I washed the hands of a woman no one claimed

Dear Delyara, I volunteer with a Muslim burial service, preparing women for burial when their families cannot or will not do it. Today, we received an elderly woman who had died alone in temporary accommodation. The paperwork contained a name, an estimated age, and an emergency contact number that no longer worked. There were no daughters waiting in the corridor, no sister asking whether we had covered her properly, no one carrying the perfume she loved. We washed her in silence. Her hands were small and badly swollen at the joints. On one finger was a pale circle where a ring had once been. I kept wondering who had placed it there and why it was gone. When I combed her hair, I found one silver hairpin tucked near the back of her head. It was shaped like a leaf and had probably been there for days. The other volunteer said to place it with her belongings, but there were no belongings except a plastic bag containing slippers and a bus pass. I cleaned the hairpin and returned it to her hair beneath the shroud. It may have been against the rules. I wanted one thing to travel with her that suggested she had once stood before a mirror and chosen how she wished to be seen. At the funeral, only four of us attended. When her name was spoken, I said “present” silently, because death should not be allowed to make it seem that nobody had ever noticed a person was here.