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Author: Charles
Funerals must address dreams, too
In an excellent article in the Christian Century, the Rev Samuel Wells, an American, describes taking a British funeral. There are lessons here for clergy, funeral celebrants and undertakers.
And so it was that I was called to preside at the funeral of Michael. Michael had had a difficult life. He had Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
At the funeral tea I lingered and asked Michael’s mother what it was like to say goodbye. “Oh, it wasn’t much fun,” she said. “But d’you know what?” she added. “I slipped a packet of condoms in the coffin just before they closed it.” And she winked.
Was ever a parting gesture so laden with complexities of meaning? The young Tutankhamen, teenage pharaoh of the 14th century BC, was surrounded in his tomb by an array of golden artifacts. Michael was sent to the hereafter with a supply of prophylactics … The condom represented the adulthood Michael had never attained, the manhood he’d never inhabited.
Whatever the packet represented, it was a poignant symbol of care and abandon, restraint and permission, encouragement and playfulness, fertility and wistful regret. Michael’s mother had spent 14 years caring for his every bodily need: her final gift was a gesture toward the single bodily desire that remained out of his reach, the one that she couldn’t satisfy for him. It was a microcosm of what this life had not given him—and maybe the next life would.
Since that day I’ve changed the way I talk with grieving families about their loved ones. I ask if there’s something they want to put in the coffin. I wonder with them if there’s something their beloved had always longed for or something that remained out of reach. Is there a way the funeral can name and address what could never happen or the dream that could never be? I try in each funeral to include something visual, tangible, laden with unspoken meaning—a gesture, an artifact, a procession of gifts, a picture, a focus for prayer. Michael’s mother taught me that God makes heaven out of our faltering, foolish and fragile attempts to imagine and construct it.
If clergy will not shape liturgy to incorporate people’s longings and regrets and desires … then people will simply go ahead and construct their own. Only if they’re very lucky will the clergy hear about those homemade liturgies. With a wink.
Read the whole article here
David Abel answers his critics
If funeral celebrants suffer from anxiety, that is not surprising.
In addition to job anxiety, because they exist at the beck and call of undertakers, and financial anxiety because they must resign themselves to the vagaries of the mortality rate, there comes with the job, also, a degree of social anxiety — just try telling people what you do.
And then there is status anxiety. Until the British Humanist Association began training civvies to minister to the unchurched, all funeral obsequies in Britain had been presided over since the dawn of time by people, whether shaman or sorcerer, soothsayer or priest, who were imbued, in popular perception, with a special, sacred, qualification. Funeral celebrants need to have an answer to the question: “By what authority vested in you do you do this work?”
The full answer to this question is long and complex but can probably be condensed as ‘I (think I) am the Right Sort of Person’. What, precisely, is a Right Sort of Person? There was a discussion about this recently here.
Which brings us to the question of money, wherein lies all manner of vexation. Celebrants need to put food on the table if they are to be able to act out their vocation. In Africa, as Kathryn Edwards is wont to observe, it is the custom of villagers to leave a chicken at the door of the shaman. In our altogether more advanced society, celebrants must submit an invoice or specify the amount to be placed in the brown envelope customarily slipped into the back of the hand by the conductor as he simultaneously whispers from the side of his mouth, “Which one’s the widow?”
The vexed question of money has been at the heart of the distaste felt by many Right Sort of People towards what they feel to be an insurgency by the Wrong Sort of People, who are reckoned to be simply not up to it and, with an output level of up to ten funerals a week, only in it for the money. A complicating factor here is that the disapprobation of the RSPs looks a bit like, sounds a bit like, snobbery and is probably experienced as snobbery. Feelings are therefore running pretty high.
The contumely of RSPs has been focussed on the unfortunate and possibly undeserving person of David Abel as the most visible personification of this insurgency of the simply-won’t-do’s. This was because he posted a video on his website which described the amount of money to be made from funerals, to the exclusion of any discussion of a wider ministry to the bereaved. There was quite a lot of howling about it.
Not that RSPs are in it for the no-money. Most have a tender regard for their market value, especially relative to what bereaved people spend on accessories like flowers, and what undertakers bank in profit. Most think they’re worth more than they get. But they are, also, possessed of ideals. They see their work as ministry.
David Abel has now posted a video on the Fellowship of Independent Celebrants’ website in which he acknowledges and addresses the criticism he has received. He talks of the importance of vocation, advising those who think they’d be able to do something else equally well to do that instead.
He also tells potential candidates of his training course that celebrancy “is not a get-rich-quick scheme”. At the same time, he advises them to make a careful assessment of what they need to earn if they are to be able to follow their vocation: “I have to acknowledge … that this is a business.” He also addresses the matter of the number of funerals a celebrant might expect to take per week, and do them well. He reckons 8-10 probably too many, 3-4, plus a weekend wedding, more appropriate.
I am sure you will agree that he deserves a hearing. See his new video here. (I can’t embed it)
A Good Funeral Award gets you noticed
AW Lymn – The Family Funeral Service is acclaimed in the Nottingham Post
for its success in the Good Funeral Awards
Story here.
Thought for the day
“I wonder if,
working with funerals
and the bereaved,
one can also be
too attached
to the idea of death,
taking refuge in it.”
The ideal death show
Article in today’s Spectator by Clarissa Tan. (There is no paywall around this article, so I hope the Speccie won’t mind us reproducing it all.)
I am in a yurt, talking about death. Everyone is seated in a circle, and I am the next-to-last person to share. The last of the summer sun is shining through the entrance. At one end is a display coffin of biodegradable willow — there’s also tea and coffee, and coffin-shaped biscuits with skeleton-shaped icing.
‘I am a reporter,’ I say. ‘I’ve come to cover this event. But don’t worry, I won’t report what you share in this yurt. Also, I have cancer. I have been in treatment for one year, but now the treatment is over. I take one day at a time.’
There is silence, then hugs. I thought I would cry, but I don’t. Instead, I feel acceptance and a strange kernel of satisfaction. For the rest of my time here I am Death Girl, shrouded in drama.
The yurt is on the grounds of a beachfront hotel in Bournemouth. I am attending the Good Funeral Awards, meant to honour the best in the business. Running up to the awards dinner there are a series of activities such as the ‘death cafe’ I am participating in, where people mingle to mull mortality. Death cafes are now taking place all over the world, as Mark Mason has written in this magazine, but the weekend also will feature a number of speakers on subjects such as the use of LSD in the care of the terminally ill, memorial tattoos and what to wear for your final journey. An award will go to the embalmer of the year — a miniature coffin in the style of an Oscar.
I arrived expecting a weekend of black comedy. This is what I find, but there’s something else — a sincerity and straightforwardness that takes me by surprise. Many of the attendees are involved in the death business, as coffin makers and corpse tailors and funeral celebrants, because they feel our society does not pay enough attention to death. We avoid it, plaster over it, try to pretty it up and Botox it out of existence.
Even old age is taboo. As we all live longer and longer, so our actors and actresses, politicians and pop stars get younger every decade.
‘Why do we do this, when death is something that happens to all of us?’ lamented one woman.
Why, indeed? I’d done it too, until I discovered my illness. Then I thought of little else — about the fragility of life, the permanence of death. Friends sent me amulets, prayers, ginseng, ‘positive energy’. My heart opened, and something flooded in. What if death were not disconnection, but connection? What if we were just going to meet our Maker? Then death would not be severance, but reunion. It is not at all a fashionable point of view, but I believe in God — and a good one, at that. The belief fills me with healing, wonderful hope. It is the hope not that I will live. It is the hope that I am loved.
The awards dinner is actually a happy affair. The great and good of the funeral industry quaff champagne and exchange jokes. Opposite me at my table is a woman who runs a funeral company. She is flanked by her husband, who also manages the business, and her brother, who is up for gravedigger of the year. The actress Pam St Clement, whose EastEnders character Pat Butcher died on-screen in January last year, is here to present the prizes. Everyone claps and cheers. In the midst of death, we are in life.
It’s a fine line between the two. Looking at the people around me, women in evening dress and men in black tie, it strikes me that death can be a glamorous affair. I wonder if, working with funerals and the bereaved, one can also be too attached to the idea of death, taking refuge in it. That’s another thing I’ve realised, too. Twelve months of ill health, hospitals, medicines — while they were tough, they also gave me an identity. I am a journalist and death gave me a story.
I realise that although I am frightened of dying, there’s a also a tiny part of me that’s always been scared of living. The finality of death is hard. The uncertainties of life can be harder.
After the dinner, the winners and losers of the Good Funeral Awards get up to dance. I peek into the ballroom bespeckled with lights. What will they play? ‘Born to Die’? ‘Forever Young’? Perhaps ‘I Will Survive’? Or ‘Stayin’ Alive’? I decide I’ll take a cab back to my bed-and-breakfast and watch Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow on telly. Perhaps this is not the time for me to dance with death.
Pebbles in the press
Davina Kemble’s pebble coffin has been featured in the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald. She’ll be on BBC Wiltshire next Thursday afternoon. If you click on the cutting it will leap up to a larger, more readable size.
The crying need for more funeral venues
Guest post by Wendy Coulton of Dragonfly Funerals
It struck me today when queuing at a takeout coffee kiosk how many choices I am prompted to make when I place my order – what type of coffee, how many shots, what size cup, any extras (chocolate sprinkles or cinnamon on top) and whether I have a loyalty points card? And before my thoughts were broken by the familiar coughing and spluttering of the milk being heated, I wondered how many coffee outlets there were in my home city of Plymouth? I tallied up 20 with ease.
Sadly, though, the bereaved in a city population of over 240,000 residents are currently not spoilt for choice if they want a non-religious venue for the funeral service/ceremony of their nearest and dearest. If you don’t want a church, one of the two local authority run crematorium chapels in Plymouth tends to be the assumed ‘only’ alternative.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with the staff at the crematoria. They are fantastic and do the best they can within the constraints of the facilities and the volume of funerals taking place. And some families will have no issue with the crematorium chapel’s fixed layout and absent ambience.
There is a hidden ‘gem’ though which I would love to see being more widely promoted without reliance on Funeral Directors to tell their clients. It’s a beautiful Victorian Gothic chapel – where I can, as a qualified Civil Funeral Celebrant, conduct ceremonies because it is deconsecrated – in Ford Park Cemetery. The cemetery is run by a charitable trust and with significant grant and donations funding they transformed the disused chapel from a machinery store into a very special community space.
Following funeral ceremonies there mourners told me they felt the chapel lifted their spirits and how much they appreciated not feeling rushed, and having the freedom to ‘personalise’ the space within the chapel and freely move and participate in the ceremony.
I have heard by word of mouth that a funeral occasionally is held at a local rugby ground for longstanding club supporters but as far as I know that’s about it when it comes to current funeral venues in Plymouth.
When I did an online search for Plymouth wedding venues, thirty options immediately appeared from manor houses and country golf clubs to a fort and even a zoo! It begs the question why can’t these venues also host funerals?
Is it a decision these businesses make based on the misplaced assumption that having a coffin with the body of a dead person in it on the premises may offend customers or upset their staff? Do they think funerals are not commercially viable? Often weddings and funerals are cited as the only time family members scattered to the four winds come together and they value the opportunity to socialise after a funeral – sharing memories and catching up. Hospitality services could be part of the ‘offer’ package for funerals to make it financially worthwhile for the venues to host.
We are a consumer society – we know our rights and we know how to complain don’t we? The bereaved seem to ‘settle for’ whatever funeral service venue they are advised is available in their area. There should be at least 30 options popping up on an online search for Plymouth funeral venues.
One day…
Don’t charge, don’t care?
A mother whose son was stillborn is calling for an investigation after his ashes were not returned to her for over a year, reports the Northern Echo. A spokesman for Speckmans Funeral Service, part of Dignity Funerals, said: “We collected the cremated remains and returned them to the funeral home with the intention of contacting the family but unfortunately a member of staff did not follow our usual procedures and this did not happen. A senior manager visited Ms Heaviside to profusely apologise for this oversight and assured her that our procedures have been reinforced so that this does not happen to another client.
An incident of negligence like this can sometimes be an indicator of institutional negligence. This being so, it is entirely permissible to speculate on what other negligent conduct may go on at Speckmans, and therefore the entire Dignity plc operation, that we don’t know about because it doesn’t reach the press.
Baby funerals are carried out under contract. They normally don’t make any money for a funeral home and, where they don’t, may be an invidious duty — a nuisance. And so we are entitled to speculate, without over-exciting Dignity’s libel lawyers, whether the failure to put Ms Heaviside in touch with her baby’s ashes was simply because no one could be bothered. We are entitled to wonder what other carelessness might have been accorded to other babies in Speckmans’ care.
Corporate funeral directors customarily respond to a scandalous incident by promising to reinforce procedures. Were it the case that the staff at Speckmans had slipped up because no one cared enough, it is unlikely there would be the remotest chance that reinforcing procedures might incentivise them to give a damn from now on.
Death Over Dinner
It seems that Death Cafe has spawned a little brother, birthplace Portland Oregon, dob sometime earlier this summer. It’s name is Death Over Dinner.
The aims of Death Over Dinner are pretty much the same as those of Death Cafe, namely, to get folk together to talk about you-know-what. It’s the initiative of Michael Hebb, who works at the University of Washington. The rationale for dinnertime deathchat? In Hebb’s words: “The dinner table is the most forgiving place for difficult conversation. The ritual of breaking bread creates warmth and connection, and puts us in touch with our humanity. It offers an environment that is more suitable than the usual places we discuss end of life.”
It’s a good formula. Death Cafe has already taught us that the model works. I must own up here to my own blindness to Death Cafe — I didn’t think it would. How wrong, sometimes, can we be.
The Death Over Dinner website is excellent. It is simple, instantly understandable and, above all, empowering. You can rapidly plan your own dinner party online. It is suggested that you give your guests, and yourself, a bit of homework in advance. You choose that from a bunch of truly excellent resources. The system generates an invitation to your guests together with tips about how you might facilitate the discussion. When it’s over, you can share your experience with the website which, usefully, pools them with others.
The website is highly functional. It’s a lovely piece of work. Top marks go to the collection of resources, written, audio and visual.
There are downsides. It is very US-centric. I very much didn’t like: “We have gathered dozens of esteemed medical and wellness leaders to create an uplifting interactive adventure” because like most Brits I don’t like being told what’s good for me by leaders of any sort. These initiatives work best if they’re bottom- up — like Death Cafe.
Given Death Cafe’s viral spread around the world, there’s probably a lot to be said for the two initiatives working together.
You can have a dummy run on the website — fill out the form and see what you think of the contents of the email you get back moments later.
There is much to commend this enterprise. Find the website here.