As the sun broke through after days of chilly April rain, about 30 people gathered at the First Parish Cemetery in York to honor a man none of them had known.

James, 80, had no friends and family to attend his funeral. His wife, Dorothy, is still alive but has advanced dementia and could not leave her long-term care facility. They have no children and no known relatives. 

Instead, in attendance were people from the company that delivered oil to James, York town selectboard members, volunteers from the food pantry, members of a local church and one of his neighbors. James and his wife had lived in York for nearly 40 years. 

When Janie Sweeney found out James had died, she put out the word about his funeral to ensure he wouldn’t be sent off alone. Sweeney, who is the family services manager for the York Community Service Association, asked The Maine Monitor to refer to James by his first name since he couldn’t consent to being named.

Sweeney said it was important to bury James in his longtime community.

“It matters a great deal to me that people are not sent on the next journey alone, that they are laid to rest with dignity and people around,” Sweeney said.

A growing number of older adults are living alone and have limited contact with other people. An estimated 20% to 25% of adults 65 and older who don’t live in nursing homes are considered socially isolated, according to a 2024 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In Maine, which is the state with the oldest population, 28% of older Mainers live alone, according to the Healthy Aging Data Report produced by the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Sweeney said those statistics reflect her community. More than half of the people served at the York Community Service Association food pantry are older adults, she said, and the majority of them live alone. That means the York community, and other Maine communities like it, need to be realistic about how many neighbors are living alone and may die without anyone knowing, she said.

“Nobody wanted to talk about death and dying with us when we first started this conversation in 2022, but we need to talk about it. It needs to be more open and loving and caring in how we plan for what’s going to happen at the end,” Sweeney said.

The York Community Service Association is a nonprofit that runs a number of programs, including administering the town’s general assistance program, hosting a bimonthly community supper, fundraising for a fuel assistance program and convening regular “death cafes.”

The association started gathering people to attend funerals for those with no friends and family after a woman died in York Housing in 2022, and no one knew for several days, Sweeney said. The York Community Service Association arranged a graveside burial service for the woman and gathered people to attend her funeral. Since then, the association asked the town to start a burial fund, made up of $4,000 annually, and has arranged four other funerals, including for James, which was the largest yet. His funeral costs were covered by the town’s burial fund. 

It took a lot of work for Sweeney to find out what had happened to James. The first warning sign came when the company that delivered James’ oil realized it hadn’t heard from its customer all winter. An employee went to James’ home to check on him and noticed a pipe had burst in the house. Worried, the company asked Sweeney to find out what happened.

Sweeney called around, asking if anyone knew where James was. Eventually, a funeral home called the town clerk to say James had died at a long-term care facility in Bridgton on March 5. His wife, Dorothy, had moved to the facility to get care for her dementia. James had joined her there after he had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer in December.

Sweeney got James’ body transferred back to York and arranged for a burial with military honors. James served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, Sweeney said. He received the National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with two Bronze Stars, an Army Commendation Medal with one Gold Leaf Cluster, the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal with 60 Devices, the Good Conduct Medal and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palm.

During the ceremony, Sweeney stood up to receive the American flag from a military officer. Sweeney has military people in her family, and she said it was especially emotional to receive the flag on behalf of James because Vietnam War veterans often faced protests and attacks when they returned home.

“It was such an honor to be the one receiving the flag on his behalf and on the family’s behalf,” she said. “That other emotional part of it is that there was no other family member to receive the flag.”

Sweeney said she’s proud of her York community for coming together for the funeral and showing up for each other, even for someone they didn’t know.

“To have him come back to his own community felt very right to me. This is where he belonged,” Sweeney said.

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.