Author: Charles

Embalmer required

16 July 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorised

Excitement is building around the GFG Funeral Industry Awards – the first ever held for the Dismal Trade. There’s been a lot of press interest and, so far, stories in Metro and the BBC website. Sky are interested in featuring the event as part of a feelgood series about nice things happening to nice people.

Even though there’s a lot of fun built into the event, the underlying purpose is bloodymindedly serious: to celebrate the unsung heroes of Funeralworld. Given the amount of dissing the industry has endured this year, it’s time to yank out the colonoscope, hold up the mirror and reach for the garlands.

Have you nominated anyone yet? If not, why not?

Are you allowed to nominate yourself? Yes. But get back-up.

The one category – the only category – in which we’re struggling is Embalmer of the Year. If you know of a brilliant reconstructionist with a heart of gold, please speak up for them.

To remind you, those categories again:

Most Promising New Funeral Director

Embalmer of the Year

The Eternal Slumber Award for Coffin Supplier of the Year

Most Significant Contribution to the Understanding of Death in the Media
(TV, Film, Newspaper, Magazine or Online)

Crematorium Attendant of the Year

Best Internet Bereavement Resource

The Blossom d’Amour Award For Funeral Floristry

Funeral Celebrant of the Year

Cemetery of the Year Award

Gravedigger of the Year

Funeral Director of the Year

Best Alternative to a Hearse

Book of the Year
(published after 1 May 2011)

Lifetime Achievement Award

If you wish to nominate someone, send an email with a written recommendation (no more than 100 words) to say why you think the company or individual is worthy of the award.

Please include an address and telephone number. Your citation may be quoted at the award’s ceremony on Friday 7 September 2012.

Email your entry to: goodfuneralawards@joyofdeath.co.uk by Monday 6 August 2012.

Time’s up, take yourself out

16 July 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Attitudes to older people, dying, End-of-life issues, euthanasia, Good death, medical interventions in dying, self-deliverance

A theme that we like to explore on this blog is the way in which longevity has reconfigured the landscape of dying. The blessing of long life has its downside: protracted decline. We are likely to linger longer, much longer, than our forebears. There’s a physical cost in chronic illness and possibly, also, mental enfeeblement. There’s the emotional cost to the elderly and their families. And then there’s the financial cost, which the government has wrestled with and now kicked deftly into the long grass.

In the Sunday Times Minette Marrin wrestled with it, too. I’ll have to quote a lot of it because the ST website is paywalled. She suggests some interesting solutions:

Last Thursday the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) announced in a chilling report that the escalating costs of an ageing population will mean yet more national austerity. Pointing out that the proportion of people over 65, who now make up 17% of the population, will rise to 26% by 2061, it estimates many increased costs, in care of the elderly, health and pensions, amounting to an added £80 billion a year in today’s money.

In the next 20 years, the number of people over 70 is set to rise by 50%, reaching nearly 10m, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The OBR states that Britain’s public spending will be “clearly unsustainable” over the next 50 years, despite the spending cuts. So, far from care for the elderly rising above today’s inadequate standards, it is almost certain to fall further below them. There’s no money now and in future there’s going to be even less. 

Universal bus passes (which cost £1 billion a year), winter fuel allowances (£2 billion) and free television licences must go. 

Everyone must accept that their savings, including their homes, may have to be spent on paying for care in old age. There’s no universal right to leave one’s property to one’s children.

Taxes of all kinds must rise hugely, or else there will have to be a large hypothecated tax upon people reaching old age. Services to old people must be reduced … Health service care must be rationed for the very old. Palliative care of every kind should be available, but not ambitious treatments.

There should be fewer old people. I’ve often felt the best thing one can do for one’s children is to die before real infirmity sets in. The taboo against deliberately shuffling off this mortal coil, as people did in other cultures in the interests of younger people, is wrong. Most people say they never want to be a burden to others in old age; it would be good if more of us felt able to prove we mean it, by taking a timely and pleasant walk up the snowy mountain. Especially since there’s no money left. [Our bold]

Source

West Grinstead says not in our back garden

16 July 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: crematoria

 

A little over a week ago we glanced at a growing furore in Sussex over a proposed new crematorium. Here’s the latest news from the front line:

More than once West Grinstead residents were told to ‘be civil’ as they grasped with open arms an opportunity to voice their opinions.

Patrick and Matthew Gallagher, of the funeral director and crematorium applicant Peacebound Ltd, and architect and surveyor Douglas J P Edwards, were laughed at and taunted as they attempted to explain to residents what the benefits of a new crematorium would be for their village.

An hour and a half of fiery debate between the passionate army of residents and the three crematorium applicants ended on a sombre note when one resident asked to have the final word.

He said: “We have had questions thrown back at us and we have been condescended to. I do not appreciate the way we have been spoken to.”

Mr Edwards explained to residents that much of the countryside would be protected if the proposed site were to go ahead but lost the interest of the group when he said that ‘pitifully few people actually went onto the site’.

To which residents called: “We live there, we know the site!” and ”We don’t want to go following you there.”

At the end of the meeting, when it was made clear to Patrick Gallagher that most residents had not warmed to his point of view, he made one last effort to end on good terms.

“I did not mean to offend anyone. My most sincere apologies I did not mean to do that …  I have tried to be as open and accessible as possible and I really do want to continue in that vein. I believe it’s a good development for local people … I do believe it will be a wonderful legacy to be left by members of West Grinstead and Horsham.”

To this comment the crowd laughed and one resident asked: “Would you like one in your back garden?”

Source 

ED’S NOTE: Highly embarrassing for Patrick Gallagher, a pillar of the industry, who owns two nearby funeral homes. Difficult not to feel for him?

 

Learning the hard lesson

16 July 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Death education

Professor Kathy Black peppers each startled student enrolled in her University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee class with a single question on the first day: “How old will you be when you die, and what are you going to die of?”

Halfway through the course, shaking them up again, she schedules a field trip to a local funeral home, including a tour of the embalming room. After frank talk about the emotions he deals with in his work, longtime funeral director Gary Wiegand enthralls the class with a short course on preserving a dead body

“They become aware of their own mortality,” she says. “Many of them change their mind about cremation, or being organ donors. Then they start to question their religion. They start to look at death, life, meaning in a more existential way.”

When Hannelore Wass, founder of the journal Death Studies, introduced a class on dying at the University of Florida in 1970, she was greeted with nervous jokes about what would be on the final exam.

“They called me the Death Lady,” Wass recalls. “They thought I was way off-base.”

Even after death studies became an accepted academic specialty, medical and nursing schools tended to minimize end-of-life issues. Now, Wass notes, the field is back in the spotlight. Although politicized by talk about “death panels” in the recent health care reform debate, the need to contain costs and improve care has forced a fresh look at how Americans die — mostly in hospitals, mostly without advance directives or wills.

“Each generation has to deal with the issue all over again,” says Wass, who lives in a Gainesville nursing home. “I think that as the population is aging, that may be one reason: We’re having to face it more and more.”

“Even professionals are not always comfortable talking about death and dying,” Black, a teacher with the presence of a motivational speaker, tells the class during a session on health care. “They are also human beings, and a constellation of their own personal experiences.”

“Everybody wants to travel to Europe, or write a book,” she says. “But for a lot of these people, this raises the question of what’s going to go in the middle. It forces them to consider how they want to live their life.”

Then Black throws a curveball. “Bad news,” she tells them: “You only have a year to live. What comes off the list?”

Next, after they have erased all their goals that take too much time, she gives them more bad news: They only have a couple of weeks left.

“People cry,” she says. “They’re gasping in class. This is a class where you walk out and you look at the trees differently. You look at life differently.”

Whole article here. 

This is how it’s supposed to be

15 July 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Co-op

From the website of the Federation of Funeral Cooperatives of Québec:

Cooperative funeral homes have proven a highly successful model in Canada, and especially Quebec. The cooperative movement is growing, with 9,600 deaths treated by funeral cooperatives in 2011 in Canada, up more than 5 percent from 2010.

The Fédération des Coopératives Funéraires du Québec (Federation of Funeral Cooperatives of Québec) is the umbrella structure for all funeral cooperatives in Quebec. Founded in 1987, it has grown to include 35 member cooperatives, 23 across the province, 10 in other provinces in Canada plus funeral cooperatives in Lima in Peru and Seattle in the United States.

Collectively owned by over 170,000 members in Quebec, the cooperatives operate within communities, for communities, following a philosophy of meeting the needs of bereaved families, whatever their budget, taking a humane approach and respecting values of solidarity, mutual assistance and integrity. The cooperatives offer many advantages to consumers, not least of which is their lower costs: the average cost of a funeral in Canada in 2004 was CAD$6,325, while the average cost of a cooperative funeral was $3,677.

Source

ED’S NOTE: There’s a big international summit of funeral co-operatives in Quebec in October this year which we’d love to attend but can’t because we’re skint.  We’ve heard good things about Canada’s funeral co-ops. We know that our friend Josh Slocum of the US Funeral Consumers Alliance will be there, so we hope he’ll tell us all about it.

 

Make your own carryyouoffin

13 July 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: coffins

From the Waikato Times, New Zealand:

A Hamilton high school night class offering people the chance to build their own coffin has been inundated with budding box builders looking to cut funeral costs.

Clyde Sutton, a Fraser High School relief teacher, said a surprising amount of community interest was behind the move to teach carpentry with what some might consider a potentially macabre example.

“Death can be a bit of a taboo subject but this class is a sign of the times and is much cheaper (than buying a coffin),” he said.

“It’s a way for people to look at their own mortality and have some decision in their death, rather than leaving it up to someone else.”

Fraser High adult and community education director, Peter Faulkner,initially laughed the idea of coffin-crafting class off as crazy. “There was enough enthusiasm out there though, so I started to take it more seriously,” he said.

Mr Faulkner said people used coffins for all sorts of things, such as coffee tables and bookshelves.

“It’s not only about saving some money but rather taking charge of that part of your life,” he said.

Source

An affair of the heart

13 July 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: memorialisation

From today’s Daily Telegraph:

Dedicated Winston Howes, 70, spent a week planting each oak sapling after his wife of 33 years Janet died suddenly 17 years ago.

He laid out the fledgling trees in a six-acre field but left a perfect heart shape in the middle – with the point facing in the direction of her childhood home.

The labour of love has now blossomed into a mature meadow – a peaceful oasis where Winston can sit and remember his wife of 33 years.

His meadow cannot be seen from the road and has remained a family secret until a hot air balloonist took a photograph from the air.

Source

Simile of the day

13 July 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Quotes

“This was the last of the fast Oval pitches. If Malcolm hadn’t taken nine for 57, there might have been a case for making Harry Brind the man of the match. Brind, in his last season as head groundsman at Surrey, produced a glorious wicket: hard, fast and as true as a dying man’s final words.”

Rob Smyth in the Guardian on the third Test vs South Africa, 1994.

Source

Simple solution

13 July 2012
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: funeral cost, funeral directors, Pauper funerals, scandals

 

We had an enquiry the other day about simple funerals. Our enquirer had visited the website of a funeral director, surveyed the components of their simple funeral (as prescribed by the NAFD at 11.4), and reckoned it would do nicely. The cost was £1640.

All our enquirer wanted on top was a limousine. He gave the funeral director his order: one simple funeral, please, and a limousine. So logical and straightforward did the request seem to him that he was astounded when the funeral director replied, “Thank you, sir, that’ll be £3670.”

Two grand for a limousine (fair price, £200 tops). Where the heck did that come from?

Students of the Dismal Trade will not be nearly as astounded as was our enquirer. Most funeral directors hate people buying their simple funeral, so they build in deterrents. The example above is just one. Anything outside the package shunts you up to an altogether more elevated price scale. Add a lim and you pay for a bespoke funeral. Another trick is to bundle a coffin of more than passing hideousness and make you feel like a toerag. The coffin in our enquirer’s simple bundle has no handles. Yes, really. Flagrant to those who read this blog, perhaps, but not, interestingly, something that our enquirer seems to have noticed or cared about.

A great many funeral directors do not advertise their simple funeral. Why does this funeral director advertise his? Is it a gambit to get people through the door – a loss leader that no one ever actually gets to buy? You tell me.

This sort of marketing sleight of hand comes from the Tommy Cooper school of conjuring. Clumsy. When you do something that’s bound to be found out, that’s stupid.
Intelligent, ethical funeral directors can teach their dim or devious fellows a trick here. Start with your professional fee. Calculate how much you need to charge to cover your time, expenses and overheads, then add a bit of profit. Be settled in your mind that what you take home will not be so little as to make you resentful. Once you’ve done that, you can add merchandise and services at a normal retail markup or even at cost. If a client turns up with their own coffin, you won’t mind a bit. The important thing is that there will be no imperative to upsell.

Exploitation of the bereaved is under threat, not from consumers, but from new entrants to the industry who are pricing their services fairly and transparently. The days of the dark arts are, we must hope, coming to an end.

Not yet awhile. Down in London, Barbie Leets was compelled to permit her mother to have a public health or council funeral when she failed to get together the five thousand pounds she needed to bury her. She is angry with the funeral directors in her locality. Why? In the words of the BBC report:

Barbie Leets ‘says that she was never told about the simple funeral that every funeral director is supposed to offer for nearly half the price she was quoted. “I feel very let down, very disappointed. I feel they took advantage of my situation at the time.”’

Watch the video clip here. Enjoy the response from NAFD spokesperson Dominic Maguire.

If you have a view about this, please add a comment. I am conscious that what I have written may not say it all. Examples of ethical simple funerals welcome, too.

Thoughts of a funeral-goer

13 July 2012
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: Thoughts of a funeralgoer

Posted on behalf of Mrs Mollington by Barry

I have not been well lately so Barry, Daisy’s lovely friend, is kindly typing this as I dictate my latest ‘Thoughts’.  He is an excellent touch-typist despite having builder’s hands.

He’s smiling –  he’s a retired English teacher.  But I don’t think he’ll mind if I proof-read it before he emails Charles.  I hope we meet the deadline.

Yes Barry, type everything I say and if there’s time I’ll edit it later.  If you’re not sure, put it in brackets.

(Deep breath…)

Everyone thought I had made a full recovery from that virus and, when Daisy visited me a few days ago, she said how well I was looking.  It was then that I knew something was wrong.  I could see the concern in her kind eyes.  I chose to ignore it, as she chose to ignore the way I struggled to take a sip of tea.

Dehydration.  Nature’s way of telling us we’re ready. 

The following day, I could barely lift my head from the pillow.  My children, Jamie and Alex, were next to my bed, sitting on the high-backed chairs from the dining room.

Jamie was talking quietly.  It was a while before I realised that she was reading from a book.  Kazuo Ishiguro’s sublime The Remains of the Day.  We had discussed it endlessly and we’d watched the film together.  Poor selfless Mr Stevens.  As I listened to my daughter reading, I decided that Anthony Hopkins would never have found happiness with Emma Thompson.  Then I pondered, ‘Why on earth is Jamie reading this to me when I am quite obviously dying?  Could she not find my Pam Ayres?’

(No Barry, I don’t think Mr Stevens wasted his life.  Well, not completely anyway.)    

My son Alex has an important job in the city.  So the fact that he was here in my bedroom in the middle of the morning meant that it must be serious.  That and those dining-room chairs.   He was talking softly into his phone – someone from work.  Lots of technical jargon and the occasional swear word.  Sounded like one of those characters from the mockumentary ‘2012’.  Things have changed since I worked in an office. 

(Yes, I’m positive mockumentary is a word Barry.  Ignore the squiggly red line.  On second thoughts, right click it and add it to the dictionary.)

We’re told that as we die, our lives flash before us.  My mind was a blank, apart from one vivid memory from more than sixty six years ago.  I was eight years old and really poorly with the measles.  Mum decided to fetch the doctor.  When I realised that she was about to leave, I called out in my delirium, ‘Don’t slam the door!’ As my bedroom door was quietly closed, I cried, ‘Noo!  You slammed the door…’

(Yes, Barry.  I’ll let you spell ‘no’ with an extra ‘o’.)  

Since that day, I have never liked being in a room with the door completely closed.  Over the years, my little foible has been the source of many comical incidents.

(No Barry, I’m not going to elaborate.) 

As Alex put his phone on my bedside table, I couldn’t help worrying about my last words.  One could say something noble, only to live a bit longer and end up saying something like, ‘There’s a cobweb up there.’  I have occasionally day-dreamed about this sort of thing in an idle moment. We’ve even talked about it around the dining room table.  Mr M wants to say the words from Spike Milligan’s tombstone, ‘I told you I was ill.’ But I favour, ‘There’s something incredibly important I’ve been meaning to tell you…’  Followed by a slight choking sound and then silence.

(Why do I call him Mr M?  Have you never seen an episode of Columbo, Barry?  The spouse always remains a mystery.)

Back to my dying moments.  As I was wondering whether I had the energy to say any final words at all, I heard a pitiful yelp coming from the landing.  So I mumbled, ‘Mr Chunky wants to see me.’

As I took my final breath, Jamie whispered, ‘Is she?’ But before Alex could reply, I breathed again and they both jumped, stifling short cries. 

When Daisy stepped out of the wardrobe, I should have realised that my grip on reality had well and truly slipped. She was frantically flicking through the pages of the Natural Death Handbook, shouting, ‘Where’s the cremfilm?  We can’t have any leakage!  She promised me there’d be no leakage!’

(Yes Barry, cremfilm is also a word.  And, no it’s nothing to do with keeping sandwiches fresh.)

Then Daisy calmly asked me if it was all right if she measured me for my coffin, adding, ‘Should it be in inches or centimetres?’

(No Barry, I didn’t see a bright light at the end of the tunnel: just Daisy with a look of determination and a wooden ruler.)

I must have fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep after that.  When I finally awoke, Daisy explained that they had taken it in turns to sit with me and Mr M had kept vigil through the night, holding my hand for hours.   It seems I was delirious at one point.  Everyone was extremely worried especially when I cried out, ‘Remember, I want a burial cloud AND Highland Cathedral!’

(No Barry, it’s not that strange.  A burial cloud is a type of coffin.  Yes, it should have a capital B and C.  And yes, I would like a real piper to play Highland Cathedral.  In a kilt.)

Postscript from Barry: Lyra is making a steady recovery and is staying with her sister Myra (I think that’s what she told me to say although I’m sure Daisy told me her name is Mary).