Ashes To Admin: Tales from the Caseload of a Council Funeral Officer

LoveReading Says

In Ashes to Admin, Evie King shares endlessly fascinating — and often unexpected — experiences from her job as a council funeral officer.

In technical parlance, Evie is responsible for “Section 46 funerals under the Public Health Act”. In lay terms, that means arranging funerals for people who die alone, without family or friends to arrange a funeral. In her straight-talking, informative introduction, Evie explains the process: “when a person dies in these circumstances, I get a call, typically from a care home, or a coroner, less typically from a relative”.

Significantly, she points out that “not everyone who has their funeral carried out under Section 46 is alone or estranged”, and notes that calls from relatives are on the rise. Given the cost of living crisis, and the fact that the average funeral costs around £4000, more and more people are finding it impossible to bear that cost. Heartbreakingly, she states that “Bereaved families come to councils as their last resort, often ashamed, their grief compounded by feelings of having failed their loved one”.

The chapters that follow, poignantly named after some of the individuals whose funerals Evie organised, and whose lives she here respects and honours, are filled with stirring details. Honest on how it feels, as an administrative official, to witness so many tragic lives, troubled lives, and lives that might have been different, and how it feels to be confronted by death so brutally on a daily basis, this is a uniquely absorbing read.

Joanne Owen

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