Lawn Of The Dead

Ash spreadings, Loos explains, have grown more elaborate over the years. He has stories about scatterings over the Gulf of Mexico, wine and cheese parties, and an $80,000 send-off with treats to match the deceased's corporate logo.

Loos may have a soft touch with mourners, but when out of earshot of the bereaved, he talks like the public-relations major he was at Northwest Missouri State University. After college, he spent three years as leadership consultant to his fraternity, Delta Chi. Now he's the president and a funeral director at Heartland Cremation and Burial, while Liz manages the floral arrangements.

"Coming into this as an outsider, having my outsider, unclouded opinion, it was important to know where we were going in the industry," Loos says. "Worldwide, cremation is the preference. Caskets are really a North American cultural thing."

He flies around the country giving speeches on how to advance the industry. "There's a stigma in some areas that cremation is not popular. At one point, it made up less than 20 percent of the mortuary business. Locally, we're now around the low 30s, and in part of the country, it's up to 50 percent," he notes.

"Going into this, you ask yourself: In the span of our lifetime, what is our business going to become? And cremation was an industry that was going to grow and is growing."

But he says he makes very little, if any, money from the indigent cremations.

"When you consider everything that needs to be done, and that there's only a flat $400 fee for the service, it's basically charity work."

The county can't keep a body forever. The medical examiner's office can hold a body for up to four months, if necessary. Eventually, though, something has to be done with it.

Ron Brasfield, forensic administrator with the Jackson County medical examiner's office, says he exhausts every option to find family members, but it's often hard to do. County officials usually search no more than 30 days, running newspaper advertisements and checking paper trails.

"The homeless aren't really forthcoming when they go to places and have to register who they are. You can get hospital records, but when you get to next of kin, it'll say 'Mickey Mouse' or something," Brasfield says.

Once the medical examiner's office has given up on finding a relative, it's up to Michael Wells, in the office of the county counselor, to find someone to dispose of the body. Even if a relative is available, he or she may not want to claim the body. "You'll get ahold of someone and they'll tell you, 'Oh, yeah, my uncle will handle that, so let me give him the message and he'll get right back to you.' Then you never hear from them again," Wells says. In his desk drawer, he keeps a list of mortuaries willing to take an indigent case.

At Blue Ridge Boulevard No. 2, Heartland Cremation and Burial Society stands at the confluence of a business district and a residential neighborhood, across the street from a gas station and a block down the road from a high school. It was once a large, two-story house before it was converted into a funeral home. The interior still looks more like a house than a funeral parlor. The flowers and chairs might have been arranged for a party.

The crematorium is a free-standing, converted two-car garage not far from the back door of the house. It's furnished with its own small office, with a cheap brown desk and a few shelves stacked with small brown cardboard boxes. One is labeled John Doe No. 253. This is where the indigents stay for a little while longer, in case someone comes looking for them.

In his last years, Felix Esposito carried a photograph around with him and showed it to almost everyone. He showed it to the same people repeatedly, presenting it as though for the first time.

Inside the black frame is Esposito, perhaps 50 years younger, on his wedding day in Cuba, his black hair slicked back and his mustache dapper. The photographer has caught him with his head turned toward his new bride, smiling with his eyes half-closed. His wife faces the camera with her eyes down, sliding a long kitchen knife into a sheet of wedding cake.

The photo was one of Esposito's only possessions by the time he arrived at Clara Manor a few years ago. He died in October 2006. Lupe Aguilar keeps the picture wrapped in cotton.

Aguilar acted as Esposito's translator — since arriving in the United States as a refugee in 1980, Esposito hadn't learned much English. He was already in the early stages of dementia when he was checked into Clara Manor, near 36th Street and Warwick. And though he was surrounded by other Cuban refugees of varying ages and conditions, he made no attempts at camaraderie.

"He didn't talk much," Aguilar says. "He kept to himself. We would all go down to the senior center, and he would stand by himself, off in a corner."

Sometimes he dropped hints. He had once owned a dry-cleaning business in Cuba. And he had been a prisoner, something he never explained, other than to say he hated Castro. "You're not allowed to have anything over there," he told Aguilar. His wife and his family were dead, he said. One living relative, a son, remained in Cuba.