Lawn Of The Dead

The cottonwood's prominence makes it a convenient spot to spread the ashes. Loos figures that it's a reasonably dignified slope of the cemetery, in case any-one ever comes looking for a long-lost relative.

"No, no one ever shows up to look for them. Or, at least, I haven't met them if they did," Pence says. "I wouldn't know what to tell them anyway. If he [Loos] tells 'em he scattered 'em here, I'll show them to the cottonwood tree."

Anyone who does come will have to take Pence's word for it. The ashes of a person have no more integrity than the remains at the bottom of a barbecue pit, and what isn't immediately taken by the wind will go in the rain or dissolve in the morning dew.

Claudie Harris got the idea for the memorial service six weeks before Cherylen Battles died.

Battles had lived at Rockhill Manor, in the neighborhood a couple of blocks north of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, since 2002. The house is an assisted-living facility for people with chronic mental illness. Battles was dying of ovarian cancer. The weight had wasted from her face and limbs but remained in her belly, giving her the look of a woman who had finally conceived very late in life.

She had always been a quiet woman. When the cancer started getting worse, she fought to keep her own room on the second floor and struggled up and down the stairs rather than have the staff make up a new ground-floor room and go to the trouble of moving her. So it was a surprise when she finally asked Harris for something.

"I want me some fried chicken," Battles said, "and some greens and some macaroni and cheese."

The two had met when Harris was working in the home's laundry service and Battles had gone down one day and volunteered to help. That happens a lot in Rockhill. There's not much to do some days except work with the staff and make small talk, which is what they did — the news, what was going on around the home. Battles knew that Harris kept a garden and that she liked to cook.

So Harris prepared the food, and the next day, she brought Battles the meal.

"The only time I ever asked her about her family was when she got sick," Harris says. "And the only family she knew of was an uncle in Kansas. She tried to call him, and we tried to get him, but he got the phone number changed. That broke my heart."

Knowing Battles didn't have much time left, Harris decided to organize a memorial service for her while Battles could still enjoy it. Harris talked to the staff, telling everyone a date and a dish they could bring, and she started making more fried chicken.

They brought Battles into the staff room with her boyfriend, another Rockhill Manor resident named Roy. Battles knew it was a goodbye, but she didn't say anything about it other than to thank everyone who came.

She died a month later, in September 2006.

Roy met Battles waiting at the bus stop. She kept him out of trouble, he says.

"Not everyone act right, you know," he says. "It ain't the staff — it's the residents. But not everyone always get along. She calmed you down. She told me once she had had a family and a couple of kids, but she didn't know where they were."

Roy and Harris sit at an outside table at the rear of Rockhill's grounds as they talk. Harris pauses to light a cigarette.

"You know, that's the first time I ever heard she had any kids," Harris tells Roy.

The two talk a little while longer before Roy's new girlfriend comes for him. Harris shakes her head, starts talking about everyone being God's child and how long she's had to be patient working here. She quotes Bible verses about forgiveness. She says she's seen people go to bed normal and wake up not knowing who they are.

"Someone cared enough to get her to us," she says of Battles, "but that was the end of it."

She keeps Battles' belongings in a desk drawer. There isn't much there: a few cassette tapes, Christmas music and gospel mostly, and a picture that might be 20 years old of a young woman Harris has never seen in person.

"I keep thinking somebody might come and get them," she says.

Then she rubs out the cigarette and walks back into Rockhill Manor. There are 168 residents, and something always needs finishing.