Reporter's Notebook: For Refugee Lives Lost, A Final Resting Place by the Sea

— -- The hill villages of Lesbos rising from the Aegean Sea have been a beacon of promise, in the past year, for more than half a million refugees fleeing war-torn countries.

But the sea-faring route to the Greek island is not easy. An estimated 1,000 people have drowned on the way, victims to rough waters and their makeshift boats. More than half of the fallen are children and, many times, entire families. Most of their bodies remain missing at sea.

Now, nestled between olive groves, two streets away from the seashore where they drowned, these asylum-seekers are laid to rest. Local authorities on Lesbos have honored the refugees who lost their lives reaching its shores with a dedicated cemetery, which provides them a dignified burial, in the Muslim tradition. More than 70 men, women and children have been buried there, so far.

The bodies are prepared in a dedicated room at the cemetery, according to religious tradition, on a special wooden table. Then, they are wrapped in white shrouds for burial.

Islamic tombs are usually marked with simple marble slabs bearing the name and dates of birth and death. But in this cemetery, so many of the names are unknown. For those, the tombstone reads "unidentified female/male" followed by an approximate age, a date of discovery at sea, date of burial – and the numbers of their DNA samples, kept by Lesbos authorities in case anyone comes to find them.

The International Organisation on Migration estimates that more than 600,000 refugees, mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have reached Lesbos since January 2015. Those who survived the journey have mostly moved north toward Germany and Sweden. Those who did not now have a place to rest.