Walter's unclaimed body was recently laid to rest in a nearby Potter's Field. I learned this today when I asked my chaplain if anyone had come to claim my friend
Walter's body. No one did. So his remains were interred in the frozen ground of a New York State Department of Correction Services burial site that's located a short
distance beyond the walls of the prison. The graveyard is hidden within the hills of State owned land.
Previously I'd written about Walter's unexpected passing (see Walter's Dead and Vacant Cell). Today, however, when my
chaplain gave me the news about him it caused me to again ponder and mourn Walter's demise.
Most correctional facilities in New York have a piece of land off the main grounds that's set aside to receive their unclaimed dead. Not all prisoners have family
or friends on the outside who, when they die, will come for their remains. With the passing of time those on the outside either die off, move on, or just forget about
those who are incarcerated. But some prisoners were alone in the world even before their arrest and imprisonment. They lived with loneliness in the streets. Then,
years later, they died alone, too.
Nevertheless, my helpful chaplain added that he'd held an official "committal service" for Walter, as Department of Corrections rules require. A committal
service is a term prison officials use in order to commit a deceased inmate's body into the ground as well as commit his soul back to God. Such a service, according
to the chaplain, usually takes about five minutes.
As procedure dictates, once the committal service ended, Walter's body, already tucked inside a simple pine coffin, was then lowered into the ground by a crew of six
prisoners from the nearby minimum security annex. The annex is located about a quarter mile down the road from the main prison where I live. It has a grounds crew who,
several times per year, when they're not required to dig a grave or fill one, will head to the Potter's Field with a guard to oversee them. They act as caretakers
raking leaves, plucking weeds, and picking up whatever wind-blown trash may have settled on this desolate spot.
My chaplain told me that our Potter's Field consists of an approximately 90X90' fenced area on a hilly section of land located near a small former cattle barn. He
said there are old gravestones which go back decades from when the Potter's Field first opened. It is actually on land designated as belonging to Woodbourne Correctional
Facility which is a medium security prison whose property merges at some point into Sullivan Correctional Facility's property. Woodbourne is an older facility. And
because this is all State owned land and is considered part of the grounds of two prisons, no civilians can go here. No one from the public could wander into the cemetery
On a good note, however, I was told that a sergeant from my facility attended Walter's service and volunteered to say a few nice comments about him as my chaplain and
the work crew stood silently at his side. This both surprised and touched me. He remembered Walter and went out of his way to say goodbye to a man whose family wrote
him off as dead long before his heart stopped beating.
D.B.
