If you die with no money or no family to bury you then the duty to arrange a funeral falls to the Local Authority. Evie King is employed to deal with these matters in an unnamed authority and in Ashes to Admin she talks about her role, describes some of the cases she has had and shares what she has learned.
The stories of the dead are, of course, really the stories of lives lived. Why do people have no family ? Is there money in the estate ? What memories and information are available in the belongings they leave ? What was important to these people ? How can they best be commemorated ? Evie has to know the people and their circumstances before she can act so this means detective work and often speaking to estranged or lost relations. It is also a grim reminder that we should all make sure that our nearest and dearest know these things about us so that they can carry out our wishes after we are gone.
The stories included are all a little different and the author uses them to talk about how we think of death and remembrance, which she does without being at all preachy and often with a little mild humour. She describes what she does to find out about people’s lives and the work of the other professionals involved. On occasion she has to invite strangers to mourn the dead or to talk about them on radio or social media to ascertain facts about them – the saddest story in this book is the one about the unidentified woman whose background and identity have never been traced.
Although many of the stories are sad the book as a whole is actually quite life affirming. It is good to know that if you die in unfortunate circumstances that someone will care enough to arrange a funeral for you and it is also good to know that there is someone out there doing this for the people we will never know about.
Anne Is Reading 