On a clear Thursday morning in December, more than a hundred people stood solemnly observing as a group of clergymen chanted and prayed over a mass burial ground in Boyle Heights.
“For those who are unclaimed, we now gather here today to celebrate and to lay them to rest,” said Christina Ghaly, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, to the crowd.
Since 1896, the county has hosted an annual unclaimed dead ceremony to commemorate the lives of hundreds of people who died in LA County and whose remains could not be forwarded to next of kin. The county’s office of decedent affairs oversees the cremains and ashes that are buried together every December in East LA. Only those who died within LA County’s borders are eligible for the burial. A total of 2,308 people who had died in 2022 were buried together this year — the highest number over the past twenty years.
“We do not know enough about each person to do justice to their full stories,” said county supervisor Janice Hanh. “We know many were homeless, some were children, some were immigrants … many were sick … almost all of them were poor.”…