Lawn Of The Dead

Andrew Loos met the funeral director's daughter when they were in junior high school. After that, there was always a sense of inevitability to his future.

Even before he and Liz got engaged, Andrew heard the joke over and over: You know you're going to end up running a mortuary, right? Funeral families have a habit of raising their young for the job. The parents want their kids to run their own businesses and be as financially stable as they are. And it's not a trade that makes recruiting outsiders easy.

They managed to put it off for a few years. Though he didn't do as well in college as he had hoped, Andrew found a good job in marketing after he graduated. They lived in St. Joseph. Liz got a merchandising degree and worked at the wedding department at a Dillard's and managed some clothing stores.

One night at dinner, when Andrew was 25, his father-in-law paused between bites of steak to mention that there was a mortuary on the market in Raytown. If Andrew wanted it, they could be business partners.

Loos, now 37, performs one service that few morticians will do, and he does it more than any of his peers in the business. When Jackson County's poor or homeless die and no one comes to claim them, it's often Loos who handles the bodies. Under county guidelines, the public health department pays for disposal of the dead; most often, that means cremation because it's the cheapest route — $400 per body.

Loos is pragmatic about why he became the county's premier handler of the forgotten dead.

"We were the first business in the area to have a crematorium, and we have a freezer," he says.

Usually, a family member somewhere is willing to sign off on a cremation and accept the ashes. In the case of a loner or someone without family, maybe a neighbor will pick up the remains. But sometimes, Loos cremates someone who has no family, no friends and no one willing to claim the remains. He has a plan for that.

"We do a scattering ourselves," he says. Generally, he doesn't wait longer than 30 days.

"We want to give them some closure in some sort of dignified manner."

Loos always does the scatterings in the same place, between a cottonwood tree and a columbarium at Brooking Cemetery on East 53rd Street. He's left dozens of men and women in the same spot over the years.

Because of privacy laws, Loos says, he can't reveal the names of the people whose remains he has scattered. But for each indigent body the Jackson County medical examiner's office sends to Loos, there's a record that provides some clues as to whose ashes have merged with the patch of grass and dirt beneath the cottonwood tree in Brooking Cemetery.

The records list known family, known assets, the deceased's last known place of residence, and who finally requested and paid for the cremation.

If there was no family and no one consented to cremation, Loos almost certainly disposed of the remains himself.

Jack McReynolds' last residence was a nursing home on Wornall. County records list no relatives and "none" under assets. The applicant-for-cremation line is blank.

McReynolds knew that he wasn't going to live in the Greens at Creekside for long. His nurse, Gloria Williams, remembers the tall, slender black man as still and quiet for a cancer patient who must have been in a great deal of pain.

"I knew he was at peace because right after he got here, he mentioned it," Williams says. "He said, 'I know I'm not going to get any better. I know it's coming.'"

McReynolds stayed in his narrow hospital bed for three weeks before dying in March 2006 at the age of 67.

He spent most of his time reading novels or the newspaper or watching television game shows. Sometimes friends or old co-workers visited, many from the Baptist church that had made arrangements for him to go to the nursing home. But no family.

Joanna Belle, activities director for Greens at Creekside, has worked in nursing homes for more than a dozen years. She always gives new patients a questionnaire that hints at their family histories.

"I have to ask them why they're here, and a lot don't want to answer because it makes them sad. So they just say, 'My health' because they don't want to talk about what's going on with their families or people that could be taking care of them," Belle says. "The only thing they'll tell you about is their children. I don't think he had any."

Neither Belle nor Williams knows what happened to McReynolds after his death. County records note a $400 invoice for direct cremation to Heartland Cremation and Burial Society, requested and paid for by the county.

"You know, I never understood that, why he didn't have any kids," Williams says. "He was a real nice-looking man. You wonder what happened."

Despite the comforting box of tissues on a polished wood table, the Heartland Cremation and Burial Society's parlor is mostly a showroom. Urns of varying shapes and materials are on display, including one large biodegradable container in the shape of a heart, pale with pink flowers, like a box of Valentine's Day candy. There are rows of jewelry in which the bereaved can keep a tiny piece of ash to wear around their necks.