Author: Charles

Brilliant new website for grievers and undertakers

13 January 2010
Charles
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Categories: onlie memorial sitonlime memorial sites

Welcome

This site is dedicated to supporting
the bereaved and paying tribute to the loved ones we have lost. It is designed to assist you with funeral planning, sharing memories and coping with grief.

We are here to help you to:

Learn more about Absent Friends

I like this website. It’s new. It’s a one stop shop for mourning people and dismal traders. One of the services it offers is ‘complimentary obituaries’. Well, we all want one of those. You can scrawl on a wall. You can come to it in the throes of grief and, look, you get to console (or something) yourself by viewing global tragedies. What else could they offer in this line? I dare not let my imagination loose. But you do not operate under my constraints.

Why do atheists believe in heaven?

13 January 2010
Charles
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Categories: Humanists

 

All faith groups have sects to be ashamed of, the ones who want to string up gays, stone women taken in adultery, that sort of nonsense. Let’s not get into one of those complacent debates about how it could be that faiths based in love can spawn such hatred. We might, though, consider drawing the line against outlawing fundamentalists by using anti-terrorism laws. Did you see that the edict issued by free speech-loving Mr Johnson against Islam4UK extends to a proscription against insignia and clothes. Clothes??!! Talk about taking a sledgehammer to crack a nutter.

Rectitude breeds contempt, that we can say. But in one faith group it breeds anger to an intriguing degree. Atheists. The Dawkinistas.Terrifically cross lot. No one is safe from their yelling, even old maids cycling to church through the morning mist. Is there something essentially silly about preaching a negative, getting all hot under the collar about Nothing? I don’t have a view on this myself. I am a bystander, merely; a quizzical commentator.

Anyone who believes anything has problems with the doctrine. Those who don’t are the ones to watch. How many atheists fervently believe in Nothing? Not that many when the chips come down to it. When you shine the interrogator’s light into the eyes of their faith you’ll more often than not elicit this anomaly: “I don’t believe in god…but I do believe in heaven.” This is the point when my friend Richard, an exuberantly faulty Catholic, quotes Chesterton: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing – they believe in anything.”

This is a problem for humanist funeral celebrants – an acute embarrassment. Members of their flock are always wanting to sing from a hymn sheet and lift their eyes to a hereafter. It’s not so much an aspiration as a supposition. Belief in a heaven of some sort seems to be ineradicable from the mind of humankind, a heaven which needs no whitebeard concierge.

Lifestyle gurus are always telling us to live in the present. Ever tried it? People with a death sentence can do it, and some meditators, perhaps, but most of us are too busy using the present to assess our past or plan our future. In our heads, the future is where most of us do most of our living. We defer a lot of pleasure in the sure and certain hope of that future. This is why we have pension plans. And this is why the death of a young person is so much more painful to us than the death of a very old person: the young person has been denied so much more future.

Even a completely clapped out body cannot rid most of us of the habit of living in the future. Sure, we can at this stage easily see that an earthly future is out of the question. That’s when our minds leap lightly into the hereafter. And that’s why atheists believe in heaven.

Finding Valhalla

12 January 2010
Charles
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Categories: funeral pyres, open-air cremation, viking funeral

 

A friend writes. She is to be interviewed for the talking wireless. They’re going to want her take on Viking funerals. What, she wonders, are my views on Viking funerals? Can you, I wonder, help?

Interesting territory. We think of the classic Viking funeral as a blazing longship, bearing the corpse of a chieftain, drifting slowly and spectacularly across the sea. This is mostly myth. Where immolation took place in a longship it normally happened on dry land. The ship would customarily contain grave goods of all sorts, of course, we’re comfy with that, but it would also contain, often, slaughtered horses and servants. We’re not quite so comfy with that, and not just because we read the Guardian or suffer from servant envy.

And while that was one way the Vikings did funerals, the blazing longship, they weren’t one-trick ponies, they had others besides, and I’ve blogged about them. Here.

History be damned. There’s nothing more subversive of mystery and wonder than party pooper facts. What’s interesting is what survives: the glorious myth. And what’s interesting about the glorious myth is that it continues to exert such a strong hold on our twenty-first century imagination.

Why?

Because it meets so many of the needs of the living. Those needs are timeless, of course. They are aesthetic, emotional, spiritual and practical.

In terms of practicality, a holocaust is a good way of disposing of a dead body. Beyond that, it is spectacular. The flames rise (vertically) to the heavens as the wind fills the longboat’s sails and it journeys (horizontally) to the horizon in a way which mirrors the words of the Christian prayer: “But as thou didst not lose them in the giving, so we do not lose them by their return. For not as the world giveth, givest thou, O Lord of souls: that which thou givest thou takest away: for life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only the horizon, and the horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.”

There is compelling emotional and spiritual appeal in this imagery, of journeying, transition, transfiguration and consummation (deliberate pun). The spirit rises as the craft moves over the face of the waters; that which is earthly is subsumed by the sea. All the elements are present: earth, air, fire, water. And there is an inexorable dynamic.

Is it that we yearn for Viking funerals because modern funerals fall so dismally short on all fronts? They do. don’t they? Above all, they lack movement, and we especially need to rediscover that. Burial still meets lots of needs if there is a strong element of processional. Cremation, on the other hand…

So perhaps we should apply a Viking test to all funerary rites. This would produce interesting results, especially at a time when we are looking for an alternative to cremating dead people in incinerators. What do you think a Viking would say if you tried to interest him or her in cryomation? Sorry, I don’t know the ancient Norse for the predictable expletive, but you know its translation.

All of which leads to the conclusion that instead of looking for smart technology to dispose of our dead we need something altogether more retro. The solution to the problem of the dismal industrial cremator suddenly becomes crystal clear.

The open air funeral pyre.

Please add your helpful thoughts about Viking funerals in a comments box below. 

FOOTNOTE: Read about the Viking funeral of Tal Stoneheart, brother of the Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik, here.

Too good to be real

12 January 2010
Charles
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Categories: ceremony, eulogy

I have tried, in the Good Funeral Guide, not to cover topics already dealt with by others. Instead, I have incorporated lots of signposts to best sources of information and best archives of resources – poems, music, ceremony ideas.

There’s lots of stuff out there about eulogies, most of it guff. But TheFuneralSite has some really good advice about eulogy writing. I especially like the following (mostly, let’s be honest, because I fervently agree with it):

A eulogy composed and delivered by someone who loved the deceased is the key component of a meaningful memorial gathering.

Think about the funerals you’ve attended. What do you most remember? Wasn’t it the daughter’s speech about her mom’s life or the nephew’s series of stories about his Uncle? These speak directly to our hearts. We relate immediately to the speaker. They may make us cry, but this group experience will draw us together as a community and help us to acknowledge the life of our relative, friend or associate that has ended.

…

Often the eulogy is given by a clergy or celebrant who has never met the decedent let alone loved them. Although the clergy or celebrant may do an excellent job of interviewing family and friends and presenting an accurate and interesting eulogy, the intimacy of first hand knowledge and heart-felt attachment will be missing and can lead to disappointment.

It almost doesn’t matter what is said, the experience of someone who loved the decedent standing up and speaking on behalf of the departed is a powerful experience for both the speaker and the audience.

The personal eulogy is a gift to the departed and to those in the audience.

Don’t miss out on this extraordinary life experience.

I also like the Top Five Reasons to Give a Eulogy, especially number 5: It’s the right thing to do.

If a funeral is too good it risks being no good. Seamless scheduling + slick stage management + faultless timings + superb performances + splendid merchandise = too good to be real.

Here’s a moving example of what I mean, the conclusion of two posts written by a US blogger about his father’s funeral.

The funeral was almost over. The funeral director was clearly wrapping things up and this man came forward asking for a chance to say one last thing. He was a short man and was of East Indian descent. I recognized him only because he had introduced himself to me before the funeral. With apparent nervousness and a heavy accent, he began to speak.

“I work for Chip for six year. When I look for a job he interview me and he is very nice. When I work for him I never see anything on his face but a smile. In six year he never say a thing to hurt my feeling. He help me and my whole family. He is a good man to work for. When he leave (company) we walk out the door with him and he gave me his book to help me understand some things. There were some tears on my face. Thank you.”

This was the most moving of all of the speakers, in my opinion. Despite the fact that the service was ending, he felt compelled to speak, knowing he would never get another chance to say those things in that forum. Despite his obviously difficulties with the language, he stood up and told this story and blew away those assembled with his simple story of how with nothing more than a little kindness and decency, my father had made an immense impact on his life.

Be sure to read both posts. Find them here.

Adventurous ashes

11 January 2010
Charles
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Categories: ashes
When Ralph B White died two years ago his friends at the Adventurers Club of Los Angeles set about taking portions of his ashes to all manner of furthest flung parts of the globe.
“Rather than have people mourn him, he wanted to give people incentive to go have adventures,” said Rosaly Lopes, who was engaged to White when he died and is the keeper of the ashes.Though White covered a lot of the Earth during his life, said Krista Few, his daughter, most of these scatterings have delivered his ashes to new territory. “The competition is what is the most bizarre place we can take Ralph?”

 
It’s a nice story. Read it here.

Counting the cost

7 January 2010
Charles
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Categories: Processions

Here in the UK we are all following, intently or wearily, the furore created by the declaration of intent by Anjem Choudary and Islam4UK to hold a procession through the streets of Wootton Basset “not in memory of the occupying and merciless British military, but rather the real war dead who have been shunned by the Western media and general public as they were and continue to be horrifically murdered in the name of Democracy and Freedom – the innocent Muslim men, women and children.”

Silly stunt, you may say. Politicians of all hues have condemned him. Many would ban him. Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), says he would be “surprised” if senior officers in Wiltshire seek to block the protest because any group has a right to march even if their views are “unpleasant and offensive … Our view is we will have to deal with it, people have a right to march. People might not like it but that is the law.”

Whichever side you’re on, it’s worth looking at this in the light of the ritual which now attends the repatriation of dead service people. That’s what I want to focus on: this new ritual.

It’s a recent thing, this bringing home our dead, only made possible by skilful morticians, refrigeration and aeroplanes. It’s a novelty. It’s also a curiosity. These processions through Wootton Bassett look like funeral processions, but they’re not. They are journeys to the coroner. When dead civilians go to the coroner buy cialis reviews they go, not in a hearse, but in a low key van of some sort (call it a private ambulance if you like) in everyday traffic. It’s a non-event and none the poorer for that. The funeral to come is the thing, after all.

It’s as if these dead service people are being given a sort of pre-funeral. Why? Don’t people have the opportunity to honour them (or protest about them) after the coroner has handed them back to their families at their funeral proper? Of course they do. So why?

It’s an invention of the Ministry of Defence. PR? It’s your call. These processions are well regarded. And bringing home the dead in this way certainly gives the country a way of counting the cost of the war in Afghanistan.

But while these processions offer ordinary people the chance to pay their respects to the dead, they have also become expressions of patriotism and militarism. Wootton Bassett is no place for pacifists or dissenters. It’s Daily Mail country. It’s got political. So it’s no surprise to see the political Mr Choudary requiring the right, in his own way, to drive home the cost of the war to Afghan civilians.

If Wootton Bassett has become a political battleground, the invention of this about-to-be-hijacked ritual is something the MoD may now regret.

No death threats, please. Use a comments box to put me right.

Exhuming the past

7 January 2010
Charles
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Categories: Uncategorised

Far and away the most powerful image of 1979’s Winter of Discontent, when one and a half million public sector workers went on strike, was that of the dead lying unburied. There’s a peculiar horror in that; it blends dishonour with decomposition most potently. Bloated rubbish bags, bloated corpses. Bluebottles. Stench. The unburied dead of ’79 endure in our national mythology – and myth is what it mostly is. But hey, let’s not let the truth get in the way!

 
Up here, our rubbish bins should have been emptied on Tuesday, but the council can’t get their truck to slither up our street. Happily, while walking the dogs yesterday morning, I waved to Steve the undertaker as he drove his limousine gingerly past me on his way to a funeral. And I reflected that it won’t be long before some shroud-waving newshound disinters the nightmare image of the unburied dead, transmuting a little local difficulty into a national crisis.
 
It hasn’t happened yet, but you never know. Is this the start of it?

The sound of muesli

6 January 2010
Charles
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Categories: Cryomation

Did you ever come across promession? It is the brainchild of Susanne Wiighe-Masak, an environmentalist Swede. It offers, or promises to offer, an eco-friendly alternative to cremation. In Susanne’s words, this is how it works:

Within a week and a half after death, the corpse is frozen to minus 18 degrees Celsius and then submerged in liquid nitrogen. This makes the body very brittle, and vibration of a specific amplitude transforms it into an organic powder that is then introduced into a vacuum chamber where the water is evaporated away.

The now dry powder then passes through a metal separator where any surgical spare parts and mercury are removed. In a similar way, the powder can be disinfected if required.

The remains are now ready to be laid in a coffin made of corn starch. There is no hurry with the burial itself. The organic powder, which is hygienic and odorless, does not decompose when kept dry. The burial takes place in a shallow grave in living soil that turns the coffin and its contents into compost in about 6-12 months time. In conjunction with the burial and in accordance with the wishes of the deceased or next of kin, a bush or tree can be planted above the coffin.

The concept captured the imaginations of many people. The imminence of the introduction of the first promator has kept us on the edge of our seats for years … and years. I wrote to Susanne in June asking how it was all going. Her reply was as upbeat as always: “The production of the first promator for Jönköping is also well on its way and the plan is to deliver that to them this winter.”

It almost certainly hasn’t happened. Susanne is a gentle person and she hoped that gentle vibration was the way to reduce a frozen body to powder. It doesn’t work that way. She had reached stalemate.

Into the breach stepped an inventor in Suffolk who took Susanne’s idea, ran with it, worked with the University of Hertfordshire and came up with the breakthrough to the problems Susanne had balked at. In his forthright way he told me on the phone that, when you’re trying to reduce a corpse to freeze-dried powder, you need to be aware that “the body is a tough piece of kit.” He does it, not with gentle vibration, but by altogether more brutal cutting and grinding. He can now reduce a body to sterile freeze-dried flakes which look a little like muesli.

He calls his process cryomation. He’s got the finance to see the project through. He’s done trials with focus groups to see what they think of it, even the cutting and grinding. Interestingly, amazingly perhaps, they liked it. They had no difficulty with the aesthetic. Remember the fuss there was about cremation? Remember what they said about resomation?

In addition to finding cryomation aesthetically acceptable, focus groups also liked the environmental benefits: it produces only 25% of the carbon produced by cremation. Best of all, it releases no mercury or dioxins. Furthermore, the remains are compostable and turn to loam in 6-12 months. You could use just one small burial plot for a family for generation after generation.

We need an alternative to cremation. We want to be able to put something back when we’re gone. Cryomation is as exciting and as desirable as promession. But is it simply going to teeter tantalizingly on the brink of imminence for ever and ever and get nowhere?

It looks not. It’s just been shortlisted by Shell, one of nine finalists picked from thousands, for a Springboard Award, made to businesses who “offer compelling plans for a product or service which helps combat climate change”. That has to be somewhat of a hallmark of credibility.

There’s a website, but it’s not airworthy yet. In balancing promise and delivery, these guys seem to have got it right. Definitely one to watch. Mid-2010, they say. That’s when we should start to hear real rumbling.

You can look at her feet sticking out right here

6 January 2010
Charles
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Categories: funerals in other cultures

“America,” said Oscar Wilde, “has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.”

I don’t want to give offence to any of my many US readers. But for people in the UK who sometimes get frustrated with the way we do funerals over here, it’s worth reflecting that one of the reasons, perhaps the principal reason, why the pace of change over here in the UK is so glacial is that, compared with our US brothers and sisters, we have so little to react against. Here, scandals are few and small-scale, usually the result of the pitiful incompetence of little people, not the systematic malevolence of big bastards. Here in the UK, many of our funeral directors may be characterised as comically self-important, but they come nowhere near the Olympian paternalism of so many US funeral directors with their degrees in mortuary science (tcha!). UK prices are not half so high as US prices. So we don’t duck under the radar of our funeral directors by opting for direct cremation, a practice we still find somewhat breathtaking. It’ll be some time before we pluck our newly-dead from their deathbeds and run them straight to the incinerator. It may just be the case that, living as we do under communism over here (hat-tip to Fox News), we treat each other, on the whole, better.

I don’t cover US scandals in this blog because they are uninstructive to UK readers to whom, for the most part, this blog is offered. I don’t normally stroll into political minefields, either. But heck, you don’t come here for comfort.