Archive: 2011

Death with dignity

19 October 2011
Charles
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Categories: Death; Good death, self-deliverance

Posted by Charles

When Meg Holmes was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2009 her husband Andrew started a blog so that he could update friends about her condition.

Meg died on 1 October. The following post describes her death.

My wife Meg died on the morning of Saturday October 1st in the loving company of her brother, sister, son, daughter and husband.

Suffering from a disease that robs one of intellect and dignity, she had the option, as a Washington resident, to choose the time of her death. She used the provisions of Washington’s “Death with Dignity” Act to hasten her death, while she was still able to converse with and understand her family members. (Oregon has long had a very similar “Death with Dignity” act, Vermont and Massachusetts are considering one).

Her family gathered on Friday and spent the day with her. She was much more alert and animated than of late and visited with each of us. Despite knowing that her death was the next day, we all slept well that night (I slept much better than for many weeks), showing us that we were prepared for her passing.

Social workers (she met privately with one from hospice and one from Swedish Hospital to affirm her decision) and the volunteer from Compassion and Choices Washington all remarked on her readiness (and that she had not been ready the previous week).

The volunteer from “Compassion and Choices Washington” showed immense skill and empathy in helping Meg and in caring for us. 

Meg died peacefully and quickly, with no signs of discomfort. It was a remarkable end to a long struggle, and released Meg from what we all knew could be a long, distressing, undignified and inevitable end. Our preparations, the company of relatives, Meg’s peaceful passing and the knowledge of her command of the situation all served to make her passing much easier for us all. 

Find Andrew’s blog here.

Grateful thanks to the excellent Death With Dignity blog for alerting me to this. Find it here.

The real thing

18 October 2011
Charles
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Categories: Memorial service

Gail Rubin is now on Day 19 of her 30 funerals in 30 days. Over on her The Family Plot blog she is delighting her many fans with a full account of each as it happens. The appeal of what she is doing is broad. She is compiling an important social document, an account of funerary practice in our time in the context of US cultural traditions. More compellingly, in our opinion, she is celebrating the lives of ordinary people. 

Yesterday she attended a memorial event which we want you to know about. It was for Bert Nordgren. Here are some extracts from her report: 

Though Bert Norgorden’s only living relative is his sister, a family of friends in Albuquerque gathered at the Elena Gallegos Open Space area for a memorial gathering and potluck lunch. 

Herbert “Bert” Norgorden was remembered for many things: his love of herbs and teaching about their healing powers; an accomplished self-taught flutist; a talented photographer of plants, flowers and nature; a great cook and teacher; and a warm, wonderful man.

The celebration started with musician and singer Gene Corbin providing a powerful a cappella version of “Amazing Grace.” Bert and Gene had made lots of music together over the years. 

About 35 people were in attendance. Toward the end, all raised their glasses of liquid – whether goats milk (a favorite of Bert’s), lemonade, iced tea or champagne. Marcia Landau said, “To Bert and to all of us. Thank you for coming out today. He lives on in our hearts.” Everyone then enjoyed the food brought for the potluck lunch.

Find Gail’s blog here and catch Day 19 as well. 

Is this the most tasteless competition of all time?

18 October 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Attitudes to death

Over at Theaodeadpool.com they have an annual competition. The idea is to guess who will die in the next year (they’ve got to be famous enough to merit a newspaper obituary). Editorially, it is GFG policy to present you with everything that’s going on out there. Personally, we’re squirming more than somewhat. 

Here is an abridged version of the rules:

Send us 40 names. People you think will die (none of this pass away bullshit) in 2011 and get an obituary in one of the many fine news outlets that still produce obituaries. 

If someone on your list dies before the year ends, I will write to you and ask for a new name. 

People on death row are eligible if they a) die from a cause other than execution or b) their level of celebrity is such that their passing would have been newsworthy even before their crime and/or conviction or c) their crime or some element of their trial, conviction or incarceration is newsworthy enough that they have wide name recognition. Saddam Hussein was a valid pick under “b.” Ted Bundy and Timothy McVeigh would have been valid picks under “c.” Ordinary murderers are not acceptable. In many different ways.

There is no entry fee. There is a prize for first, however. Thanks to Mark in Maine, you will win Moxie Soda, generally two bottles. Some think this makes second place more desirable. If you win, you must be gracious and thank him, even as you’re spilling it down the drain.

After each hit, Bill, Brad or I, or a guest updater, will write either a respectful or irreverent obit and post it on alt dot obituaries with the relevant scoring update. 

There’s more to it than being the luckiest guesser. There’s also a scoring system. You get more points for a young person than you do for an older person. There are also bonus points — you’ll need to check this all out — here. 

Updates are recorded on the alt.obituaries Google Group, together with a well-written and respectful obituary. 

Views?

Isle of the Dead

17 October 2011
Charles
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Categories: Art and death

This concert will be a fantastic interweaving of myth, music and magic telling the story of the ancient Sumerian Goddess Inanna and her descent to the underworld to aid her suffering sister Erešhkigal. In leaving her realm of the heavens to face the darkness of the underworldfrom which there is no return, she faces death, sacrifice and a loss of innocence. It mirrors our own personal journeys of life into loss, suffering and shadow, but ultimately wisdom, redemption and mastery. In creating the myth as theatre the audience is invited to invoke their own stories and experiences.

Jane Flood has been a professional storyteller since 1990 and has a word hoard of over 300 traditional stories. She was commissioned to craft the myth of Inanna by the Festival at the Edge in 2002 and has been developing it ever since. She has collected and performed stories all over the world including Nepal, East Africa and South America. Her present work is mostly landscape based and is exploring the connections between people and place and the stories we tell that make sense of how and where we live.

bellAcappella is one of the leading chamber choirs of the South West and has received rave reviews for its performances since its founding in 2008. Singing songs from Georgian polyphony to gospel, their heartfelt enthusiasm and dedication to excellence continues to enthral new audiences. Led by Director Basira Ward they will be performing some sumptuous modern masterpieces by Dubra, Tavener and Whitacre alongside Baroque classic, Purcell’s funeral sentences.

Quatre Voix is a vocal quartet of professional singers who will sing early renaissance polyphony.

Sponsored by green fuse Funeral Directors, 7 High Street, Totnes tel: 01803 840779

ICAHD is a non-violent, direct-action organisation established in 1997 to resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories.

The consolations of a Catholic funeral

16 October 2011
Charles
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Categories: Religious funerals

Here’s an extract from good and powerful piece in the Catholic Herald by Siri Abrahamson

In the midst of a grey, damp winter, at the end of a healthy and normal pregnancy, our second child, a daughter, dies at birth. Despite 20 minutes of attempted resuscitation in the delivery room, she never draws breath outside my body. The neo-natal consultant has tears in his eyes when he comes up to the bedside where my husband and I are clutching each other’s hands in disbelief. “I am so sorry. We couldn’t save her.”

Our shock is complete. There was no indication this would happen. When we are asked if we would like our baby blessed, we say yes, in a haze. We are willing to grasp at any straws to try to numb this pain. The hospital’s Catholic priest turns up shortly thereafter. I can’t remember asking for a Catholic priest, but perhaps we had. Neither my husband nor I are Catholic, though my mother is.

The priest gets our names wrong, yet his prayer offers unexpected solace. He leaves us with a rosary. That night, and for many more nights to come, I sleep with it around my neck.

When it comes to arranging the funeral there are three available options – a Church of England service, a Catholic service or a non-religious ceremony. I ask my husband, an agnostic, if we can have a Catholic service and he says yes.

… … … 

A month after Elspeth’s death the funeral takes place in a crematorium in north London.

It is another cold and grey winter’s day. In accordance with our wishes, only a handful of friends and family are attending the service, and the heartache of everyone present is palpable. My husband and I have dreaded the service, being so close to our baby’s cold body again, the finality of what we are about to experience. When Elspeth’s coffin turns up, in a hearse delayed by morning rush-hour traffic, it is so small. My husband is encouraged to carry it inside. Standing in the front row of the crematorium’s chapel with our older daughter, I watch him walk inside, his face and body contorted with sobs. We know few words of the prayers said by the priest, but the service is beautiful and more meaningful than we had dared hope. Just as we walk outside, the sun breaks through the clouds for the first time in weeks.

Read the whole article here. 

A cortège of daughters

15 October 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Poetry

A cortege of daughters 

A quite ordinary funeral: the corpse 
Unknown to the priest.  The twenty-third psalm. 
The readings by serious businessmen 
One who nearly tripped on the unaccustomed pew. 
The kneelers and the sitters like sheep and goats. 

But by some prior determination a row 
Of daughters and daughters-in-law rose 
To act as pall-bearers instead of men. 
All of even height and beautiful. 
One wore in her hair a black and white striped bow. 

And in the midst of their queenliness 
One in dark flowered silk, the corpse 
Had become a man before they reached the porch 
So loved he had his own dark barge 
Which their slow moving steps rowed 
As a dark lake is sometimes surrounded by irises. 

(Elizabeth Smither) 

 

Thank you, Sweetpea,  for recommending this wonderful poem.

Quote of the week

14 October 2011
Charles
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Categories: Attitudes to death, memorialisation

James Horwill, the Australia rugby captain, puts the World Cup semi-finals into perspective.

Before every match, he winds white tape around his left forearm and writes two names on it with a black marker pen, Macca and Ponto.

They were his close friends of his from childhood who, a week before he was due to join up with the Wallabies for his first tour, to Europe in 2006, died in a boating accident.

He went on the tour at the urging of his friends’ families and ever since then he has written the two nicknames on tape before every match, whether for the Reds or Australia.

“Footy is not life and death,” he said. “It’s still a game.”

Who are the real rotters here?

14 October 2011
Charles
11 Comments
Categories: funeral cost, funeral directors, Social Fund Funeral Payment

Is this a Welsh thing, or is it beginning to happen all over the UK? In Wales, according to a BBC news article, the number of public health funerals is alleged to have doubled in a decade.

This is contradicted by the view of the Local Government Association. In a survey dated 2010 it reports:  

The number of public health funerals held by local authorities has remained broadly consistent across the last three financial years (2007/8 to 2009/10) … Two fifths (40 per cent) thought there had been some increase, the top three reasons being “higher numbers of people dying with family and friends unwilling to contribute to the costs of the funeral” (59 per cent of respondents); “higher numbers of people dying with family or friends unable to contribute to the costs of a funeral” (56 per cent); and “higher numbers of people dying with no friends or family” (49 per cent) … A calculated cost per public health funeral revealed that, on average, funerals cost £959

Whatever the truth of the BBC’s assertion, there may be evidence that, in Wales, there is growing reluctance of undertakers to arrange funerals for families who are skint.

It is difficult not to sympathise with the undertakers. They carry plenty of bad debt as it is. When they agree to arrange a funeral for a client who is making an application to the Social Fund for a Funeral Payment, they have no guarantee that the application will be successful. So slow is the Department of Work and Pensions in processing these claims that the dead person will have been dust-to-dusted long before verdict + cheque come through. For an undertaker, taking on such a funeral is a gamble. You can see why they might not like the look of the odds, the more so in an age where money owed to an undertaker is no longer necessarily seen as a debt of honour.

At the same time, to turn a family away is to risk considerable damage to a reputation for caring community-mindedness, the cornerstones of an undertaker’s good name. The BBC news article highlights this:

Joanne Sunter, from Portmead in Swansea, said she was turned away by four funeral directors because she was unable to pay a deposit of hundreds of pounds up front.

“I was heartbroken. My mother was in a mortuary rotting and none of these people would help me,” she said.

Note that Ms Sunter does not direct her anger at the DWP. But then it’s not clear that she is eligible for a Funeral Payment. If she isn’t, then where does responsibility for her plight lie?

A little while ago Nick Gandon, in this blog, sparked discussion about the way the Funeral Payment is administered – here. If funeral directors were to come together and refuse to take on applicants to the Social Fund, then, as Norfolk Boi had it, “The DWP would have to solve the situation they have created” – by making up its mind a lot faster.

The Minister for Work and Pensions, Steve Webb, has another idea, according to Teresa Evans. He’d like to substitute the Funeral Payment with a crisis loan, relieving pressure on the Exchequer and loading debt onto the poorest in society.

Teresa thinks the best way for the Welsh to bring their undertakers to heel is by taking matters into their own hands and doing everything themselves. There may be two schools of thought about the feasibility of that.

I can’t find any recent figures on successful applications for a Funeral Payment, so it’s hard to know if there’s been a sharp increase in recent years. I have only been able to discover that between 1988-89 and 1993-94 awards increased from 37,000 to 72,000 with a corresponding rise in expenditure from £18.4m to £62.9m. I guess the number continues to rise.  

Which is why I have found my mind wandering towards what I can only shamefacedly describe as a conspiracy theory.

We live in an age where fecklessness is under attack by all political parties. Tories talk of a ‘culture of irresponsibility’ and Labour talks of a ‘something-for-nothing culture’. Lib Dems presumably say something halfway between the two. They all agree on the need for instilling some social discipline in what’s come to be known as the underclass.

Note that Steve Thomas, chief executive of the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA), reckons the trend towards public health funerals is going to grow. He adds: “Now, it’s not a trend any of us would welcome, but it does reflect the nature of society and probably the problems we have in the economy at the moment.” Note the order in which he lists those two trendsetters. We can take it, I think, that when Mr Thomas talks of “the nature of society” he is referring here to 1) an increasing number of feckless people wilfully neglecting to make financial provision for a funeral and 2) a “higher numbers of people dying with family and friends unwilling to contribute to the costs of the funeral” . If that is so, ask yourself what is the likely effect of publishing Ms Sunter’s photo. If this is the look of applicants to the Social Fund it is not necessarily a good look and may even be a stigmatising look.

So here’s my conspiracy theory. Is the DWP, by making the applications process such a gut-wrenching nightmare, hoping to shock and shame the poor into setting money aside like they used in the good old days when the man from the Pru would pop round on a Friday evening and collect their two bob?

If so, it would seem to be discriminating against the deserving and the undeserving poor alike.

Over at WhatDoTheyKnow.com they’ve been making masses of FOI requests for information about public health funerals. Find them here.

Meet St Pancras

13 October 2011
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies

 

St Pancras was beheaded in 304 during Diocletian’s persecution when he was only 14 years old. His skeleton was clothed in armour in 1777. He now resides at the Church of St Nikolaus in Wil, Switzerland.

Are you in or out?

13 October 2011
Charles
14 Comments
Categories: funeral cost, funeral directors, funeral plans

It’s not often that you see a funeral entrepreneur on Dragon’s Den, but last night’s show shone a brief spotlight on an enterprise which, in an industry unaccustomed to innovation, is likely to elicit responses ranging from ‘It’ll never work’ to ‘Tcha.’ Theo Paphitis ruled himself straight out, no messing. But it turns out that death spooks him.

It’s one of those online planning sites (you know, the ones that never make it) with a twist. It’s more than a just passive repository of funeral wishes. It’s also a service comparison website which enables consumers to find the funeral director who’ll give them what they want.

The idea is that you plan a funeral online (with plenty of help), and your plan is then sent anonymously to all funeral directors in a geographical radius set by you. The funeral directors respond with a quote and a pitch. They name a price and they also say why they think they are best for the job. They can link to their website and anything else that makes them look good – third-party endorsement, a video clip on YouTube, whatever. You then choose the funeral director who seems both nicest and best value, and from there on it’s face-to-face and personal. If it doesn’t work out, you go back to the website and choose someone else.

How does it pay for itself? This is the bit that funeral directors are going to hate. You buy a coffin from the website at a cheaper price than you are likely to be able to buy it from a funeral director. The website pockets the margin.

Want to know more? Go to the website and try it out for yourself. It’s called CompareTheCoffin.com. Yeah, yeah, what’s in a name?

Is it likely to catch on? Don’t ask me; I don’t have a business brain. But I’d hazard a guess it stands a good chance of establishing a niche. More and more people are shopping around for a funeral. CompareTheCoffin does all the legwork for them and still almost certainly enables them to make a saving. It seems to have something of the win-win about it, for best funeral directors, too – but, as I say, don’t ask me.

I must declare an interest, though. When the originator of CompareTheCoffin, Steven Mitchell, approached me at the conception stage and asked me to write some text for his website, I did some drilling down, not in a Paphitis way, but into the ethics of it. I satisfied myself that, yes, this is an ethical business idea, Steven is a good guy, as is his web developer Akmal (this is a rare partnership between a Jew and a Moslem), and I set about earning a few meagre pence as a day labourer.

Whether or not CompareTheCoffin is a runner is something you are in a far better position to judge.

After last night’s show the CompareTheCoffin website came under what looked like sustained cyber-attack, which may perhaps be rated flattery. If it’s back up after its drubbing you can find it here. Catch the Dragon’s Den show here.