Happy Monday, everyone.
If you come to this blog wondering what’s kicking off, chances are you’ve got something to say yourself.
If so, we’d like you to.
The GFG’s a talking shop. We don’t have an editorial line, we don’t have a manifesto. Come one, come all; we’re Funeralworld’s Speakers’ Corner.
If you’d like to sound off about anything at all, do get in touch.
“In numberless instances the interment of the dead is in the hands of miscreants, whom it is almost flattery to compare to the vulture, or the foulest carrion bird.”
Writer in Leisure Hour, 1862
Announcement by the Press Association:
The UK’s largest provider of funeral-related services has reported higher profits after its strongest year for the number of families planning ahead for a death.
Dignity, which has 600 funeral locations including 35 crematoria, said the number of pre-arranged funeral plans on its books and yet to take place increased to 265,000 in 2011, from 238,000 the previous year.
The group, which last year held 62,300 funerals, allows customers to plan a funeral in advance and make provisions towards the cost through its Dignity Guaranteed Funeral Plan.
Dignity said underlying pre-tax profits increased by 3% to £41.6 million in the year to December 30, as it increased its location portfolio by 33 in the year.
Sebastien Jantet, analyst at broker Investec, said Dignity had delivered “yet another set of strong results”. He added: “The highlights were a strong performance from the pre-arranged funerals division.”
The Sutton Coldfield-based group said its funeral services division, which brings in the largest proportion of profits, had received investment of around £9.5 million, with roughly half of this funding the replacement of its hearses and limousines.
The group’s crematoria division saw operating profits increase 7% to £21.3 million as it conducted 47,600 cremations, compared with 45,200 the previous year.
The group completed the construction of two crematoria in Somerset and Worcestershire in the period, while work continues on a new crematorium in Essex. The group is also the preferred bidder to operate Haringey Council’s crematorium in north London.
Looking ahead, Mike McCollum, Dignity chief executive, said: “While 2012 has started more quietly than 2011, the board remains confident in the group’s prospects and its expectations for 2012 remain positive and unchanged.”
Here at the GFG-Batesville Tower we celebrated this marvellous news by announcing a half day holiday (unpaid, of course) and shooting an intern.
The infantile superficiality of the media’s treatment of issues around death and funerals is something we’ve deplored frequently on this blog — and today’s news is that things haven’t got any better.
Instead of giving serious consideration to what a crematorium might do with the heat it is compelled to capture from its waste gases, a necessary precondition for mercury scrubbing, the Daily Mail prefers to target its readers’ susceptibility to righteous indignation. So we get this:
A council’s cost-saving plans to heat a chapel where mourners go to grieve with energy from the burning of dead bodies has outraged residents.
‘I think it’s outrageous. Relatives will be sitting in the chapel remembering their loved ones and knowing their bodies are being used to cut energy bills,’ said James Sanderson, 43. ‘I would not like to be sitting there thinking my dead gran was heating up the room. It’s sick and an insult to our loved ones.’
What the clever journalist, who surely knows better, has hidden from the readers and the combustible Mr Sanderson, who seems to like going off on one if it means getting in the paper, is that human corpses make very poor fuel. This may be down to them being 72 per cent water. Try and heat your living room by chucking another nan on the fire and you’ll find that out soon enough.
Rentagob is never far from a hack’s mic or notebook at a time like this. In the same article Tory twat councillor Tom Wootton said:
‘The Conservative group is quite shocked by this proposal and we want more information and figures as to how cost-effective this would be.
‘The Liberals have insisted they will not burn rubbish to make energy but here they are proposing to use the heat from burning dead people, which I think is a little strange.”
Here in Redditch this debate has been had and put to bed. A union official raged and an undertaker spluttered, but the good ordinary people of this lovely old moss-covered market town simply thought about it quietly then gave their thumbs up to heating the swimming pool with a little help from the crem.
For they understand that the heat given off by a burning body is negligible, and that their swimming pool will in fact be heated by the heat used to burn bodies.
The British, it seems, are a reassuringly pragmatic people, an impression reinforced by the fact that, when we last looked, no one had bothered to comment on the Mail’s inflammatory nonsense.
Read the whole article, if you can be bothered, here.
Posted by Lyra Mollington
We were both in sombre mood as we travelled back along the M4 in Myra’s bright yellow Honda Jazz.
We’d had a slight tiff as we viewed the flowers after Trevor’s funeral. Whilst I was keen to go back to the house for light refreshments, Myra was going on about the long drive home. We couldn’t even agree on whether it should be called a reception, a wake or an after-party. I’m fairly sure that Trevor’s body would have to be there for it to qualify as a wake.
I digress. Marjorie had put on the most marvellous spread of sandwiches and cakes. It seemed to lift her spirits to see us all tucking in. After circulating for a few minutes, I discovered the identity of the miscreant with the inappropriate ring tone – one of Trevor’s drinking pals. Ring-tone Man assured me that Trevor would have “loved it”. And that he was “all forgive and forget”. I began to warm to Trevor’s friend, Andrew. However, the distinct smell of alcohol was rather a mystery at one o’clock in the afternoon.
Marjorie invited me to write in the remembrance book. There were quite a few R.I.P.s together with, only the good die young/ miss you forever/we’ll never forget you. And the baffling “Your (sic) a real ledge mate!” Andrew had written, “Anything to get out of buying a round you tight bugger! Mine’s a double! LOL!”
However, I put away my disapproving face – these were the people who had cared about Trevor and they thought a great deal of him. I glanced across at a room full of smiling faces and quickly dismissed my original idea of writing something in Latin.
As I tried to think of some mots justes, I looked at the photographs that were on display. I spotted an old black and white one taken of all the cousins on my mother’s side of the family. We were in height order: me, the eldest, at the back. And right at the front, there was little Trevor – with his mop of blond hair and his huge lop-sided grin; not a care in the world. Myra was right – it was going to be a long drive home.
“He thought the world of you two you know.” It was Andrew. Apparently, Trevor was proud of his cousins who went to the grammar school. And although we were “a bit posh” we were “up for a laugh”.
I wrote, “You will always be our beautiful golden-haired boy with the cheeky smile. You gave us fun and laughter. Thank you Trevor. Per aspera ad astra.”
Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the under-lying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
The seasons bring the flower again,
And bring the firstling to the flock;
&; in the dusk of thee, the clock
Beats out the little lives of men.
O, not for thee the glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any gale,
Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom:
And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
I seem to fail from out my blood
And grow incorporate into thee.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson — In Memoriam
Here’s a collection of Victorian superstitions around death and funerals. Of course, everyone didn’t believe all of them but, even so, it’s remarkable (perhaps) how few have survived.
If the deceased has lived a good life, flowers would bloom on his grave; but if he has been evil, only weeds would grow.
If several deaths occur in the same family, tie a black ribbon to everything left alive that enters the house, even dogs and chickens. This will protect against deaths spreading further.
Never wear anything new to a funeral, especially shoes.
You should always cover your mouth while yawning so your spirit doesn’t leave you and the devil never enters your body.
It is bad luck to meet a funeral procession head on. If you see one approching, turn around. If this is unavoidable, hold on to a button until the funeral cortege passes.
Large drops of rain warn that there has just been a death.
Stop the clock in a death room or you will have bad luck.
To lock the door of your home after a funeral procession has left the house is bad luck.
If rain falls on a funeral procession, the deceased will go to heaven.
If you hear a clap of thunder following a burial it indicates that the soul of the departed has reached heaven.
If you hear 3 knocks and no one is there, it usually means someone close to you has died. The superstitious call this the 3 knocks of death.
If you leave something that belongs to you to the deceased, that means the person will come back to get you.
If a firefly/lightning bug gets into your house someone will soon die.
If you smell roses when none are around someone is going to die.
If you don’t hold your breath while going by a graveyard you will not be buried.
If you see yourself in a dream, your death will follow.
If you see an owl in the daytime, there will be a death.
If you dream about a birth, someone you know will die.
If it rains in an open grave then someone in the family will die within the year.
If a bird pecks on your window or crashes into one that there has been a death.
If a sparrow lands on a piano, someone in the home will die.
If a picture falls off the wall, there will be a death of someone you know.
If you spill salt, throw a pinch of the spilt salt over your shoulder to prevent death.
Two deaths in the family means that a third is sure to follow.
The cry of a curlew or the hoot of an owl foretells a death.
A single snowdrop growing in the garden foretells a death.
Having only red and white flowers together in a vase (especially in hospital) means a death will soon follow.
Dropping an umbrella on the floor or opening one in the house means that there will be a murder in the house.
A diamond-shaped fold in clean linen portends death.
A dog howling at night when someone in the house is sick is a bad omen. It can be reversed by reaching under the bed and turning over a shoe.
We like this account of the dangers posed by mercury emissions from crematoria:
Mercury is an odd element. It is a metal, yet liquid at ambient temperature and it is very volatile, easily becoming a gas. Keep in mind mercury is an element, therefore cannot be destroyed.
When mercury is emitted from the stack of an incinerator, it exists in its gaseous state while dropping to the surrounding terrain. When atmospheric mercury falls to Earth, it does so as a dry deposition. Bacteria in soils and water then convert this mercury into the very toxic and lethal methylmercury, and it is this form of mercury that is taken up by tiny aquatic plants and organisms. Fish, for instance, that eat these plants and organisms build up methylmercury in their tissue. As bigger fish eat the smaller fish, the methylmercury is concentrated farther up the food chain. This process is referred to as ” bio-accumulation.” This accumulation of methylmercury can reach a level millions of times higher than the water it came from.
Methylmercury is freely transported across the human blood brain barrier, as well as across the placenta, where it is absorbed by the developing fetus. Children with this history show a loss of IQ points, decreased performance of language skills and memory function, as well as attention deficits. In adults there can be cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and autoimmune effects.
Josh Slocum, Executive Director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance in the USA, is a major hero to all who toil at the GFG-Batesville Tower. Here he is talking on the telly about funeral pricing and home funerals.
It’s interesting to note the similarities with the British funeral industry, in particular consumers’ disapproval of the marking up of coffins. We unquestioningly accept mark-ups in all other commercial transactions, so why do we find the marking up of coffins so objectionable? Does it say something about our unease with a for-profit business model of funeral directing? If so, what can we do about it?
Josh talks about the Federal Trade Commission’s Funeral Rule, the sort of document we badly need in the UK. It’s very well written. What a pity the Office of Fair Trading has never written a version for British funeral consumers — or funeral shoppers, as Josh terms them.
Josh talks, too, about the emotional and spiritual value of a home funeral as ‘personal, family event’, an alternative to turning your loved one over to strangers. In the US, the home funeral movement is growing. In Britain it has most regrettably stalled.
Find the Federal Trade Commission Funeral Rule here. Hat tip to the Funeral Consumers Alliance to alerting us to this interview.
Extracts from an excellent article in the Washington Post:
I head to the ER. If I’m lucky, the family will accept the news that, in a time when we can separate conjoined twins and reattach severed limbs, people still wear out and die of old age. If I’m lucky, the family will recognize that their loved one’s life is nearing its end.
We want our loved ones to live as long as possible, but our culture has come to view death as a medical failure rather than life’s natural conclusion.
Suffering is like a fire: Those who sit closest feel the most heat; a picture of a fire gives off no warmth. That’s why it’s typically the son or daughter who has been physically closest to an elderly parent’s pain who is the most willing to let go.
At a certain stage of life, aggressive medical treatment can become sanctioned torture. When a case such as this comes along, nurses, physicians and therapists sometimes feel conflicted and immoral. We’ve committed ourselves to relieving suffering, not causing it. A retired nurse once wrote to me: “I am so glad I don’t have to hurt old people any more.”
Read the whole article here.
