Author: Charles

Two new websites I like a lot

22 July 2010
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: ashes, Attitudes to death

Two interesting new websites for you today. Both are labours of love, and both are run by nice, intelligent people.

The first is homegrown ScatteringAshes.co.uk. It’s a resource for people who, once they’ve got the ashes back from the funeral director in one of those plastic cartons, wonder what on earth to do with them. It can take them a long time to get their heads around it. It can take a long time, as a family, to agree. And, of course, they wonder what their options are. So Richard Martin, impelled by his own experience of bereavement, has created for them a sort of Ashes Central where they can survey their options and pick up some good tips about what sort of ceremony might best suit them. In his own words: “The site was born out of experience and a desire to tell people that they can celebrate a life in their own way. Often people can hold onto ashes for a couple of years or more before they decide what to finally do. By which time the funeral director is not at hand to guide you. Hopefully we can.” It’s well informed, comprehensive and a work in progress. Do write to Richard, if you feel the urge. He’s a ready learner who wants to do the best he can. His is a good idea and I think it deserves to do well. He runs a nice little blog, too. Well worth subscribing to.

The second site is US-based. It is the creation of Felix Jung, like Richard an industry outsider, who is much influenced by the work and thinking of Thomas Lynch. It’s called DeadAdvice.com and is reminiscent of the site established by Bill Drummond, MyDeath.net, where people can plan their own funerals. Whereas MyDeath is now a mature site, and has been infiltrated to an extent by jokers and drunks, DeadAdvice is very young and as yet has few postings. It is a place where people can write letters which address the Big Questions. In Felix’s words:

“Am I a good person? Have I been living a meaningful life? Am I spending the time I’ve been given wisely and well? In trying to answer those questions, I began thinking of the advice people have given me… and of the advice I might give others.

“Every letter on Dead Advice begins with the same first sentence: “Now that I’m dead, I want to tell you a few things.”

“Imagine, for a moment, that you have just died. If you had to look back over the arc of your life as it stands today, what stories would you tell? What lessons would you share, what things might you regret or confess?”

I’m really going to enjoy watching these two unfold.

ScatteringAshes.co.uk

DeadAdvice.com

Tahara

21 July 2010
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death, Nokanshi, Tahara

In his excellent book Curtains, Tom Jokinen quotes US undertaker BT Hathaway on the subject of home funerals. Hathaway reckons a home funeral suits “the 5 per cent who have money, time, resources, education and political and emotional will.” With preconditions like these, how come it ever got as high as 5 per cent? Hathaway concludes: “It’s poetic, but the truth is, I don’t know that many poetic families.”

Poetic? I’m not sure about this elegant disparagement. Jokinen draws his own wrong conclusion: “This is of course the same argument for why people eat at Pizza Hut instead of milling their own wheat and breeding their own pepperoni cattle.” Here we have an overstatement. You don’t have to grow a tree to make the coffin, neither do you have to plant your own jute to make the lining.

But convenience is a seductive thing. And time is of the essence. A dead body is potentially a chaotic, eruptively ugly thing; it makes a lot of sense to call the experts in and keep a safe distance. And we reflect here that, when people die, those who loved them urgently want the body back from wherever in the world it conked out. They want this with a fervour which arguably defies reason. This may be not so pronounced in the UK, where dead soldiers were buried where they fell as late as the Falklands war. But in the US the historic clamour to have the body returned led to a stream of dug-up coffins coming back, once hostilities were over, from the battlefields of the first and second world wars.

So: distance matters. The body must come home. Propinquity is good. But closing the distance and engaging with that body? NO!  At the last, we need our cordon sanitaire, cowards that we are. Here we record the loss of the lesson of the teachings of all the great religions that the dead body should be treated as an object of veneration.

At the end of his book Jokinen begins to reap the harvest of his experiences as an undertaker’s understrapper. Here’s what he says:

“Instead of deflecting a confrontation with death through commerce, you face it, fill the hole by hand, and then get on with the hard work of mourning, knowing that instead of passively choosing an object from a catalogue and subcontracting the ritual to someone else, you’ve acted, taken a stand, not against dirt, in fact, but in favour of it. An act with a meaning.”

Later the same day he meets his wife for supper. “I have seen the future,” I tell her. “And it’s Jewish.”

In other words, he finds the middle ground between doing it all (the home funeral) and doing nothing: giving in to “the impulse to fix grief through shopping.”

A lot of religious law has to do with physical and emotional health. Much law relating to diet has been rendered obsolete by simple advances in hygiene. Leviticus is for that reason looking decidedly old hat these days, and pigs unfairly deprecated. But a number of Jewish practices, however ritualised, retain their (thank you, Mr Hathaway) poetic value because they promote healthy grieving.

Sitting shiva, for example. Taking yourself out of the loop, telling your employer to get stuffed and staying at home for either seven or three days after the burial. Time exclusively spent getting your head around it but, importantly, time which is bounded. Got to be good.

And then there’s the work of the chevra kadisha, the little community team that performs the tahara – the ritual preparation of Jews for burial. This involves the right prayers, of course, and also the washing and dressing of the body with immense respect, concluding with an apology to it should anything done have offended it.

I’m not making a pitch here for the return of the splendid and formidable laying-out woman. All I would observe is that, if a dead body is held precious, then it makes good emotional sense to play a part, under the eye of experts, in getting it ready for burial.

There’s a very good little video film which talks about the work of the chevra kadisha and shows the tahara performed in a funeral director’s mortuary. I’d embed it if I had the skills. If you want to skip straight to the tahara, start 6 ½ minutes in.

Click here.

How to plan a good memorial service

20 July 2010
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Humour, Memorial service, Plan your own funeral, tributes

It’s time to introduce you to my friend CrabbyOldFart. He’s a silver blogger in the US whose beef is with young people (he loathes them). He posts weekly, on Mondays, and brings much merriment to a day which can so often have the feel of an ordeal about it.

This week, he brings his no-nonsense mind to bear on how to plan your own memorial service.  Here are some extracts:

Last week I attended a service comprised of 3 old people, a rented minister and 600 egg salad sandwiches. It was a damned sad turnout and a waste of good egg salad too. If you do nothing else you need to ensure that you attract a crowd – it’s the last party you’ll attend and you don’t want it to be an unmitigated flop.

I recommend providing incentives…

…

I don’t know how many times I’ve gone to a service and been subjected to some barefoot, hippie minister with a pony tail rattling on about a senior he’s never even met … I’ve pre-selected my minister and you can rest assured that he’ll be an aged, wrinkly white man with a scowl on his lips and an Old Testament in his hand. And if he doesn’t know me personally – that’s fine, I’ve already written the sermon for him.

…

There won’t be any music at my service. This is a memorial not a rock concert for Christ’s sake. I don’t need people waving lighters in the air or doing super-tokes to the strains of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” or “Only the Good Die Young.”

If there must be background noise, I want a Halloween sound effects tape full of chain rattling, howling wind and unsettled moaning – it’s dramatic and much more in keeping with the occasion.

…

I’ve selected who will speak, instructed them on what I expect them to say and have provided them with amusing but largely fictional stories from my past.  As a condition of speaking, I’ve made it clear that they need to submit their eulogies to me now for review, editing and final script approval.

Read the entire post here at The Problem With Young People Today Is…

Eulogy magazine

19 July 2010
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

Have you read Eulogy magazine? A number of you have asked me, and you have probably been expecting me to cough up a pov. But at more than £3 a throw it is way beyond my stayin’alive budget.

Yet we ought to know about it, need to know about it. Would you like to review it for readers of this blog? Please, please do!

Write something and send it to me: charles@goodfuneralguide.co.uk

St Raoul

19 July 2010
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

You’ve been following the Raoul Moat aftermath? The parody-of-Diana shrine, the mawkish and the up-yours tributes, the incredulous condemnations by a clearly baffled political class?

Revulsion? Dark merriment? Take your pick. This is a very British, brutish affair. If you’ve a moment, the St Raoul site on Facebook is worth a gander and a ponder.

When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease

19 July 2010
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: music

Here’s a seasonal number (with apologies to US  and Scotch readers, to whom cricket probably makes no sort of sense at all). This is the song that DJ John Peel agreed with his producer, John Walters, would be played on the radio when he died. It didn’t happen. Walters died three years before (Peel played the song for him), but no one living was immediately aware of the request when Peel died. Andy Kershaw made up for the oversight in his Radio 3 tribute to Peel; he played it at the end. Lovely melancholy, elegiac brass band sounds to relish here.

Its mood resonates with these well-known lines of the enthusiastic opium eater Francis Thompson:

For the field is full of shades as I near a shadowy coast,

And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,

And I look through my tears on a soundless-clapping host

As the run stealers flicker to and fro,

To and fro:

O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago !

When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease

When the day is done, and the ball has spun, in the umpire’s pocket away
And all remains, in the groundsman’s pains for the rest of time and a day
There’ll be one mad dog and his master, pushing for four with the spin
On a dusty pitch, with two pounds six of willow wood in the sun

When an old cricketer leaves the crease, you never know whether he’s gone
If sometimes you’re catching a fleeting glimpse of a twelfth man at silly mid-on
And it could be Geoff, and it could be John, with a new ball sting in his tail
And it could be me, and it could be thee, and it could be the sting in the ale
Sting in the ale.

When an old cricketer leaves the crease, well you never know whether he’s gone
If sometimes you’re catching a fleeting glimpse of a twelfth man at silly mid-on
And it could be Geoff and it could be John, with a new ball sting in his tail
And it could be me and it could be thee, and it could be the sting in the ale
The sting in the ale.

When the moment comes and the gathering stands and the clock turns back to reflect
On the years of grace as those footsteps trace for the last time out of the act
Well this way of life’s recollection, the hallowed strip in the haze
The fabled men and the noonday sun are much more than just yarns of their days.

When an old cricketer leaves the crease, well you never know whether he’s gone
If sometimes you’re catching a fleeting glimpse of a twelfth man at silly mid-on
And it could be Geoff and it could be John with a new ball sting in his tail
And it could be me and it could be thee and it could be the sting in the ale
The sting in the ale.

When an old cricketer leaves the crease, well you never know whether he’s gone
If sometimes you’re catching a fleeting glimpse of a twelfth man at silly mid-on
And it could be me and it could be thee.

Geoff is Boycott (you guessed?). John is John Snow, the fast bowler.

The Lazarus touch

18 July 2010
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Humour, music, Organ donation

Thank you, all those of you who expressed solicitude during my little illness. I am very touched. I can see now why it is that women outlive men. It is because they sensibly enlist medical science to deal with symptoms as they occur, they don’t impatiently wait for them to go away. And when they do see the doctor they don’t downplay those symptoms because they don’t want to make a fuss or give trouble, thereby rendering diagnosis more or less impossible. I have learnt my lesson.

I hope the little song in praise of organ donation (above) will make you smile.

PLEASE DON’T BURY ME

John Prine

Woke up this morning

Put on my slippers

Walked in the kitchen and died

And oh what a feeling!

When my soul Went thru the ceiling

And on up into heaven I did ride

When I got there they did say

John, it happened this way

You slipped upon the floor

And hit your head

And all the angels say

Just before you passed away

These were the very last words That you said:

Please don’t bury me

Down in that cold cold ground

No, I’d druther have “em” cut me up

And pass me all around

Throw my brain in a hurricane

And the blind can have my eyes

And the deaf can take both of my ears

If they don’t mind the size

Give my stomach to Milwaukee

If they run out of beer

Put my socks in a cedar box

Just get “em” out of here

Venus de Milo can have my arms

Look out! I’ve got your nose

Sell my heart to the junkman

And give my love to Rose

Give my feet to the footloose

Careless, fancy free

Give my knees to the needy

Don’t pull that stuff on me

Hand me down my walking cane

It’s a sin to tell a lie

Send my mouth way down south

And kiss my ass goodbye

Down with the dead men

12 July 2010
Charles
10 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

The perpetrator of this blog is unwell. The vast outpouring will recommence on his recovery (DV).

What’s in a coffin?

9 July 2010
Charles
9 Comments
Categories: coffins, green funeral

At Musgrove Willow you can go and watch the coffin being made — and even lend a hand.

There’s a big coffin show on at Chiltern Woodland Burial Park this weekend. I can’t make it, sad to say. If you can, it looks good. And Chiltern is a lovely place.

Coffins are what visitors to the GFG website most want to know about. Brits are really into coffins. Does any country offer a bigger range? I don’t think so.

It bugs consumers that they cannot buy direct from most coffin manufacturers because the funeral directors ‘persuade’ manufacturers not to sell to them. It bugs consumers that funeral directors slap the biggest margin on coffins they can get away with. It probably bugs the manufacturers, too. It bugs consumers when they learn that funeral directors bury some of their professional fee in their coffin prices. This all adds up to a feeling that they are being cynically diddled when their defences are down.

But, here’s the point, even a normal retail markup would likely be reckoned unfair. It is observable that the same people who are wholly happy to pay for a meal out when they could buy the food on their plate for 5x less at Tesco cannot see why the same rule should apply to coffins.

It is related to a general feeling that funerals are too expensive. This is a problem for funeral directors, because they are not. Funeral directors need, therefore, to work extra hard to demonstrate that they give value for money. One of those ways is to be hyper-transparent about costs.

But I think there’s more to it than that. Why do consumers feel that the normal rules of retail do not apply to coffins? The answer may be that funeral consumers have a particular feeling about the coffin: it is the last beautiful, personal gift they can buy for the person who has died. They would like to feel that they chose it and bought it and gave it to the funeral director to put their dead person in. Or that they chose it and asked the funeral director to get it for them. They see the funeral director as agent, not retailer. Above all, they want to own that coffin.

If there’s anything in this – and I’ll be interested to find out if you think there is – then funeral directors will do well to sell their coffins at more or less cost and justify their professional fee in terms of: specialist expertise + hours + overheads expressed as an hourly rate, like any other professional. This need not make them feel insecure. They do things other people can’t or won’t, after all.

Embalming: a matter not of if but when

8 July 2010
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: DIY funeral, Embalming, funeral directors, home funerals

Nobody I can think of would dispute the assertion that it’s good for the bereaved to spend time with their dead, contemplating their absence – what I like to call their very present absence.

There is a debate about how dead a person should look. Some people want to spend time with an embalmed, cosmetised body; others reject this with some force, the more so when they find out what embalming entails. In the funeral industry itself there are two camps, the routine embalmers and the default refrigerators. When routine embalmers seek to make embalming a condition of viewing, they often do so from the best possible motives. Many of them rank among the industry’s best and most dedicated funeral directors. But that doesn’t necessarily make them right. At the same time, any holier-than-thou blanket rejection of embalming is going to fail those who would benefit from it. As Maggie Brinklow says, you can only make good decisions on a case-by-case basis. It may be mutilation to those who reject it, but it is not to those who do not. It is certainly not mutilation in the eyes of the best embalmers, whose gentleness confounds any such condemnation.

In an interesting article on AlterNet, Frankie Colman quotes Gary Laderman on the very high value of embalming skills as a professional attribute: “Without this procedure, funeral directors would have had a difficult time claiming that they were part of a professional guild, and therefore justified as the primary mediators between the living and the dead from the moment of death to the final disposition.” It is observable that in the UK, where the whole embalming-casketing-visitation caboodle never took off, the status and prosperity of funeral directors does not ride half as high as it does in the States.

When the funeral reform movement in the States took off in the 60s, with Jesscia Mitford as its most vocal spokesperson, Laderman observes:  “Funeral directors were arguing forcefully against charges that their mediation between the living and the dead translated into social obstruction that barred the stricken from facing death with maturity, realism and honesty.” But, Coleman asks funeral director Shaun Newburn, in what condition does the body need to be? “Newbern believes his clients don’t want any odor or leakage of body fluids during the wake and is concerned that it could happen if the deceased is kept at home.”

It is when funeral directors say things like that that you want to strangle them. It’s the sort of fright-thing some of them say in this country to clients interested in a cardboard coffin: “Oh, no, we can’t have one of those. Your Dad died of cancer, you see, there is likely to be considerable leakage…” leaving a picture in the mind’s eye of Dad falling through the sodden bottom.

Jerrigrace Lyons, the eminent US home funeralist, tackles this business of leakage and odours, and here I learned something I didn’t know about the properties of dry ice – and which you may well not know either: “For three-day wakes we generally use dry ice. It is extremely cold (minus 110 degrees Fahrenheit). We place it under the torso of the body and a small piece on top so it freezes the fluids in the lungs and stomach. We have rarely seen any fluids coming from the mouth or nose because of this. Even when the deceased has purged a little brownish fluid from the mouth (again rare) it has not upset anyone. Families often deal with far more fluids and other matter released from the body when their loved one is in the dying process.”

For Jerrigrace and her kind it’s the subtle changes that take place in a dead body over days that impart psychological and emotional value and underline the irrevocability of death. Others, though, are grateful for the unchangingness of the stabilised, embalmed body. It’s an effigy, if you like, a devotional object, and this is what they need.

Funeral directors are taught that they are the custodians of the bodies they look after. Actually, they are not: they are agents for the custodians, for the dead belong, by law, to their people. They can become very proprietorial about their role, act as gatekeepers to the body and forbiddingly dissuade people from spending time with their dead if they think they will be upset by what they see. These undertakers need to read the study Viewing the body after bereavement due to a traumatic death: qualitative study in the UK by A Chapple and S Ziegland, published on the BMJ website. Its conclusion is as follows:

Even after a traumatic death, relatives should have the opportunity to view the body, and time to decide which family member, if any, should identify remains. Officials should prepare relatives for what they might see, and explain any legal reasons why the body cannot be touched. Guidelines for professional practice must be sensitive to the needs and preferences of people bereaved by traumatic death. The way that relatives refer to the body can be a strong indication for professionals about whether the person who died retains a social identity for the bereaved.