Archive: 2011

We need to talk about funerals

24 August 2011
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: alternative funerals, ceremony, death and funerals, funeral customs, funeral directors, Reasons to go to a funeral, Secular approaches to death, traditional funerals

Posted by Vale

But, I hear you say, we do already. All the time. Interminably.

And, of course, we do.

This website springs from the Good Funeral Guide and the blog is full of discussions about new ways to dispose of bodies, about wild and wonderful flights of imagination in the services that are being created and lots of talk about the funeral industry itself. There is even room for philosophising in the many posts that consider what funerals are for (click on the category Ceremonies at the bottom of this post for a full listing).

But it struck me recently that, interesting and important as this talk is, most of our posts are about what happens in and after the service. We talk much more rarely about what happens before, even though this is where, for the people involved, all the important decisions are taken. It is also where funeral directors have an  opportunity to make a real difference to the quality of the service provided. To understand how, you first have to recognise what is happening.

Think about the traditional way that funerals were commissioned (and allow me to exaggerate and oversimplify for a moment). In a religious context it is the priest/ rabbi/ immam or whoever that acts as the guardian of the process. They may well be involved before death. After they act both as guardian and guide to what is to be done, in what timescale and with what rites. Funeral director, the family themselves, every player in the funeral process submits to this approach.

For the people involved in – and who are happy to identify themselves with – the process there is a great deal of comfort in this. It is often rooted in community. It will express contains both tradition and continuity, and it satisfies the requirements of faith. There is the added satisfaction of  knowing that all that is right and proper has been done.

Of course the direct link between family and faith – even as a cultural association) has been weakening for a long time now. In this census year a UK survey by the British Humanist Association suggested that two thirds of us do not regard ourselves as religious. While, internationally, another study claimed that data collected over a number of censuses (censi?) showed that in nine countries there was a trend that would lead in the end to the extinction of religion.

In these circumstances what should families do? The GFG is unequivocal. People should be given the information, advice, time and support they need to work out what sort of funeral service they want.

But, without access to another wise guide, funeral directors have, by default, acquired a huge new responsibility. More often than not they are the ones that families turn to as they begin to face up to the question of what sort of service it is that they need to commission. It has to be a real concern that – with some notable, brilliant and inspiring exceptions – too many still feel that the old process is the best – even where it lacks all legitimacy or meaning in the lives of the people affected.

This is why we need to talk about funerals. Meaning, spirituality, grieving, the comfort of community are all possible outside of religion, but only if the right questions are asked at the start. What needs to happen to make sure that more funeral directors are willing to ask them?

Don’t miss the bus

22 August 2011
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, funeral trends

This from Charles Moore in the Spectator, 11 August 2011:

Have you noticed how people’s funerals now take place longer and longer after their death? Such delay is not permitted in Judaism or Islam, religions which developed under hot suns, but it is now quite common for Christian or godless crem funerals to be held even a month or more after decease. I suppose this is the result of efficient refrigeration. It does, it is true, make it easier for friends and family to get to the funeral if there is more notice. Even so, it seems a bad trend. Death is absolute, and breaks in upon life without consideration of timing (unless you are poor King George V with your life ‘drawing peacefully to its close’ in order to coincide with the first edition of the Times). The reality of its awful fact should not be postponed. 

 

Rites and riots: the search for meaning

22 August 2011
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

 

Posted by our religious correspondent, Richard Rawlinson

“Show me the manner in which a nation cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals.”

Sir William Gladstone 

Following the recent spate of arson attacks and looting sprees, it’s easy to conclude some of England’s more feckless vandals have been dragged up expecting rights without responsibilities, and that we’re doomed unless we rein in aspects of the liberal social experiment of recent decades.

One of the challenges of society today is the nature and speed of cultural change, in particular how people seek meaning and hope. Ritual has always played a part in helping us process life transitions, whether from bachelor to husband or wife to widow.

In today’s pluralistic, late-modern world, fewer people are using religious rites of passage to help understand meaning in life and death. Secular state-endorsed civil marriages and funerals are providing an alternative. But even when humanistic services include religious elements, do they not tend to be consumer-driven – ‘what the client wants, the client gets’?

If the Church is trying to revive her relevance, I don’t think the answer is accepting requests for ‘Fly Him To The Moon’. So what does she offer that’s different, what’s her ‘unique selling point?

Regular church-goers receive community support and consideration of bereavement beyond the funeral. But so, too, do those surrounded by friends and family in a secular community, so pastoral care alone is not a justification.

The true answer also won’t wash among non-believers: faith in God and the hope of His love for eternity. It’s a chicken and egg dilemma for the Church. No faith, no gain. No gain, no faith.

So the question is how to inspire faith, and increasingly the answer is a return to traditional liturgy and rites, not yet more guitars, tambourines and pagan-style dancing in the sanctuary. This traditional revival, driven by His Holiness Pope Benedict, is not about empty aesthetics, but about liturgy and ritual showing how beauty and truth connect with one another. Interestingly, it’s the young who get it and are cheerleaders for the cause. They’re fed up with Vatican II aging hippies making them cringe as they try desperately to be ‘in touch’.  

From the heroic to the heartfelt – obits in Iceland

19 August 2011
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: Academia and death, Attitudes to death, memorialisation, Secular approaches to death

Posted by Vale

Can the obituaries published in Icelandic newspapers tell us anything about our changing attitudes to death and dying?

Obituaries are a national pastime in Iceland. Every day the leading national newspaper – the Morgungblaðið – publishes pages and pages of them. And they are read avidly. One writer has even claimed that the passion Icelanders have for their obituaries is a sign of a ‘national obsession with death’. 

Iceland’s obituaries are different. They are not about the rich or famous or worthy and they are not written by professional writers. Instead they are, simply, the personal tributes that family and friends make to the people they have lost. And, since the first decades of the last century, Iceland’s newspapers have published pages and pages of them every day, for free.

Over the years the style of obituary has changed and it was this that caught the attention of university researchers. In a paper published by Mortality (Letters to the dead: obituaries and identity memory and forgetting in Iceland) they look at these changes and ask questions about what they reveal about the changing attitudes to death.

Two examples make the point:

“Many memories surface [now that Ari is dead] as the man was an enormous personality, formed by difficult childhood…Of course Ari had to start working very early and maybe this experience shaped the way in which he made great demands on his family when it came to work. In the year 19xx Ari lost his wife who had stood as a rock by his side for almost thirty years. It was clear that this was a severe blow for Ari but he suffered his grief in silence. ‘I am Iceland’s battle,’ Ari said once on a happy occasion, and he certainly was the battle of Iceland, although the battlefield was not one where people get killed. It was the field of dreams and achievements of the man who with optimism and courage was instrumental in developing agriculture in his region from mud huts to modern buildings. Ari …was also famous for his hard work and it was like three shovels were being used when he was digging and three hammers being used when he was hammering. Ari was renowned for his helpfulness, and the bigger the favour asked the quicker he was to respond. . . . I offer Ari’s children and relatives my deepest sympathy. Iceland has now lost one of its best sons. Rest in peace.” 

“My dear dad, how can one understand this? You, so young and fit, are torn away from this earthly life just like that. We who still had so many things to do together. I know, men plan but God decides. Dear dad, I miss your kind words and your hugs terribly. As long as I can remember you have always made my wellbeing your priority. You were not just my dad but my best friend too. Nothing was too good for me. The memories accumulate, but they would fill a whole book. This summer, which now draws to an end, we were allowed to be together even more than usually. The two of us spent most of it together and every day you’d say ‘How shall I spoil you today darling?’ . . .My dear dad, I know you are with God and that we will meet again, but until then I’ll seek solace in warm memories and in the prayer you taught me [a well known Icelandic prayer is reproduced]. Your loving daughter”

What has caused this shift from the reserved and heroic account of Ari’s life to the personal heartfelt emotions in the letter from daughter to father?

At a practical level the new obituaries started to appear 1994 when the paper – in response to popular demand – relaxed the rules about what could be written. In the research a number of possibilities are explored, including the suggestion that it marks a shift in a society from one where identification with community has shifted to the personal and individual. This may well be true – but, for any of us working with the bereaved isn’t the shift familiar? The services we create here in the UK are increasingly personal, full of emotion and personal feelings directly expressed. 

If the changes can be traced to shifting social relationships in Iceland, what is driving the changes here in the UK? And when did we realise as a society that we wanted to do things differently? After Diana’s funeral perhaps? 

Woo-hoo-logy!

16 August 2011
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: scandals

The guys and gals at Eulogy Magazine have run rather a good story to earth and, in the process, attracted a libel threat from the Sue Ryder charity, which they have responded to by proclaiming it in a press release. Nice one, bredren!

At the beginning of 2011, Eulogy discovered that Sue Ryder and King’s Court Trust (KCT), a little known and unregulated probate firm, were in the process of developing a commercial partnership called, ‘Services for Bereavement’ 

On Friday 11th March 2011, Christine Houghton, Marketing Director of KCT told us, “Sue Ryder will be giving us a list of their patients to work from. Obviously we can’t be seen to be ‘ambulance chasing’, which is why Services for Bereavement is important.” 

Concerned with the way such a proposal might contravene data protection laws, we asked Sue Ryder for clarification. They denied any agreement to share data with KCT, but refused to explain how the company was led to believe that they would be given a list of patients. 

Whetted your appetite? Read the whole sorry mess here.

Death and the Riots

15 August 2011
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

Posted by Cadaverous

This week, like much of the country, I have been watching the riots that ripped apart our communities. I don’t only mean watching the incessant news updates and reading the reams of angry and insightful comment. I was immersed in events themselves with riot police at both ends of my street, and local youths bombarding police with bricks. On Wednesday night you would have founds me bolting my windows tight and worrying about the safety of my children. 

The local area was taken to pieces. Cars and shops were set on fire and passersby and the emergency services attacked. Surprisingly, the rioters even took exception to Hackney’s branch of Co-operative Funeralcare whilst other surrounding shops survived unscathed.

With the freedom of the city the rioters didn’t march on parliament demanding equality and justice. No, they went shopping. When there weren’t designer goods to be had, anything seemed to do with even pound shops being looted. Rioters were hitting the streets with a brick in one hand and a clutch of empty bags in the other. 

In some way this riot shopping is not surprising. The quest to consume has become a dominant soundtrack to our lives. But it’s not only the rioters who go to rotten extremes to get what they want, as the grotty behaviour exposed in the NOTW phone hacking scandal shows. The world often looks so damn unfair. Blowing up the financial system seems to win you a state subsidised bonus and many of our MPs have been caught quietly swindling the taxpayer.

An insightful friend recently said that ‘consumer capitalism is driven by death energy.’ I think he means that we’re not very sorted about death and dying, and this manifests in our prevalent value system. We’re looking for value without context and our fears work to shift a lot of product. 

This makes sense if our awareness of mortality is linked to how well we live our lives. That this is part of the human condition is the subject of a “venerable line stretching back to the beginning of written thought.” (Yalom). The Stoic philosopher Seneca said “No man enjoys the true taste of life but he who is willing and ready to quit it.” For us, blanking out death means we get overly attracted to gaudy baubles such as glamour, riches, fame, power and luxury. 

The riots have resurrected talk of ‘Broken Britain’. Britain, and indeed much of the world, certainly looks pretty shaky if not broken, but there seems to be a distinct lack of alternatives about what we need to do. Cracking down on rioters might stop the riots happening again, but will it really address what ails us? It often seems that there’s nothing with integrity left. 

My suggestion for our response to this situation is a bit different. I think we should step up our work to get people to engage with death. 

Maybe this might result in more people doing what’s really important for them right now. Maybe we’d be less attracted to stale models of what a good life looks like. Maybe we’d decide we need less stuff instead of more. 

Just maybe.

Cadaverous hangs out at Death Cafe. 

Who decides when the law is an ass?

12 August 2011
Charles
10 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, bureaucracy, ceremony, Formality vs informality, Requiem Mass

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

It’s invariably the breaking of rules that’s considered scandalous by the media, whether a tabloid splash about a married celebrity’s romp with a prostitute, or a Guardian scoop about the illegal phone hacking that secured such a story. But sometimes a story is picked up because it’s about the upholding of rules, the merits of which attract heated debate. Stories relating to religious funerals can fall into this category.

BBC Online is likely to have raised a few eyebrows when it reported on the Archbishop of Melbourne banning rock music at funerals. It’s unclear whether the BBC’s motive was to make a liberal stand against traditionalism. It at least presented the Archbishop’s reason – ‘that a church funeral should maintain Christian focus, and secular celebrations should be reserved for before and after the funeral’. He’s not passing judgment on non-Catholic funerals.

Even if some stories are biased, they enable comment and discussion. ‘Priestess denied Catholic funeral rites,’ reads another headline, about a woman in Chicago who was invalidly ordained by the Women Priests Movement using the prayers and rituals of the Catholic Church.

Again, anyone is entitled to disagree with the laws about male-only ordination, but this woman knew that a simulation of the sacrament of Holy Orders incurs excommunication, revoked only by contrition. She chose to reject Catholicism so should accept a non-Catholic funeral.

Another headline causes more soul-searching: ‘No Catholic funeral for Italian right-to-die advocate’. The man, suffering from muscular dystrophy, requested the disconnection of his respirator, with the doctor arguing this was not about euthanasia but about refusing treatment that would have constituted ‘therapeutic cruelty’. However, the Church made it clear that the ruling was not a reaction to the man’s death but to his earlier high-profile involvement in public campaigns for legalised euthanasia. Like the self-appointed priestess, his vocal stand opposing Church teaching placed him outside the Church.

Would the right-to-die campaigner have been allowed a Catholic funeral had he quietly accelerated his own death? Yes, and not just because the Church would have been oblivious to the exact nature of his death. Plenty of people, Catholic or otherwise, are humanely ‘let go’ by the medical profession. The media rarely points out that the Church does not count all discontinuance of extraordinary health care as euthanasia.

Still on the subject of ambiguity, there was a highly unusual case in San Diego recently which was publicised under the headline, ‘California Catholic Church refuses gay man his funeral’. The Church overturned the individual priest’s ruling, having heard the deceased, a local businessman with a partner of 24 years standing, was a devout Catholic and stalwart of his parish.

Some might argue he, like the priestess and the euthanasia advocate, was living outside the Church by enjoying a loving, same-sex relationship, and therefore not eligible for a Catholic funeral. Others, including those in the Californian Church hierarchy who overruled the rogue priest in their midst, chose compassion. 

Canon law says that ecclesiastical funerals should be denied to those who might cause public scandal of the faithful unless they gave signs of repentance before death. It’s unclear whether the man’s funeral would cause scandal in his parish, or if he felt any need to make amends. Perhaps the Church establishment effectively saw that some rules were open to interpretation, that sometimes scenarios appear to jar with charity and common sense.

This also seems to have been the case when some US pro-life campaigners objected to the Catholic funeral of Senator Ted Kennedy due to his public support for abortion. Whatever Kennedy may have confessed before death will never be known but Cardinal Sean O’Malley said in the senator’s defense: ‘At times, zeal can lead people to issue harsh judgments and impute the worst motives to one another.’

Copout or kindness? The fact these polemical situations exist is not, for me, a deal-breaker. It’s accepted that one can respect the authority of Church guidance on most things, and part ways on a few others. But only within reason. The Church, with all her man-made flaws, teaches us how to love God as He loves us. We may sometimes fail but obedience is one part of that love – something too big for media headlines to convey.

Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins

10 August 2011
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

Posted by Sweetpea

On holiday, I bought myself a new book of poetry by one of my favourite poets, Billy Collins, published by Picador Poetry.  What a treat:

Every morning since you disappeared for good,

 I read about you in the daily paper

 along with the box scores, the weather, and all the bad news.

Some days I am reminded that today

will not be a wildly romantic time for you,

nor will you be challenged by educational goals,

nor will you need to be circumspect at the workplace.

Another day, I learn that you should not miss

an opportunity to travel and make new friends

though you never cared much about either.

I can’t imagine you ever facing a new problem

with a positive attitude, but you will definitely not

be doing that, or anything like that, on this weekday in March.

And the same goes for the fun

you might have gotten from group activities,

a likelihood attributed to everyone under your sign.

A dramatic rise in income may be a reason

to treat yourself, but that would apply

more to all the Pisces who are still alive,

still swimming up and down the stream of life

or suspended in a pool in the shade of an overhanging tree.

But you will be relieved to learn

that you no longer need to reflect carefully before acting,

nor do you have to think more of others,

and never again will creative work take a back seat

to the business responsibilities that you never really had.

And don’t worry today or any day

about problems caused by your unwillingness

to interact rationally with your many associates.

No more goals for you, no more romance,

no more money or children, jobs or important tasks,

but then again, you were never thus encumbered.

So leave it up to me now

to plan carefully for success and the wealth it may bring,

to value the dear ones close to my heart,

and to welcome any intellectual stimulation that comes my way

though that sounds like a lot to get done on a Tuesday.

I am better off closing the newspaper,

putting on the clothes I wore yesterday

(when I read that your financial prospects were looking up)

then pushing off on my copper-coloured bicycle

and pedaling along the shore road by the bay.

And you stay just as you are,

lying there in your beautiful blue suit,

your hands crossed on your chest

like the wings of a bird who has flown

in its strange migration not north or south

but straight up from earth

and pierced the enormous circle of the zodiac.

 

Individuality in the Requiem Mass?

8 August 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Religious funerals, Requiem Mass, traditional funerals

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

Réquiem ætérnam dona eis, Dómine (Eternal rest give to them, O Lord).

There is often talk about the tone of funerals: the balance between celebrating a life and grieving a loss; the ratio of bespoke parts reflecting individuality, to formulaic parts reflecting the universality of death.

Catholics expect this balance in the funeral rites, too. In the Prayer Vigil, or wake held between death and funeral, allowing the bereaved to say their goodbyes. In the Requiem Mass, which allows for personal choices of hymns, Bible readings, prayers and words of remembrance. In the Committal, the final leave-taking at the graveside or crematorium. In any post-Committal drinks party.

That care should be taken so any secular poems and songs chosen for the prayer vigil or words of remembrance should be in keeping with the Christian faith is unlikely to be an obstacle for someone opting for a Catholic funeral.

But the wealth of church music invariably fulfils, from the Requiem Masses by Verdi or Mozart to Celtic chants such as this rendition by Matt Meyer of Litany of the Saints.If you must, you can even select schmaltzy hymns, though not over my dead body, please.

Sacred literature also serves to offer thanksgiving to God, as well as prayers for the deceased and support for the bereaved. Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’, is a popular choice as are certain readings from St Paul’s letter to the Romans, or this prayer by Cardinal Newman:

‘O Lord, support us all the day long of this troublous life, until shadows lengthen, and evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then, Lord, in thy mercy, grant us a safe lodging, a holy rest, and peace at last. Amen’.

Such selections blend with the familiarity of the Eucharistic liturgy as all masses, funeral or otherwise, re-enact the Easter journey of Jesus Christ from death to resurrection.

Keeping God central as the author of all life is occasionally greeted with mixed emotions. The bereaved can be feeling anger and want the sole focus to be on their deceased. In this state, they may think their beloved doesn’t need the Credo , Pater Noster and Hail Mary repeated to help the deceased to rest in peace. As the mass is celebrated, they may drift off into private contemplation of the person they have lost.

However, those attending the funeral mass more often gain comfort from it, playing their part in willing the deceased Godspeed, contemplating the good that merits God’s love, and the sins that require forgiveness.

Whatever music and spoken words are chosen, those meditative moments of golden silence are what makes each funeral unique. Still waters run deep.

OMG!!! Men of Mortuaries

5 August 2011
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: something for the weekend

Posted by Vale

‘Aren’t undertakers old, gray of complexion, gaunt and, well, creepy?’

It’s the opening question in a 2007 article in America’s Obit magazine and, of course, the answer is no – as evidenced by the photographs shown in a calendar displaying all that is best of American male mortician manhood.

The Calendars were for charity and the mortician who organised the shoot – Kenneth McKenzie who has a funeral home in Long Beach, California – sees them as a humorous way to dispel the notion that morticians “are gray-haired and hunchbacked with no personality.”

Have a look at the original article to check for yourselves:

http://www.obit-mag.com/articles/omg-men-of-mortuaries

But I think a gauntlet has been thrown down in the USA. Anyone want to pick it up? And does anyone want to nominate a likely candidate?