Author: Charles

An Instinct for Kindness

21 November 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Assisted suicide, self-deliverance

From the review in the Guardian:

Last year Chris Larner took his ex-wife Allyson – with whom he had remained good friends – to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland where she ended her life. It was a life that had become unbearable because of the constant pain, indignities and limits imposed upon her by multiple sclerosis, a condition she had lived with for more than 25 years. Allyson decided that enough was enough.

It is its total lack of sentimentality that makes it so moving, and half the audience is in pieces long before the end. That, and because the redoubtable Allyson is so fully present in the show. Planning her own funeral, she declares: “I don’t want any stiff upper lip. I want weeping and wailing and inconsolable.” This was not a woman to go gently into that good night, and this is a show that reminds us that how we die is as important as how we live.

Useful advice for senior citizens

21 November 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Humour

Ever wondered about what to look for in a nursing home?

We know. It’s a pre-need question and just like funeral planning we all like to think we wont need it. Or maybe we’ll get lucky and die first.

But life expectancy is only another way to say hanging around. Street corners are too chilly (and there are no toilets) and the libraries are all closing so maybe the nursing home is all that’ll be left to us.

In which case it’s worth checking this site out. Packed with top tips it’s as indispensible as – dare we say it – the Good Funeral Guide itself.

For example here it is on what to look for when assessing amenities in the home:

Don’t be drawn in by fancy extras like craft rooms, massage pools, visitor parking or other amenities that are never likely to be used.

Focus on the basics and make sure that they have the small creature comforts like heat, running water and around the clock electricity.

Top advice. Read more here.

Plumbline and square – the Masonic funeral

21 November 2011
Charles
No comments
Categories: alternative funerals, Attitudes to death, death and funerals, funeral customs

Some Masons call their funeral ceremony an Orientation, but these days the service itself can be like a secular ceremony – apart, of course, from the Masonic ‘paraphernalia’.

Masons are a great deal more open about their ceremonies than they used to be, but much of what they do still seems esoteric and mysterious. Borderzine magazine has an interesting article about 93 year old Norman Miller, resident of El Paso, who bebelieves that since he began in 1964 he has carried out well over a thousand Masonic funerals.

In the interview he explains the process:

“We get word from the families of the the funeral director that the family desires to have a gravesite [sic] service. We don our Masonic aprons, our paraphernalia…some of the lodge officers have their jewels on. We form the group and I do the Masonic orientation.

The full article can be found here.

If you are interested Masons in Maryland have provided a video reenactment of the Masonic funeral:

Of course this is America. Is anyone prepared to say whether it is different here in Britain?

Death Cafe

19 November 2011
Charles
No comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, Grief

Do you follow Death Cafe?

If you don’t, you really ought to pop across and check it out; it’s brilliant.

It doesn’t have have an agenda or a campaigning platform; it doesn’t address itself to a particular constituency or type or sect. It believes, I hope I’m right in surmising, that death should be part of general discourse. So it stages pop-up death cafes where anyone can drop in, have a nice cup of tea and some cake, and chat about death. It’s not morbid or Goth or weird, it’s completely normal — that’s the point. 

Jon, the host, is posting some great stuff on his blog. Eclectic’s the word, quality’s the name. 

Go see. Here. 

Pauper funeral

18 November 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: music, Pauper funerals

From the Toronto Globe and Mail:

I was standing in the parlour of a Toronto funeral home, waiting for the friends of the homeless man we were about to bury. The funeral director was supposed to be retired, but he had stayed on to see the business through the transition to a new owner. Together, we looked through the stately front window toward the strip club across the street offering “the finest in adult entertainment.”

In Toronto, the city pays funeral costs for those without assets. But the stipend for clergy is so paltry that the funeral director had trouble finding a minister who would agree to perform the service.

I had said yes, but on one condition: I wanted to meet the family of the deceased. I was not willing to perform a cold and impersonal service for a man I knew nothing about.

The only contacts he had were other homeless men and women. I arranged to meet some of them at a coffee shop to discuss their friend. Our conversation was rich and heartfelt, and I was honoured to be a part of it. Together, we planned an informal, simple, yet personal service to honour the deceased.

Just as I prepared to begin the service, a woman stood up and said that a medicine man had called. He was coming, but was stuck in traffic. Could I wait?

I could.

Twenty-five minutes later, a first nations healer walked into the room. He performed a sacred smudging ceremony to open the service. The next 30 minutes included readings from Leonard Cohen and Ecclesiastes, several eulogies, a toast to a friend and the rosary.

Then the funeral director stood up and said he would play the CD of Sanctus and Benedictus conducted by Eugene Stewart and the St. Matthew’s Choir, recorded live at the funeral of President John F. Kennedy. I still remember his exact words as he pushed the CD into the slot: “It is my firm belief that every person deserves such a sending off.”

Whole article here. 

Signs of the times – undertakers as event managers

17 November 2011
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral customs, funeral directors, funeral trends, funerals in other cultures

Funerary customs are on the move in Germany, which seems to be emerging as the country to watch at the moment.

Undertakers are becoming a little like event managers. People who are not religious and don’t go to church expect undertakers to organize a ritual for the funeral.

In recent years the culture of mourning has changed in Germany. Funerals have become more personal, often more colourful.

‘As private business people, funeral directors are usually better able to cater for individual needs. A priest, on the other hand, is confined to certain structures,’ says Alexander Helbach, spokesman for the consumer funeral watchdog association in Germany. Helbach believes morticians are profiting from the change in attitudes by extending their services into organizing funeral orators or funeral halls for families of the dead.

As German undertakers move to meet consumer expectations by extending their service into ceremony-making, we note that most British undertakers have been very slow to exploit the opportunity.

Following recent discussion on this blog about who is responsible if a grave is dug too small, it is delightful to note that Germans, noted for thoroughness in all things, train their undertakers to cope with all contingencies:

In the central German town of Munnerstadt there is even a special graveyard where young morticians can practice burials – the only one of its kind in Europe. 

Read the whole article here. 

Death Row

17 November 2011
Charles
9 Comments
Categories: prisons

On Texas’s death row, there are no contact visits at all– no hand-holding, no embraces.

There is a strange little ritual when a Texas prisoner who still has family and friends is executed: his or her loved ones rush to the Huntsville funeral home which holds the contract with the prison, to touch the dead body while warmth remains in it. Normally, it will have been over five years since it was possible to touch the prisoner at all.

[Source]

Back to business after the ‘blitz’

17 November 2011
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral customs

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

It may be the 300th anniversary of the completion of Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral but 2011 will be remembered as the year the great building closed to the public for the first time since the Blitz due to health and safety fears after anti-capitalist protesters set up camp on its doorstep.

I’m not sure how many funeral plans were put on ice due to the protesters but, as the nation’s church, St Paul’s has been a focal point for the remembrance of the departed, both famous and anonymous.

Margaret Thatcher is to receive the accolade of a State funeral at St Paul’s when she reaches the end of her days – the first Prime Minister since Sir Winston Churchill to be afforded such an honour. In 1965, the dramatic images of Churchill’s coffin, draped in the Union Jack, were broadcast to millions around the globe.

There have also been services marking the contributions made by ordinary men and women involved in conflicts in the Falklands, the Gulf and Northern Ireland. On another occasion, a large crowd gathered following the terrorist attacks on New York on 11 September 2001, as London expressed its solidarity at a time of grief. At the service of remembrance following the terrorist bombings in London in July 2005, young people representing different faith communities lit candles as a shared sign of hope.

Over 90 years after the opening of Wren’s new cathedral, it hosted the funeral service of Admiral Lord Nelson in 1806. After his death at the Battle of Trafalgar, his body was preserved in a keg of naval brandy before burial in the Crypt. His final resting place is immediately under the centre of the Dome of St Paul’s.

In 1852, a million people watched the Duke of Wellington’s funeral procession to St Paul’s. The building was closed for almost six weeks while extra tiers of seating and grandstands were erected in the aisles and transepts in preparation for the 13,000 attending.

Imagine the uproar if the building was closed for any length of time to prepare for Maggie’s send off.

Quote of the week

16 November 2011
Charles
No comments
Categories: crematoria

“A crematorium would stink up the neighborhood. Essentially, we would be breathing dead people.” 

Stephen Thorburn of Las Vegas in response to a proposed crematorium in his neighbourhood. 

You have 30 seconds – impress me

16 November 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Attitudes to death, death and funerals, Marketing

You’re the first internet based funeral service. You want to make sure people know you are different and you have 30 seconds of TV time to get your message across. How would you do it? Yesterday we presented the advertisement that Basic Funerals in Canada created. You can see it here.  We thought it was worth repeating because it highlights the whole question of how advertising works and what sort of message you might want to get across.

Basic Funerals CEO Eric Vandermeersch is clear that, as he launches his new service, he wants to differentiate it from traditional businesses. Cost of course (and it’s interessting that home visits are seen as exceptional), but it’s also about style and approach:

“When you talk about funerals, obviously it’s a sad time, but there’s also a great element of celebration. We’re not trying to make light of the serious side, what we’re really doing is showing people that we’ve changed the model—it doesn’t have to be expensive anymore,” he said. “There is a lighter side of the industry and we’re not afraid to show it because it is the most important side of the typical funeral.”

He added that commercials he’s seen for other funeral homes lack in the entertainment department. “Usually, it’s the owner of the funeral home standing by a fireplace talking about how his family has been in the industry for six generations and it’s pretty boring to say the least.”

You may not do a TV ad yet, but thinking of your website and paperbased advertising are you the man on the right or the lady on the left? And who has got it right?