Death is complicated and expensive, even for people with a proper plan and a loving family. It’s even more complicated, and potentially even more expensive when you have neither.
The Unclaimed is at once the grimmest and most empathetic book I’ve read in a long time. Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans document the story of four people in Los Angeles who die without a next-of-kin, and what happens in each case. We meet the officials in the police department, the coroner’s office, and several other agencies who are charged with figuring out who these people actually are, what they own, who may be their legal next-of-kin, and what to do with their remains. These people often face restrictions because of budgets or staffing, burnout and depression.
The families they do find are often extremely complicated as well – estranged by any number of factors from mental illness to substance problems to religion. Prickett and Timmermans write about distant relatives who can’t or won’t get involved in the circumstances of the deceased.
But along the way, we meet a cast of characters that pour their hearts into helping people, performing or attending ceremonies for those they’ve never met, raising thousands of dollars to give the unclaimed dead a proper burial.
We also learn a little about death and burial – the cultural and religious history about why we deal with the dead the way we do.
I really have no idea why I picked this up – someone must have recommended it to me. I hope I remember who it was, because I owe them thanks: while this book was not an easy read, and often brought back uncomfortable memories or frightening futures, it’s a book that I think of regularly, now even weeks after I’ve read it.
The warmth and empathy that Prickett and Timmermans have for their subjects, both dead and living, radiates from the book, even when so much of it is spent describing byzantine bureaucracies that seem designed to frustrate the process of closure.
