What Happens to Your Body if You Die and You Have No Family
Death is solitary.
Everyone who leaves this world does then unaccompanied. Simply for some, the path leading to that deviation is also lonesome. Some have no family, no friends, not even money to cover life'due south various expenses. And when they cannot pay the costs of living for themselves, they likely cannot pay the costs of death either.
It's not uncommon for an individual to die with neither financial assets nor next of kin to defray with the costs of a funeral. And although Suffolk County offers some funding, several Due north Fork funeral directors say they almost always have a fiscal hit when they handle such situations.
But they yet do information technology willingly.
"How tin can you deny somebody a proper burial in the community you live in?" said Karen Heppner, funeral manager at McLaughlin Heppner Funeral Home in Riverhead. "How can I say, 'No, I'm non going to do it for yous because you've had hard times'?"
The canton has a framework in place to assistance and then every person gets some sort of final rest, fifty-fifty if the services are limited. Getting to that point, all the same, requires several weeks of legwork to ensure the assistance is really needed.
When a death occurs, it is initially processed through the medical examiner's part, where the circumstances of death are adamant and officials attempt to figure out what comes next. If any family exists, they are contacted; if a will was written, it is referenced.
And if the ME'south search turns up nil, the case goes to the canton public administrator, who performs his own search for relatives and documentation. If that search yields no possible form of payment for a funeral — say, the deceased's savings account or a child willing to human foot the beak — so the county Section of Social Services can assist.
"If the body ends up with the ME and nobody comes in to merits it and they tin can't locate everyone, they contact us," said Franklyn Farris, Suffolk Canton's public administrator. "We try to locate somebody, and if we can't discover anyone to step upward or locate any funds, nosotros go to DSS, they option out the funeral home and we qualify them to exercise it."
With the public administrator's say-so, DSS can surrender to $1,200 to any funeral home willing to take on such a job, often called a "welfare case" or a "DSS instance." The guidelines are strict: only a elementary cloth-covered casket, short visiting hours and and then on. (If they wish, though, family members tin can contribute upwards to $ane,200 of their own to add together services.)
Once a funeral home accepts a example, it must handle the residual of the process — from embalming to burial — on its own. Here on the North Fork, which is generally well-off compared to the rest of Suffolk County, any given funeral home could meet a half-dozen such scenarios a year.
However, the boilerplate cost of even the simplest service and burial in the area can range from $two,300 to $3,500, according to a number of funeral directors. So when a funeral abode takes on a DSS instance, information technology does so at a substantial discount.
"Even if social services gives me $1,200, that's not going to embrace it," Ms. Heppner said. "That's a pretty substantial burden for united states to exercise it."
Joe Grattan, funeral director for DeFriest-Grattan Funeral Homes in Mattituck, said he ever takes a hit when he has to purchase a plot for a DSS case. Like others, though, he is still happy to do so.
Sometimes, that cost is mitigated because a person's family has already purchased a burial plot. And indigent veterans can be buried at Calverton National Cemetery for complimentary.
"Because we're so close to a national cemetery, unlike funeral homes have taken it on that if it's a veteran, we'll do a burial at Calverton National [for free]," Ms. Heppner said.
Sal Mangano, one of the directors at Tuthill-Mangano Funeral Home in Riverhead, said sure religious organizations such as St. Vincent DePaul might also help shoulder the price.
Just cemeteries themselves are rarely involved in this process. Richard Ehlers, superintendent of New Bethany Cemetery in Mattituck, said he never even knows when a person is being buried with a county stipend.
"[A funeral managing director] volition telephone call me up and say, 'I demand a plot for a person,'<\!q>" he said. "He doesn't tell me whether they're rich, poor, race, anything."
Cremation is cheaper — the whole process costs roughly $i,600 in a DSS instance, according to Doug Mathie of Horton-Mathie Funeral Abode in Greenport — just under New York Country law, funeral directors can only cremate an private when there is clear evidence that'due south what the person wanted.
"Cremation is irreversible," Mr. Mathie said. "Vi months down the line, if a relative steps forwards and says, 'Where's my loved one?' and the person'southward cremated, at that place's a problem. Merely if the person's buried in the wrong place, you can always correct the situation."
The number of funeral homes willing to take on these cases is unclear because no law requires it.
Afterward all, anyone who takes on a welfare example essentially loses money. But Mr. Grattan, who has "worked in every funeral dwelling eastward of Patchogue," said he has "never heard of whatsoever case existence turned down."
Ms. Heppner, Mr. Mangano, Mr. Mathie and Mr. Grattan all confirmed that their establishments accept DSS cases.
"Nosotros're a community business organisation, and we take to take intendance of the customs," Mr. Mangano said. "It's of import to [the deceased's] loved ones, their friends, their neighbors. You merely desire to do the right thing in this world."
Some homes have been doing funerals as a public service for decades. Mr. Grattan remembered that his predecessor, David DeFriest Sr., once buried four migrant workers who had died in a fire at the Cutchogue labor camp.
"I tin't say for sure whether he got paid a dime," he said. "He may have gotten something from social services or from the Department of Welfare, as they chosen it in those days. What would have happened to them? I don't really know."
In some cases, funeral directors must play an boosted function: that of last witness to the burial. Traditionally trained to aid the grieving put their loved ones to rest, these men and women sometimes become surrogate families, standing in to do whatever they tin to make certain everyone's departure is properly acknowledged.
Mr. Grattan remembers several cases in which he, a chaplain and a gravedigger were the only people present at a burying. Mr. Mathie has had like experiences, but like his recent "surreal" case.
In 1 instance about 20 years ago, Mr. Mathie brought a casket to a church for a service and no one came save for the priest and six pallbearers.
That stuck with him for the improve function of two decades. And in the years since, he said, in that location take been "besides many times" where a burial or a cremation went unattended. But for many, helping out in these lonely cases is simply the correct thing to exercise — ethically, spiritually and existentially.
Photograph Credit: Chris Lisinski
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Source: https://riverheadnewsreview.timesreview.com/2016/02/71456/what-happens-when-life-ends-for-someone-with-no-family-or-means/
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