Author: Charles

Dining with the dead

19 November 2013
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: memorialisation

In many Western countries graveyards are seen as sinister or even frightening but not so in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

As with other eastern Orthodox countries, it is common for Georgians to honour their deceased relatives by taking food and wine to cemeteries, and having feasts beside the graves.

Although practised thoughout the year, Orthodox Easter is one of the busiest times for the tradition.

BBC News Magazine online.

Is this the sort of commemorative practice that could translate to Britain? 

The last word in bucket lists

18 November 2013
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: cemeteries, death and funerals, Good books, memorialisation

It was nice to have Ann Treneman write for us last week about the vital importance of specifying where you want your dust or ash to repose. 

But I’m afraid I’ve got a big problem with her book, Finding the Plot: 100 Graves to Visit Before You Die. Dang it, you pick it up for a gentle browse and you just can’t put the darn thing down. 

What it was, exactly, that originally impelled the parliamentary sketch-writer of The Times to become a leisure-time graveyard rabbit we don’t know because, of course, she cannot fully account for it. You understand as well as anyone that mortality exerts a mysterious gravitational pull on people in myriad ways. The way it tugs Ann is to inspire her to go graving. That’s what she calls it, graving. 

It wasn’t long before Ann discovered that there are already lots of books about famous graves out there — so what makes hers different? 

She sets out her criteria. Her hundred graves had to be eclectic, iconic, accessible and ‘not too depressing or upsetting … I was also wary of murder victims. This book is about lives, not deaths.’ She also set herself the task of visiting every single one of them, a journey that took her as far as the north coast of Scotland. No wonder the book took four years to write. Around half are in London because, ‘per square mile, London has the most interesting dead people of anywhere in the world.’

You’ll find, of course, that some of your favourites are missing. In place of them are some you never dreamed of. There’s the grave of Anthony Pratt, inventor of Cluedo, in Bromsgrove, and that of Dusty Springfield in Henley-on-Thames. There are three graves of people obsessed with big cats. At Malmesbury is that of Hannah Twynnoy, torn to pieces by a tiger. At Hampstead lies George Wombwell, his tomb topped by Nero, his pet lion. And at Abney park rests Frank C Bostock, lion tamer, who died of the flu. 

In short, there can be no quibbling with the rich variety of people Ann Treneman has chosen to commemorate. 

The best thing about the book, after its subjects, is the way it is written. Treneman writes with light-touch humour which moves easily to touching seriousness when describing, say, the graves of the Hancock family of Eyam, six little children’s headstones clustered round their father’s, victims of the Plague (pictured below). 

Yes, it’s a very good read. Hint strongly to your partner that you’d like it for Christmas — or surrender to temptation and buy it now. We give it five stars. 

Don’t Let Go

14 November 2013
Charles
9 Comments
Categories: Art and death

Posted by Kitty

I’ve just watched a 3D film at the cinema. Yes! On a weekday morning.

The film was Gravity. Despite its minimal dialogue, it covers topics such as courage, mortality, bereavement and survival.

I made the mistake of taking my other half. He completely spoiled the drive home. When all I wanted to do was to reflect and have a good cry, all he wanted to do was to pull apart the film’s scientific and technical plausibility. Only breaking off from his detailed critique to tell me to slow down.

So what if a couple of the Laws of Physics were broken? At least one on the drive home. Gravity is visually stunning and totally gripping. And for a story set in Space it is surprisingly intimate. (No, not like that, although there’s no doubting the chemistry between the two lead actors even with their space helmets on.)

However, one thing was completely implausible: there is no way that Sandra Bullock’s character would not have known the colour of George Clooney’s eyes.

Never say die

13 November 2013
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Assisted dying, Assisted suicide, Definitions of death, euthanasia, Featured

The Falconer Bill on assisted dying is making its way through the Lords before going on to the Commons, and the familiar debate rages once more. The usual suspects oppose it. They include senior doctors and lawyers and, you probably think, a lot of religious people, yes? And disabled people?

Actually, the stats show support for assisted dying as follows: 

  • * General population: 80%
  • * Religious people: anywhere between 60% and 80% depending on how you ask the question.
  • * Disabled people: 75% 

The principal players in the battle are, on one side, those who argue for personal autonomy and the right of anyone to die when they damn well please (terms and conditions apply), versus, on the other, those who seek to safeguard the interests of the vulnerable, whether elderly or disabled  — those who might come under pressure to do away with themselves. Should the Bill become law, there is the customary fear of slippery slopes and thin ends of wedges. It’s certainly true to say that the original Abortion Act never envisaged or intended that there should be so many abortions — but for all that, abortion rides high in the public’s favour.

The argument about assisted dying is one that needs to be heard; the law, when it comes, needs to be a good one. The eventual outcome is a forgone conclusion, of course. If it be not now, yet it will come. 

It’s perhaps regrettable that the Bill uses the euphemism ‘assisted dying’. What it means is assisted suicide – a doctor enables vetted people to kill themselves by handing them a fatal cocktail. One thing it is not is euthanasia, where it’s the doctor who does the killing. If the Bill becomes law, euthanasia will still be murder. 

Falconer’s Bill is pretty much a carbon copy of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act of 2007. If you want to see how things are likely to pan out here in Britain, see how they have panned out over there. 

And if you want to find out precisely when you are going to die, click here. If you want to watch a US tv series showing people dying in real life, click here. 

The interesting thing about the debate about assisted dying is that it is taking place in the context of new science which is continuously calling for a reappraisal of the definition of death. At what point can we say that someone is dead? 

Take Ariel Sharon. Remember him? Prime minister of Israel. Had a huge stroke in 2006. Yes, that one. 

He’s still alive, lingering on in a permanent vegetative state (pic below). 

Once upon a time death was cardio-pulmonary death. Still is. But when technology made it possible sometimes to restore cardio-pulmonary function, but not consciousness, a redefinition was required. It’s called brain stem death. In nautical terms, the bridge has been wiped out, but the engine room is still humming. 

Brain stem death describes not loss of consciousness but the end of consciousness. Brain stem death is the point at which living organs can legally be harvested — and give a new lease of life to dying people. How dead is that? How dead are you when your heart literally goes, in the words of the song, on? A brain-dead pregnant mother nourished a foetus for 107 days and gave birth to a healthy child.

Which is why some people deny that brain stem death is death. 

Twenty years ago an MRI scan of a stroke patient might have shown them to be utterly dead.  Today, tissue plasminogen activator can restore them to unimpaired health. 

What price, then, the irreversibility of death? 

How would we define death in the as-yet hypothetical case of someone’s brain being transplanted from their dead — in a cardio-pulmonary sense — body into a de-brained but otherwise healthy body? 

Take it a stage further: if death is the cessation of life, what is life? 

Some people propose that death should be defined as the irreversible loss of personhood — the point at which you can declare that Elvis has left the building and ain’t coming back. Okay then, if so, when do you call time of death on a demented person? How do you address the matter of the still-beating heart? 

And yes, what constitutes “a person”? 

Over in America, Dr Sam Parnia is now reviving people who have died of a heart attack several hours after they have died, and he reckons that in 10-20 years’ time it’ll be possible to resurrect dead people after 24 hours. Parnia even proposes allowing a person who has died of, say, pneumonia, to remain dead while an antibiotic goes on working to kill the disease, and then, when they’re ‘well’ again, bringing them back to life. 

Understand this: brain death is nowhere near an event. It’s a process that takes longer than anyone thought. The brain goes on dying for hours after the heart has stopped beating. So: what levels of awareness do we retain after our death, and for how long? 

It’s science that’s altering the definition of death in the modern age. Many religions have, for centuries, thought of death, not as a full and final event, but as a time of transition. Science has not ruled out continuing consciousness. Sam Parnia, who has for years collected the recollections of the out-of-body experiences of those of his patients who have died for a short time, offers this caveat to those who think that the seat of selfhood is the brain:

“We always assume that all scientists believe the brain produces the mind, but in fact there are plenty who are not certain of that. Even prominent neuroscientists, such as Sir John Eccles, a Nobel prizewinner, believe that we are never going to understand mind through neuronal activity. All I can say is what I have observed from my work. It seems that when consciousness shuts down in death, psyche, or soul – by which I don’t mean ghosts, I mean your individual self – persists for a least those hours before you are resuscitated. From which we might justifiably begin to conclude that the brain is acting as an intermediary to manifest your idea of soul or self but it may not be the source or originator of it… I think that the evidence is beginning to suggest that we should keep open our minds to the possibility that memory, while obviously a scientific entity of some kind – I’m not saying it is magic or anything like that – is not neuronal.”

Location, location, location

12 November 2013
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Embalming, funeral, funeral plans, memorialisation

Guest post by author and journalist Ann Treneman. 

Over the past four years, I have spent almost all my spare time in cemeteries for my new book ‘Finding the Plot: 100 Graves to Visit Before You Die‘. One of the key things that I have discovered is that having the right funeral is all about planning. There’s no point in dying and just hoping for the best. You’ve got to treat your funeral as if it were a major event in your life (which, of course, it is, except for the tiny detail that you are dead).

So, here, then, are three cautionary tales: three brilliant men who got their deaths quite wrong.

The first is Charles John Huffam Dickens, as his full name was. The man who wrote so much about cemeteries (not to mention grave-robbing) and funerals did his best to micromanage his own: “I emphatically direct that I be buried in an inexpensive, unostentatious and strictly private manner; that no public announcement be made of the time or place of my burial; that at the utmost not more than three plain mourning coaches be employed; and that those who attend my funeral wear no scarf, cloak, black bow, long hat-band or other such revolting absurdity.” So what was the only thing he forgot to stipulate? Yes, that’s right: location.

Dickens died in 1870 at his home Gad’s Hill, near Rochester, Kent. Apparently that is where he wanted to buried but The Times newspaper had other ideas (just a tiny unostentatious plot in Westminster Abbey) and as this was the one detail that the hyperactive novelist had failed to mention, The Times prevailed. Thus, in the middle of the night, a grave in Poet’s Corner was dug. The body arrived at 9.30am by anonymous hearse. Only 12 people attended although history does not record if any dared to wear an “absurd” hat-band. But, even as the quiet event finished, journalists were banging at the abbey doors. In the end, the grave was left open for two days as thousands came to pay their respects, throwing in flowers. So not quite the strictly private event that Dickens decreed. In fact, not at all.

If only Thomas Hardy had studied his Dickens a bit better he might have been more explicit about what was to become of him. The great novelist had told his literary executor that he would like to be buried at St Michael’s Church in Stinsford in Dorset (the mythical Mellstock of his writings). “I do not, in truth, feel much interest in popular opinion of me,” he said, “and shall sleep quite calmly in Stinsford, whatever happens.”

But when Hardy died in 1928, at the age of 87, he was overruled and he was no longer there to argue otherwise. His executor Sydney Cockerell and J.M. Barrie of Peter Pan fame decided that he must, instead, be buried in Westminster Abbey, as close to Dickens as possible. (How ironic is that?) His family were outraged. Finally, the vicar at Stinsford came up with a classic English fudge: his heart would be buried in Stinsford, the rest of him, after cremation, would go to the Abbey.

Thus, on 16 January 1928, there were two funerals. The great and the good gathered in the Abbey while, at Stinsford, there was a much simpler service, after which the small heart-sized box was buried in his first wife’s grave (left). Of course, in the pubs, this was the spark for many a joke, including those about resurrection (where was the rest of him?) and speculation that, actually, a cat had eaten his heart while on the slab. But, I have to say, having visited both the Abbey and Stinsford, that I have no doubt where he belongs – and it’s not London.

Finally, then, we come to Byron whose will had stipulated that he was to be buried with his beloved Newfoundland dog Boatswain in his glorious plot that still lies in the ruins of Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire. But Boatswain died in 1808 and his master lasted (just) until 1824. Byron, of course, was the king of scandal, with rumours and accusations of infidelity, sodomy, violence and incest all playing a part.

No one was surprised when he fled to Greece, where he died while fighting for independence. His body lay in state in Athens for three days before returning to England by boat. But back home, it turned out Westminster Abbey did not want him. And the new owners of Newstead Abbey (he had sold it to pay some debts) weren’t going to have him interred with Boatswain either. So it was nearby Hucknall for him. 

The funeral cortege that left London was really most peculiar. The first hearse contained a coffin, the next vases with his internal organs. Many of the other coaches were empty, their owners having hit on the marvellous wheeze of “ghost” appearances as a way of paying tribute to the poet without, actually, being seen to condone his behaviour. In Hucknall, though, people queued for four days to see the coffin. Creepily, in 1938, the coffin was re-opened with the vicar reporting that Byron was, indeed, there, including descriptions of his deformed foot and his genitals. Truly, for Byron, there was no peace in death, though we should not be surprised.  

Ann Treneman’s book, Finding the Plot: 100 Graves to Visit Before You Die, is published by the Robson Press at £12.99. You can purchase it online through Amazon or the publisher (https://www.therobsonpress.com/books/finding-the-plot-hardback) or in all good bookshops. It is also available on Kindle.

ED’S NOTE: We read a review of Ann’s book and asked her to write for us. We are very grateful to her for agreeing to do so. 

Telling the essential apart from the accessory

12 November 2013
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: funeral, Personalisation

Perhaps what we need just now is a bout of reactionaryism and a reappraisal of where funerals seem to be going in the light of where they have come from. 

We don’t have an intellectual hard-hitter over here like undertaker-poet Thomas Lynch, but what he says about American “monogrammed, one-off, highly personalised funerals” is broadly relevant to funerary trends over here, especially the rise of direct cremation. 

“The dead aren’t incidental to a funeral; the dead are the reason we have funerals.”

“One of the things we seem to have missed is the essential qualities, and we’ve gotten overfocussed on the accessories.”

“The corpse … is the problem we are trying to deal with and should be central to whatever goes on.”.

“The cultural impulse to treat cremation not as an alternative to burial, but as an alternative to bother.” 

Lynch seems to have relaxed his strictures on cremation. I think he said, once, “We burn the trash and we bury the treasure.” For all that, the book he has written with Thomas Long is a good and an essential read. It helps you make up your mind about things. 

If anything is going to kill funerals (apart from third-rate celebrants and undertakers who don’t understand the value of a funeral) it is going to be the evasion of bother. 

Here is the great man interviewed by the great Gail Rubin. 

It’s all in the livery

11 November 2013
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: funeral, Hearses

We are pleased to host a series of posts, in monthly instalments, recounting the adventures of Vintage Lorry Funerals. Here’s the first. 

Vintage Lorry Funerals 1950 Leyland Beaver is sometimes chosen to carry the Deceased solely because of its colour.

The lorry was used in a Leeds Traveller’s Funeral for no other reason than its livery is mainly blue, the Deceased’s favourite colour. The blue and red livery has also created opportunities with Football Fans, whose teams play in similar colours. However, it was never perceived at the outset of the business that the lorry would be appropriate for Military Funerals until the first one in Gosport.

When the lorry was booked for a former Royal Marine’s Funeral, David Hall, who owns the lorry, was advised that a minimalistic approach should be adopted with only the coffin, covered by a Union Jack, on the flat-bed. David has developed securement techniques so that a flag can be held tight to the coffin in transit. On a cold November morning the Marine’s Widow walked 100 yards down a slippery path in the cemetery to shake David’s hand and to thank him for his part in a fitting send off. She said, ‘I knew that the colours would match’. However, it wasn’t until the photographs from the funeral were analysed did it become evident that the Oxford Blue and Post Office Red livery closely match the Blue and Red in the Union Jack.

Other Military funerals undertaken include that of a Commando in Eastleigh, where his comrades commented that the manoeuvring of the coffin, on and off the deck, was like a military procedure. An RAF family in Swindon chose the lorry not only because of its colour, but also due to the wing embellishments on the cab resembling RAF wings. Over the road from Hillier Funeral Service is a Primary School and loading the coffin coincided with the children’s diner time. A group of boys beckoned David, dressed in his black boiler-suit and black beret, across the road. One boy asked, ‘Was this soldier killed in Afghanistan?’ and a second boy, who was transfixed by David’s uniform whispered, ‘Are you part of the SAS?’

Will The Co-operative Group throw Funeralcare to the wolves?

10 November 2013
Charles
12 Comments
Categories: Co-operative Funeralcare

On 2 July this year the Co-operative Group’s executive team visited Rochdale. The chief exec, Euan Sutherland, tweeted: “Spent the day at Rochdale Pioneers Museum with the Exec immersing ourselves in Co-operative heritage. Fantastic, inspirational, relevant”.

All very heartening if you’re one of those who inclines to the view that capitalism is essentially sociopathic, and that therein lie the seeds of its destruction. 

Disillusionment with capitalism does not in itself boost the credentials of co-operation. The history of consumer co-operatives is not especially glorious. They tend to start well then lose their way, demutualise, play copy-fatcat.

The history of worker co-operatives shines more brightly — as John Lewis and Waitrose testify.

Ethical values in themselves are no determinants of commercial fertility. The history of ethical values demonstrates that, actually, they are best exemplified by those people who renounce material things. Had Gandhi been driven everywhere in a Rolls Royce and dressed in a Prada suit, the story of Indian independence would read otherwise.

For this reason, the words ‘ethical business’, attractive as they are, have something of the flavour of an oxymoron.

But this is what The Co-operative Group claims to be, ethical, never more stridently than in recent weeks from amidst the twisted wreckage of its wretched bank. It is now 70 per cent owned by its creditors, including a bunch of American hedge funds. Rather than die of shame it instead proclaims new life: “By continuing to have regard for the highest standards of ethical principles we are more committed than ever to ensuring the Co-operative Bank remains just as special for years to come.”

Ethical schmethical. The bank has lost the title to call itself a co-operative in the sense of a jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise. To call itself co-operative is now patently misleading and is rightly being legally challenged.

Where did it all go wrong for The Co-operative Group (as opposed to co-operative values)? The Daily Telegraph reports ceo Euan Sutherland conceding with refreshing honesty that “the organisation has lost it way, and, referencing the founding Rochdale Pioneers, that its recent controversial history was not what the organisation was set up for.” You can easily see the shades of the Pioneers nodding in sorrowful assent.

Whether or not, fuelled by the Rochdale Principles, The Co-op can in the future succeed in its core mission of enabling working people to buy those things that they would otherwise be unable to afford we shall have to wait and see. We simply note that, at a time when there is increasing anxiety about funeral poverty, Co-operative Funeralcare has offered no lead and generated no initiatives. Nothing.

The Pioneers surely would have.

Having said all of which, it may already be too late to lose any more sleep over the way Funeralcare has fallen short of — betrayed, some would say — its ethical values. Because it’s beginning to look as if, in order to bring the Group back into profitability, The Co-operative Group may be about to shed its funerals operation and throw it to the capitalists. The same Telegraph article tells us:

Mr Sutherland, who took control of the mutual from May 1, said that in order to reduce the current £1.3bn bank debt, it must look to productivity, efficiency, and selling some of its assets. Divisions which will not be sold include its food retail business and its pharmacy business, it is understood. Non-core arms are thought to include the funeral business and its security business, but Mr Sutherland would not comment further.

Given the deep loathing with which the top chaps at Funeralcare regard the GFG (good morning, Mr Tinning), we can forgive you for supposing that we’d celebrate this with a day at the races. But we emphatically wouldn’t. First, our politics here are pink. Second, we’d deplore the impact of this on the many excellent people in Funeralcare, especially on the shop floor (not the management). When Sutherland talks of productivity and efficiency, he’s using the language of the time and motion man. We can only imagine the effect that ‘efficiencies’ are having on good men and women right now.

Third, we regard the funerals business as pre-eminently suited to a social enterprise business model. We’d like to see Funeralcare given another chance to get it right and be what it says on its tin.

The Sunday Times has been told by Sutherland that “every private equity group in Europe” wants to buy Funeralcare, but that he is not minded to sell.

Time will tell. The man needs to find £500 million fast. If he’s minded to sell, let him talk to an excellent worker’s co-operative that we’ve long thought would make a very good fist of it. Tune in, please, John Lewis. 

A warrior’s sendoff

9 November 2013
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

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It all started with an announcement in the Blackpool Gazette (above). 

Then it was taken up by Sgt Rick Clement of The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment. Rick lost both of his legs to an IED in Afghanistan. He runs a fundraising website “in order to give something back to the various charities that have helped me and my family on the road to recovery.

Rick put a message on his Facebook page echoing the call for people to attend the funeral of Harold Jellicoe ‘Coe’ Percival, who served in RAF Bomber Command as ground crew in world war two and thereafter led a nomadic life, much of it in Australia, before somehow ending up in Blackpool. He never married. All family ties had dissolved. 

The Facebook appeal went viral and was shared by comedian Jason Manford. It now looks as if there’s going to be a terrific attendance at Mr Percival’s funeral, which is scheduled for 12 midday on Monday (11.11). 

Well done to Mr Clement’s undertaker, Roland Whitehead and Daughter, for  their original announcement. And a big thank you from the GFG to the funeral worker in Blackpool who was kind enough to ring us up and tell us about this. 

Full story here. 

Lest you forget

9 November 2013
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: memorialisation

Remembrance Sunday brings the nation together in commemoration of those who fought and died in war. Old soldiers don their medals and attend church parades. Those who think this smacks too much of glorification mark the event in other ways.

But no one will pass through Sunday and then Monday (11.11) unaffected by the anniversary. Everyone has their own take on it.

For inhabitants of the Isle of Portland, where this blog will lay its bones, Remembrance Sunday has a particularly poignant resonance. You see, the Cenotaph was dug from the bowels of our island, and we islanders have a strong sense of connectedness with our exiled stone. 

The Cenotaph was actually quarried in virgin ground. Once enough stone had been dug for the monument, the workings were filled in and quarried no more.

The Cenotaph was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and incorporates some sophisticated geometry. The sides are not parallel, but if extended would meet at a point some 980 feet above the ground. The horizontal surfaces are in fact sections of a sphere whose centre would be 900 feet below ground.

Portland stone commemorates those who have died in battle in other ways. All those headstones you see in cemeteries maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and in cemeteries and churchyards across Britain: all Portland stone. 

The National Memorial Arboretum? Portland stone. 

As is, appropriately for an organisation created to bring an end to war, the United Nations headquarters in New York. 

Portland stone is not associated exclusively with solemn occasions. No royal wedding would be complete without an appearance by the happy couple on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. Yes, you guessed it: Portland stone.