Ashes to Admin (Evie King)

OVERVIEW

Have you ever considered what would happen if you died and there was no one to give you a funeral? If your family was estranged or too poor to afford one – if you outlived all your loved ones, if you had a solitary life, or if you were discovered too decomposed to be properly identified? In these instances, someone from the government is tasked with your final admin. If you’re somewhere in the UK, that someone might be Evie King. Ashes to Admin: Tales from the Caseload of a Council Funeral Officer, takes a behind-the-scenes look at what happens to people who die with nobody around, willing, or able to bury or cremate them (a Section 46).

Our deepest fears

Is your worst nightmare to die alone… with no one to notice and no one to care? It’s a nightmare because we are hardwired for belonging, and the thought of belonging to no one is miserable (if not downright terrifying). We also want legacy – we have kids, work hard, contribute, hone hobbies and skills. We want to leave a mark, to be significant… but can you do that if no one remembers you?

King has confronted the truth that some of us will die with no one to claim us. Her most sober reminder is that, technically, we all die alone and are eventually forgotten. If that seems bleak, don’t worry, because the thematic undercurrent of Ashes to Admin is that in life everyone has someone, and that you matter even if you aren’t remembered.

You’re not alone.

If you die at home, King will collect your keys, make sure your fridge is emptied, and unplug your appliances. She’ll cancel your Visa, your gym membership, and your library card. But she’ll also call the people in your address book, chat with your neighbours, hunt down friends and old acquaintances. What she has discovered is that no one has no one – there is always someone who remembers. It might be family and friends, but it could be people who admired your garden, maybe strangers who remembered your generosity. Truly, nobody has nobody. You simply cannot exist in the world without impacting others, without making connections.

Everyone leaves a mark

Even if there was no one around to remember you (which will be true for all of us in some distant future), that wouldn’t erase your existence. You lived a life. Even if no one remembers your story, that doesn’t mean you didn’t have one. King has found her work with the dead life-affirming, a constant reminder of the “vapour trail we leave even after we’re long gone.” There is always someone who was influenced by your kind comment in the checkout line, someone who smiled every time they saw your chrysanthemums, someone whose life trajectory was altered slightly because you lived. Irvin Yalom called this rippling – humbler than legacy, this idea that we “live on” in the ripples we leave behind.

A funeral is not a scorecard. The meaningfulness of your life is not measured by “the opulence of your send-off,” the size of the wreaths, or the number of attendees. A funeral is a funeral, not a life. Whether your wake is attended by a thousand people or a single council funeral officer, you lived, and that’s what matters.

The world is a better place because of Evie King’s ripples

When I picked up Ashes to Admin, I thought it would be a book about what happens to corpses –  something like Stiff or Smoke Gets In Your Eyes – but this book is about what happens to people, and it’s that way because King is interested in people… their whole lives, not just their endings. She’ll use every tool at her disposal to find out more about you so she can personalize your send-off. She wants to know if you liked art, if you had hobbies, if you wrote irreverent poetry or had a secret flame – if you were funny, kind, reserved, philanthropic, or contemplative. She cares about your story. She cares about you. And that’s why this book is so special, because it’s a book about death that’s filled with humanity.

It's probably true that what we want in death is what we want in life – someone to care and someone to remember. The lesson is that we can give this to each other today when it matters most. We can give each other the gift of love and remembrance, of being seen. King doesn’t believe in ghosts or afterlives, she doesn’t do this work because she thinks the dead are watching – she does it because honouring the dead is honouring the living. In death, like in life, no one should be alone or forgotten.

“Remember that we disappear, life goes on. It shouldn’t stop you from giving your all while you’re here, but if you’re stressed at your desk, remember some day there will be someone else sitting there in your place; we’re all temps in a way. . . So I suppose the neat conclusion would be to keep that in mind, befriend death, turn a light on, extinguish those shadows, and live well; because that’s the bit that matters.”

WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)

Read enough books about death and you’ll find an idea that is only occasionally examined: that how we treat the dead matters. It’s simple enough to declare that corpses are no longer people (and that’s true in many fundamental ways), but the symbolic link between a living person and their corpse is powerful. This symbolic tether is why medical students struggle in first year anatomy; it’s why there are laws against desecrating corpses, why we can’t harvest organs against someone’s wishes, and why we can’t dissect or donate without permission. The laws that protect the dead mirror the laws that protect the living, and they reflect contemporary cultural values. In an increasingly “Westernized” world, these laws often anchor on autonomy (a value which is reflected in national values of freedom, sovereignty, and self-governance). We also require dignified handling of corpses and human remains (because dignity and respect are something we demand for the living). What I liked about Ashes to Admin is that it allowed me to extrapolate this idea further: because belonging is one of our most fundamental human yearnings (maybe even more so than autonomy or dignity), belonging is something the dead are owed.

Making a place for the dead and their stories among the living, giving them a place to belong, would that make us better at giving those things to each other? In a world where many feel more isolated and alone than ever before, perhaps our longing to belong in death reflects our longing to belong right now. And maybe we can use that as a catalyst. I would argue that Evie King already is.

IN SUM:

Is this book entirely secular? Yes. (King calls herself a “total heathen;” some of the people she meets believe in the supernatural, but King makes no positive claims).

If I had to describe the book in one sentence? On the surface it’s a book about what happens to unclaimed bodies in death, but underneath it’s a book about how we all want to be claimed by people in life.

Who should read this book? Future corpses.

What does a corpse smell like?

Here’s a fun little epilogue (which I guess is fitting for a book dedicated to epilogues) – King’s description of that decomposing corpse smell reminded me, “this is not the first description I’ve heard!” So, I exhumed a few others to compare:

·         Judy Meliner (Working Stiff): a “sickly-sweet bacterial reek.”

·         Evie King (Ashes to Admin): like “someone was sick in a bucket of marzipan and left it in the sun for a week.”

·         Mary Roach (Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers): “dense and cloying, sweet but not flower-sweet. Halfway between rotting fruit and rotting meat.”

·         Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets In Your Eyes): the first note of putrefaction is “licorice with a strong citrus undertone. Not a fresh, summer citrus, mind you — more like a can of orange-scented industrial bathroom spray shot directly up your nose. Add to that a day-old glass of white wine that has begun to attract flies. Top it off with a bucket of fish left in the sun.”

Caitlin Doughty would later go on (in Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?) to liken it to your Grandma’s cloying perfume sprayed over rotting fish that’s been baking in the sun for a few days.

There you have it… vomit and marzipan, rotting fish and your Grandma’s perfume, sour fruit and meat, licorice with industrial citrus spray… and just a hint of day-old white wine, baking in the summer sun.

Well, now I don’t want lunch.