The only written clues to Brown’s final wishes were tucked into the file cabinet: a brochure titled Making Your Will: A Good Steward’s Guide, published by Catholic Relief Services, an international aid group, and a Merrill Lynch form designating the nonprofit as the sole beneficiary of his investments. He’d filled out the form four days before his death—but hadn’t signed it.
This, it turns out, is the most difficult part of a public administrator’s work: discerning the final wishes of a stranger who hasn’t spelled out those wishes. Rodrigue and Tisserand are responsible for deciding whether to cremate or bury someone and what type of funeral to plan, if any. With Brown, they focused on his service uniform and medals, which he’d kept for more than 70 years. His estate could afford a funeral with military honors, including a full-gun salute by honor guards—all of which ran about $3,000—so that’s what they organized.
Only one person attended Brown’s burial: an assistant funeral director named Blanca Rico, who worked at the local funeral home. Occasionally, Rico digitally records the burials of people who die without friends or family to attend. “I always think, That’s somebody’s son, that’s somebody’s brother, that’s somebody’s dad. They were a somebody in this world,” she says. This time, though, she had another reason to be there. Rico had lived on Brown’s street for a time. They’d wave hello when they saw each other. Once, several years ago, he’d even helped her fix a faulty weed trimmer. The day of the service, held at Northern California Veterans Cemetery, Rico filmed Brown’s funeral on her smartphone. A team of inmates, who were doing cemetery maintenance as part of their work-release, paused to watch.
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