“Grief is like a drunken houseguest who keeps coming back for one more goodbye hug.”
This morning we received an email which had been forwarded in error by Mr Potts, Customer Relations Manager at The Co-operative Funeralcare, to a bereaved family – not we hasten to add one of the families referred to in the message – who forwarded it to us. On reading it, we immediately deleted the blog post describing the incident referred to out of respect for the wishes of the families concerned. We have redacted those parts of the email which indicate the location of the incident and the date of the press story; and those which reveal contact details.
We thought the email worth publishing for its own sake – because it isn’t often we get an insight into what goes on in the engine room.
From: Neil Walker (CLS-Exec)
Sent: 11 February 2013 09:11
To: Anna Osborne (CLS-Probate Consultants); Sanjeev Chahal (TS) (CLS-Probate Operations)
Cc: Ziad Shukri (TS) (CLS-Legal Advisory); Karen Morgan (CLS-Wills); Jon Potts (Funeralcare); David Collingwood (Funeralcare)
Subject: Incident within Funeralcare
XXXXXXXXXXX
Funeralcare had an incident in the XXXXXXX part of the country a few weeks ago. As you would expect Funeralcare dealt with the matter in a sensitive and appropriate way with the 2 families involved; to the extent that neither family wanted anything to appear in the press. Unfortunately the press in the local area published a story relating to the matter xxxxxxxxxxxx.
In the unlikely event that the probate advisory team get questioned on the matter by a client who has any concerns whatsoever, could you please could you ensure that the client is offered the opportunity to receive a phone call from Co-operative Funeralcare. Please could you ask your team members to capture name and contact details of the client and pass them onto yourselves as team managers?
Could I then ask that you pass the client details onto Jon Potts, Customer Relations Manager, Funeralcare. Please ensure that you follow up any e-mail with a phone call to ensure that Jon or a member of the team has picked up the details? Jon’s contact details are:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxx9
Posted by Vale
In my very occasional series (see Song for my father by Horace Silver) here’s another piece written as a tribute to a much loved father. It’s a version of Adios Noninos by the great musician of the tango, Astor Piazzola.
Posted by Richard Rawlinson — in sparklingly shameless name-dropping form – ED
‘Thank goodness for inequality,’ quipped a friend with nonchalant disregard for political correctness as we casually admired inequality’s legacy of beautiful architecture lining the streets of Belgravia this weekend.
The plethora of blue plaques adorning these grand houses gave a degree of substance to this seemingly flippant remark: the display of wealth was arguably a consequence of remarkable people doing remarkable things, whether in politics, medicine, literature, art or any other accomplishment that gave them ‘celebrity’ status, or a place in history.
Sunday strolls in London often conjure up memories of those who have gone before, whether a martyr such as John Southworth, executed at Tyburn (now Marble Arch) or simply plaques noting that a Charles Darwin or a Virginia Wolf ‘lived here’. Even swinging through the revolving doors of Claridges might trigger a passing nod to the ghosts of notable guests, whether a Garbo or a Roosevelt.
As I get older, my familiar haunts remind me not just of figures from the more distant past but offer up personal recollections of those who have died. With age, we become more nostalgic as well as know more people who have ‘shuffled off this mortal coil’.
Before she became famous as one of The Two Fat Ladies, Jennifer Patterson and I crossed paths on two fronts: she was cook at The Spectator when I worked there in my 20s; she also lived in a mansion block near Westminster Cathedral that later became my home.
A traditional Catholic, Jennifer rode her motorcycle to Kensington for the Latin Mass at the Brompton Oratory because she disapproved of the Cathedral’s Novus Ordo mass. I attended mass at the Oratory this Sunday, so Jennifer sprung to mind as my friend and I walked to lunch afterwards through streets lined with plaques revealing they were once inhabited by everyone from philanthropist George Peabody to Nancy Mitford.
I recalled Jennifer’s funeral at the Oratory after she died of lung cancer in 1999. By then an unlikely OAP TV star, the ‘Spinster of Westminster’ attracted over 1,000 mourners. The floral tributes around her coffin included a bottle of whisky and her motorcycle helmet, and a speech alluded to her stiff-upper-lip jollity, even on her hospital deathbed. Asked by visiting friends how she was feeling, she’d reply matter-of-factly, ‘I’m dying, dear.’
Jennifer would arrive mid-morning at The Spectator’s Bloomsbury offices, always wearing a smock with a pouch for her Woodbines, helmet in one hand and cigarette in the other, and often still slightly inebriated from last night’s whiskies.
Before settling into the kitchen to prepare a ‘bunny casserole’ for editor Charles Moore’s lunch guests (who could be anyone from Prince Charles to then-Chancellor Nigel Lawson) she would swan around the offices as if she was hosting a cocktail party, offering a welcome distraction from work with her booming voice and madcap small talk.
When she got to my desk, she’d make me blush by grabbing my cheeks with her ringed fingers, then shaking my face while making ‘coo-chi-coo-chi-coo’ noises, as if I was a sweet child or cute puppy.
I was there when Jennifer threw crockery and cutlery out of the kitchen window because the accounts department had left unwashed coffee mugs in ‘her’ sink. Charles sacked her on the spot but reinstated her a few weeks later.
I shared an office with Rory Knight Bruce, another eccentric character and someone I worked with again when he became editor of Londoner’s Diary at the Evening Standard – which leads to other recollections of brushes with dead folk in public consciousness.
Rory, a fanatical huntsman of foxes as well as a newshound, might be considered a bully by today’s right-on standards. He had a bulging contacts book and he’d slam a scrap of paper bearing a well-known person’s number on your desk, and bark at you to call it and ask the most outrageous questions.
I once had to wake up an elderly Quentin Crisp in his New York garret for a quotation about some gay rights legislation. Despite the time zone difference, a reedy voice picked up immediately (‘Crisp here’), and he was charm personified, a lonely, gentle insomniac seemingly content to natter about anything to anyone at any time.
Another diarist was given a trickier challenge. Rory got it into his head that we must contrive an attack on the Turner prize by… Francis Bacon. Amazingly, Rory had the number, not just of Bacon’s agent but of the legendary, chaotic studio of our then greatest living artist.
‘Call him now,’ hissed Rory to a bemused colleague, ‘and ask him if it is really acceptable that a collection of loathsome art-crowd inverts should use the name of Turner to lend substance to this appalling and valueless charade.’
He added for good measure, ‘You must use the phrase ‘loathsome art-crowd inverts’, is that clear?’.
We all watched nervously as the helpless young diarist dialled Bacon’s direct line.
‘Yes?’
‘Is that Mr Francis Bacon?’
YES?’
‘Erm, I’m calling from the Londoner’s Diary page in the Evening Standard…’
‘YEESS?’
‘Could you tell me, Mr Bacon, do you think it objectionable that a crowd of loathsome art-crowd inverts should abuse the name of Turner for their prize?’
There was silence. We all anticipated Bacon to scream, ‘Bugger off’, or worse. But instead he chuckled and simply said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you’ before replacing the receiver.
Bacon died a year later in 1992 and his last disturbing triptych from 1991 hangs at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Its ghoulish figures blur the divide between life and death. So too do our memories. I wonder if the artist was momentarily disturbed while working on this painting by some timid hack following outlandish orders.
“I just love the work. Much of it isn’t anything to do with being at the cutting edge of any ‘new’ movement, but about listening to people, giving them attention and valuing a person’s life that I am told was just ordinary.”
Sue Goodrum, celebrant.
Posted by Vale
I was at a funeral recently when this song by Purcell was played at the committal. We listened to the Treorchy Male Voice Choir, but I couldn’t find their version on You Tube so this is the Kirkintilloch Male Voice Choir instead.
Close thine eyes and sleep secure;
Thy soul is safe, thy body sure;
He that loves thee, He that how to buy a cialis keeps
never slumbers, never sleeps.
The quiet conscience in the breast
Has only peace, has only rest;
The music and the mirth of kings
Are out of tune unless she sings;
Then close thine eyes in peace and sleep secure.
There is a lovely, fuller version too. If you are keen you can listen to it here. Worth it to my mind.
It’s amazing, really, just how terrifically buttoned-up Brits are when it comes to commemorating their dead. Other cultures offer us examples of observances, duties, rituals and practices which can teach us a thing or two. We really ought to take them up on it.
One of these is the household shrine. We’ve touched on this before here and here.
Up in Scotland, ‘Honest’ Rob Lawrence makes a household shrine (illustrated above). It comes in different sizes, for indoors ones or for outdoors.
Like it?
There’s something else Rob does which you’ll like. Let him explain:
“When I make a coffin, I save and label some off-cuts of the timber used. We then offer the family (only if they want it) a shard of the actual timber used in the coffin as a book mark. It becomes a tangible connection that one can hold and play with. One such book mark was given to a wee lad of 7 years ish by his dad because the wee lad so missed his Grandpa. We understand this helped a little.”
We’ve held this over awhile, but the question it asks remains topical. The article is about the aftermath of the Newtown shootings:
The funerals and burials over the past two weeks have taken place in Catholic, Congregational, Mormon and United Methodist houses of worship, among others. They have been held in Protestant megachurches and in a Jewish cemetery. A black Christian youth group traveled from Alabama to perform “Amazing Grace” at several of the services.
This illustration of religious belief in action, of faith expressed in extremis, an example at once so heart-rending and so affirming, has left behind one prickly question: Where were the humanists?
Well worth reading the whole piece in the New York Times here.
Continuing today’s hearse theme:
Parked opposite the biggest state hospital in the region are a few odd-looking, modified vehicles with a prominent stage and a decorative dome above. They are equipped with steps, stretchers and chairs and are marked with philosophical quotes like “towards the creator bidding adieu to creation”.
A player in the funerary business said the idea struck him during one of the funeral services when saw the carriers of a catafalque dropping the dead body over a trivial issue and fought in the street. “The dead should be venerated and the incident pained me a lot. So I designed one of the mortuary vans as a chariot,” he said.
“There is a huge demand for these vehicles, especially in the city outskirts and in the neighbouring villages where people want to make the funerals a grand event.”
“We ensure that the dead body reaches the funeral grounds and don’t bother about the petty quarrels or fights en route. A motorised vehicle is a much better choice than a makeshift catafalque since we don’t abandon the vehicle over petty quarrels which are common during funerals. We are after all involved in the noble service of ferrying the departed,” says the driver of one such chariot.
Answer and full story here. Sorry, no pic available.
There’s a small but growing number of funeral shoppers who are becoming increasingly determined to find funeral directors who will assist them, or partner with them, in arranging a funeral. Some simply want to roll their sleeves up and do their bit for the person who’s died; others want to keep the costs down.
It’s good to know that they don’t have too far to look. Funeral directors are pretty good at accommodating a DIY element — at the cost of some angst. DIY-ers cost hours of free advice and may be unreliable about getting to the crem on time. Funeral directors aren’t control freaks for fun.
Until now, it has been very hard for DIY-ers to find anyone who’ll rent them a self-drive hearse. It’s easy to see the enormous emotional satisfaction to be gained from driving the person who’s died on their last journey on Earth. It’s just as easy to see that there could be insuperable insurance difficulties in the way of this.
No carriage master that we know of has ever leased cars + drivers direct to bereaved people, let alone a self-drive hearse. While understandable, it’s also a pity. We know that a lot of funeral shoppers like to order and pay for their coffin direct from the maker. They’d probably like to source other goods and services, too. But funeral directors feel they must protect their commercial viability by being one-stop shops for everything, so they strongly encourage manufacturers and suppliers to deal with the trade only.
There’s plenty of good news for funeral shoppers who want to buy their own coffin. The shelves are now healthily stocked.
And now there’s good news for those who’d like to order a self-drive hearse. James Hardcastle at The Carriage Master can supply handsome hearses and limousines nationwide direct to bereaved people, with drivers or without.
They give you a little tutorial before you get behind the wheel, of course.
We can see a lot of forward-looking funeral directors offering their clients this option.
Find The Carriage Master here.
