What does it say about contemporary America that every year, without the exigency of natural disaster, Los Angeles County buries 1,600 unclaimed bodies in a mass grave? Or that all across the country, communities are struggling to dispose of growing numbers of unclaimed bodies with barely a whisper from elected leaders?
A book eight years in the making, The Unclaimed exposes a growing phenomenon in America (and presumably outside its borders; only a few other countries are mentioned): people dying alone, or without final arrangements having been made, whose bodies are collected by local authorities, cremated as an act of efficiency, and held for a few years — waiting on shelves for family members to claim them — before being anonymously dumped into common graves. This is a work of narrative nonfiction — with a compelling account of four denizens of Los Angeles who spent time on the unclaimed shelf — and since authors Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans are both Professors of Sociology, this is also an attempt to understand the social and bureaucratic factors behind the phenomenon. I found the information in this book to be provocative — a little shocking, a little sad — and while I can’t imagine circumstances in which I could become totally estranged from my family in my last days, it’s a good reminder to have those final arrangements laid out and paid for. Fascinating, well-told glimpse into a hidden corner of our fractured world. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
The unclaimed provoke us to ask whether our lives matter. To claim, which originates from the Latin word clamare or to call out, is an act of connection: When you claim, you are asserting a bond between yourself and something or someone else. To go unclaimed, then, is to be disconnected; it is an acknowledgment of severed bonds. If you die and no one calls out for you, did your life have meaning?
Training their focus on L.A. — where those 1 600 people whose remains go unclaimed each year are cremated and eventually disposed of by just two hard-working employees of The Office of Decedent Affairs — Prickett and Timmermans were able to spend time with each of the three distinct agencies that handle the bodies and estates of the dead in the City of Angels. And by telling the stories of four people whose remains were at risk of becoming unclaimed, the authors demonstrate that to a large extent, it’s these agencies and their bureaucratic red tape that often preclude a more respectful interment (one woman, Midge, had a close church community, but since they weren’t legal family, they couldn’t claim her remains to give her the burial she deserved; a veteran, Bobby, was entitled to a free burial in a military cemetery, but that information was misfiled and his estranged son had trouble raising the cremation and storage fees the city wanted in order to release Bobby’s remains to him). Telling the stories of Midge, Bobby, Lena, and David — all of whom had family out there somewhere — Prickett and Timmermans paint a sad picture of how easily any of us could end up unclaimed.
Some interesting passages:
• (According to a death scene investigator) a “trash run” is when an elderly person, often a hoarder or a recluse, is found in a neglected dwelling, after decomposition has set in and a foul smell has alerted a neighbor.
• Researchers estimate that more than 40 percent of families in the United States will experience a form of estrangement at some point — frayed relationships with fathers are the most common.
• Wealthy estates with “unknown heirs” were often skimmed off by a shadow group of private investigators, called heir hunters, some of whom had previously worked in the public administrator’s office. They knew there was money to be made amid the county’s heavy caseload, and conducted detailed research to locate heirs, sometimes even contracting with local genealogy clubs and detectives abroad to locate people.
• Yvette Vickers was a 1959 Playboy centerfold and actress who starred in the cult favorite Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Vickers died in her home in Beverly Hills in 2010 but her body lay undiscovered for nearly a year, until a neighbor did her own welfare check.
• Families come by to pick up ashes in only about one of every six cases. The overwhelming majority of those cremated by the county — more than 82 percent — remain unclaimed.
• An estimated 32,000 people die unattended every year in Japan, their corpses often lingering undiscovered for days, months, and sometimes years. Most will depend on the government for cremation and burial. The phenomenon is so prevalent that it has its own term: kodokushi, which loosely translated means a “lonely death.”
I found it interesting that low income families are no more likely to leave a family member unclaimed than those with more money (“The poor go to great lengths to receive a decent funeral, ‘for they know,’ sociologist Tony Walter wrote, ‘there is something appalling about a human life ending, and no one noticing, no one marking it.’”) And maybe not surprising that when estranged family members are notified of a relative’s death, they are often more interested in their share of the estate than in retrieving cremated remains. Should it be surprising that it’s totally legal for unclaimed bodies to be sent to med schools for research before being sent back to L.A. for cremation? I could go on and on: This is a book full of interesting facts.
The uncomfortable truth is that the unclaimed are not marginal outliers. All signs suggest that their numbers will continue to rise if nothing changes, and those at risk already dwell among us. They are the resident of the house on the block with the overgrown front yard and disintegrating cardboard boxes piled next to the front door. The man shuffling bent over on his daily walk, always by himself. The trans teenager hitting the streets after an ugly fight with their parents. The quiet nursing home resident, fighting tears after yet another Mother’s Day without a phone call. The unclaimed-in-waiting are everywhere.
On the bright side, there are community groups who advocate for the unclaimed: The authors share stories of those who gather in military sendoffs to unclaimed veterans; those who provide burials for abandoned infants; those who congregate in ceremony during L.A.’s annual dumping of ashes in the common grave. There’s a sense that “the unclaimed” is a bigger problem in a large, anonymous city like L.A. than anywhere I’ve ever lived, but I agree with the authors that there is a growth in disconnection and social isolation everywhere. They have suggestions for strengthening the social safety net — for reexamining what we owe to one another after death — but if nothing else, this is a good reminder to finalise those “disposition” plans.
