Last week, two friends, Steve and Marlene, were killed in a car accident.  They were much older and since they did not have any family, other than a cat, we all referred to them as Uncle Steve and Aunt Marlene.  They would jokingly refer to our mutual friend, Bill, as their nephew and how they would leave him their “estate.”  They did not have significant monetary assets, he was a military officer about 40+ years ago, so they lived off of his social security and military pension and unfortunately did not think they really needed a will since they did not have much.  However, as all of us, they had accumulated items that represented their lives – and engraved bowl from Indonesia, some dolls from Europe, an old firearm, and a bunch of postcards and memories.  In fact, Steve and Marlene had listed Bill as their nephew/emergency contact on all manner of identifications, I assume thinking that this would be enough for Bill to have authority to take care of the many details once he and Marlene were incapable.  Over the years we had all talked about many things, including where we wanted to be buried – I wanted to be cremated and have my ashes brought to my birthplace, Dick wanted to be buried in his family plot, and Steve was adamant about wanting a proper body burial.

After the accident, our friend Bill received the dreaded phone call from the state police, Steve and Marlene were killed.  Now what?  We all spoke and mourned our friend, but no one more than Bill and his family, see they really did think of them as family and felt responsible for fulfilling their last wishes.  However, since none of us were biologically related, and as far as we knew, they had no family, this would not be a simple task.  Would the state allow Bill to ensure that Steve and Marlene were buried, rather than cremated?  We started making phone calls to the court, our Congressman, the local Agency on Aging, the Sheriff’s office, Medical Examiner…you name it and we called it.  Unfortunately, as we were not family, there was nothing we could do.  We explained that we were not looking for any money, we just to make sure they were buried and not cremated.  We could not do that without being assigned as an executor by the courts and this process would take them about two months.  According to state and local policy we had at most two weeks before an unnamed bureaucrat would make a decision about their fate.  No, there was no emergency role we could play to ensure they were buried instead of cremated.

Someone pointed out that since he was a military officer that perhaps the military could claim him and bury them.  That led to a number of calls to the VA, but again, without the proper paperwork, they could not do anything.  They did however tell us to look for a particular discharge paper which would be necessary for entrance into any military cemetery, and that most officers had a life insurance policy.  So, back we went to the state police to ask for permission to re-enter a private residence, the first time was to feed their pet cat while we found her a new home.

It has now been five days after the accident and I am fearful that we will not be able to honor our friends’ last requests.  We have expanded our calls to social workers, friends of friends that know a local police officer and a funeral director, trying to get a contact at the VA, basically we followed up on any and all ideas.  Unfortunately, we are running out of time and hope.  The medical examiner told us that the policy is that after 7-10 days, an unclaimed body is turned over to the Sheriff.  The Sheriff’s office will spend a day or so looking for any family before cremating the body and then will seize the assets to cover expenses.  Given that we know there is at least one life insurance policy and we have numerous witnesses that know of their distaste for cremation, we had hoped we could at least get them buried and then have their policy pay for a simple funeral.  At this time, that does not appear to be the case.

Keep your fingers crossed for a happy ending.