…it’s living that scares me to death.” Annie Lennox
If your mind is active and you have a minute to do nothing better with, you might like to accept the Gail Rubin challenge, pop over to her blog and supply your on variant on the many “Living is easy…” quotes.
If Gail is not on your blogroll, add her.
Find The Faily Plot blog here.
What’s in a coffin?
Okay, a dead person. What I meant, as you perfectly well know, is what is important in the eyes of the people who choose them? There’s a huge range, now – it has multiplied over the last ten years – catering for a very wide range of needs and tastes. Does any other country offer such a range?
The cheapest could never have got any cheaper; even cardboard hasn’t managed to do that. Cardboard is a peculiarly British deathstyle understatement, especially when bought by someone who could afford much better.
Eye-friendly coffins sell well. Anything without a repellent and chilling gleam. A Sunset coffin is especially good at not gleaming, and manages to be tactile as well; your fingers make a beeline for it. Lovely. Printing technology has made possible the explosion (can I say that?) of picture coffins, and also the facility to make them very personal. They’re lovely, too.
And then there’re the eco-coffins – the ones made from natural materials. Banana leaf, water hyacinth, bamboo, etc, all of them imported, so not as eco-friendly as all that, but the price is pretty good and they look nice enough in their faintly foreign way.
Those who want an indigenous look go for willow. But most willow coffins aren’t made from British willow, and it shows if you knows. The weave is loose, the willow shiny, either because it is sprayed with varnish or with a mixture of turps and linseed to stop it going mouldy on the way over. Compared with a willow coffin made in the Somerset Levels, these coffins are much cheaper and very much less than cheerful. But I would guess that a lot of consumers don’t know where they come from or what the difference is. They probably suppose they are being buried in something relatively local, but they’re not.
People buy a willow coffin often because they want to put something back. And while I wouldn’t quibble for a minute with the quality of the coffins made by Somerset Willow or Musgrove Willow, there’s another willow coffin out there which enables the buyer to put something back in two ways.
The WinterWillow is made in Cambridge from English willow. It’s a class act – a lovely piece making. It’s a good price at £625 direct to the public, fully lined and kitted out. And all profits are ploughed back not into the boss’s new car but into the very deserving Wintercomfort charity, which supports the homeless and teaches them skills for work.
Right stuff, direct sale, good price, saintly people. I can’t think of another coffin with as many selling points. It’s the kind of purchase that would make anyone feel proud to write the cheque.
Here’s a roundup of recent tweets. I was dressed down the other day for publishing too many all at once. It’s a good point. In future I shall post fewer oftener.
Falling murder rate hits gangsta funeral home – http://bit.ly/izyK2S
I see greenfuse have a new website. Something of a standard setter, I’d say – http://bit.ly/kY4HBd
Grief denied is grief delayed? Good piece here on direct cremation and emotional aftermaths – http://bit.ly/k65FnH
New natural burial ground, just opened –http://www.willowsnaturalburialgrounds.co.uk/
How would you like to approach natural burial with young people? Dr Hannah Rumble wants to know. It’s a good question –http://bit.ly/kOgNH1
Agree w/Kevorkian’s understanding of the magnitude of the problem but disagree w/his solution. New post on our blog: http://ht.ly/59S14
Shocking indictment of the L’pool Care Pathway – and I had thought it was all so good http://bit.ly/iGeOga
‘Rest in peace you wooley bastard.’ Massive outpouring of grief in NZ for dead sheep – http://on.fb.me/jD0rxl
Woman smitten in flagrante by outraged tombstone –http://tinyurl.com/6ax8k9p
Note to hacks: don’t seek quotes from undertakers about falling death rate, they’ll tell professional lies – http://bit.ly/jp7D3u
Voice of Daleks buried in a cardboard coffin – http://bit.ly/iKUaNX
Temple of Grief – there’s a good new name for a crem. Sanctuary of Sorrow? Basilica of Bereavement… Got me thinking –http://bit.ly/kkovAA
Very interesting piece in the NYT on doctors’ duty to eol counselling and not deserting their patients – http://nyti.ms/j5SxgJ
Honouring the moment of death – and getting the bag for belongings right. Brilliant piece, this, from Ireland – http://bit.ly/jge1Mx
Involving the family in the funeral. A laudably enlightened undertaker writes – http://bit.ly/lzaPlJ
A funeral in a garden. Perfect and wonderful – http://bit.ly/lEW7EH
“Their greatest gift was teaching us how to live and how to die.” Funeral for body donors. http://bit.ly/jnIZf5
“We cannot have a situation whereby people strip naked at funerals.” http://bit.ly/k7TXyD
cuttlefishpoet Digital Cuttlefish
People look at the funeral industry and conclude that it can’t go on like this. You’ve probably done it. I have. Come on, we’ve left Victorian values behind (even the Tories), we have moved on from Victorian healthcare, no one reads Walter Scott any more, so how come the undertakers got left behind in that particular timewarp? The whole look of it is just so dated if not plug ugly (your take) and so out of kilter with the spirit of the times. I mean, if we want to celebrate Nan’s life in our gladrags do we really want these gloomy geezers garbed in grief waiting attendance with their carefully arranged faces?
Yes, actually, we do. Until we can think of something better that’s exactly what most of us want. But, by gum, we’re all thinking about it. The howling strategic error of the regrettably ineffectual Dying Matters Coalition was to lead with a stultifying negative: “Death is still a taboo subject for Brits.” No it’s not and don’t tell us we’re crap at talking about it. We’re getting better at it all the time.
Contemplating change, for Brits, means bearing in mind the heritage factor. We like to have our cake and eat it. We like to clutch our iPads as we watch Lancaster bombers fly over Beefeaters and bearskins and Buckingham Palace when thoroughly modern royals get spliced in a timeless way. Even those with mixed feelings about royals are reluctant to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Reinvention implies demolition. In Britain, always fearing something worse, we conserve, we list. And we do love a bit of ceremonial, don’t we?
So there’s nothing to be said for berating the poor bloody undertakers for serving up the same old same old. Dammit, it’s what they’re asked for.
At the same time, it is undeniable, is it, that we are at the very fag end of the Victorian funeral? Its elements of ostentation, pomp and very public procession, diminished as they are, don’t fit the modern mindset. It’s remarkable that it’s persisted. It’s remarkable it ever got invented. We’re not a show-offy people, after all, and look, there’s shy, private Nan stuck in traffic at the roundabout for all the world to see through the big windows of the hearse. There is so much that is anomalous.
So you can easily forgive those who have looked at the funeral industry with an entrepreneurial or a reforming eye and sought to set off a bit of kicking and screaming. The entrepreneurs have had a particularly bad time of it. Business orthodoxy, where it has prevailed, has only done so when it has camouflaged itself as its opposite. The consolidators have succeeded stealthily, patchily, and only ever by passing themselves off as same old same old. Deftly done, Dignity.
It was therefore in a spirit of low expectations that I set off for the third biennial funeral exhibition (it’s a trade fair) organised by the NAFD. I went as the GFG and wished I hadn’t, fearing I might be turned away at the door. By an apparent administrative oversight I was let in and, carefully wearing my badge back to front, went looking for the others of the underground who had also slipped under the wire, making my way as incognito as possible through displays of the usual glossy hearses and glinty coffins and stainless steel embalming tables and mortuary trolleys and rows and rows of severed heads where embalmers were having masterclasses in putting Humpty together again. The first time you see it all it makes your head swim, let me tell you. I’m used to it now.
Louise at Sentiment was swarmed. So was Jon at MuchLoved. Mike at Phoenix Diamonds had time just to swap a hasty joke. Liz at A Giving Tribute was mobbed. In the good old days they would all have been standing idle, we’d have had all day to ourselves (a long day). Innovators, lovely people with great products born in their hearts, were also rans.
Something was up.
And to cut a long story short, this was what was up. The funeral directors were getting it – emotionally. They weren’t just there to see what was in it for them (more of the same and a pint with some mates), they were seeing what was in it for us, people who buy funerals. They weren’t looking for what they could flog but what they could add – add to the experience of a funeral as an event which can do so much (if done well) to transmute grief into something more endurable, something even joyous. They kept all the innovators exhaustingly busy. (They enjoyed their pint too, of course.)
And far from finding myself a pariah figure (I remain so to some, I know) there was a startling welcome in the hillside from lots and lots of funeral directors. And I began to feel a bit bad about some of the mean and mischievous things I’ve said about them collectively. They didn’t mind, it was the others I was talking about, they said, they knew that. Truly, this has become an industry of two halves, and the forward-looking half has achieved critical mass. That’s more than half, isn’t it? Woop, as Louise would say, woop (I can’t, not at my age).
Until last Friday my fixed view was that the funeral industry is unaccustomed to consumer scrutiny and doesn’t like it. Well, my mind has done a volte face on that, let me tell you. By day three I was wearing my badge round the right way. I have never talked so much in my life or had so much serious fun with so many brilliant and lovely people.
I’m still taking it in. There’s been a sea change. Cue that Dylan song.
Not many people cite or quote holy texts any more, but a deep human appetite for words of transcendent, mystical wisdom lives on. Twitter is full of people regurgitating inspirational quotes by secular saints (loadsa Gandhi, of course). Once in a while a Facebook friend is afflicted, and of course I block them at once. But we’re probably all guilty, so here goes. When the atheist, anti-marriage writer HL Mencken got wed in a church his friends protested. He replied, ‘Like all other infidels, I am superstitious.’ And that would seem to me to be a pretty good, down-to-earth quote to describe the faith position of most people today. I’m not ashamed to offer you that.
Mencken also said this: ‘Old age ain’t no place for sissies.’ Never truer in this age of protracted, intractable dying. As the years pile up we need more and more courage to face and negotiate the inexorable. There’s no doubting who this country’s real heroes are.
Heroism comes in different guises. I very much like its guise in this letter to the Oldie magazine.
SIR: Working people frequently ask us retired people what we do to make our days interesting.
Well, the other day, my wife, Helen, and I went into town and visited a shop. When we came out, there was a traffic warden writing out a parking ticket. We went up to him and I said, ‘Come on, sir, how about giving an OAP a break?’ He ignored us and continued writing the ticket. I called him an idiot. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn-out tyres, so Helen called him arrogant. He finished writing the second ticket and put it on the windscreen with the first. Then he started writing more tickets. This went on for about 20 minutes. Just then our bus arrived, and we got on it and went home.
We try to have a little fun each day now that we’re retired. It’s important at our age.
Grenville Collins
Any Londoners interested in this excellent initiative?
Down to Earth, Quaker Social Action’s exciting new funeral support project, is now recruiting volunteers to be trained as mentors for the east London area. Mentors will gently support bereaved people on a low income as they deal with the funeral planning process. They will enable and empower individuals to deliver an affordable but meaningful funeral without experiencing financial crisis.
If you are interested in a challenging but rewarding volunteering opportunity that can make a real difference to someone at a time of need please read the following briefing and contact Russell Ogston on email: russellogston@qsa.org.uk or telephone 020 8983 5055 for a volunteer application pack.
I was at Bristol Temple Meads and a five-hour train journey lay ahead. A party of young people boarded and a girl headed straight for my dog collar. “Can I talk to you, Reverend?” It had all the hallmarks of a “chat up the vicar” joke and I was tired. But no. Three hours earlier her boyfriend, a long-term depressive, had intentionally taken a lethal dose of tablets and she had discovered him dead in their flat. He could no longer face the pain of his existence and she was travelling to her parents for comfort.
Read the whole article in the Guardian here. Worth it.
‘Untimely’ Death
Death knocked on my door –
it was a policeman
come looking for the home of a child found unharmed
amid the wreckage of a highway crash.
I heard him say ‘grandparents’
and my mind saw Grandma long since ready for her death
and Granddad who would never cope alone.
That one word gave me just an instant
to relax amid the swirling building comprehension:
it was not my grandparents, but the child’s, whom death had taken.
The child was my first-born,
returning from her first adventure with my parents.
And in that orphaned moment there opened up a gap
that could have swallowed my existence
were it not for also knowing my beloved child lived.
I never understood the peace that followed:
was it knowing that my parents both had lived their best?
Or that some day life would show me
that the timing did make sense?
Or did it come from looking back
on all the strange events that melded up
to keep our daughter safe?
It did not keep the tears at bay
or push me through the grind of daily living,
but there was peace beyond my understanding
that came upon the grubby wings
of death.
Margie McCallum
Margie has recorded a CD of this and 17 other poems under the title When Death Comes Close. It comes with a booklet and is available from Amazon.
I shall reproduce others of Margie’s poems in the coming days.
If you’re feeling a bit glum today, or even if you aren’t, have a look at this new blog.
Three items of interest today.
First, if you have followed the life and times of Jack Kevorkian, aka Dr Death, and the effect he has had on the assisted suicide debate, you will be interested to read the latest post on the Death With Digity blog, which concludes: Firebrand, hero, crazy man, renegade, zealot. No matter how you describe him, Kevorkian got all of us to think about something we never want to face, and by talking about death our end of life options are improving. Read it here.
Speaking of those he helped on their way with his Thanatron and Mercitron, Kevorkian said: My intent was to carry out my duty as a doctor, to end their suffering. Unfortunately, that entailed, in their cases, ending of the life.
There’s a good roundup of newspaper reports of his death at the excellent Exit blog here.
Second, an eyebrow-raising insight into the sort of nimbyism which must have put a stop to, or delayed the opening of, many natural burial grounds. You can’t say ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ anymore, but you can say ‘No Dead’ – and they do. Inhabitants of the leafier part of Ajax, Virginia (why didn’t they call it Brobat or Izal?) are in uproar over a proposed NBG at the bottom of their gardens. Among imbecilities which they have vocalised are: “When a body decomposes, the rotting creates maggots and flies and attracts rodents, which will attract foxes and coyotes” “What happens if someone has AIDS and that gets in the water?” “From a scientific perspective, thousands of bodies in a mass grave decaying simultaneously into the watershed is very unnatural … and unprecedented,” and “That’s all we need, is to see a coyote running by with an arm or leg in its mouth.” Read the whole sad story if you can bear to here.
Third, and I direct you to this because I believe that there’s nothing the public sector cannot do better than the conscienceless for-profit sector (you’ve been following the Southern Cross scandal, I’m sure), an account by a proud public sector worker of the death of his grandfather. He concludes ‘What drives me, the organisation I work for and hundreds of others like us, is ensuring that everyone has the best chance of being as fortunate as my dad was at the time they need it most – not just in social care, but from public services in general.’ Read the blog here.
Fourth (I never said I was numerate), at the funeral in the US yesterday of a young man killed in a car crash the mourners wore green – for life and renewal. Now, that’s a good idea.
