Only the lonely

Their names are read one by one. Each of them is dead, and nearly all of them died alone.

It's a winter evening inside Perry Funeral Home on Trumbull near Warren in Detroit. A handful of mourners and a few well-wishers are gathered in a small room, surrounded by flowers and candles and shaded lamps, the fixtures of funerals. This is the one place in town where unknown or unwanted bodies from the county morgue wind up to be prepared for burial.

Tonight's gathering is a memorial for these forgotten dead. Once a month, their names are read aloud slowly, solemnly, reverently. As each one is spoken, a bell is struck and a candle is lit on a table that stands where a coffin would normally be. By the time the final name on a long list is read, the front of the room will be lit a bright golden yellow.

Someone might wind up unclaimed for a few reasons. The body was discovered somewhere outside long after death and can't be identified. No next of kin can be found. Or the person was truly alone in the world.

"There's a whole group who, for whatever reason, have been cut off from society," says Carolyn Gamble, the 67-year-old organizer of this service. "In our city there are so many people who are destitute. They don't really have family, so for whatever reason, they end up in the morgue like this."

Tonight, the list of the deceased holds 30 names.

"Paul Brown," says her friend, Della Woodall, wearing church finery as she stands behind a lectern. A long pause follows her words. Nobody here knows Paul Brown. Nobody's ever heard of him. But in silence they contemplate his name, and for a brief moment he isn't forgotten anymore. 

"Date of birth: March 6, 1954," Woodall continues. "Date of death: Nov. 2, 2011. Age: 57." Another pause. Then the mourners, all eight of them, make the same intonation: "May he rest in peace."

They'll never speak of how he died, or why he's now on this list of the forgotten, even though some here have learned those facts from the morgue. This is to merely recognize that he, like the others on the list, is now missing from the world.

"Matthew Wilson," she continues. "Feb. 22, 1970. Date of death: Nov. 20, 2011. Age: 41."

Again, a pause. "May he rest in peace."

James Gallagher. Nora Adams. Gerald Freedman. Cornelius Wright. Duncan Cameron. Thomas Webb Jr. A couple dozen more names follow. Some barely middle-aged. Others in their 90s. 

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