Author: Charles

What price eternity?

3 September 2012
Charles
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Categories: Attitudes to death, Death education

Following Michael Jarvis’s piece earlier today, I’m beginning to wonder whether death-denial isn’t more prevalent among the elderly than the young.

In the September Oldie magazine (strapline: ‘ticking the right boxes’) agony aunt Mavis Nicholson prints a couple of letters from readers: 

Dear Mavis

Re your piece in the Summer issue on dying, I’m so glad I’m not the only one who thinks she is not destined for death! For no reason I can think of I’ve always had the feeling that I’m not going to die. I shouldn’t wonder if there isn’t a whole pack of us out there, suffering from this delusion. I wonder if it has a name? Perhaps we should coin one. I’ll be interested to know if you get more responses from people with this ‘complaint’. 

Vivienne Rendall

Dear Mavis,

As usual, I looked at my Summer Oldie back to front, so started with you, a mere 81, not believing you’d ever die. I’m 86 and also quite unable to consider not being here any more. Like your Rob Woods, I believe part of us goes on. 

But — let’s be realistic — the more likely answer is that our brains are just not programmed to comprehend nothingness, so we invent endless theories about what might happen in the afterlife: heaven, hell, reincarnation, whatever. I have now reduced my expectations from eternal life to aiming for 100, now no longer as rare as it used to be. 

Helga Harman. 

Immortality therapy might do the trick. A dose of Gulliver’s Travels for starters.

When he first lands in Luggnagg and beholds the Struldbrugs, Gulliver “cried out as in a rapture; happy nation where every child hath at least a chance for being immortal!”

Gulliver revises his opinion when he realises that “the question therefore was not whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health, but how he would pass an eternal life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it … The diseases they were subject to still continue without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellation of things and the names of persons, even those who are their nearest friends and relations.”

It gets worse. 

Taboo or not taboo?

3 September 2012
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, Death education, Dress codes, funeral customs, medical interventions in dying, Natural Death Centre

Posted by Michael Jarvis, onetime Manager of the Natural Death Centre

For very many people in the UK ‘death’ is a subject left unmentioned. If you are reading this then you are part of a minority. A minority, furthermore, who would generally like to see more public openness regarding dying, death and funerals. We know the benefits: peace of mind from discussing one’s individual wishes, removing an unnecessary burden of decision-making from the bereaved, possible financial advantages from advance planning, and so on. 

Death seems to be a taboo subject for many, but does the general reticence to mention death, let alone discuss it, make it so?  We need to understand how it this has come to prominence. It wasn’t around in the time of our Victorian forebears despite their sensibilities in many areas (skirts on piano legs, for example). Rather, it was paraded with openness in art and literature and surrounded by a great deal of etiquette and ritual. Type ‘Jay’s of Regent St’ into a search engine to see details of a whole store devoted to mourning dress and accessories. So what happened in the last century to bring about such a seismic change? 

First, war and a pandemic. The First World War brought death on such a massive scale that repatriation was not feasible and Victorian and Edwardian notions of mourning were unsustainable. The scale of loss of life was immediately surpassed as a result of a global ‘flu pandemic and in the aftermath ‘death’ as a subject began to be swept under the carpet.  

Second, and there’s a degree of irony here, better living. In the 20’s and 30’s homes fit for heroes might have been a bit thin on the ground, but improvements in medicine and sanitation brought about a significant rise in life expectancy which had been less than 50 years for both men and women in 1900. Conversations http://www.mindanews.com/buy-cialis/ which began “We should talk about what happens when I die” would increasingly be answered by “Don’t be silly, you’ve got years ahead of you!” 

Third, and perhaps most relevant, is the simple fact that death is now largely institutionalised. Death happened in Victorian homes; now the event is most likely to occur in a hospital, outside the home and away from friends and family. It is most likely too that they will not see the body which will be removed by undertakers. Undertakers themselves would prefer the use of the term ‘funeral directors’, another example of the dead being at a distance from the family.  

Taboo? Perhaps on reflection it’s not so much that death is a forbidden topic as that for many people death happens to others, elsewhere, and is dealt with by someone else. And here’s the rub, denying the existence of death is unhealthy. Unless we can change that mindset we run the risk of creating psychological problems and we lose control: control of that which we wish for ourselves, that which will ease the pain of bereavement and even lessen the likelihood of family disputes and squabbles.  

Put bluntly it is my view that we would all be the  better if more people felt able to have conversations about death and its various implications. Projects such as the Good Funeral Guide and the Natural Death Centre have done and are doing sterling work but there’s a lot that individuals could do. Think of all the clubs and societies in your area – from the W.I. to Rotary via Probus, Lions, Mothers’ Union and countless others, the one thing they have in common is that from time to time they struggle to find speakers. Offer your services. Challenge them to put death on the agenda.

 

J’accuse!

2 September 2012
Charles
35 Comments
Categories: funeral directors

It was always going to be risky, this business of recommending funeral directors. We set out purposefully, hoping for the best with the best possible intentions, knowing that if you’re going to make anything in this world, you’re going to make mistakes. We’re optimists. It seemed, and still seems, to be a good thing to do, to show funeral shoppers the way to the people who’ll look after them best. Win-win.

Yes, it’s an important service. Because of their reluctance to say to their funeral director, “Now take me to your mortuary, I want to see that everything is in order,” funeral shoppers must, instead, blindly trust him/her to discharge what is, to them, a funeral director’s most important role: to be nice to their dead person. As we know, there can be many a slip twixt back and front. As independent consumer advocates, we are in the best possible position to offer the reassurance that consumers most desire.

But Funeralworld is another country; they do things differently there. Who (the hell) are we to sit behind our keyboards and opinionate? What do we know, dammit?! Well, by sheer hard work we have learned. When we’ve boobed — and we have — we have put our hands up quick as a flash.  We’ve done it the hard way. It’s been a slog at our own expense. And, yes, we’ve won precious credibility.

So it came as a blow last week to undergo a credibility-threatening event which, coincidentally, came at a time when, having suspended our listing in order to radically remodel it in sustainable form, we are about to relaunch it. We know that our listing is 98% good. We need to aim for 100% minimum and roll it out nationwide. We can do it. Stand by for an announcement.

The credibility-threatening event was the arrival of a letter here at GFG HQ. Here’s what it said:

Dear Mr Cowling

I see you recommend __________ of __________!   (Name and place deleted.)

Have you visited his premises? I have, and was appalled. Only one room divided by a curtain to make a reception and a chapel … I also asked where he kept his bodies and was told in his mortuary. I could not see where his mortuary was so have asked around and been told he does not have one. Also he has no cold storage and in hot weather advises people that a relative is not suitable for visiting when really he has not collected the body from the hospital because he has nowhere to keep it! After leaving I also noticed he has only one door into the premises and no parking. I did not like the idea of my dad being hurried across the road on a stretcher and left in the front room so I went somewhere else. I may have paid more but at least I know my dad was cared for in proper surroundings.

I follow your blog and you seem to be a very nice man, perhaps you are too nice and have had the wool pulled over your eyes by someone who talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk.

I wonder how you follow up your recommendations, do you make spot checks, do you phone around pretending to be a customer.

The letter is signed, but there is no address, postcode or any other contact details. 

The subject of the letter is a funeral director in whom we placed an absolute trust. He was trained to the highest standards by the doyenne of tutors and seemed to us to be born to be an undertaker. He recently moved to new premises which are, by his own admission, small. We trusted that they were big enough. Above all, we trusted that he would have made adequate provision for the care of his dead and, of course, installed a fridge. We hadn’t yet got around to re-visiting him. 

What could have happened? He’d gone mad? He was never anything but a charming blagger? He had money problems? We all know well enough how the most unlikely people can go off the rails. 

It was time for a spot check.

Having no address for my correspondent and, therefore, no assurance that she is who she says she is, but knowing that she follows the blog, I publish my reply here. 

Dear _______

Thank you for your letter (undated) drawing our attention to what you allege are grave shortcomings in the premises and mortuary equipment of the funeral director you named. 

I paid him a visit on Friday and asked to be shown his mortuary/embalming suite. There I found a perfectly adequate fridge. Every tray had on it a duvet which is used to cover each occupant. Every tray had its own pillow, and on each pillow lay an artificial rose (of rather good quality). The mortuary was entirely clean and odour-free. 

The premises are, as you say, small. While I was there I spoke to a person who had come to visit her dead relative — not for the first time. She was perfectly happy with both the premises and the service she was receiving. Indeed, she could not have expressed higher satisfaction with both. 

I am pleased to be able to tell you that your principal misgiving is unfounded. I cannot verify your allegation concerning the coffin. As to the premises having no rear entrance, we must bear in mind that many funeral directors do not have rear access, yet manage to transfer their dead in a perfectly respectful manner. We must bear in mind also that it is the tradition in this country ostentatiously to display a coffin in a hearse on the public highway.

The funeral director has been offered the lease on the much bigger premises next door and intends to move as soon as he can. 

We remain happy to recommend him. Our opinion of him rides as high as ever.

Please feel free to post a response to this in a comment box, but please do not publish the name of the funeral director concerned because this may involve us in litigation. This is a censor-free blog except in cases of libellous comments. Please be aware that any comment you post will reveal your IP address.

With all best wishes,

Charles

 

 

One planning problem we don’t have over here

31 August 2012
Charles
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Categories: crematoria

Authorities in an eastern Polish city are trying to stop a funeral company from building a crematorium in the same neighborhood as the former German Nazi death camp of Majdanek.

Full story.

Thoughts of a funeral-goer

31 August 2012
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: Thoughts of a funeralgoer

Posted by Lyra Mollington

Editor’s note: before reading Lyra’s latest thoughts, it may be helpful to read last week’s Thoughts of a funeral-goer.

Whilst everyone else was making their way to the cloisters to look at the flowers, I popped back to have a chat with the young lady chapel attendant. I pretended that I had left my reading glasses behind. As we approached the pew, I apologised. Silly me – they were in my bag all the time!

Before she could lead me out, I asked her if she had a busy day ahead. She told me that it had been fairly quiet recently and there were only five services that day. Which was interesting, because Joyce’s family had been told by their funeral director that the crematorium was ‘chocker’. Perhaps he was worried that if he told the family the truth – that he was having trouble fitting them in to his tight schedule – they would look elsewhere. Although I doubt it. Who wants to go ‘shopping around’ for a funeral? Apart from me of course.

I casually mentioned that the lady vicar had seemed to be in a hurry. Was there a family emergency? The chapel attendant’s lips were sealed. Well almost. She smiled and asked me if everything had been all right. I was about to say yes, apart from the vicar bolting for the door like a greyhound released from her trap, but before I could speak, a voice boomed from the balcony. I had completely forgotten about the organist. Unlike the chapel attendant, he was not at all discreet. But he was extremely charming.

‘Ha!’ he boomed. ‘She was panicking from the moment she arrived!’ He was now leaning over the balcony. ‘She’s doing a service at Randall’s Park in half an hour and the traffic between here and Leatherhead can be a nightmare. And there’s been a road closure. Squeaky bottom time methinks!’

And with that he sat down and started playing his organ in the style of Eric Morecambe! The chapel attendant tried not to smile.

Interestingly, one my favourite comedians used to be a crematorium organist – Bill Bailey. Perhaps they’re all comedians. Perhaps they have to be.

I digress. I wasn’t going to get any more information out of the chapel attendant and the organist was off to ‘powder his nose’ so I left to join the rest of the family.

Is there any sight more forlorn than smartly dressed bereaved people silently looking at flowers? In this case, even more so because Joyce’s family had requested ‘no flowers’.

I put on my solemn face. Inwardly I was smiling. Joyce wouldn’t have liked the vicar… but she would have loved the organist.

Buried in a ‘Wasp Rockery’

30 August 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Art and death, cemeteries, death and funerals

Posted by Vale

Gore Vidal died at the end of July aged 86. Although he would have wanted to be remembered as a writer and thinker, he was perhaps better known as a raconteur and wit with a vicious line in put downs. He had a long feud with writer Norman Mailer and once goaded the belligerent Mailer so much that he knocked Vidal down. As he fell to the floor Vidal managed to say ‘Ah, Norman, lost for words again’.

But then, with an insouciant air the GFG itself likes to sport, he believed that ‘Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.’

Dick Cavett, who used to host a TV chat show, has said that ‘You can be sure of one thing. Gore Vidal hates being dead. Unless of course we die and go somewhere you write, drink, have sex, appear on TV and, above all else, talk.’

It’s less well known that he had chosen and laid out his final resting place many years ago. His headstone of polished granite, marked with his date of birth, was in place and waiting only for his own death and interment for its inscription to be completed. The headstone includes Gore’s lifelong companion, Howard Austen, who died in 2003.

It’s in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington DC which dates back to the early 1700s. Christopher Hitchens called it a ‘WASP rockery’. You’d expect the patrician Vidal to want to keep distinguished company. Perhaps more unexpected is the suggestion that he chose his plot for another reason altogether. Nearby is the grave of Jimmie Trimble, a school friend and lover of Vidal’s who died on Iwo Jima. Jimmie was, the New York Times has suggested, ‘the only person with whom [Vidal] ever felt wholeness.’

Sources: Dick Cavett, Huffington Post

For the post mortem amusement of…

30 August 2012
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Art and death, Poetry

Posted by Vale

Richard Brautigan was a writer and a poet. He died not long ago, which makes this poem very timely. Ed Dorn wrote it ‘for the post mortem amusement of Richard Brautigan’. Let’s hope he is:

A B H O R RE N C E S
November 10, 1984
Death by over-seasoning: Herbicide
Death by annoyance: Pesticide
Death by suffocation: Carbon monoxide
Death by burning: Firecide
Death by falling: Cliffcide
Death by hiking: Trailcide
Death by camping: Campcide
Death by drowning: Rivercide
Lakecide
Oceancide
Death from puking: Curbcide
Death from boredom: Hearthcide
Death at the hands of the medical profession: Dockcide
Death from an overnight stay: Inncide
Death by suprise: Backcide
Death by blow to the head: Upcide
Death from delirious voting: Rightcide
Death from hounding: Leftcide
Death through war: Theircide & Ourcide
Death by penalty: Offcide
Death following a decision: Decide

Ed Dorn wrote the famous Gunslinger. Brautigan is best known for books like The Confederate General from Big Sur and Trout Fishing in America

Thanks to Celebrant Kim Farley for finding the poem.

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Disinherited!

29 August 2012
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: Art and death

Posted by Vale

Once in a while, looking around, it dawns on you that getting to the kitchen has become an obstacle course; setting off for the bedroom an orienteering event. It’s the moment you realise that your books have stopped furnishing your rooms and begun – like a literary occupy movement – to take them over. Bitter as it is, it’s the moment you realise that a clear out is needed.

We were tackling a pile or two recently (on the scree slopes in the dining room) when our son came in and cried out ‘but those are my heirlooms!’ It’s a comfort to know that my collection of Mazo de La Roche and Marks and Spencer Cookbooks will be in good hands after I am gone but, I thought, what will he do with the electronic books?

It’s a good question. Libraries (and record collections) can be read and loaned, treasured, split up and shared out – unless they are electronic. The problem is that you never wholly own a Kindle book – you simply purchase a right to read that is at present non-transferable. Equally a music collection bought from Apple cannot be passed on as digital content (legally at least). Nowadays the day you die is the day the music dies too. It’s a queer reversal.  In the past it was you that exited while your possessions lived on in other hands. In the digital world you will live on in a thousand guises, while it is your digital assets that fade away.

It looks as though you might as well be buried with your Nook or  your Kindle, iPods or iPad – new grave goods for the virtual afterlife. After all your books and music will already be safe, stowed away again in their own clouds.

Read more about it here.

Suicide note

28 August 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Uncategorised

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

I picked up the London Evening Standard today and may as well have logged on to GFG. Of the three cover stories, one was about the health of the nonagenarian Duke of Edinburgh; one about the suspended death sentence of a Chinese woman convicted of murdering a Brit, and another about the suicide of Top Gun director Tony Scott, who threw himself off a Los Angeles bridge.

I’m sure even ardent Republicans here will feel a degree of concern for the Queen’s aged husband, and will recall with affection at least some of his un-PC utterances over the years:

‘You look like you’re ready for bed!’ To the President of Nigeria, who was wearing traditional robes.

‘Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?’ To residents of the Cayman Islands in 1994.

‘I would like to go to Russia very much — although the bastards murdered half my family.’ In 1967, when asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union.

‘How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?’ To a Scottish driving instructor in 1995.

‘There’s a lot of your family in tonight.’ After noticing business leader Atul Patel’s name badge during a Buckingham Palace reception for 400 influential British Indians in 2009.

As for story two, I’m sure most here oppose the death penalty, even for heinous crimes.

But do any of you have views on the ‘ethics’ of suicide? Having recently blogged about the need sometimes to release anger at funerals (here), suicide cases spring to mind: we love and miss the person, we wish we could have made things different, but why did the selfish bastard do this to us?

Despite this human response, most religious and non-religious folk alike are united in compassion for those troubled souls who take their own life for whatever reason, and whether they’re seemingly fortunate or clearly deprived and abused.

Religions have varying degrees of forgiveness for what is generally held to be a sin across the faith spectrum.

The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church states, ‘We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.’

Meanwhile, Conservative Protestants, especially Evangelicals, have argued self-murder is as sinful as murder. And because these sects don’t believe in prayers for the dead, they say salvation can only be earned prior to death: the unpardonable sin then becomes not the suicide itself, but rather the refusal of the gift of salvation.

In Jewish law, suicide is deemed sinful, but it may be acceptable as an alternative to certain cardinal sins, when it becomes martyrdom for sacred principles. In practice every means is used to excuse suicide—usually by determining either that the suicide itself proves that the perpetrator was not in his or her right mind, or that the suicide must have repented after performing the act but before death took place.

Most Muslim clerics consider suicide forbidden and make a point of including suicide bombing. Prophet Muhammad allegedly said: ‘Whoever is cruel and hard on a non-Muslim minority, or curtails their rights, or burdens them with more than they can bear, or takes anything from them against their free will; I will complain against the person on the Day of Judgment.’

The revolution will be televised

25 August 2012
Charles
10 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

A premier-league TV production company (we’re not allowed to say the name) is presently shooting a documentary about the GFG Awards, complete with behind-the-scenes peeks at some of the nominees at work in their own workplace. They want lots of human interest. Some nominees have already been contacted; the rest are advised to stand by. 

This is great news for The Cause. Brian Jenner (organiser of the Joy of Death Convention) and I have done our due diligence and we are convinced that the motives of the team behind this are the sound and sincere. The half-hour documentary, dedicated exclusively to the GFG Awards, will be one of a series of documentaries about heartwarming competitive events. 

The finished piece of work will reflect the deep seriousness, emotional intelligence and sense of humour which characterise the best people who work in the funeral ‘industry’. It will repair some of the reputational damage wrought by exposés of malpractice which have beset us this year. It will show funeral shoppers that there are people in this business of death whose excellence and beauty of heart they had never dreamed of. 

If you can join us, please buy your ticket at: http://www.joyofdeath.co.uk/tickets/ 

We are more grateful than we can say to Sunset Coffins for donating the funeral Oscars, pictured above.