Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Buried alone

It’s a Monday morning at the Thiais cemetery, about 20 minutes south of Paris.

Four cemetery employees, dressed like waiters - black trousers, white shirt, thin black ties – but wearing work boots and gloves, crank up the heavy stone cover of a white tomb.

[Crank sound]

Rows of identical tombs stretch out in every direction – this part of the cemetery has the impersonal feel of a parking lot, despite some attempts at landscaping.

[ambi]

This is section 102, reserved for the free burials provided by the city of Paris.
Until 2003, if you died and no one claimed your body, you’d be buried here without much ceremony.

Since then, though, volunteers from a collective called ‘Les Morts de la Rue’ – the dead of the streets -- have been showing up, to mark these burials with simple ceremonies.

Today, like every Monday and Wednesday morning, two people from the group are here, Thomas Cichawa, a volunteer, and Cecile Rocca, the group’s director.

They are burying four men, one after the other.

[ambi]

The cemetery workers pull the coffins out of a van… Each has a metal plaque on it, with a name, birth and death date

The first one is that of a 47-year-old man who, according to police reports relayed to the group members, died a violent death.
He may or may not have been homeless…

[ambi]

The cemetery workers bring the coffin over to the open tomb, and lower it in with hooks and ropes. Then they stand aside.

Cecile starts to read a text from a piece of paper.

Cecile: “Cher Didier…

Dear Didier

Cecile “Vous etes né…

You were born the 26th of July 1961, and died May 18th of this year

Cecile: “Il y a eu un cetain nombre de temps…

There was a long delay before your burial, which was likely the time needed to investigate the circumstances of your death.

Cecile: “Votre prenom…

Your first time comes from a Latin word meaning desire. And I hope with all my heart that beyond your dramatic death - too early, and too alone – desire was part of your life

Cecile: “Adieu Didier.”

Goodbye Didier

After the reading, the workers lower the lid onto the tomb.

[Sound of lid closing]

Cecile sets a flowering plant on the stone – one of four she bought at the flower shop on the way in.

She and Thomas take turns reading texts for the other three men.
One is unknown – his name is written as “pouvant etre” – could be named – an anonymous burial.

Afterwards, Cecile and Thomas go across the street to a café.

[ambi]

Every time group members accompany bodies, they meet up afterwards to record everything that happened. They write down the color of the flowers, the weather, who was there… everything.

This goes into a folder, along with the text that was read. It’s to give to families, if they ever turn up – which happens quite rarely.

The texts are never religious. They’re written by the volunteers, often quoting poems. Thomas says he tries to imagine who the person was, but it’s not easy

Thomas: They have different names. They were born in such a places- so it may follow you to some- imaginary landscape. Imagine these people- how they lived. We often know only the end of the lives, so someone who lived in the porch or on the street, or something- just three or four sentence sent us by the authorities. Really nothing- so you, you try to imagine the others’ life.

Accompanying these people in their deaths is very personal, very intimate.
But the larger picture is political.

One of the aims of the collective is to raise awareness about homelessness.
In particular, they highlight the low life expectancy of people living on the streets.

Thomas: homeless people- they lives are shorter than ours, because the conditions of life are very hard, very tough.... That’s why we can see very young people die. We accompanied today, a fifty years old guy- which is my age. Or I saw accompanied a 35 years man.... so- you, you can be angry about that, because these guys don’t have to die, in the middle of the street. They could do something- and they are something.

The group was founded to keep track of homeless people who would disappear from the streets. The idea was to bring homeless groups together to help identify people, and then give them proper burials.

But beyond this, the group’s president Christophe Louis says it’s about raising awareness:

Louis: It’s to denounce the premature deaths of all these people of the street. The average lifespan of the people we accompany is about 48 to 52 years old, which is very young for the French population. So we want to people aware that life on the street kills: everyone who ends up on the street is condemned to a premature death. Death allows us to make the people aware of this, because death is frightening. And so we set up ethical questions: is it OK in France to die in the street? To die with the same life expectancy as that of a very poor country, while we’re the world’s fifth most powerful economy?

The group buries eight people a week in the Paris area.
They get what little information is available from the public morgue, hospitals and police reports.

They publish names in death announcements, both in public ceremonies, and online. Last year they posted 390 names.

The collective also buries people who aren’t homeless, but who have died alone.

Sometimes someone’s family contacts the group long after the burials…
They’ve been looking for their brother or father or uncle who they lost touch with when they became homeless… But Louis say that’s rare. More often are those who have not been identified:

Louis: What we are most disturbed by is when we aren’t able to figure out someone’s identity. Often in our announcements and in the people we accompany is a man, without a name. Either he was not recognized, or he did not have identity papers. It’ happens regularly. And it’s hard, because do people live anonymously in our society? No, I think every person has an identity, and we can’t give that to them on the last day of their life.

Louis says burring homeless people offers a different perspective on how they live:

Louis: You tell yourself that it’s a pity to be there at the last moment, and not to have done what had to be done before. When you work with the dead, it’s to work with the living, to engage with the living.

Group director Cecile Rocca says the volunteers humanize the whole process. It used to be that coffins would come from the morgue marked with just the weight and an inspection number.

When volunteers asked for this to be changed, the cemetery was very receptive, says Cecile. Now there are metal nameplates attached to the coffins.

Cecile: Our presence publicly establishes that we consider these people as part of this republican fraternity. And we are witnesses. Before the association was present like this, things happened without much dignity. Because when there is no one there, there is no reason to be dignified. For the grave diggers, who are incredible people, it was just a job. The fact that we are there tells us, tells the gravediggers, tells society, that these are human beings who are saying goodbye.

AMBI

The cemetery’s administrative offices are in a 1960s-style building at the entrance. The vans from the morgue stop by here to get the tomb assignments.

Director Brigitte Roux approaches her job matter-of-factly, and she’s dressed the same way: jeans and Converse sneakers. She says that administratively, unclaimed bodies buried in the cemetery’s 36-hundred public tombs are treated just like anyone else.

The difference is that if the bodies are unclaimed after five years, they are exhumed and cremated, to leave room for others.

Roux: If the family does not show up within five years, unfortunately they cannot recover the body. In fact, it’s pretty rare, though. It’s rare that there are family-requested exhumations from these individual tombs.

She says that there are always two volunteers present for the 30 or so unclaimed bodies buried here each month. And their presence changes the way the work is done.
Patrice Varnerau, the cemetery’s head grave digger, agrees.

Varnerau: The grave diggers, they know that every Monday or every Wednesday there is- not a ceremony, but a kind of prayer for each burial. Before, there was nobody there. The coffin had an inspection number and the weight. The morgue marked that. Now it has a name plate. It’s no longer an unknown person. The ritual is important for the person who is being buried. It doesn’t change our work much, but for the person being buried it gives them a bit of a value. Even if they won’t see or hear it, but for them it’s a good thing.

[ambi]

The bodies come to the cemetery from hospitals, or from here, the city morgue – a brick building in the center of Paris by the Seine river, sandwiched between two busy streets. It’s rather grim, with the screeching of an elevated metro overhead.

[metro]

Every Monday morning at 8 AM, two volunteers meet a van here, which is loaded up with four coffins.

One of the two women this morning is Danielle Momon, a translator, who has been accompanying bodies since the end of 2008. She comes about once a month.

Momon: The first time, I was very concerned that I would burst into tears like at a funeral of someone close to me. But it didn’t happen. You realize that you are obviously not at a funeral for someone close. But I do find it to be a very powerful experience. I won’t say it’s beautiful, but there is something powerful in accompanying someone who you don’t know, knowing they are not leaving alone. It’s a deeply human gesture- and it makes us reflect, too. You tell yourself it could be you.

[metro]

Momon: I feel bad about it, but I know that I have trouble addressing a homeless person, and here, I feel like I’m doing what I know better how to do.

[ambi]

Thomas: “Cher Mohammed Ben Said….

Dear Mohammed Ben Said. You were born in 1924 and died in 2009.

Thomas: “Nous ne connaisons que la fin de votre vie…

We only know the end of your life – very little.
You lived in the hallway of a building- You died in the hospital

Thomas: “Notre presence ici…

Our thoughts for you, Mohammed, can be expressed in these famous words: No man is an island, entire of itself.
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…

Thomas: “Adieu Mohammed.”

Goodbye Mohammed.

In Thiais, France, I’m Sarah Elzas.

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