Author: Charles

Down to Earth wants volunteers

23 May 2012
Charles
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Categories: Uncategorised
Down to Earth Mentoring Programme  
Down to Earth is now recruiting volunteer mentors to support people on a low income as they deal with the funeral planning process.

What will mentoring for Down to Earth be like?

Challenging but rewarding! You will work closely with individuals and families on low incomes who are organising a funeral—sometimes their own. You will be providing them with the information and support they need to make the best possible decisions at this difficult time. This may involve working from our base in Bethnal Green, a community venue or a person’s home. Types of support may include:
• Telephone signposting to appropriate services
• 1:1 planning sessions with our funeral planning pack
• Support in filling out Social Fund claim forms or making loan applications
• Support in meeting funeral directors and other official appointments
• Providing a neutral viewpoint and unbiased feedback on decisions
• Gently guiding someone through the whole funeral process

What skills and qualities are we looking for?

We need people with empathy, patience and good communication skills. You will be a good organiser, confident in problem solving and happy working with challenging and delicate situations. Some experience of death and funerals is ideal, but not essential. Above all, we are looking for people with the desire, time, skills and compassion to commit to working with people who are making hard decisions around death.

Due to the sensitive nature of the volunteering we suggest that mentors be aged 21 or over. Volunteers would be asked to commit to the project for a minimum of six months.

Why mentor for Down to Earth?

As a volunteer mentor for Down to Earth you will have the privilege of supporting vulnerable people at the most difficult time in their lives. It’s a powerful experience that is sure to challenge your world view.
Our mentoring provides a unique opportunity to develop a broad range of transferable skills in communication, support and event planning. We provide full support from a team of end-of-life care professionals. Our mentors also benefit from full training over four days, covering such modules as:
• Death and bereavement
• The mentoring process
• The funeral process and action planning
• Financial planning and the Social Fund
• Faith and cultural awareness
• Communication and listening skills
• Dealing with difficult questions
• Recognising risk

When?

Initial interviews: Thursday 7th June 18:00 to 20:30
Training 10:00 to 16:00 on 13th, 14th, 20th and 21st June

Interested? Telephone Lawrence on             020 8983 5057       or write to LawrenceKilshaw@qsa.org.uk for an application pack or just to find out more.

Lawrence Kilshaw
Down to Earth

Quaker Social Action 
17 Old Ford Road, Bethnal Green, E2 9PJ
Tel:             020 8983 5057
Fax: 020 8983 5069
Web: www.quakersocialaction.com

QSA: 140 years of social action in east London; winners of a Centre for Social Justice award and a CAF Charity award, winners of the Bank of America Neighbourhoods Excellence Initiative and a New Philanthropy Capital recommended charity

Religious funerals: why Jews bury their dead

23 May 2012
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: funeral customs, funerals in other cultures, Religious funerals
Posted by our religious correspondent, Richard Rawlinson

The first crematorium to be opened in London, in 1902, is directly opposite Golders Green Jewish Cemetery, opened in 1895. Apart from their Hoop Lane location, they share little in common. Traditional Jews, like traditional Christians and Muslims, believe in burial: and burial only in a Jewish cemetery, with a funeral at which only fellow Jews handle the body, carry the coffin and fill the grave. While Jews, like Christians, are free to lapse and go with the relativist secular flow, orthodox Jewish teaching is absolutely clear on this, whether or not it seems counter-cultural in modern liberal society.

‘Earth you are, and to earth you will return,’ were God’s words to Adam in Genesis. Jews believe the body’s natural decomposition in the earth, the source of all life, is directly commensurate with the soul’s ability to return to its divine root. They hold that the soul does not depart the body immediately, meaning incineration in a furnace would be spiritually traumatic: the soul is in an in-between state when it has no body with which to relate to the world, and is not yet free of its tenuous bonds.

This belief contrasts with the more pragmatic view, held by Buddhists and atheists alike, that upon death what is left is only matter and how remains are treated is of no consequence to the well being of the departed.

As a deterrent to cremation, ashes should not be interred in a Jewish cemetery, and the bereaved are even encouraged to go against the wishes of the deceased if contrary to tradition. Scholarly Rabbi Naftali Silberberg says: ‘While ordinarily Jewish law requires the deceased’s children to go to great lengths to respect the departed’s wishes, if someone requests to be cremated or buried in a manner which is not in accordance with Jewish tradition, we nevertheless provide him/her with a Jewish burial’.

By way of justification, he explains: ‘It is believed that since the soul has now arrived to the World of Truth it surely sees the value of a proper Jewish burial, and thus administering a traditional Jewish burial is actually granting what the person truly wishes at the moment.

‘Furthermore, if anyone, all the more so your father and mother, asks you to damage or hurt their body, you are not allowed to do so. For our bodies do not belong to us, they belong to God’.

The belief that the body is a sacred vessel for the soul, and simply on loan from God, is complemented by the belief that Man was created in God’s image, further strengthening the case against bodily mutilation. These two reasons combine to explain why religious Jews oppose tattoos and piercings, and autopsies and embalming which violate the body’s completeness, defacing it so it cannot be returned in its entirety, as it was given.

As with most laws, there are, however, exceptions. ‘After the Holocaust, many conscientious Jews gathered ashes from the extermination camp crematoria and respectfully buried them in Jewish cemeteries,’ says Silberberg.

He adds: ‘An individual who was raised in a non-religious atmosphere and was never accorded a proper Jewish education cannot be held responsible for his or her lack of observance. This general rule applies to individuals who opt to be cremated because their education and upbringing did not equip them with the knowledge necessary to make an informed choice in this area. This assumption impacts some of the legal results presented’.

While no one would deny the victims of the Nazi death camps the funeral of their faith, some might find the latter clause perhaps offers ‘wriggle room’ too far. Religious doctrine is full of such dilemmas which, on the one hand, demonstrate compassion but, on the other hand, dilute and contradict the absolutes of orthodoxy. If an unschooled Jew is, as a consequence, lapsed, should he/she have a Jewish funeral anyway? And would he/she, and the bereaved family, expect or demand one? When posed with such a question, people invariably ask, ‘What would God say?’

Footnote: The death last year of tattooed Jewish-lite pop star Amy Winehouse illustrates the reality of religious compromise. She was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium after a Jewish funeral service, and her remains are buried at Edgewarebury Jewish Cemetery.

Next week: Hindu funerals

Raising the money in hard times

22 May 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: funeral cost

Anne Dunbar, co-owner of a funeral home in the Dayton suburb of Springfield, Ohio, reports that 15 to 20 families a year now ask that newspaper obituaries include a plea for contributions toward funeral expenses.

It’s not uncommon, in the US, for families to raise money for a funeral, and here’s a new way of doing just that.

It’s comparatively uncommon in reticent Britain — where, to be fair, funerals aren’t nearly as expensive.

We wonder if the everlasting recession will change that. More than that, we wonder why it’s hardly ever done at all. People ask ‘Is there anything I can do?’ customarily with a helpless shrug of the shoulders. Give them the opportunity to bung a few quid into a JustGiving-alike fund and I’m sure they’d be relieved, the more so if they knew that any surplus would go to a chosen charity. 

People like to feel they’ve done their bit, that’s the point. 

Cockup

21 May 2012
Charles
15 Comments
Categories: Co-operative Funeralcare

The following is an abridged version of a story in this is Cheshire

A GRIEVING sibling says she is angry and upset after the wrong picture was placed by her brother’s coffin at his funeral.

Directors at Co-op Funeralcare also forgot to lay a Manchester United flag over the coffin as directed.

The 63-year-old said: “We have been totally ignored.  Nobody has come back to me, I have to keep ringing them. We didn’t know who the man was in the picture but I was too upset to say during the service.”

After three months of calls, Mrs Banner finally received a letter of apology from the company and was told two weeks ago the fee for the service had been refunded.

She added: “If we had a sincere apology straightaway from the Co-Op that would have done it. But now I can’t let go of the idea that I couldn’t fulfill my brother’s last wishes. I think they thought I was upset and if they left it long enough I would give up but they have made me angry and now I can’t let go. “I don’t think they should get away with treating people like that and I would never use them again.”

A spokesman for Co-operative Funeralcare said the flag was placed inside rather than on top of the coffin ‘due to a breakdown in communications’.

He added: “We would once again like to offer our sincere apologies to Mrs Banner and have reviewed our procedures in order to ensure that this will not happen again. We sent a letter to Mrs Banner a few weeks ago apologising and offering to reduce the cost of the funeral by means of compensation. We pride ourselves on the professional service that we provide to our clients and acknowledge that, on this occasion, our level of service fell short of our usual high standards. The celebrant, independent to Funeralcare, has expressed his apologies that the photograph he used was not a photograph of Mr Bonehill and has returned his fee.”

Ed’s note: While it’s true to say that a good celebrant will make a funeral director look good, and a bad funeral director can never make a good celebrant look bad, this story shows us that a bad celebrant can make a funeral director look awful. One is almost inclined to offer condolences to the Co-op, but not quite. 

Does this make the case for a secular funeral ritual?

21 May 2012
Charles
39 Comments
Categories: celebrants, Humanists, Religious funerals

Here’s an interesting and stimulating view of funerals from Guardian commenter Sussexperson:

Each to their own, and all that, but there are serious flaws in the “capturing the person” style of funeral. I’ve been involved in a depressingly large number of those over recent years, so can speak from bitter experience.

You don’t, as a rule, have very long to organise a funeral service: often, less than a week. Consequently, friends and family are scrabbling around for favourite readings, favourite music etc. If the funeral’s at the crem, you generally have to choose the least worst option from the music on offer rather than the single piece of music the dead person would really have wanted. If you’re tasked with giving the eulogy (or “saying a few words”, as it’s usually put), it’s just awful: the closer you were to the person, the less able you are to sum them up in a glib two-or-three-minute address. Result: the general attendees may come away saying the usual things about “a lovely service” or whatever, but you, the handful of nearest and dearest, know you’ve short-changed your relative/friend — that it’s all been a bit sketchy and inadequate. Horrible. And the guilt of that stays with you.

Myself, I’ve decided I don’t want to inflict all that on my own family/friends when I go. I’ve left instructions in my will that there’s to be no “saying a few words” or other DIY stuff at my funeral; it’s to be the traditional C of E Book of Common Prayer funeral service, and no nonsense. Not because I’m religious, but because it’s the most perfectly-constructed ritual I know of — and ritual is there for a reason. It externalises all the thoughts and feelings that people in grief (assuming anyone does grieve my departure!) can’t easily put into words themselves. It provides a framework. And it lets the mourners mourn, instead of foisting upon them the necessity of getting up an ad hoc bit of am-dram. Furthermore, by using the same ritual, the same words, that have been in use for centuries, it makes that single death part of a long continuity: something to be accepted as the fate of all mortals, not some exceptional outrage against natural law. Much more comforting, in my view.

Plenty of opportunity afterwards, over the funeral baked meats, for the anecdotes and personal reminiscences and quiet chuckles, if people want to do that.

In the same comments thread was this, from Remorsefulchekist:

I went to a Christian funeral and was bored witless.
I went to a Christian funeral and was moved beyond words
I went to an Atheist funeral and was bored witless.
I went to an Atheist funeral and was moved beyond words
Repeat with variations for Sikhs, Muslims, Pagans, Jews, Agnostics, Buddhists . . . 

Guardian article here. 

Dead Dad

20 May 2012
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Art and death, Attitudes to death

Brian Appleyard writes: Mueck exhibited only one piece at the Sensation show: Dead Dad, a hyper-realistic sculpture of the corpse of his father. The first shock was that it was little more than half life-size. The second shock was — well, I’ll come back to that. Some years later, Craig Raine, the poet and critic, recalled his reaction to Dead Dad. “And there, on the floor, 3ft long, is one indisputable, obvious masterpiece… a calmly brilliant sculpture which is the contemporary equivalent of, say, Holbein’s subtle portrait of Erasmus, with its engaged intelligence and wryly amused thin mouth.”

I enjoy Mueck’s work and this sculpture in particular, reflecting how death apparently diminishes those we love.

See Brian Appleyard’s whole article here

Posted by Evelyn

For sale: Timothy Leary’s flotation tank

18 May 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Psychoactive drugs

Are you intrigued by the healing or consciousness-changing potential of floatation tanks? Now is your chance to experience the floatation chamber in your own home with a unique piece of psychedelic history.

The winning bidder will also receive signed, framed portraits of Leary and Lillyby visionary light photographer Dean Chamberlain. These prints are valued at $1,200 each.

This Samadhi Floatation Tank was gifted to Timothy Leary in 1996 by its inventor, renowned consciousness researcher John C. Lilly, who hoped it would help ease Leary’s end-of-life suffering.

Download and read this provenance letter to learn more about the tank’s features and the historic exchange between Lilly and Leary.

Place your bid here. 

Quote of the day

18 May 2012
Charles
15 Comments
Categories: Quotes, Religious funerals

One interesting fact I encounter is what constitutes a ‘religious funeral’. I have on a number of occasions met and prayed with distressed familes who have had humanist funerals because they thought that ‘non-religious’ meant C of E!

Comment in the Guardian here.

Thoughts of a funeral-goer

18 May 2012
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

Posted by Lyra Mollington

Apart from a brief encounter with cancer when I was in my forties and a slightly dodgy back, I am in good health for a 74 year old.  Neverthless I was perturbed to discover that I am only six months older than Jane Fonda.  However, as my mother used to say, it’s not what’s on the outside that counts…  She also used to advise me to study hard because I was unlikely to bag myself a rich husband or indeed any husband at all.  How wrong she was!

This morning I awoke (always a good start to the day) to the dulcet tones of James Naughtie and a nice cup of tea made by Mr M.  By the time I was in the kitchen preparing Colin’s breakfast, it was Thought for the Day.  Have you noticed how they cleverly begin with something topical and then, before you know it, they’re talking about Jesus? 

On Tuesday I was especially interested to hear Canon Angela Tilby telling us about death.  I don’t know how I missed it, but apparently it’s Dying Matters Awareness Week.  She was just getting to her point – how to talk meaningfully about something we don’t really understand – when Colin started barking at one of the cats who occasionally risk life and limb by straying into our back garden.  Frustratingly, I heard only the words scepticism, brutal and metaphor which made me even more desperate to know how it ended. 

Later that day, when my grandson Sebastian popped in after work, I asked him to show me how to find Angela’s podcast.  I could have done it myself of course but I like him to think that I rely on his expertise.  Which, come to think of it, is how I bagged the husband my mother said I would never get.

With Colin safely curled up in his bed, Mr M. preparing supper and Seb surfing the web, I listened again to Tuesday’s Thought for the Day.

As Canon Angela concluded with the words, ‘Death, though a change of state, is not the end of being,’ I noticed Seb rolling his eyes.  I was perplexed – Angela had spoken so movingly about how she helps people come to terms with death through the language of faith.  As a family I would say we are all at the agnostic end of the Anglican spectrum.  However, I’m beginning to think that Seb might be one of those aggressive atheists one hears so much about. 

He asked me if I had ever seen a ‘brilliant and funny’ website called Platitude of the Day.  I told him that I might take a look if I had some spare time.

I have to confess that the moment Seb left, I clicked on the link.  I am afraid that Mr Peter Hearty (the author of Platitude of the Day) had deliberately misinterpreted Angela’s wise words.  Indeed, I was taken aback to discover that he does this to all the contributors of Thought for the Day.  However, to my great shame, after reading his archives, I was addicted. 

Where Angela speaks of how we soften the language of death by the use of metaphor, Mr Hearty writes, ‘You would think that people… would be more candid when one of your loved ones dies, and say things like, “Well that’s the end of your husband that you’ve been married to for the last 50 years. He’s gone, dead, kaputt, finito, so you just better get used to it.” Oddly, they don’t. They tend to try and soften the blow, even though they don’t believe in the invisible magic afterlife.’

He then gives her a rating of 5 out of 5 – extraordinarily platitudinous.

Angela and Peter are both sincere in their beliefs. I am grateful to both of them for giving me so much to think about in this week of Dying Matters Awareness.  I am also grateful to Seb for finding me this article and video about Ms Fonda’s plastic surgery — here. 

 

Habeas corpse

17 May 2012
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: Art and death, Dead people's rights, Embalming, funeral directors, Legal rights

An email flies in from a consumer advocacy org in the US. It’s about a British funeral consumer, let’s call him Jim, who has asked them for help. Jim has been told by his funeral director that there will be no funeral until he pays most of the bill upfront. Jim can manage much of the bill now, and can pay the balance very soon, but his funeral director won’t budge and the funeral is just days away. So Jim appoints another, more reasonable, funeral director, who rings up FD1 and says he’s coming to collect the body. FD1 refuses to release it.

What, the consumer advocacy org wanted to know, is Jim’s legal position?

I responded with the standard spiel. The executor/administrator is the legal ‘possessor’ and ‘controller’ of the body and it is an offence for anyone except the coroner to withhold the body from that person. Further, there being no property in a corpse, it is illegal to arrest one for debt. What’s more, it is almost certainly lawful to exercise reasonable force to gain (or regain) lawful possession of the corpse.

This applies, of course, whether or not the consumer has entered into a contract with the funeral home. A dead person cannot be used as a bargaining chip, and the executor can take their dead person home whenever, within reason, and as often as they want. I’m almost certain that’s right. 

And then my mind wandered sideways. For a long time I have wondered what it is legal and what it is illegal to do to a dead body. What constitutes what Americans classify ‘abuse of a corpse’?

And I wondered also about something else that’s been bugging me for a while: what status does routine embalming confer upon a body?

Having more pressing, urgent and duller things to do, I went a-googling. This time, I put in my thumb and pulled out a plum. Actually, two plums.

Plum One

The law case that altered the legal maxim that ‘the only lawful possessor of a corpse is the earth’ was the Anthony-Noel Kelly case. He is an artist. In 1998 he exhibited casts of body parts which had been smuggled out to him by lab technician Niel Lyndsay from the Royal College of Surgeons. Both were arrested and charged with stealing human body parts.  At the trial, the defence submitted at the close of the prosecution case that (i) parts of bodies were not in law capable of being property and therefore could not be stolen, and (ii) that the specimens were not in the lawful possession of the college at the time they were taken because they had been retained beyond the period of two years before burial stipulated in the Anatomy Act 1832, and so did not belong to it. The trial judge rejected those submissions, ruling that there was an exception to the traditional common law rule that there was no property in a corpse, namely that once a human body or body part had undergone a process of skill by a person authorised to perform it, with the object of preserving it for the purpose of medical or scientific examination, or for the benefit of medical science, it became something quite different from an interred corpse and it thereby acquired a usefulness or value and it was capable of becoming property in the usual way, and could be stolen. The same applies to body parts “if they have acquired different attributes by virtue of the application of skill of dissection and preservation techniques for exhibition and teaching purposes“.

There we have it. “Preservation techniques for exhibition … purposes.” Does this apply to bodies embalmed for viewing? After all, they have undergone a process of skill.  If Jim’s detained dead person has been embalmed, can his dead person now be classed as property?

Plum Two

The second discovery comes from a case before the European Court of Human Rights in 2007. Briefly, two men were killed in a firefight with Turkish security forces. When things had died down, members of the security forces cut the ears off the corpses.  The applicants complained of violations under Article 3 of the Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture, and “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. The court’s judgement was that it appeared that the deceased’s ears had been cut off after they had died. Article 3 had never been applied in the context of respect for a dead body. Human quality was extinguished on death and, therefore, the prohibition on ill-treatment was no longer applicable to corpses; notwithstanding the cruelty of the acts concerned in the instant case. It followed that there had been no violation of art 3 on that account.

I don’t want to speculate on the implications of that.

Information source here.