“The Priests used the blood money returned by Judas to buy a
Potter’s Field." ~ Matthew 27:5-8
As the ferry chugs across the
water, the island’s withered brick of abandoned 20th century
buildings came into view. Its
destination - a 120-acre site with stunning views of Long Island’s "Gold
Coast." Flocks of Canada geese
patrol the island’s rich marsh grass and wild flowers. In its prime, Hart Island had been home to a
reform school, a TB hospital and an insane asylum.
Today, Hart is the final resting place for the unknowns, the
discarded, and the forgotten. Though its
dead number more than the living in all but 10 U.S. cities, the graveyard
remains unseen by all but the handful of convicts and guards who dig and tend its
graves.
Potter's fields like Hart aren't
just cemeteries for paupers and winos. Roughly
half of the Island’s dead are infants and stillborns; buried in a field
reserved for babies, in shoebox-size coffins stacked five high and twenty
across.
Michael is one of 28 inmates working on the island, short-timers
who volunteer to ride a Rikers Prison bus to the ferry providing the only
access to Hart Island each day.
The “Death Crew” is considered a plum gig, so far as Rikers
options go; for 50 cents an hour they handle wooden coffins that often smell
and occasionally leak. Most welcome the change
of routine and a chance to be outside.
But for Michael, the job is a blessing; an opportunity to
make sure these lost souls get buried with respect. He won’t tolerate fellow prisoners who joke
or clown around.
The prisoners often know little about those they’re burying
beyond their demographic data and the place where their bodies were found,
scrawled on the sides of coffins (i.e. Hispanic Male, (42): found 241st Street,
Inwood), and numbered to make it easier to locate and exhume them if a family
comes calling (which rarely happens).
Before the coffins are lowered, one by one, from the back of
a morgue truck into the hands of waiting inmates, Michael offers a brief prayer
for each lost soul – always stating with the deceased’s first name.
He’d always been agnostic, but now he put all his faith in
God to care for them and forgive them of any sins. “Just because they’re poor, homeless or
stillborn, doesn’t mean that we should forget them,” he promises. “Strangers are our brothers and sisters too.”
After a final blessing, he resumes his sacred duties.
Many achieve great feats and never ask the world to see or
admire them, yet instead toil day after day for others. Instead of dining with kings, they blissfully sit
with the broken, to pour love into places the privileged never witness. It’s a pure humility to which we should all
aspire.
Creator God, we ask Your presence as we
honor our sisters, brothers and children. Look over all those buried in a potter’s field,
their families and friends, and those at risk of joining them. May we acknowledge their lives and honor them. Amen
