Author: Charles

From rags to riches

23 August 2010
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: funeral cost, funeral directors

Whether or not funerals are too expensive depends on how much money you’ve got and how you like to spend it. Some like to say it with a Batesville casket, mountains of flowers, a fleet of vintage Bentleys, prancing horses, a military band, the Red Arrows—the sky’s the limit. If you’ve got lots of dough to blow and, therewith, administer a little fiscal stimulus to some local service providers, that would seem to be wholly unobjectionable.

Others prefer something simpler. Of those, a significant proportion urgently need something simpler. If you are jobless and skint, no disgrace in times like these, the Social Fund will pay up to £700 towards the cost of a funeral. But you can’t get a mainstream funeral at anything like that price. The average cost of a simple funeral is £1050 and that doesn’t include disbursements, which will eat up £500+. You’d be paying off the balance for what would feel like eternity. The Social Fund will only cough up after the funeral. No wonder so many undertakers are refusing to take on clients who need to apply to it. They think they may never get paid.
What advice for such as you?

First, understand that you can accomplish the really important purposes of a funeral for very little. The most important part of the process, the farewell ceremony, needn’t cost you a penny. Do it yourself.

Second, get rid of the trappings: the hearse, the cars, the banks of flowers. Does this mean doing away with dignity? Of course not. Dignity is how you behave, not stuff you rent.

What’s going to cost? The burial or cremation will cost a few bob. Cremation is a lot cheaper. For that, you’ll have to stump up roughly £350-450 to the crematorium plus £147 for two doctors to pronounce your dead person dead. You’ll probably want to buy a coffin, though you could just wrap your dead person in a shroud of some sort. A coffin on ebay will set you back just £115 + £20 delivery. You’ll need a suitable vehicle to take your dead person to the place of disposal. Say goodbye to £700. Show a finger to the Social Fund.

There’s paperwork to do. No problem there. And there’s the small problem of what to do with the body while you wait for the funeral.

Most hospitals will keep a body in their mortuary for nothing if a person dies in the hospital. Some will even do the same for someone who has died at home. The alternative is to bring the body home, but the problem here is keeping it cool enough to delay decomposition. You can do your best, and screw the coffin lid down so as to keep any bad smells inside. But you may think it safer, if the hospital will not cooperate, to ask a funeral director to do all this. You will almost certainly find an independent funeral director to let you use their fridge (the bigger firms just aren’t geared to it). This may cost you up to £25 a day. On the day of the funeral, drive down to the hospital or the funeral director with your ebay coffin, pop your dead person inside, and off you go.

It’s an unconventional way of proceeding, for sure. Will your crematorium, hospital or, if you use one, funeral director treat you as if you were a bungling amateur and a bloody nuisance? Absolutely not. It’s a heartwarming fact, the sort of discovery that restores your faith in human nature, that most crematoriums can’t do enough for you. The same goes for hospital mortuaries where a small (customary) consideration, £10-20, will earn you even more goodwill. Even funeral directors (the smaller the better) will put themselves out for you. You really will be supported every inch of the way.

Not spending more than you have is vital. If you are brave and hardworking you can save £1,000 you never had. When it’s all over you may, because you courageously rolled your sleeves up, experience a species of satisfaction that the Red Arrows could never have given you. The same goes if you could have afforded it, but preferred to engage rather than outsource.

My apologies for the sudden reappearance of this old post. I’ve been doing a spot of categorising, resulting in the usual inexplicable nonsense, of which this is but one example.

Teen Undertaker

23 August 2010
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death, funeral directors

The media loves death and funerals — wacky music, funky coffins, all that sort of stuff. Best of all, the media loves to find people working in the funeral industry who do not conform to the common conception of deathworker as  inhabitant of a dark and terrifying otherworld. Normal people; people like us. Better still, people who are young. Best of the best, beautiful young women.

If the effect is to educate the public about the reality of funeral service, all well and good. Last week’s Channel 4 programme, Teen Undertaker, served this purpose pretty well, I believe. It follows two teen undertakers, Laura and Paul. It panders, yes, but it also reveals responsibly.

There’s one bit that made my eyebrows rise. I wonder if yours will, too.

Catch it on 4 oD here.

Practicalities and suicide pacts

21 August 2010
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Assisted suicide, Dignity, Exit, Good death, Humanists, self-deliverance

Here’s a highly recommended post over at the Exit blog: Heartache of a death not shared — a helium suicide fails.

It discusses this story as reported by the Times:

Early one morning in September, William Stanton heard footsteps coming up the stairs of his cottage in Somerset. He knew who it was and panicked. “I shouted out: ‘Go away, Nigel, leave me to it, leave me to it!’”

Nigel, a neighbour and family friend, did not go away. He came into the bedroom and found Stanton in distress and his wife Angela lying dead with a plastic bag over her head.

The Stantons had made a pact to end their lives together and put it into effect just days after the director of public prosecutions revealed how he would apply the law prohibiting assisted suicide. It did not work out as they planned and stands as a terrible cautionary example for anybody thinking that self-inflicted death is easily arranged…

Who we are is what we mean to others

20 August 2010
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Attitudes to death, bereavement, funeral food, Grief

Here are some extracts from a cheering story in the Newburyport News, Massachusetts which has set me thinking about the nature of identity and community.

My father, Arthur Allen, died at the age of 63 on Aug. 2. My dad was the embodiment of compassion, duty, style and bravery. He was the guy fighting for the rights of the victims; he was the man campaigning for a friend; he was a proud member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts; he was a humble member of the Byfield Protection Fire Company No. 1; he was an EMT [Emergency Medical Technician], EMT trainer and swim instructor for underprivileged children; he was a promoter for the annual Firemen’s Ball; he was an organ donor; he was the chairman of the Mass. Aeronautics Commission; he was president of his own business, Security Team; and he was the one who enjoyed doing magic tricks for kids. He was always ready to buy you a meal and even quicker to pick up the tab. He was a true friend to many, my greatest supporter and my mom’s best friend. My dad was a great thinker who spoke provoking truths about our lives, towns, country and times.

…

He was a collector of people and a fixer of troubles. I think it was his own painful childhood, being orphaned at 12, that made it possible for him to connect with injured people and drove him to find ways to alleviate their pain. He was living proof that a person could rise above their problems and make a positive difference in this world. He wanted to help others find their way to healing, too.

…

Who could step up and make sense out of this senseless loss. Who would comfort my mother, my sister, his sister, the people? I felt alone, overwhelmed, and in a dark place.

Then a funny thing happened.

Messages started pouring into our home from friends, families, neighbors and acquaintances. Stories of who my father was and how much he meant to so many were shared in person, by phone, by mail, and even through Facebook postings and poems. Food flowed from every nook and cranny. Pictures of holidays, vacations and events were shared. Children were playing in the yard with my father’s dog. Friends and foes united in grief were hugging in the living room. I heard laughter coming from my parents’ kitchen. I heard my mother laugh. Ready or not, the healing had begun. How was this possible?

It was my dad’s extraordinary love of life, the love he shared with others, the love he instilled in me that was coming full circle home. I was not alone; we were not alone. He was right there with us in the words, deeds and memories shared by others. In the end, it was the positive energy my father sent out into the world that led his family through the dark days of his loss. It was his powerful last lesson for us.

Read the entire story here.

The, er, whatchamacallit

18 August 2010
Charles
13 Comments
Categories: funeral food

If there’s any ordinary person worse off than yourself, you’ll find them in the problem pages of newspapers and magazines. Do you seek comfort in problem pages? A prurient frisson? An incredulous giggle? Much depends probably on the demographic catered for by the publication. The further downmarket you go, the juicier, sexier and more exotically sordid the emotional quagmire. You get none of that on the problem page of the establishment Spectator magazine. The problems which most baffle our upper echelons concern, it seems, delicate matters of etiquette. Problem solver Mary shows her petitioners how to extricate themselves from invidious social situations in ways which would have drawn gasps from old man Machiavelli himself.

When I was convalescing last month, sitting around idly reading magazines and sipping iced water, I experienced a whim and wrote to the Spectator’s Mary about a problem which exercises many funeral hosts and readers of this blog: what to call the ‘do’ afterwards. This is what I (mendaciously) wrote:

Dear Mary,

My  mother  is presently succumbing to old age and an attendant cancer. She is fortified by serene courage and cheered by the arrangements she is making for the party after her funeral; every day brings fresh finishing touches. But what to call it? We observed that you recently acceded without demur to the term ‘wake’. Inasmuch as this applies to a vigil held over a body before a funeral, we have rejected it, along with everything else we can think of including, of course, the intolerable ‘reception’ and the unbearable ‘refreshments’, leaving us only with the unobjectionable if inadequate ‘do’.  With time fast running out, can you gallop to our rescue?

My letter was published (to my inordinate pride), and received this reply, which I think helpful:

Why not refer to the event as a ‘remembrance party’? This has a bittersweet poignancy and is perfectly dignified. Readers are welcome to submit rival suggestions.

To date, no Speccie reader has submitted anything better.

Can you?

Every body

17 August 2010
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: perceptions of funeral directors

Here’s an interesting story from the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard. These are some extracts:

CIRENCESTER Hospital has closed its mortuary to avoid a massive refurbishment bill and awarded the service to a local funeral directors.

The Tetbury Road hospital, decided to shut down its mortuary earlier this year after discovering it would need a major refurbishment to stay fit for use estimated at hundreds of thousands of pounds. It was given permission by the NHS Trust to outsource its mortuary service.

The NHS hospital put the contract out to tender and all three Cirencester funeral directors- Cowley and Son, A Slade and Son, and Packer and Slade – submitted bids.

The three-year contract has been awarded to Cowley and Son, on Victoria Road. Robert Orford, part-owner Cowley and Sons, said he was pleased with the new arrangement  … “It is a great thing for the hospital too because their current mortuary is unfit for use so they have saved vast sums of money from not having to refurbish it.” … Mr Orford stressed that the agreement would not force families to choose Cowley and Sons as their funeral directors. “Bereaved families have a free choice,” he said. “We don’t have a monopoly on people who die at Cirencester hospital.” He said Cowley and Sons would not receive payment from the NHS for the service. “We have competitors in the town and we have to do all we can to get a step ahead,” he added. “This could be a great opportunity for us.”

There are troubling issues here. How much would it really cost Cirencester hospital to refurbish its mortuary? All it needs is cooling equipment, a serviceable floor and tiled walls. Twenty grand, tops? Hundreds of thousands??

Then there’s the NHS assertion that it asked all three funeral directors in the town to tender. I spoke on the phone to A Slade and Son. They say they were never asked. Dunno about the other undertaker’s — they’re Co-op.

Then there’s the Cowley and Sons’ zero-sum tender. Why on earth would they do that? Philanthropy? Hardly. As with a coroner’s contract, they know that the undertaker with the body is likely to get the funeral. Habeas corpse.

Do you like this any more than me? Redeeming features, please. If none, then any features you please to point out or reinforce.

One family’s take on the perfect funeral

16 August 2010
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: DIY funeral, family funeral directors, Formality vs informality, home funerals

The following is taken from Ben Heald’s blog and so much speaks for itself that I don’t need to add another word:

Nothing can prepare you for losing close family suddenly; and I don’t want to dwell on the personal loss.  What I’d like to talk about is the learning I’ve taken from the experience of a family working together as a team to plan and carry through a funeral event.

The key intervention came from the funeral director (Andrew Smith in Macclesfield), who we found online in the Good Funeral Guide.  Just over 12 hours after Mum died, my sister Kate & I were in his office and he told us we mustn’t rush things, the funeral was principally for the living not the dead and the more the family got involved the better they’d feel about everything – 3 crucial differences from the approach we’d taken with my father’s funeral 17 years ago.

Mum wasn’t a church goer, and taken together with Andrew’s wise counsel, we quite quickly decided on the format.  Clearly funerals are personal, and there is absolutely no sense of being prescriptive, but this was our take on the perfect funeral:

  • We tried to speak to everyone in Mum’s address book to talk to them personally; even though we knew many of them would already have heard.
  • Before the funeral we spent time together for 3 days as an extended family (of 11) at Mum’s house.
  • The night before the funeral we stayed at the B&B accommodation on the barn complex, so were able to rehearse the night before and morning of the funeral.
  • We held it in a barn in the countryside away from main roads with a lake right outside (in fact traditionally a wedding venue).
  • We dug through all her old photos and had 20 of them scanned and blown up onto A2 boards.
  • We found the old cine films (that had been lost for 30 years) and had them transferred to DVD.
  • Six of Mum’s teenage grandchildren carried the coffin into the barn from the hearse.  To better prepare them we’d taken them all along to see her in the Chapel of Rest two days beforehand.
  • We selected a mixture of sacred and secular readings all read by the family.
  • We asked Mum’s cousin aged 79 to introduce the service and the various hymns/readings.
  • A friend of Mum’s played the piano accompaniment.
  • My son sang Gerald Finzi’s ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun’.
  • My brother Jonny sang a Native American Quechua spiritual.
  • Jonny & I played a duet on the piano – En Bateau from Debussy’s Petite Suite.
  • I delivered the address, which we’d all worked on together with inputs from Mum’s sister Judith.
  • Before the service we played Bach’s Goldberg variations and the coffin came into Rutter’s For the Beauty of the Earth.
  • Mum was actually cremated the following day, but no one attended (we described it when asked as a private cremation); which meant we could immediately start talking to everyone with tea, cake and champagne, surrounded by the gorgeous blown up photos.

As Andrew had advised, by getting involved and because we’d taken our time, the focus was on her life not her death.  The children also told us they felt they now knew her as a person, not just as a grandmother.  And because we’d worked together as an extended team, the bonds between us all have been strengthened.

So my recommendation would be not to specify what you want at your funeral, let the next generation work out together what’s right.  Just as in the business world, you shouldn’t micromanage your teams.

Florrie

13 August 2010
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

We’ve been busy moving house on our beloved Isle of Portland, from my old bachelor pad to something a little bigger, and someday we shall retire there. The new place is everything a Portland house ought to be: twenty-four inch thick walls which render neighbours inaudible, and a handsome garden enclosed by limestone walls. We are very pleased.

We are also unusually conscious of its former occupant, Florrie Ansell. She was 98 when she died in March. Except for the last two years of her life, which she spent in a care home, she had lived there since she was born. It was her father’s house before her. When Florrie married Alec, she moved him in. When her father died in 1955 the first thing she and Alec did was install electric light, something her father had always taken against.

We are finding out more and more about Florrie. She taught piano on a little upright in the back room. If a pupil played especially well he or she was allowed upstairs to sit at the grand and talk to the cats. Florrie was always beautifully turned out, and she looked after her house beautifully, too. It’s gone a bit downhill lately and the roof is leaking a bit, but her pride in its appearance is plain to see. Her niece has asked us to hurry up and paint the front door and the window frames: “She would be turning in her grave to see them as they are now.” In truth, they’re not bad – but we have made them a priority.

Is Florrie’s spirit palpable? Not as a disembodied presence, not to us. But the house has a perceptible serenity, and we feel a strong responsibility to be respectful of Florrie and the feelings of all her friends in what we do to it. So the art deco fireplaces will stay, and the stained glass panel of the little Dutch boy in the hall door, together with the art deco bath, the sort of bath Bertie Wooster would have splashed about in.

Usually it’s only aristocratic piles that commemorate their former occupants. We know we have a duty to commemorate Florrie. It’s a duty we accept as a privilege.

A real funeral

23 July 2010
Charles
10 Comments
Categories: ceremony

Requiem Video for David J Catts, Dead Mate from Kim Reddin on Vimeo.

David Catts, a man much given to tomfoolery, embodied all manner of beautiful imperfections. Aged 41, married for just eight months, he fell in July 2009 from a 17th storey balcony in what his father described as “skylarking gone tragically wrong.” He’d had a few drinks. His funeral addressed his beautiful imperfections with rare honesty and love. People said what needed to be said.

This blog is on holiday for the next week, after which it will be moving house. Posts will be sporadic. Happy days, all of you. And thank you for following. I really appreciate it.