Abandonment and hope in the City of Angels
In the shadow of Hollywood's perpetual glamour machine, where even the morning fog seems to come with its own Instagram filter, two sociologists, Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans, have spent eight years peering into the darkest corners of Los Angeles County's morgues. Their findings, published in read less like an academic treatise and more like a love letter to the forgotten, penned in the ink of hard truths and unexpected grace.
The numbers alone should stop us cold: 150,000 Americans go unclaimed each year, their bodies relegated to the modern equivalent of potter's fields. But statistics have always been poor storytellers. What the authors give us instead are the intimate portraits of four souls who slipped through society's increasingly fragile safety net - Bobby, the Vietnam vet who found his voice in a choir; Lena, clutching a hammer in her unlocked house; David, finding peculiar peace in solitude; and Midge, whose van became both home and prison.
These stories are told with a granular detail that makes you forget you're reading well-researched sociology as Bobby's journey from the streets to singing on isn't just a redemption narrative - it's a reminder that talent and tragedy often share the same address. Lena's paranoid fortress of solitude, complete with that bedside hammer, speaks volumes about the fear that frequently underlies isolation. David's embrace of Scientology and solitude challenges our assumptions about what constitutes a life well-lived. And Midge, whose church community refused to give up on her even when she tried to give up on herself.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Dublin's city mortuary tells a parallel tale. Twenty-one bodies lie in state, identified but uncollected, one having waited more than a year for someone to remember they once existed. We Irish have always understood death better than most - our wakes are legendary, their keening an art form. Yet, in the land of a thousand welcomes, bodies go unclaimed here too. The challenge of burying the destitute poor has long haunted Irish communities.
Our Irish approach to death has always been distinct, shaped by centuries of tradition and ritual. The wake, that uniquely Irish celebration of life in the face of death, represents a communal refusal to let anyone go unmourned. Yet even here, in the land of a thousand welcomes, bodies go unclaimed, stories go untold.
The similarities between the American and Irish experiences are striking. Both countries grapple with the same fundamental question: how do we honour the dead when the living have turned away? In Los Angeles, Church worker Albert Gaskin holds onto ashes longer than protocol demands, hoping against hope that someone might come looking. In Dublin, the database of 44 unidentified bodies maintained by Irish authorities speaks to a modern tragedy playing out against the backdrop of ancient customs. Each entry in that database - from the abandoned newborn to the man who spent 35 years in a Cork psychiatric hospital - tells a story of connection lost and dignity denied - modern technology's attempt to close wounds that have festered for decades.
But this isn't just another misery memoir for our disconnected age, as what emerges from these pages is far more nuanced - a testament to humanity's stubborn insistence on finding connection in the most unlikely places. The hundreds who gathered in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, to mourn strangers, their presence a quiet rebellion against the notion that some lives matter less than others. The church secretary who gives Midge a key to her apartment, the couple who converts their garage into a home for her, and the choir members who stand vigil at Bobby's bedside are the true heroes of this tale. The Mexican American community in Boyle Heights who gather to mourn strangers finds its parallel in the Irish tradition of attending funerals of people barely known - a cultural imperative to ensure no one goes to their grave unmourned.
The similarities run deeper than mere coincidence. Both nations have experienced profound social upheaval and population displacement. America's epidemic of loneliness claims its victims, just as Ireland's history of emigration and social change has left its own legacy of fractured families and lost connections. The rural villages that once ensured everyone belonged somewhere have given way to urban anonymity, where neighbours might not know each other's names, let alone their stories.
The American authors' most devastating critique isn't of government bureaucracy (though there's plenty to criticise in the Kafkaesque definition of "family" that prevents chosen families from claiming their loved ones) but of our collective willing blindness to the fraying of social bonds. Yet even here, hope sneaks in through the morgue's back door.
What Prickett and Timmermans have achieved is remarkable - they've written a book about death that pulses with life, about abandonment that celebrates connection, and about institutional failure that somehow leaves you believing in institutions, or at least in the people who staff them. It's a mirror held up to our fractured society but also reflects the persistent, stubborn light of human decency.
The parallel narrative unfolds with its own peculiar grace here in Ireland. The decision to publish details of unidentified remains online speaks to a modern approach to an ancient problem - the need to name our dead, to give them back their stories. It's a digital-age solution to a timeless human need for closure, for connection, for the simple dignity of being remembered.
The book's most powerful moments come not in its grand observations about social isolation or institutional failings but in the small acts of grace that pepper its pages. The veteran who sits quietly with his friend as he packs to leave rehab, asking nothing, offering everything. The church member who stands "on the front step" waiting for the prodigal to return. The county worker who treats each box of ashes as if it contained the remains of his own family.
These moments remind us that community isn't something we're born into—it's something we actively create, day by day, with small decisions. Nothing is merely accidental; the unclaimed bodies in Los Angeles and Dublin aren't just statistics or cautionary tales; they're mirrors reflecting our own choices about how we live, connect, and care for one another.
Ultimately, isn't about death at all. It's about life - how we live it, how we share it, and how we might do better at both. It's about the choices we make while we still can and the legacies we leave when we no longer can. It's about the fundamental truth that unless everybody counts, nobody counts.
Bobby's choir mates, Midge's church family, Lena's concerned neighbours, and David's peaceful solitude aren't just supporting characters in tales of lonely deaths. They're reminders that community exists wherever we choose to create it, that family is more verb than noun.
As I write this, somewhere in Los Angeles, strangers may be gathering to mourn people they never knew. In Dublin, forensic scientists are extracting DNA from long-buried bones. And in countless towns across both continents, the unclaimed wait in cold storage while the machinery of bureaucracy grinds on. But they're not really unclaimed, are they? Not anymore. Not after this book.
In both nations, the story of the unclaimed dead is ultimately a story about the living - how we choose to honour our shared humanity, the communities we build, and their continually reforged connections. We are reminded that dignity in death, like love in life, is something we give each other. And perhaps most importantly, it's a call to action - to strengthen our bonds, widen our circles of care, and ensure that no one goes unclaimed, unmourned, or forgotten.
