On April 18th, a 14-year-old boy named Shiloh Hampton was walking through a park near Lloyd Center when he was shot and killed. By all accounts, Shiloh’s life was probably much harder than most of ours. While he was in foster care, he was loved by his friends, family and foster parents. Portland police have said the shooting was gang-related, but those closest to him say he wasn’t part of a gang. He very well may have been an innocent bystander. But innocent or not, he was shot to death in the middle of a park on a sunny afternoon. Today I signed the license that allows his family to bury him in one of Metro’s cemeteries.
When I started working at Metro, I knew that we owned and operated 14 pioneer cemeteries in Multnomah County. But I didn’t realize that I would be involved in those operations. I assumed my responsibility would end at setting the budget for our operations staff. One of the most unusual parts of my job is reviewing and signing the burial license for purchases of cemetery plots at Metro facilities. The burial license is the legal document that gives the right to have some buried in a plot (technically we call it a Certificate of Interment).
I’m the final reviewer in the process. My job is to make sure all of the paperwork is in order and to check things like making sure the plot we’re selling hasn’t already been sold to anyone else. This is harder than you might think, because some of these cemeteries are over 150 years old. Over those 150 years they were managed by a wide variety of organizations, and at some times, by no one at all. The old records are very spotty, but we take our commitment to the cemeteries very seriously.
Most of the licenses that come across my desk are routine. Because many of these cemeteries have strong ties to families that have lived in the region since the pioneer days, many of the licenses are for descendents of the pioneers. For a variety of reasons, our cemetery plots are less expensive than many private facilities. As a result, Metro’s cemeteries have become very popular with groups where money is an issue. In the eastern portions of Multnomah County, there is a large population of Russian and other eastern European immigrants. Those communities have become significant customers of the pioneer cemeteries.
Toviy Sinyayev was a junior at Milwaukie High School. On April 4th, he died from a heroin overdose. His friends said he had been a good student, but this year he’d been disconnected and missing school. Two adults were later arrested for selling heroin to Toviy and his sister. I’d seen several articles in the paper on his death, and about two weeks later, his burial license came across my desk.
Most of the burial licenses I see are less dramatic.
The vast majority of the names aren’t familiar to me. The information included in the files varies. Sometimes the family will include an obituary, but most of the time they don’t. Some are tragic in their simplicity. I’ve signed several for young children – babies and toddlers. There is nothing in the file to indicate what happened, but I try not to imagine their parents’ pain. I know that while the paperwork shows a relatively simple business transaction, it most certainly is not.
A couple of weeks ago I signed the license for man whose name looked familiar. He was the father of a friend of my sister. Our families were connected for several years, but grew apart. He apparently passed away after an illness. I learned from our staff that he was related to the pioneer family that originally started this particular cemetery. He was buried next to his great-great grandfather. In the midst of their pain, his family was taking some comfort in connecting with that part of their past.
Most of the time, my job is very abstract. I spend a lot of time dealing with numbers and I’m usually conveniently isolated from the practical effects of my work. My involvement with the cemetery program is a unique opportunity to be a part of the broad range of the human experience. It is also an opportunity to be a part of a program that serves the public with grace and dignity during what are certainly very hard times.
