Perfect Memorials Funeral and Cremation Blog » prayer http://www.perfectmemorials.com/blog Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:00:18 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Prayer for the Dead in Detroit http://www.perfectmemorials.com/blog/prayer-for-the-dead-in-detroit/ http://www.perfectmemorials.com/blog/prayer-for-the-dead-in-detroit/#comments Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:30:35 +0000 Perfect Memorials http://www.perfectmemorials.com/blog/?p=1039 Late in 2008, actor/comedian Rosie O’Donnell was in Detroit making the movie America for the Lifetime cable network when she blogged about the economic decline of the Motor City:
I’m here in Detroit, Michigan where the recession is already the depression. Hard to believe unless you see it. We must save this city.

While hard times have affected all kinds of people in ways big and small, they have, perhaps, fallen hardest on Detroit. The crumbling of the once mighty auto industry and unprecedented declines in the financial and real estate markets have driven unemployment and homelessness to record highs. In Detroit, the effects of poverty are everywhere – even in death.

The kindness of strangers
Paul Betts, a former highway designer, heard a radio report last year about the increasing number of unclaimed bodies resulting from the recession. Perhaps the deceased were estranged from loved ones, or perhaps families lacked the funds to provide a proper funeral. Betts understood that Wayne County had a contract with a local funeral home to bury the dead, but the fact that no one was present to mourn their passing troubled him deeply.

A call to the county coroner put Betts in touch with Bill Kiesgen, the funeral director at Perry Funeral Home. The state and county pay the funeral home $700 per cremation or burial, and the funeral home splits the fee with the cemetery. Together, Betts and Kiesgen devised a plan to hold a monthly  prayer service for the deceased who have no one else to pray for them. As Betts saw it, “We’ve got a lot of abandoned buildings we can’t do anything about. Abandoned people, we can at least pray for.”

Although the Unclaimed Friends services, held on the third Wednesday of every month, are open to everyone, most of those who attend are members of the Episcopal parish where Betts is a member. Kiesgen supplies a white rose for each of the deceased – in March, there were 24 white roses – and Betts gives a metal angel to each of the guests. One by one, the names of the deceased are read aloud, and mourners respond, “May he (or she) rest in peace.”

Everyone deserves a farewell
“Everyone deserves some sort of a farewell,” according to Kiesgen, who doesn’t judge the families of the deceased, reasoning that they may have faced a choice of whether to feed their living members or bury the one who died.

Following the service, Betts encourages the guests to pass their angels and roses on to others with a request that they, too, pray for the stranger whose name is on the rose. He thanks everyone for coming and expresses his hope that by participating in the service, they have made Detroit a little kinder place.

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