Author: Charles

Missing the point

9 October 2008
Charles
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Categories: ceremony

“We don’t want the wedding to be a happy, jolly occasion. No, we want it to be a lament; an elegy for everything lost. Marriage marks a beginning, yes, but also an ending, a parting from family, a distancing from friends, the loss of personal sovereignty, the extinction of the old way of life. If a wedding doesn’t confront these things it isn’t emotionally honest. That’s why we’ve asked everyone to wear black.”

Make sense to you?

“We don’t want the funeral to be a sad, gloomy occasion. No, we want it to be a celebration of life, a time to dwell on happy times. I mean, death isn’t the end, is it? It doesn’t take away what we feel, does it? Our love? Our memories? Death – it’s a new beginning, right? Life goes on. That’s what we want to focus on. That’s why we’ve asked everyone to wear red.”

Better?

Fact is, both weddings and funerals are about renunciation and parting. It would perhaps make wedding vows more meaningful if bride and groom publicly acknowledged the new world order and reaffirmed the duty they owe each other and their friends and family. But, primarily, weddings are about celebration – obviously.

Just as funerals are about sadness. Obviously. People overlook that at their cost – their emotional cost. A lot of people, these days.

Tears, laughter; laughter, tears. You get ‘em at weddings and you get ‘em at funerals. You can’t have a good one without both.

Dan emailed from Scotland this morning. He’d seen an account by Matthew Parris of a memorial service that struck him. It struck me, too. Here’s an extract:

Sweet word

So it came as a relief to escape into Derby Cathedral on Saturday to speak at a concert in memory of Jeffery Tillett, whose death I noted on this page earlier this year. A local Conservative politician over many decades, former mayor, many times parliamentary candidate, patron of the arts and licensee of what was for many years Derby’s only gay bar, Jeffery would have loved his concert, led by his surviving partner, Councillor Robin Wood.

Robin read Betjeman’s heart-achingly understated poem, The Cockney Amorist. As he read the final lines…

I will not go to Finsbury Park

The putting course to see

Nor cross the crowded High Road

To Williamsons’ to tea,

For these and all the other things

Were part of you and me.

I love you, oh my darling,

And what I can’t make out

Is why since you have left me

I’m somehow still about.

… I was struck by the almost choking intensity that the word “darling” – though you would have thought it cheapened beyond recovery by overuse – still retains when spoken with passion. Most strong words become weakened by lazy repetition: “disaster”, “chaos”, “lovely”; but a few seem to have an inner integrity that keeps them honest. In the right circumstances, “my darling” really tightens the throat.

Read the entire piece here.

Variety’s the spice of death

7 October 2008
Charles
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Categories: celebrants, ceremony

Secular celebrants congratulate themselves on delivering better funerals than ordained ministers. They think they do because people tell them they do.

They risk complacency.

A secular ceremony is often reckoned better than a religious one not so much for what it does as for what it doesn’t. Remove god and the dead person is free to assume the starring role; excise worship and you relieve people of the obligation to go through motions they’d rather not. The positives are all in the negatives.

The resulting ceremony often leaves the audience with nothing to do except sit like obedient puddings and listen to a stranger offer them consolation and tell them all about their dead person, whom the stranger never met. To say that celebrants don’t know who they’re talking about is the precise truth.

When one person speaks from start to finish, pausing only to play a bit of a contemplative Pink Floyd track, a funeral ceremony can soon start flat-lining. Secularists may be unobjectionable, but boy can they be dull. Religious folk, by contrast, get to enjoy great live music, great archaic language, a bit of community singing, a bit of mystery, a celebrant in eye-gladdening fancy dress and even remission from deep vein thrombosis as they kneel down to pray. It’s a far more interactive and sensuous rite.

We can’t blame celebrants when family and friends won’t step up to the lectern and do their bit. It leaves them with no option but to do it all. It’s this that numbers my days as a celebrant. The only good funeral, in my book, is a participative one.

For some time, I have looked to technology to lift secular ceremonies out of monotony. The multimedia presentation, for me, is the future, and Wesley Music, together with people like Louise Harris, are the people to deliver it. I phoned Wesley today to find out how fast things are moving.

They’ve installed equipment at Peterborough and Liverpool, but the funeral directors are being very slow to recommend it. Nothing new there; you’ll rarely find the dismal trade at the cutting edge. But a far bigger brake to progress is, it seems, the fraught matter of copyright. Scan in a wedding photo and you infringe the copyright of the photographer who snapped it. Play James Blunt and James wants a slice of the action. There’s a lot of patient negotiation going on about licences.

The plot thickens. You’ve got to weigh up the effect of showing, say, a video clip of the dead person last summer on holiday. Will that be more than people can bear? And if you show that wedding photo, will it reignite a family feud?

As Neil at Wesley wisely puts it, “You’ve got to try and give families what they want, but you’ve also got to warn them of the implications of what they choose.”

Fools rush in. I’m feeling foolish.

It’ll come, though. And it will make all the difference.

Killing time

6 October 2008
Charles
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Categories: celebrants

Wherever dead people go they are freed from time. It’s our apprehension of this that adds to our sense of their elsewhereness and convinces us that they will not be coming back. It adds to the mystery, too. It is difficult to conceive of timeless existence, much easier to explain death in terms of annihilation.

For afterlifer John Donne “there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends or beginnings, but one equal eternity.” I find that poetically meaningful, but I’ve no exact idea what it means.

Close friends and family of just-dead people can similarly find themselves existing in a different time zone, detached, surveying the rushing world around them with anything from bemusement to anger. It’s an idea that I try to incorporate into my funeral ceremonies on the grounds that it’s useful to hold up a mirror to mourners’ feelings. It used to take me far too many words to get my meaning across, and far too many blank-eyed responses impelled me to cut down. Now I say something like, “For the time that we are here this morning, time stands still for you, for a while, and this place belongs entirely to you and to [name of dead person].”

On Friday I went to the funeral of a former work colleague. I was there for her and her only, but it was, of course, impossible also not to backseat drive the ceremony.

The celebrant, a humanist, opened proceedings with a reading about time. I didn’t recognise it, and now I shall have to write and beg him to share it. It said what I have always sought to say.

He went on to conduct the ceremony in what I thought was an exemplary way. I would say enviable as well but I am too aware of my shortcomings to suppose that I could ever be as good as him.

His words were apt. He dressed the dead person in her best light, and why not, on this day of days? It was a happy likeness.

Outstanding, though, was his manner. It was utterly unhurried. In the context of a crematorium this was all the more remarkable because crems are tyrannised by clocks. He detached us from all sense of time even though he was on a tight deadline. What’s more, he detached himself from himself and came across as a person of no interest to us. To perform that well, ego free, unself-conscious, and thereby give the stage wholly to our dead friend, was an extraordinary accomplishment.

I am tempted to draw the conclusion that the hallmark of a memorable funeral is a forgettable celebrant, and the hallmark of a meaningful funeral is a serenity which derives from a sense of time suspended. It’s a bit pat, you’ll have your own view, and it may not do for every funeral, but I think there’s something in it.

The name of the celebrant I heard is Leslie Scrase. If you live close to Bridport, in Dorset, I commend him to you.

A great day out — and a heartfelt apology

2 October 2008
Charles
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Categories: Uncategorised

If there was a conference organiser of the year award, it would go to Julie Dunk – technical officer and conference manager of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management – and her partner, Blue. The reason, probably, why there is no such award is that Julie and Blue would win it every year.

 

Two days ago I dropped in on the ICCM conference. What a bundle of fun, you may ironically think – and to your surprise you’d be right. Any gathering of any branch of the death industry is as cheery as it has every right to be, and the cem-crem gang are no exception. Thank you for inviting me, Julie!

 

I went principally to listen to Sandy Sullivan talking about Resomation, the new alternative to cremation. Here’s a process which has been already been smothered in horror by the gutter press. They want to boil dead bodies, they say, then flush them down the drain. It’s not actually like that at all. And it rather overlooks the fact that cremation entails setting fire to dead bodies and flushing them up chimneys.

 

I missed Sandy. I nattered too long to the excellent Sandra Thomson, and couldn’t get into the lecture hall without creating a disturbance. Later, talking to crem managers, I discovered a lot of interest, and a desire to find out what precisely is in the liquid that is disposed of.

 

I wanted to meet memorialisers because that’s what I’m researching at the moment. I talked to the lovely people at the FG Marshall stand, and I had an engrossing chat with Jenny Gregson of BRAMM. I hadn’t known till she told me that the reasons people prefer shiny granite headstones are because the surface is easy-clean and they look forever new. Age shall not weary them nor the topple testers condemn.

 

So many of the good guys and gals of the funeral industry were there, including Wesley Music, who have done so much to improve the quality of funeral ceremonies, and are looking to instal multimedia display equipment in crems, a move which will be transformative. Paul Sinclair, the motorcycle funeral man, was there. He is a rare bundle of utter professionalism and great good humour. Time spent with Paul flies by.

 

Krysia from the indefatigable Institute of Civil Funerals was there, and it was she who taught me most. She objected in the most passionate terms to my unkindness in this blog to Adrian Pink of the British Institute of Funeral Directors. And while I am happy to contest Adrian’s professional judgement in supposing that a vast parade of hearses makes the funeral industry more approachable (Krysia disagrees with me implacably), I am not happy to think that I may have given him offence because I gather he is an extremely nice man who really is working as hard as he can, from the very best of motives, to make a difference.

 

Krysia’s word is good enough for me. Adrian, I apologise unreservedly. And I ask you again to talk to this blog and tell us exactly what you are striving to achieve. Here’s a very good opportunity for you to reach an audience of ordinary members of the public who would, I believe, be very interested to hear what you have to say.

 

 

 

 

Joining up dying to funerals

1 October 2008
Charles
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Categories: DIY funeral, home funerals
It was very good to hear yesterday from Donna Belk, a home funeral pioneer and enabler in Texas. How I like that term ‘home funeral’ — preferable by far to the UK term ‘DIY funeral’ with all its associations of bodge, muddle, panic and a late night visit from the emergency electrician.
 
Not that many people in the UK sideline the deathcare professionals and arrange their own funerals. A lot of the early natural death zeal seems to have subsided. In the US the movement is healthy and, it seems, in good hands. “The home funeral movement.” says Donna, “is definitely gaining more attention.” See here.
 
She goes on to say: “Some people view it as an extension to hospice. We’ve had quite a bit of success in introducing it to hospice organizations in our area.”
 
I’d love to know more about how UK hospices are joining up end of life care to funeral planning, and empowering carers. I am hoping that someone at St Christopher’s, who have questioned whether funerals are ‘the missing link in palliative care’, is going to ring me up and tell me.
 
Watch this space, enjoy the videos — and thank you for writing in, Donna.
 
 
 
 

Silly stunt

25 September 2008
Charles
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Categories: Co-op, Co-operative Funeralcare

Co-op Funeralcare are always on the lookout for little PR stunts to get a pic + 75 words into the local paper — heart of the community stuff: a little sponsored run here, a coffee morning and open day there, and sixty quid raised for charity. Nothing wrong in that. No one ever got successful by hiding their light under a bushel.

But this blog has its doubts about Funeralcare, principally because its press officer promised to write to allay those doubts. The fact that he resolutely hasn’t means, of course, that doubts persist.

From time to time, they flare up. They did this morning when Dan rang to tell me that, in the ancient kingdom of Fife, John Gilfillan, funeral director at F-care’s Lochgelly and Cowdenbeath branch, has taken to giving local primary school children lessons in road safety. He gives them luminous badges for their uniforms and warns them to be on their guard. The enterprise is supported by Fife Constabulary.

It’s a laudable and community-spirited thing to do — except that Mr Gilfillan wears his undertaker’s garb to school. “I don’t want to frighten them with talk of funerals,” he says.

So why the shuddermaking kit, John?

“I don’t go too deeply into things, or the consequences of road accidents, because there are wee kiddies there,” he says.

Hunh? Pshaw!

You say it best when you…

23 September 2008
Charles
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Categories: celebrants, ceremony, funeral music

At yesterday’s funeral I invited people in the audience to have their say after they’d listened to tributes from the family. I tried to make it easy. I gave them time to think about it in advance, acknowledged that speaking in public is hard, invited them to speak from where they were sitting and reminded them that the only thing that mattered was getting it right for their dead friend.

Hardly anyone spoke. I had made an elementary error: I had supposed that their primary medium for expression is words.

Like many secular celebrants, I set great store by words. For me, they say it all. I also know that they often come over as so much blah-blah-blah – and that that may not necessarily be a bad thing. Blah can be just what people need so long as it is served soothingly warm – ask any Anglican vicar. “Death is nothing at all…” is warm blah. So is “Do not stand at my grave and weep”. To me, they’re blurry and worthless – but that’s my private problem.

For those times when words are likely to fall short, there are eloquent alternatives. There’s

· saying by doing.

· music

· dance

· saying by doing nothing

I remember planning a funeral with a family, fruitlessly trying to get them to tell me about their dead mum. Very little came until they explained that, as a family, talking was something they just didn’t do. Words, to them, were just so much blather. After some thought, I suggested lighting candles. They weren’t at all the sort of people who like lighting candles, I reckoned, but they leapt at the idea.

On the day of the funeral, I set up my stand, lit a tall candle in the centre and called people forward to light a satellite tealight. Normally, only a few come. On this occasion, everyone did – maybe thirty of them. The array of flames looked very pretty beside the coffin, where they spoke more eloquently than words.

Later in the ceremony, as I recited the solemn words of the committal, I heard a loud, alarming clunk, followed by chuckling in the audience. Afterwards, I discovered what had happened. The heat given off by the massed tealights had toppled the tall candle in their midst. Near-disaster for me but, for those there, the memorable, hilarious highlight of the funeral. It was typical, they said, of their mother to do that.

Words are unlikely ever to court disaster so long as they have been checked for precision and cleansed of ambiguity. Saying by doing, though, can be tragic-comically perilous. I’m thinking of the deplorable incident of the dove (symbolic of the soul of the dead person) which, when released, flew inside the crematorium for warmth, could not be chivvied out, and had to be shot. I’m thinking of another dove which, when released, was all at once attacked by a sparrow hawk. As the horrified mourners gazed up, bloody feathers fluttered down on them. I am thinking of the balloon which settled, miles and miles away, in the horns of a £50,000 prize bull. Enraged, the bull burst its fence, charged into a road, was hit by a car and had to be destroyed. These are all true stories.

A piece of music can be eloquent, but only when it is exclusively associated with the dead person. Music so often fails to be effective because those listening to it have their own, private relationship with it.

Dance could be eloquent, but mostly not in embarrassable Britain. Hippy-dippy. Toe-curling.

“It’s amazing / How you can speak / Right to my heart / Without saying a word” sings Ronan Keating. Silence can be defined as saying by doing nothing at all. Quakers do this very expertly, but hardly anyone else. If you invite people to sit in silence and contemplate, all they’ll do is wait. To remedy this, the custom is to fill the silence with music and invite people to do two things at once: think and listen. Doesn’t work. They still mostly wait.

Presently, funerals give the eyes little to do. Innovation is afoot. We now have Colourful Coffins, which I love. On its way, with us soon, is the multimedia review/celebration of the dead person’s life – words, music, slideshow, film clips. Louise Harris is doing pioneering work at Sentiment Productions. See her work here. I believe that the multimedia presentation is going to have a transformative effect on the way we do funerals once crems and other venues have installed screens, projectors and sound systems. I can’t wait.

Back in the here and now, I am chewing over the second lesson I learned from my mute mourners. I had wholly overlooked the fact that they had already done the most eloquent thing they could do for their dead friend. It was this: at some inconvenience to themselves they had made the effort to come to his funeral.

All the bells and all the whistles in all the world cannot speak more meaningfully than simply being there.

Making a killing

18 September 2008
Charles
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Categories: Humour

There’s a lot of eco-angst out there as the banks go bust and the economy takes on the aspect of a clown car. At times like this I thought bankers threw themselves out of windows, the useless idiots. What’s stopping them?

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. House prices are freefalling and prospective first-time buyers are revving their chequebooks.

Spare a thought for sellers as they mourn their lost equity, poor wee thingies.

Message to sellers: there’s always someone worse off than yourself. Yes, really. Like people who have sell a house after someone’s been murdered in it. Nothing depresses prices like notoriety.

To people at this disadvantage I can recommend this blog. It’s a testament to the power of positive thinking, full of good tips. Here’s one:

When a potential buyer reports being upset about the fact that a person was murdered and the body thrown into the closet, comment instead about the ample space inside the closet; how there’s lots of room for shoes and accessories.

Here’s another:

A negative comment concerning how no one responded to the victim’s screams can be answered by showing how much privacy there is in the home and how playing loud music is unlikely to disturb the neighbors.

With undimmable optimism, our blogger even proposes a Plan B in the event of insuperable reluctance among buyers:

Rent the death house to a family of Satanists so they can improve their social standing amongst other devil worshippers.

In general, positive thinking is delusional. It can’t conquer cancer; it can’t even find you a parking space.

It may well, though, be efficacious in the littler matter of selling your house. Make up a murder. Demonstrate how that highlighted its best features. You may even get all your equity back.

Good grief!

16 September 2008
Charles
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Categories: ceremony

A ceremony to mark the end of a marriage. A funeral for a marriage.

What do you think?

The concept comes to us from (I think) Australia, the country which pioneered the secular funeral ceremony. One practitioner in this field is Jennifer Cram. I wonder how may others there are?

Of course, if you’re into the business of celebrancy, it makes sense to expand your portfolio by devising as many sorts of ceremony as you can dream up. Jennifer does ceremonies for: ‘the loving commitment of partners who are not marrying; the naming and welcoming of a child into the family; renewal of marriage vows for couples celebrating staying married; the end of a relationship; reaching puberty or maturity (wise-woman ceremonies also known as croning); launching of businesses or other ventures…’ She even does relinquishment ceremonies for parents giving a child up for adoption. She’s staked out her patch.

Obviously, it’s funerals for marriages that interest us. And, do you know, whatever your incredulity is telling you, there’s actually lots of symmetry with funerals for dead people (she’s jolly clever, is Jennifer). Without using the word liminality once, here’s what her marriage funeral addresses: ‘issues of endings, separation, and letting go (disappointment, anger, sadness, fear and trying to achieve closure); issues of acceptance, forgiveness, becoming open to new beginnings and new possibilities.’ To get the whole picture, click here.

For what other emotional thresholds might you devise a funeral ceremony?

The death of youthful dreams and ambitions, perhaps…

Do say!