The families who abandoned their children
or relatives didn’t just leave them to death, but also refused to bury them. So
our cemetery angel Burks also took it upon herself to bury all of the dead
bodies which were over three dozens with her own two hands. She estimates that
she has buried forty three dead bodies. Here’s a story about what Burks did
after the parents of a child with AIDS refused to visit their child and to
claim his body.
Burks became involved to this after
visiting a friend at the Little Rock Hospital where one of the AIDS patients
was dying. She says that the nurses were drawing straws to choose who would go
in and check on him. So Burks snuck into the little patient’s room. When the
boy asked where his mother was and told her that he wanted her mother, Burks
asked the nurses if they could call his mother. The nurses told her that the
boy was at the hospital for six weeks and no one was coming. Still, Burks didn’t
accept no as an answer and wrangled a number for the boy’s mother out of one of
the nurses. She was able to speak only for a moment before the woman hung up on
her. When Burks called the woman again, she caught her attention by saying, 'If you hang up on me again, I will put
your son's obituary in your hometown newspaper and I will list his cause of
death.' The woman told
Burks that her son was a sinner. She said that she didn’t know what was wrong
about him, but he was already dead for her. After this phone call, Burks went
back to the boy’s room thinking what she was going to tell him. When she
entered the room the boy said, 'Oh, Mama, I knew you'd come.' That
day, Burks stayed with him at the hospital for thirteen hours while he took his
last breath. When Burks called his mother and told her that his son was dead, his
mother said that she wasn’t going to bury him. So Burks had him cremated and
took him with her home.