Unclaimed deaths are on the rise.
Pamela Prickett, associate professor of sociology at Pomona College, examines how some have come together to honor them.
Pamela Prickett is an associate professor of sociology at Pomona College and former journalist. She is the author of two books about Los Angeles, including The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels and Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels.
America’s Rising Number of Unclaimed Deaths
Nobody grows up and says, “I hope that when I die, there is no one to mourn me.”
Yet my research shows that’s the reality for a growing number of Americans. Entwined epidemics of loneliness, isolation and family estrangement, and eroding social ties, mean many of us will become dependent on local governments to arrange our burials or cremations, putting us at the mercy of strangers.
We’ve always had potter’s fields, with the poor in unmarked graves. But today, Americans from all walks of life have a similar fate. An estimated 2 to 4 percent of the 3 million people who die every year in the U.S. go unclaimed, a number that is increasing. In Maryland, one of the few states to keep track of unclaimed deaths, the percentage of people going unclaimed has more than doubled in 20 years.
These deaths serve as a barometer of kin support at the end of life, alerting us that something fundamental has changed in what Americans are willing to do for their relatives. It turns out to be far less than in generations past.
Yet within this landscape of loneliness, I’ve found pockets of hope. Volunteer mourners have started coming together to bury the unclaimed—people they’ve never met but whom they want to honor. Every December, Los Angeles County organizes an interfaith, multilingual service to honor all the unclaimed. Led by a chaplain from the county’s main public hospital and attended by an array of government workers and everyday Angelenos, the ceremony exemplifies strangers showing up for strangers. In other parts of the country, volunteers organize funerals for unclaimed veterans and unclaimed infants.
These funerals turn anger, sadness and sorrow into awareness, healing and connection. Even if it may seem like there are more pressing social problems, the unclaimed remind us that unless everybody counts, nobody counts.
