Funerals

The poor economy is taking a toll even on the dead, with an increasing number of bodies in Los Angeles County going unclaimed by families who cannot afford to bury or cremate their loved ones. At the county coroner's office -- which handles homicides and other suspicious deaths -- 36% more cremations were done at taxpayers' expense in the last fiscal year over the previous year, from 525 to 712.

Catching his breath every few moments, Jim Adenhart explained to the hushed crowd that the greatest day of his life was when his nine-pound, three-ounce baby boy was born. Then, in detail, he relayed his final conversation with his son last week, after Nick Adenhart had pitched the best game of his brief major league career.

Funeral Director -- Stephen Kemp rummaged through a supply closet for a box of staples, being careful not to jostle the blue paper bags of cremated remains on the floor. Stephen Kemp It's not a great spot for ashes, but he ran out of space long ago. In the grand scheme of things, the closet is as good a resting place as any. Kemp, the owner of Haley Funeral Directors, is used to a certain rhythm of life and death.

The army of grievers climbed to the hilltop at dawn, waiting for the 365 flag-draped coffins to arrive. Some sat weeping in the stony dirt amid row after row of empty graves; others lined the streets for blocks. They clutched framed pictures of husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters -- all victims of Saddam Hussein's 1988 genocidal campaign against the Kurds. When the coffins came, carried up the hill on the backs of soldiers, the lamentation could wait no longer.

Cars, bank notes and TVs were going up in flames one chilly winter morning in the parking lot of Universal Chung Wah Funeral Home in Alhambra. Thirteen white-clad relatives of Dam Lam, 87, formed a circle, each cradling a stack of paper models: a foot-long 747 jetliner, a black-and-gold car sitting in the courtyard of a 2-foot-tall, red-tiled paper mansion. One by one, the items were thrown into the fire licking out of a 4-by-4-foot wheeled container, charred from years of use.

Inglewood officials did not attend Michael Byoune's funeral Thursday, even though the City Council agreed earlier this week to pay for services for the 19-year-old who was killed in a police shooting that officials called "tragic" and that remains under investigation. Paying for the services was "just the humane thing for the city of Inglewood to do," said Councilman Daniel Tabor, whose district includes the Morningside Park neighborhood where Byoune was killed.

The last king of Toraja was 93 when he took his final breath in July 2003. Five years later, he's still part of the family, quietly residing in a small room in his former palace, shaded by two red parasols decorated with colored beads and gold fringe. By Torajan tradition, he isn't really dead. He's just sick.

As a bugler played taps outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Thursday, LAPD Officer Laura Gerritsen stood up and saluted the flag-draped casket of her life partner, Officer Spree DeSha. Gerritsen was in uniform, and the action seemed fitting to honor a woman who was remembered in a nearly three-hour funeral ceremony as a model police officer. DeSha, 35, a seven-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, was among 25 people killed and 135 injured Sept.

Some pulled up in SUVs, others came pushing shopping carts containing all their worldly possessions. But all of the more than 300 people who filled a Los Angeles church chapel Saturday to memorialize John Robert McGraham were puzzling over the same question: Why would anyone douse a homeless man with gasoline and burn him to death? "John's life and death gives us a picture of how people in this life treat other people," said Rev. Frank M.

When Jerrigrace Lyons goes out on a case, she carries a basic set of tools: makeup kit, cardboard caskets and a handbook with practical instructions for icing and transporting bodies. Lyons is a "death midwife," a specialist in the little-known field of helping people manage the passing of a loved one -- outside the traditional funeral industry. As the nation reels through its worst economic crisis in decades, her business is booming.