For centuries, artists of all kinds – from Michelangelo to Martin Scorsese, Salvador Dali to Damien Hirst and Andrew Lloyd Webber to Monty Python – have attempted to convey the meaning of the crucifixion through their work.
For many it has been a deeply
Thoughts of a funeral-goer
It’s one step forward and two steps back as far as planning my own funeral is concerned. I keep getting distracted. However, I have (almost definitely) decided that I want to be cremated.
So, it’s cremation; no embalming; and no viewings. And a thorough medical examination to ensure that I am completely dead and not in a coma. That leaves the relatively simple decision of what’s to be done with the ashes.
One thing I most certainly do not want is to be placed in any kind of permanent receptacle, particularly not on someone’s mantelpiece. Disturbingly, Daisy (who is now fully recovered from that mishap with her over-sized slippers) has several urns adorning her living room. Each to their own, but there is something unsettling about treasuring mortal remains however attractively displayed.
Nor am I keen on those cupboards they have in the memorial ‘Everlasting Peace’ section of our local cemetery. Interestingly, they’re known as sanctums thus creating the illusion that they are forever untouched. Last summer, after my friend Jean’s cremation, her family arranged an informal gathering around the sanctum to ‘lay her to rest’. The door was opened and…there was George! I had forgotten he would be in there.
Everyone nodded as if to say, ‘How lovely! Reunited at last.’ As I bowed my head, in what I hoped looked like solemn reflection, I was thinking, ‘Together again for eternity (or for as long as the lease lasts) in a little cupboard.’
I then imagined myself grabbing Jean’s jar (I never much cared for George) running to the nearest tree and scattering her remains with gay abandon. Needless to say, decorum, good manners and a stiff knee prevailed. A sharp look from Daisy told me that she knew what I had been thinking.
I am going to tell my children that I’d like to be scattered. I’ll add it to my wish list. In fact the more I think about it, the more I’m enjoying the idea of Jamie and Alex walking into the woods at dawn (yes, I’ll specify first light) and scattering me to the cold and bitter wind.
This noble scene is slightly marred by visions of them having to avoid any dogs being walked at that time in the morning, and of them struggling to unscrew the lid of my plastic jar (no point in wasting money on a scattering tube, or God forbid, an ornate urn). I’m also fairly sure they would forget to check the wind direction. Neither of them is very practical.
The main advantage of being strewn in a random area of woodland, is that there’s then no place they may feel duty bound to visit on Mother’s day, or any other day when they should be spending time with their offspring or enjoying themselves.
It’s Mr Mollington who is beginning to cause concern. Indeed, I’m rather worried that his plans may scupper my plans. The other day he mentioned that he was going to be buried – he even started talking knowledgeably about double depth graves. I shudder at the thought. And how can we possibly agree on a suitable engraving for the memorial headstone? Not to mention the fresh flowers each week.
I find myself in agreement with Joyce Grenfell on this. ‘Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone.’ However, I will ask for one flower to be broken. All I need is a simple, inexpensive coffin (one that burns at the optimum rate) topped with a single rose; a lid that can be removed from the inside (just in case); and a plain cardboard container for the ashes.
Now for the funeral ceremony…
Dead wrong
It was the nineteenth-century Liberal politician and prime minister Willim Ewart Gladstone who famously said “Show me the manner in which a nation or community cares for its dead, and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its peoples, their respect for the laws of the land and their loyalty to high ideals.” His words are largely forgotten in the UK but they are often quoted by American undertakers seeking to big up their role and get inside their clients’ wallets. Care = spend.
Were Gladstone living today he would probably have broadened his message to take in the elderly and exclude US undertakers.
The Oldie magazine recently received an appeal from Ward 23, a care of the elderly ward at Bristol Royal Infirmary. The writer, Sue Nicholls, Ward Clerk, asked for money to buy basic toiletry items. She said, “Even the smallest of items such as a bar of soap would benefit our patients … we get single sachets of shower gel and shampoo, but they are unscented and don’t lather. Vile stuff.” Ward 23 hopes also to raise enough money to buy special chairs and footstools for the patients.
Vile treatment of the elderly is normal in our country. Punitive legislation has altered attitudes to black and minority ethnic people and all sorts of other people, but no one has thought it worthwhile to extend attitude-altering legislation to include old people. Nor are there any current plans for an Old People In Need telly-jamboree fundraising festival.
The manner in which a nation or community cares for its elderly is a measure of its attitude to its dead. We shan’t get death right until we change the way we treat our elders.
If you are inclined to send a donation or a little parcel to Ward 23, the address is: Ward 23, Uppwer Maudlin Street, Bristol BS2 8HW
ADRTs — who does and who doesn’t
From a letter in the New York Times:
Older adults who do not formally convey their treatment preferences to loved ones create a distressing situation in which children and spouses must make emotionally draining (and costly) decisions about whether to continue or stop life-extending treatment.
As Ms. Jacoby points out, one obstacle to planning is a reluctance to discuss and confront one’s own demise. Yet my research, based on interviews with more than 7,500 Americans, points to another important obstacle: money. Many people complete their advance directives as part of their estate planning; the living will is written up along with one’s will and other documents to protect one’s assets.
But many people with few financial assets to protect do not take the important first step that often kicks off the advance care planning process. People in the lowest quartile of assets are only half as likely as those at the top of the assets ladder to have a living will, to appoint a health care proxy or to discuss their treatment preferences with loved ones.
Grave dressing at Easter
Posted by Vale
On my way to the crematorium today I passed a family tidying a grave, clearing it after the winter and bringing fresh flowers for Easter.
It reminded me of this description from the diary of Francis Kilvert. At the time of writing he was a curate at Clyro on the Welsh border near to Hay on Wye.
Saturday Easter Eve 16 April 1870
…When I started for Cefn y Blaen only two or three people were in the churchyard with flowers. But now the customary beautiful Easter Eve Idyll had fairly begun and people kept arriving from all parts with flowers to dress the graves. Children were coming from the town and from the neighbouring villages with baskets of flowers and knives to cut holes in the turf. The roads were lively with people coming and going and the churchyard a busy scene with women and a few men moving about among the tombstones and kneeling down beside the green mounds flowering the graves. An evil woman from Hay was dressing a grave…
More and more people kept coming into the churchyard as they finished their day’s work. The sun went down in glory beside the dingle, but still the work of love went on through the twilight and into the dusk until the moon rose full and splendid. The figures continued to move about among the graves and to bend over the green mounds in the calm clear moonlight and warm air of the balmy evening…
When the choir had gone and the lights were out and the church quiet again, as I walked down the Churchyard alone the decked graves had a strange effect in the moonlight and looked as if the people had laid down to sleep for the night out of doors, ready dressed to rise early on Easter morning.
On this blog we’ve sometimes discussed the need for special days – like the Mexican Day of the Dead – where we spend time with the ancestors. Rightly, the general view is that you couldn’t import such an alien custom but this beautiful celebration is native to us and the scenes described were only a little over a hundred years ago. And some families still take time at Easter to dress ’their’ graves.
Are there places out there where this is still a more general tradition and ritual?
Kiwis can
No pic. We can’t post a photo of the same old bloody bonfire every time we run a story about open-air cremation.
Southland, New Zealand.
When Chris Ramage’s brother John died in hospital of natural causes just before Christmas 2011, his nephew (John’s son) wanted to witness his father’s cremation. In Chris’s words, “He wanted to cremate his father and he wanted to be present when it happened. The crematorium people weren’t going to let that happen – so he did it himself.”
He did it with Chris’s help. They built a huge fire which burned for two days.
The affair has been investigated by the police and the case closed.
It is legal to cremate dead people in New Zealand, but you’ve got to do it through the necessary paperwork. Sergeant Lury said: “It is my understanding that if he had asked for a certificate he would have got it.”
Campaigners for open-air cremation in the UK might do well to investigate the NZ model.
Full story here.
The pain passes, the beauty remains
The reasons why most of us require the presence of a dead body at a funeral are well rehearsed. There’s more to this than force of habit.
In a nutshell, the dead body concentrates the mind and brings appropriate intensity to the occasion. It’s an ordeal, but an emotionally buy tadalafil 100mgvaluable ordeal. Take it away and you’ve got an altogether less focussed, less useful event.
This being so, why do most celebrants omit to propose making funeral arrangements in the presence of the person who has died? Would this not also be an emotionally valuable ordeal?
The Scientist — Coldplay
This was played last week at the funeral of Andy Bowes of Barrow-in-Furness. He died aged 37 after an accident at work, leaving a wife and three children.
Andy’s sister said this about him:
You wanted to go everywhere with me, which became a pain when I got older. I remember looking in the mirror once and saying ‘I’m going on a diet’, and he said ‘can I come?’ When I left home, he was still my little shadow. What I would give for you to walk through my door right now and shout ‘all right, sis’.
Full report in the North West Evening Mail here.
Come up to meet you, tell you I’m sorry
You don’t know how lovely you are
I had to find you
Tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets
And ask me your questions
Oh, lets go back to the start
Running in circles
Coming up tails
Heads on a science apart.
Nobody said it was easy
It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh, take me back to the start.
I was just guessing
At numbers and figures
Pulling the puzzles apart
Questions of science
Science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart
Tell me you love me
Come back and haunt me
Oh, and I rush to the start
Running in circles
Chasing our tails
Coming back as we are
Nobody said it was easy
Oh it’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I’m going back to the start
Read more: http://artists.letssingit.com/coldplay-lyrics-the-scientist-3spq2t1#ixzz1qu7aKL7V
LetsSingIt – Your favorite Music Community
Online grieving — candles
From the message board at GoneTooSoon:
Q. Could someone help I already remove the candles of the person I would like to block can I still block them if so how? Thank you
A. hiya courtney to be able to block anyone the have to be in the list of relations/relation to admin see memorial options right hand side of your garden if another member is giving you any problem then please open a support ticket you will see help at the top of any page click on there to open ticket and get help from admin hope this helps
Quote of the day
“The absorbing fact about being mortally sick is that you spend a good deal of time preparing yourself to die with some modicum of stoicism (and provision for loved ones), while being simultaneously and highly interested in the business of survival.”
Christopher Hitchens
