Suburban/Urbanist

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.

I’m on the train a lot these days.  Most days my commute is about an hour each way.  When I first started my job, the long commute was a pain.  But in the six months I’ve been doing it, I’ve come to appreciate some aspects.  I get a lot of time to read, I avoid the stress of traffic, and I overhear some outrageously funny conversations between other riders.

Yesterday, I posted a funny snippet of conversation two ladies behind me were having about how smoking marijuana makes you tired.  I was a little disappointed when they got off the train because I was sure they were going to provide loads of comic material.  But after they left, I was able to hear another conversation between two men.

They were sitting behind me and I couldn’t see either of them.  I didn’t want to turn around and look, so I just kept looking ahead.  It was obvious that they didn’t know each other, but they were having a pretty engaged conversation.  The younger man was asking the older man a lot of questions about his life and seemed genuinely interested in his answers.  It turns out the older man had been drafted into the military at some point, raised his children (by himself), had at least one grandchild, was now homeless and living downtown, and spent his monthly social security check on alcohol.

Younger man: “You’ve got a lot of good years ahead of you.  You could get work at Goodwill and it wouldn’t affect your Social Security.”

Older man: “Man, if I need money for wine, I’ll just find a corner and put out a sign.  I can make $20-30 a day doing that.”

Younger man: “But it’s a shame to let your life slip away like this!”

Older man: “But I’m an alcoholic.  We’re all alcoholics out here.”

Most commuters on MAX from the westside only ride as far as downtown.  There is a mass exodus of mostly middle class white people at the downtown stops and then the train continues to the east side of the Willamette River.  Before we reach the river though, the train goes under the Burnside Bridge and stops at Skidmore Fountain.  Burnside is home to the Union Gospel Mission and a slew of other social service agencies.  The homeless are very visible in this part of town.

In the winter, many homeless ride the train in the “Free Rail Zone” to stay warm and dry.  Honestly, I usually cringe when we stop at Skidmore Fountain.  The people who board the train are frequently dirty, smelly, loud and generally just completely unlike the mostly professional class that make up the average commuter on MAX.  This portion of the ride is frequently an eye-opener as there are not many opportunities in my mostly suburban life to be confronted with this type of poverty.  Like most everyone else in America, I know about the seemingly intractable homeless problem, but I don’t have to face it on a daily basis.

Back when I worked in land use planning, I remember some planning guru arguing that most Americans live their lives in three boxes: house, car, and workplace.  His argument was that we were limiting our connections to our community in the way we structure where we live, where we work, and how we get to and from those places.  I’m not doing his argument justice here, but I think there is some truth in that.  But not only do we try to keep the physical aspects of our lives neatly compartmentalized; we also try to box our successes and failures, and our grief and our joy.

If you spend any time on public transit, you’ll quickly realize that there is a portion of the population that isn’t boxed up in the same way.  It might be the woman arguing loudly with the debt collector, the man talking about his struggles to find a job, or the guy trying to explain to his girlfriend why he was late.  They easily let these sometimes ugly and painful parts of their lives out into the open for everyone to see.

I think there are two categories of public transit users – those who use it because they want to, and those who have no choice.  For those who choose public transit, I think we often try to keep the same compartmentalization that we have in the rest of our lives.  For me, my book and my headphones keep me separate.  I suspect that for a lot of those who use public transit because they don’t have another alternative, their lives are already less boxed up.  They probably aren’t living in a single family, detached house with only their immediate family.  Their work situation may be less formal than the average professional.  All of that probably contributes to their willingness to let their life play out in public in a way that makes many of the rest of us uncomfortable.

The conversation I was eavesdropping on wrapped up shortly after I started listening in.  The younger man was trying to convince the older man that he should be involved in his grandchild’s life.

Younger man: “Do you know how much college is going to cost in 20 years?  It’ll be almost $300,000!”

Older man: “Holy sh$t!”

Younger man: “If you get yourself some work, you could put some money away for that grandchild.”

Older man: “I already screwed it up with my kids.  I raised them by myself, but I ruined it.”

Younger man: “But you could save money, and help them go to school.”

Older man: “I’d just spend it on wine.”

Then they both got off the train and went their separate ways – undoubtedly to continue living in public.