Author: Fran Hall

St. Margaret’s Hospice Funerals. It’s over.

27 July 2022
Fran Hall
1 Comment
Categories: Hospice Funerals

It gives us no pleasure at all to report that the ill-fated venture embarked on by the CEO of St. Margaret’s Hospice in Somerset back in 2017 has come to an end. A statement on the website was posted today, and today’s edition of the Somerset County Gazette confirmed an email that we received this morning telling us that the funeral business had closed.

Back in November 2017, when we first heard about the plans for a well loved and respected hospice to go into partnership with a company operating crematoria around the UK and offer a franchise scheme for other hospices to do the same, we sounded the alarm in a post on this blog.

We followed this up the next month with a letter that we sent to the board of trustees of every single hospice in the UK advising them against following St. Margaret’s Hospice into what we considered to be a foolish and costly venture – we published the letter here. We were supported by many funeral directors from across the country who shared our concerns and added their names to the letter.

Further posts on the GFG blog on the same topic from December 2017 can be seen here, here and here. We were taking it very seriously indeed, as you can see. The use of funds donated to a hospice to set up a funeral directing business seemed to us to be foolhardy in the extreme, and the franchise idea was a folly that we hoped no other hospice would be tempted to embark on.

Undaunted, St. Margaret’s Hospice went ahead with their plans, and on 22nd January 2018 they opened the doors of their first branch in Taunton – we wrote about it here and shared the results of our survey , evidencing that the vast majority of donors to a hospice would not be happy for their donations to be used to set up and run a funeral franchise. These findings were referenced in a BBC Points West programme that covered the controversial closure of St. Margaret’s in-patient hospice ward in Yeovil.

In August 2019, we wrote another post with updates about the venture, including the disappearance of Low Cost Funerals as a partner with the hospice. St. Margaret’s were going it alone.

Then it all went quiet. Other things took priority as the whole world was affected by the pandemic. The success or failure of the hospice funeral venture in Somerset was not on our radar until today’s email arrived.

Looking back, and reading back through our public expressions of concern, it is still astonishing to consider the naivety – or foolishness – of the trustees who supported the idea of a hospice investing funds into offering funerals to its patients and the wider community, in a town where there were plenty of funeral directors already. It is difficult to understand the business case that persuaded them. And it is difficult to understand why the many, many warnings were not heeded.

The hospice apparently assured anyone who questioned them about the ethics of offering patients a funeral provided by their trading subsidiary that they wouldn’t be ‘pushing’ the funeral service at patients and families’, so it couldn’t be that patients would be encouraged to choose the hospice funeral service. It must have simply been confidence in the idea that local people would be attracted by the idea of supporting the hospice through electing to use the funeral service they operated. A risky basis for investing such a considerable amount of donated funds, as we pointed out at the time.

(Reading Ms Lee’s comments to the Somerset County Gazette today, one could be forgiven for wondering quite what she means by this statement ‘Mrs Lee added: “More recently, a change in regulations has also limited how we talk to patients and their families, and because this venture has not realised a financial return for the charity, it is now necessary to close our funeral business”. How exactly were patients being talked to about the funeral business?

St. Margaret’s Hospice most recent trustee report (dated November 2021) states that the decision was taken to “impair the intercompany balance that the funeral business owes to the Hospice. At this moment in time the Board cannot say with certainty that this balance will be recovered, there are too many unknowns in the future projections for the funeral business. The Trustees have therefore recognised a £508,000 impairment provision in the accounts to reflect this uncertainty”.

The report goes on to state; “We are proud of the decision we took to enter the funeral marketplace and saw this as a strategic and natural extension of the services that the hospice provides, as well as an opportunity to diversify and generate a new and sustainable income stream for the charity. Our aim was to disrupt the marketplace, challenge funeral poverty by encouraging more transparent and fair pricing, and provide our community with alternative options, which we have achieved. The financial return has not yet been achieved, but a new pricing and marketing strategy is being implemented with the aim to do just that.”

And yet, here we are. 

Exactly where we and so many others predicted we would be. Hundreds of thousands of pounds spent, a charity shop specializing in baby and children’s items closed to convert into a funeral home, irreparable damage done to the reputation of a much -loved hospice and, presumably, several local people losing their jobs.

It’s hard to find out how much money from legacies and fund raising has been wasted on this foolhardy venture, Companies House shows the most recent accounts for St. Margaret’s Funerals Ltd. (Company No 10985626) as at 31st March 2021 with a deficit of £427,946. The accounts for Hospice Funerals LLP(Company No OC419616) as at 31st March 2021 show a deficit of £328,348, while there are no current accounts for Hospice Funerals Trading Ltd (Company No10953084), the second company in the LLP with St. Margaret’s Hospice Funerals. 

Interested parties – of which there are likely to be many – will have to wait until the trustees’ report from St. Margaret’s Hospice reveals the extent of the losses.

In the meantime, we are very sorry that we were right. 

If only someone had listened.

500 days

2 March 2022
Fran Hall
1 Comment
Categories: Absolute Beginner - A Personal Story of Grief, bereavement, Grief

 

Oh my love. 

 

500 days have passed. 500 days without you in my world. 

 

How have I got through these days? I remember as clear as if it were yesterday the moment that you died, the sudden knowledge that everything – everything had changed. Everything about that moment is vivid in my mind, although the hours leading inexorably towards it are blurred and confused in my memory. But the instant of your death is seared in my heart forever. It was as if all the air was sucked from the room. At that instant, all of our life together came to an abrupt end, and the unknown rest of my days alone began. 

 

It’s inconceivable to me that so many days have come and gone since that moment. I have no idea how I managed to get to today. In the beginning, in the madness of those early crazed days of shock and fear and dread, I couldn’t imagine getting to this milestone. 

 

It was all I could do to get through each day, sometimes each hour. Every minute was endless, heavy with the weight of the unknown, the rawness of love turned to grief. I had to get used to it, to learn how to be. Who to be.

 

I didn’t recognise myself – I still don’t much of the time, but in those early days I was completely undone, like a shattered kaleidoscope. Picking up the pieces, such a literal expression of the work of grieving, you have to find the broken pieces of the person you used to be and try to reassemble them into something that feels a bit like the you that was. 

 

It’s so bloody hard. There are still days when I just can’t, when I function on autopilot, just getting through another day. This was every day, to begin with, but gradually, as the world turned and the seasons changed and time went by, these worst of days are fewer and fewer. I had to find my own remedies, to learn to trust that the awfulness would pass and to just endure.

 

I thought often of Jon Underwood in those early days, hearing his lovely gentle voice reminding me of the impermanence of everything, and of course he was right. Nothing stays the same, everything changes, the darkness is always followed by the light. Steve’s voice echoes in my mind too – “keep going, keep going”. 

 

And I did. I am. One day after another. One night after another. Getting days behind me since the day everything changed.

 

So here I am. 500 days done. Who knows how many ahead. Maybe not many, if the insanity in Ukraine explodes into a world war, or if a new variant of the virus that took Steve’s life emerges. Maybe thousands, if by some miracle I live another 20 years or more. Nobody knows. I understand this now, the uncertainty, the impermanence. Life is so very fragile, what we believe to be given is never guaranteed. Across the world, everyone learns this at some point in their lives, some brutally, with shocking surprise, some with resignation and acceptance. 

 

I have learned so much in these last 500 days. I am a different person now. I don’t know if this is a common thing, or whether it’s magnified by the experience of losing Steve to the pandemic that has changed all our lives. I think it’s probably the latter. This lived experience of trauma is shared by many others I have met and spoken to, it’s borne out by research and is the ongoing subject of many academic studies.

 

Grieving during a pandemic is not to be recommended, that’s for sure. The complexities and compounding factors are myriad, and far beyond my ability to articulate (not least because of the lingering impact of Long Covid which continues to affect my retrieval of words, along with a number of other unwelcome after-effects).

 

All I can do is try and capture where I am now, to time stamp the journey of my grief.

 

Apart from the presence of my beloved grandchildren, the concern of my daughters and the kindness and support of a few lovely friends, the gruelling endurance of the last 16 and a half months has only been made bearable by finding others who share this pain.

 

For me, this came in the shape of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, a campaign group fighting for an inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic; a cause that I instantly felt aligned to when I first heard about them.

 

From the first tentative steps in November 2020, when I wondered whether joining a group of bereaved people might be too overwhelming in the raw newness of my grief, to where I am now, part of the interim campaign team, heading up the volunteer group who look after the National Covid Memorial Wall and one of the official spokespeople for the group, it has been an immersive, enriching journey, one that has corralled and marshalled my grief into something meaningful and productive.

 

The ongoing campaign work has shaped the life I am living now, with a weekly commitment at the wall in London each week where I have found a group of wonderful new friends, and where I meet other people every time who are locked into their own personal hell of bereavement. These conversations are precious glimpses into the lives of other people who are living my experience, and I honour the memories and recollections that are shared with me in brief encounters alongside a wall of 180,00 painted hearts.

 

Being part of the campaign has catapulted me into a political arena, giving me the opportunity to meet  my heroes, the guys behind Led By Donkeys, to meet with the prime minister in the garden of Downing Street, to meet many opposition MPs,  the Mayor of London and the leader of Lambeth Council, to attend the first PMQs open to the public and then to have lunch with Fleur Anderson MP and to meet with a cabinet minister to discuss specialised bereavement support. 

 

It has offered me multiple interviews and airtime on all British and many international media channels, TV and radio and social media. I have learned how to do live to air interviews and keep to the key messages. I have been featured alongside politicians and commentators, speaking on behalf of hundreds of thousands of bereaved families across the country challenging the government in their handling of the pandemic.

 

I have had the privilege of appearing on Newsnight and then being invited back for two further interviews, the latest one with a highlight of Jacob Rees-Mogg MP being unable to look at the screen on which I was speaking. My grandchildren think it is normal to have a Nana on TV, they roll their eyes when they’re asked to be quiet when I appear on the screen.

 

The energy and focus of being part of this group has helped me immeasurably. I have something to do beyond trying to be the person I used to be, doing the things I used to do, and this is incredibly nurturing and nourishing for my new, diminished self. I feel I have something useful to do, on behalf of other people as well as myself. I have a new identity now, associated with the campaign group. 

 

The bitter irony is that the one person who I long to talk to about all this new-found life, all of the media, the focus, the purpose of what I’m doing – that person is gone. 

 

I hope he would be proud of me, 500 days on. I miss him beyond words.

 

 

Funeral Photography

23 November 2021
Fran Hall
5 Comments
Categories: funeral photography, Progressive funeral directors, The future of funerals

Funeral photographer Rachel Wallace 

(Photo credit Louise Winter)

 

On Sunday 22nd November 2021, something magical happened.

 

As the sun rose, Natasha Bradshaw, the inspirational superintendent of Mortlake Crematorium opened the gates to Mortlake’s beautiful grounds, and a trickle of people started to arrive for a  day that would be unlike anything that has ever been done before.

 

People carrying suitcases of changes of clothes arrived in Richmond from all across the south of England, ready to attend a series of staged funeral ceremonies. They were our extras, the mourners for seven fictional individuals whose funerals were taking place as part of the GFG’s Inspirational Funerals photoshoot.

 

The incredible amount of preparation that had gone into the day was evident, as the ceremonies began and lead funeral photographer Rachel Wallace of Farewell Photography and our indispensable second photographer Tracey Anderson started a long day’s work.

 

Funeral directors and celebrants stepped into their roles as if the funerals were real, hearses came and went, rapid costume changes meant black clad mourners reappeared wearing leopard-print outfits and bright coats, coffins were carried, flowers were placed, candles lit and blown out and lit again, beautiful orders of service were handed out and collected, music played, eulogies were read, people cried and laughed and danced and drank mugs of tea, children and dogs ran around and got under everyone’s feet, people watched via webcasts from afar – and everything was captured by the cameras.

 

The ceremonies ran like clockwork throughout the day, under the expert eye of event producer Debbie Malynn, finishing with the welcome words ‘It’s a wrap’ as the light faded and the last images were caught by the lenses. Rachel and Tracey gathered up their equipment, and Natasha and the lovely Mortlake staff tidied up the detritus of the day ready for the real funerals that would take place a few hours later – we didn’t get names, but thank you so much for clearing up after us!!

 

What was this all about, this extraordinary day of role play and expensive props? Why did we draw on the incredible generosity of all of the volunteers who gave up their day to be part of it?

 

It was because we want to show the world how beautiful and inspirational funerals can be, by creating – and then sharing – photographs that can be used by anyone.

 

The gallery of images from Sunday will be made available free of charge to anyone who wants them – for articles, websites, blog posts or social media, for brochures and literature, wherever and however these images are needed, they can be used.

 

We want to change the visual vocabulary about funerals so that everyone everywhere can see just how extraordinary and meaningful a funeral can be.

 

We know how important this is. Currently, stock photos of funerals all reinforce the narrative of sombre faced men in black carrying on their shoulders traditional (MDF) coffins dressed with coffin sprays. Just google images of funerals and you’ll see what we mean.

 

Without changing the visual lexicon, we won’t change the landscape of funerals. No matter how much we want people everywhere to think and talk about funerals, the general psyche is reluctant to do so until it’s absolutely necessary, and by then it’s too late, the social pressure is significant to conform with ‘what everyone else does’.

 

It’s time to change what people see, on as grand a scale as possible. Using pictures that give subconscious messages of ‘all of this is ok’.

 

This was our purpose in putting out a call for support in the Good Funeral Guild – and what an amazing response we had.

 

We want to thank everyone who participated, it couldn’t have happened without the phenomenal goodwill and generosity of everyone involved. You are all complete stars, and you have been part of something that will impact people you will never know or meet.

 

We need to say a particular thank you to the fabulous funeral directors and celebrants who made the funerals so real:

 

Firstly, the lovely Michael Tiney of Southall Funeral Service, whose immaculate cars were there at the crack of dawn for June’s ceremony and whose florist provided her flowers. Thanks to Becky Lee Wale, Daisy Chain Celebrant, who officiated as June’s celebrant. June’s beautiful coffin came from Somerset Willow.

 

Our second funeral for Alma was facilitated by the equally lovely Jo Williamson from Albany Funerals in Kent, with Angela Morgan officiating. The fabulous leopard print hearse was supplied by Green’s Carriage Masters (Jo generously covered the cost of the hire) and Alma’s coffin was created by Coffin Club North London.

 

The third funeral was for Sam, with more lovely funeral directors, Jacqui and Nick Taimtarha of  White Rose Modern Funerals,  Hannah Jackson McCamley (Hannah the Celebrant) leading the ceremony, and a beautiful woollen Natural Legacy coffin from Hainsworth Coffins.

 

The fourth funeral, for Maurice, had the awesome Lucy Coulbert from The Individual Funeral Company rocking up in her LandRover hearse and following car, and a stunning shroud provided by Yuli Somme from Bellacouche. Thanks also to David Holmes of Holmes and Family Funeral Directors for sourcing and bringing a beautiful hand drawn bier which Maurice’s shroud rested on for his outdoor ceremony. The celebrant for Maurice was the wonderful Rosalie Kuyvenhoven of Rituals Today.

 

Rosalie also co-ordinated the last three funerals for Noah, Ariella and May; in a completely ground-breaking part of the day, and with guidance from Natasha who has much experience of looking after baby and children’s funeral ceremonies, we photographed three of these to offer bereaved parents some beautiful sensitive imagery that could help them to begin to think about these most difficult of ceremonies.

 

Rosalie worked closely with Jo Shears from Poetic Endings on these special funerals, with coffins supplied by J. C. Atkinsons and a Swan Wing Cocoon from Bellacouche.

 

We also owe thanks to Suzie White for supplying us with stunning orders of service for the ceremonies – and for also stepping in, alongside her husband, to play particularly difficult roles for the camera.

 

Last of all, thanks to Jane, Isabel and Liv, current GFG directors, and Louise Winter, former Editor of the GFG, for their part in creating this incredible day.

 

This was a collective, tremendously generous effort by a multitude of people – not just those named in this blog post, but all of the other friends and family of members of the Good Funeral Guild who came along and played a part in a day that will change the face of funerals.

 

When the photos appear, you will all see just how worthwhile it was.

 

Thank you everyone.

 

Standardised price lists for all

11 October 2021
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: CMA Market Investigation, funeral cost, The future of funerals

 

Regular readers of the GFG blog will know that we have been calling for transparency in the funeral sector for well over a decade.

Last month, on 16th September, a seismic shift finally occurred when the Competition and Markets Authority’s Funerals Market Investigation Order 2021 finally came into effect.

All funeral directors in the UK are now required to comply with the Order, which, among other things, requires funeral directors to display price information in a clear and prominent manner, outside their premises, inside their premises and on their websites.

The CMA have specified exactly how information must be presented, with a Standardised Price List (SPL) which must follow the layout and wording supplied by them, an Additional Options Price List and a third price list showing information provided local crematorium operators.

In addition, funeral businesses must also similarly display their Terms of Business and Disclosure of Interests, including stating the ultimate owner of the business.

At last, people looking for a funeral director to help them organise a funeral will be able to compare prices between different funeral directors with ease – at the top of the Standardised Price List there is a total figure for the funeral director’s charges for their services for an attended funeral, below which is breakdown of how this total is arrived at.

The costs for an unattended funeral must also be displayed, and typical figures for burial and cremation fees must also be shown.

It is now, in theory at least, straightforward to compare funeral directors on the prices they charge, which will help people to understand the likely fees that they will be asked to pay – a hugely welcome development after years of opacity and confusion in how prices are displayed by varying businesses.

What we need to see now – and what the CMA will be monitoring – is total compliance from all funeral directors. Seven days after the Order came into effect, a disturbing number of companies seem not to have understood that this new situation is mandatory – we noted a number of well-established and prominent businesses who do not have a Standardised Price List on their website this weekend, while other premises appear to think displaying an A4 size poster at floor level in their window is complying with the Order.

It is incumbent on the funeral trade associations, head offices of large corporate companies and all independent funeral directors to ensure that members and branches are all compliant with the Order.

There is absolutely no excuse for not doing so, and there will be penalties incurred by those funeral directors who continue to fail to provide the information required.

Incidentally, we would add that it is also incumbent on the trade associations to make sure their own funeral houses are in order before using the CMA’s stipulations to attempt to hold businesses outside of their jurisdiction to account – and offering membership as protection.

The Good Funeral Guide have required all our Recommended funeral directors have their prices online for years, so, even though it has been onerous for firms who have always been transparent to follow requirements imposed because of the failure of the sector to be open about prices and ownership, we warmly welcome the CMA’s intervention.

It is regretful that this has been necessary. It is regretful that there still appear to be companies that don’t feel bereaved people deserve the courtesy of knowing what prices will be charged before they start making arrangements for a funeral. It is more than regretful, in fact, it is shameful.

If you come across funeral directors who aren’t displaying the mandatory documents, or if you happen upon a funeral director website that doesn’t have the Standardised Price List just one click away from the home page, do please let the CMA know, in confidence if you prefer. They are keen to hear about companies who are not complying.

The CMA Funerals Team can be contacted on funerals@cma.gov.uk

Isolation

16 July 2021
Fran Hall
1 Comment
Categories: Absolute Beginner - A Personal Story of Grief

 

Photo credit: Rachel Wallace Photography

Day 271. Almost nine months into this new existence.

The last couple of weeks have been difficult. I’ve been feeling unwell, symptoms of a bad cold which are, apparently, also symptoms of someone double vaccinated who has contracted the Delta variant. A lateral flow test was negative at the beginning of the week, but the Zoe app instructed me to take a PCR test and isolate. So, I’ve been home alone. Wondering if I have caught covid again.

By Friday I had completely lost my voice and had to take part in zoom meetings using the chat facility and miming. On Saturday I discovered that as I hadn’t made a note of the barcode on the PCR test, my missing results couldn’t be traced so I had to wait for another test to be sent out. Dear reader, please make a note of your barcode if you take a PCR test!! This is not mentioned in any of the instructions, nor on the government website, but if your results don’t appear, without that barcode you’re back to square one.

So, I’ve had a lot of thinking time, between coughing. I’ve been trying to work out how I am at the moment.

Fragile, I think, is a good description. I’ve never felt fragile before, but I’ve been conscious of a gradually seeping feeling of anxiety edging up from my subconscious, an anxiety that now seems to be part of my daily existence. On the surface, all is ok, but the slightest stressful thing cracks that veneer and exposes frightening depths of fear and misery underneath. Waiting for the test results has been more stressful than I realised and losing my voice (on top of my ongoing loss of taste and smell since the last time I had covid) was horrible. Isolating again has been really hard.

It feels like I have no idea who I am anymore. Everything is so different now. The me who I used to be has vanished. All the foundations that my life was built on have crumbled and gone, and I don’t recognise myself. Thinking back, I marvel at how strong and confident I used to be, how fearless.

When Steve and I first met, I had built a good life after some difficult times. I had a job I loved, my kids were grown, and I had a fun social life with friends from all over the place. I dated lots of interesting men. I was busy and independent and happy. I wasn’t looking for anything, but then Steve crashed into my life and suddenly everything was in technicolour. I knew it was different at once. I felt completely safe with him, immediately, and that feeling never left me.

When we became a permanent item, everything felt complete. Together, we were so solid, so strong. He supported me in everything I did, he was interested in everything I had to say, we talked and talked about everything, and I only wanted to be with him. Our life together was completely enough, for both of us.

For all the years we were together (other than once, for a few weeks when circumstances were difficult and he needed to exorcise ghosts from his past) – all the rest of the time, those weeks and months and years together were completely immersive and nourishing for us both. We never, ever argued. He was mystified by this, and often wondered why not, but there was nothing to argue about. We were, he sometimes said, like one person in two bodies. Completely unified and solid and strong.

He totally had my back in everything, and his constant strength and love and support made me the best me I could possibly be. He encouraged me, and counselled me, and laughed at me and made me laugh too, and he was always, always there. If we were apart, we’d speak on the phone throughout the day, but mostly we were together as much as humanly possible. It was the easiest, most perfect relationship I have ever had. We completed each other. Constant, complete love. We occasionally appreciated just how lucky we both were to be experiencing so much security, so much safety, to be both adored and adoring, but mostly we just thrived and grew, separately and together.

With his grounding, I could fly, and I did. I became a stronger voice, a more determined advocate for what’s right, a better contributor to the discourse about the subjects I cared about. I could write and speak and lead, I became better known, better respected, just better generally. Always with his advice, his balanced Libran opinions in the back of my mind. I listened to him and tempered my more extreme ideas; I grew stronger and wiser. He kept me on track, but never stifled me. He was the perfect counterbalance.

And now he’s gone. The me that I had become, the me that had blossomed from the fertile soil of love and support and interest and generosity that he had poured into my growing – that me died with him last year. There is absolutely no way I can be that person anymore, not without him. I am left staring at the wreckage of my life, trying to find the bits that can be fitted back together in some resemblance of that person I used to be, knowing full well that it’s impossible.

This, I suppose, is the long, hard work of grieving. Of reassembling, re-membering who I am. Working out which bits of me still resemble the me I used to be and can be useful in the future, and which bits are lost forever. It’s difficult to get the perspective you need when you’re dealing with the ebbing and flowing of grief; self-analysis is difficult at the best of times, let alone when your heart feels like it’s shattered into a million pieces. I have to do it in dribs and drabs, noting when I feel like me (rarely), and accepting when I feel like someone completely other (the rest of the time).

I’m at my best when I’m assuming my old persona, when I’m working. It’s like putting on a familiar coat, being the Fran that people recognise. I can be effective and decisive and have opinions that I can back up, I can focus and pull things together like I used to do. But the minute I stop – and I can’t yet keep it up for long – the minute I switch off the computer or end the zoom call or hang up the phone, I feel the illusion of normality dissolve away, and the now familiar uncertainty wash back over me.

I can push it away by distracting myself too, by walking, by letting my subconscious thoughts surface as I go, my brain creating some order of the random memories and thoughts and fears. I can focus for a while on writing, or on tracing my family tree on Ancestry.com, or on reading or baking or gardening or cleaning and tidying – all these things help a bit with managing how I feel. But there’s an underlying ache that never goes away. And none of my distractions help me piece myself together into the new me. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know where to start.

I don’t know how to carry my grief into situations either. With people close to me, it’s not a problem. Steve is a presence in our conversations, despite his absence, his existence is acknowledged, and his importance is accepted. But with other people, people I know less well, I don’t know how to be, how to bring Steve with me.

He either becomes the central player in my tragic story of being someone who married the love of her life and then lost him to covid three weeks later, or an awkward unmentioned ghost who hovers over conversations until I invite him to join us by mentioning him – at which point the tragic story takes centre stage and changes everything. How do I introduce myself, trailing this invisible ghost with me? How do I navigate conversations when I know he’s there and the other person doesn’t? At what point do I detonate the hand grenade of the horror of what I have experienced and let the pieces of my story fall over someone I’m talking to? It’s too huge, too horrific, too difficult to precis into a sentence or two.

I’ve done this once or twice and it is gruelling, for me and for the other person. Ghost Steve is as big and strong as real Steve was, and once he’s involved in a conversation, he draws all the oxygen from it. He’s better contained when he’s pre-framed by my identity as someone bereaved by covid, in my role within the community and as a spokesperson of the campaign group Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice. Ghost Steve behaves better in that scenario, he’s easier to accommodate and reference. I feel safer and more recognisable in that place too, with him pre-introduced. I am beginning to find whisps of my old confidence coalescing into the new, ‘tragic’ me.

So, when I’m working, check. When I’m doing something purposeful with my grief, check. The rest of the time, I’m fumbling along trying to look after myself and be patient. The only way to survive a loss like this is to keep going. Eventually, after enough time has passed, I hope that I will one day have gathered enough pieces of my old self together again to be recognisable to myself. I hope that I will have more time feeling strong and less time feeling lost, less time ambushed by the tears that well up unannounced, less time feeling stabs of envy at seeing couples together, less time feeling completely alone.

This week of enforced lost-test-imposed isolation has brought my actual real isolation into sharp relief. I am alone now. I am without my anchor. The rest of my life will be lived without Steve. I cannot fill the gap that he has left with anything or anyone. I have to grow the new me around the hole where he used to be. This is the most difficult thing I have ever faced, the hardest task I’ve ever been given. There’s no escaping from it, no other path to take. Oh, and there’s still a global pandemic raging. And a government seemingly determined to wash their hands of keeping us all safe.

I think feeling fragile is a reasonable thing right now.

Poetry and signs

26 May 2021
Fran Hall
1 Comment
Categories: Absolute Beginner - A Personal Story of Grief

A dear friend sent me a poem at the weekend. Technically, she re-sent it, she had shared it with me soon after Steve died, so the words were familiar, and yet the second I started to read them, the fragile skin I have so painfully grown over the depthless well of tears inside me fell apart, and I cried and cried.

It has been 220 days since Steve died. I have no idea how I have survived 220 days without him. To all intents and purposes, I am ‘doing well’. I keep being told this. I have no idea against what I am being measured. There isn’t anything to measure how I’m doing against.

The me who I was when Steve was alive died with him. Of course it did. Everything changed in that moment. And in the hours and days and weeks that followed him dying, I changed too. I have no idea who I actually am now. On the surface, I look and sound like the old me. A wearier, older, sadder me, but there’s enough of me left to be reassuring to others.

I can function now, I’m working, writing, doing admin, sorting invoices, attending meetings, giving people advice, doing what I have always done. But to be honest, I don’t know what else to do with myself. If I didn’t distract myself with work, or with looking after the children, or with doing the shopping and cooking and cleaning that needs doing, the weight on my shoulders and in my heart would drown me.

For a brief time, being involved with the National Covid Memorial Wall caught me up in a feeling of purpose. Being proactive and doing something for other people really helped turn me away from my pain, and my involvement with the campaign group continues to buoy me. I’ve been asked to be part of a sub-group working on government support for people bereaved by covid, and that is really important to me, I will throw myself into it and have already secured support for our efforts from some of the leading people in the field of complicated grief and bereavement.

Acting as one of the media spokespeople for the group is good for me too, and I will happily speak to journalists when I’m asked to. All this is positive, helpful stuff. But the yawning emptiness inside me, beside me, stretching ahead of me – it never goes away. And as the community and impact of the wall has ebbed away as the weeks go by, the temporary lift that it gave me slips away with it.

Nobody told me that the days would get harder. Grindingly, relentlessly harder. I suppose that the trauma and shock of the aftermath of Steve’s death was such that telling me such a truth would have been cruel. I’m not sure I could have borne it in those early, mad, broken days. It was enough just to get through each day in one piece, I couldn’t think ahead more than a few hours. I just lived for the moment, like a recovering alcoholic, one day at a time.

I continue to do so, I think. It seems the safest way, in these crazy uncertain times, with roadmaps and variants and insane government decisions. I’m double vaccinated now, so I’m as safe as I can be, but the invisible threat of the virus and the suffocating, choking cruelty of the glass lungs it causes continue to dog my thoughts. I shan’t be doing any socialising any time soon.

To be honest, I don’t feel like I’ll ever want to socialise again. My circle of friends is small, I’ve never been a great keeper of friends, and once I found Steve, he was all I needed. We just loved being together, all of the time, and didn’t need anyone else’s company. Both of us could do a good job of being sociable, he more than me, but we were never happier than when we were alone together, at home. And now I’m alone, at home, and he’s gone. Just typing the words makes me hold my breath.

My shoulders are tense and tight, all the time, unless I consciously make myself relax them. What has happened to me happens to countless thousands of people every year, how on earth did I not realise that so many people are walking around weighed down by the invisible leaden heaviness of being left behind, trying to live without the person who made life worth living?

I miss him so, so much. He was my best friend. My absolute best friend. The person who loved me so much. He knew me completely, as I did him – we saw each other in a way nobody had ever seen me, nor I them. It was such a wonderful, wonderful thing to be known and seen and adored. He didn’t proclaim it publicly, not until we married last year – but that was ok. He had reasons for being circumspect about how he felt about me to the rest of the world.

But I knew, with a knowing that was instant and ancient and visceral and unquestioning, I knew he loved me utterly, as I did him. He used to describe us as one entity split into two beings – I am you, and you are me. I got that, it described how I felt too. We had grown and entwined ourselves into one, over the years, but from the start, we had recognised ourselves in each other.

Seven months have passed. Seven months since my heart was ripped from my body and broken into a million pieces. I try, now and then, to remember that last, precious, irreplaceable hour as he lay dying. I remember that I knew at the time that I needed to try and etch everything in my mind so I would remember, but of course I have forgotten much. I held his hand and didn’t let go, not for a second, I remember that.

I remember that I played him his favourite piece of music using my phone, so that he would have it in his mind as he approached the precipice of death. The theme tune from ‘Out of Africa’. He couldn’t watch the film without crying; when he heard the music, it always made him cry. He spent his early years in Africa, and the film and the music resonated with those early memories of the sunshine and sounds and scents and languages of his childhood.

I chose the track to play when his coffin was carried into his funeral ceremony, and I have heard it only twice since then. It played on the radio as I walked into the living room on my 60th birthday, after being made to wait at the foot of the stairs by my daughters, just I had used to make them wait when they were young. The second time was 6 months to the day after he died; it came on the radio just as we were about to leave the house to go to the woods to visit his grave.

Both times, I cried. We all cried.

I remember telling him how incredible he was, how happy he made me, how much I loved him, how much he was loved by so many people, what a wonderful, wonderful man he was. I remember asking him if he had any regrets, and how he shook his head. I remember him looking up towards the corner of the room and me asking him if he could see someone there and him nodding, and me asking if it was his parents, and him nodding again, and me telling him that they had come to get him, their golden boy, and that it was ok to go with them.

I remember me telling him that he had the heart of a lion, and that he was the best and the bravest person I had ever known. I remember telling him he had to promise to be there for me when I died, and that he must try and let me know if he was still with me and around me after he had gone. I remember telling him that he could let go now, that he didn’t need to keep struggling, that everything would be ok, that I would be ok, that his children would be ok. I remember just trying to surround him with love.

And I remember the moment when he went. The moment that my gorgeous man died in front of me. The moment that he was gone, and his empty shell of a body lay where a millisecond before he had been. That moment will stay with me for the rest of my life.

I’ve often tried to go over that hour in my mind, hoping I will remember more. There must have been so much more, I talked and talked to him for an hour, between the nurses leaving us alone, and me opening the door and asking someone to come in and verify that he had died. I know there’s so much I have forgotten. One of the first times I really let myself go back to that hour and try and really think back to what I said and how it felt was just a few days after his funeral, three weeks exactly after he had died.

 I was walking the dog, thinking and thinking and trying so hard to remember. It was November, and there were leaves on the ground. I remembered the bit of me telling him he had the heart of a lion as I walked, and AT THAT EXACT MOMENT, as I thought that thought, there in front of me, laying in the leaves on the path, was a toy plastic lion.

I picked him up and brought him home and he has sat in front of the photo of Steve and me on our wedding day ever since.

There have been a lot of things that have happened since Steve died. Call them coincidences if you will, but I’m not so sure. White feathers litter my path when I’m walking and thinking about him – where do they all come from? I was walking on the golf course one evening, thinking, of course, about him, and there was one white feather after another on the grass. I said out loud, ‘I’m sick of these bloody white feathers all the time’ and instantly, as clear as a bell, I heard Steve’s voice in my head, saying ‘I gave you a f***ing lion for f***s sake – what more do you want?’ Laughing out loud on your own could easily be taken as a sign of madness, but I stood and laughed and laughed that night.

Are these the signs I asked for? I don’t know. I think they might be, but I don’t know. The one person who I would be talking to about whether I was making myself believe in something that didn’t exist is gone, so I’m left wondering on my own. Nobody knows the answer to this existential question. My thoughts go round and round – where are you? WHERE ARE YOU???

Ultimately, it doesn’t make any difference. He is gone. I am here. I have lost him. I have to be me without him. I don’t know how to do that, but I just have to keep going. One day, I’ll work out who I am now.

I have commissioned a memorial for his grave. It has a carving of a lion, standing on top of the plaque, which has a Swahili phrase on it.

In the film Out of Africa, a love story like no other, the lions come to lay on Denys’s grave.

It feels like the circle has come complete.

 

When I die I want your hands on my eyes:

I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands

to pass their freshness over me one more time

to feel the smoothness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,

I want for your ears to go on hearing the wind,

for you to smell the sea that we loved together

and for you to go on walking the sand where we walked. 

I want for what I love to go on living

and as for you I loved you and sang you above everything,

for that, go on flowering, flowery one,

So that you reach all that my love orders for you,

so that my shadow passes through your hair,

so that they know by this the reason for my song.

Pablo Neruda

The Competition and Markets Authority’s Funeral Market Report – update

29 April 2021
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: CMA Market Investigation, Regulation of the funeral industry, The future of funerals

 

“Now is not the time”

On April 7th a document published by the Ministry of Justice quietly appeared in the public domain.

It was the government’s ‘Response to the Competition and Markets Authority’s Funeral Market Report’, and it does not make for good reading for anyone who believes that the funeral sector needs to be regulated. Or for the 69% of those who responded to the CMA’s survey who assume it already is.

If, like us, you have been following the progress of the CMA, from the launch of their market study into the funeral market in 2018, you will have seen the case for regulation gradually being developed. After years of painstaking and in-depth work by the team involved, the Final Report, published in December 2020, outlined the serious concerns that the CMA has about the funeral sector. We wrote about it in our blog post in January.

Despite the pandemic having severely restricted the CMA in fully developing all of the remedies that may otherwise have been pursued, the Final Report proposed a number of ‘sunlight’ remedies, intended to improve transparency of pricing and focus on the hidden ‘back of house’ practices in the funeral sector.

In addition, the CMA made one recommendation to government – that:

“The UK government, and the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland and Wales, should establish in England, Northern Ireland and Wales an inspection and registration regime to monitor the quality of funeral director services, as a first step to the establishment of a broader regulatory regime for funeral services in these nations (Scotland already has a similar regime).”

The government has had a think about this, and after a couple of weeks, it told us its decision.

It said no.

While agreeing in principle to a form of regulation and inspection and stating that it believes that ‘such a move in the long term would assist in achieving the overall objective of an improved customer experience’, the government then goes on to make clear it has little appetite to ‘improve customer experience’ in such a way any time soon – now is, apparently, ‘not the time to move to wholescale regulation’.

Instead, the response goes on to outline the next steps that the government is willing to take. Which are not exactly onerous.

Apparently, they will:

  • ‘Work collaboratively with the sector and user groups to develop an agreed set of quality standards (such as a voluntary code of practice), as part of a co-regulatory model, that could be introduced in summer 2021, in parallel with the CMA’s work on price transparency, to achieve a quicker outcome for users of funeral director’s services
  • Support the sector in developing a system to encourage all funeral directors to follow these quality standards and enable users to raise points of concern through a more formalised mechanism than at present
  • Commit to evaluating and reviewing the effectiveness of this co-regulation model
  • Monitor the effectiveness and success of the Scottish regulatory system that has just launched (and which applies to organisations who provide services in Scotland but may be based in Scotland and / or England) after a year’

‘In the context of the ongoing pandemic,’ the government goes on, ‘we believe that this is both a proportionate and appropriate approach.’

Over on Twitter, the Quaker Social Action account noted how bitterly disappointed QSA are with the UK government’s response, “There has never been a more important time for robust action to safeguard bereaved people and ensure that the funerals market is working for consumers” they say.

A statement from Lindesey Mace, manager of the charity’s funeral costs helpline Down to Earth adds that the number of clients they supported doubled during the second peak of Covid-19 deaths between December 2020 and March 2021.

Lindesey continues, “We believe the UK government could, and should, commit far more to protect bereaved people, especially those affected by funeral poverty.”

We at the Good Funeral Guide are wholeheartedly in agreement with Quaker Social Action and share their frustration and disappointment at the government’s decision.

The position of the National Association of Funeral Directors, in contrast, is somewhat different to that of QSA – the NAFD has warmly welcomed the government response in an article on their website, saying:

“The NAFD looks forward to working closely with the Ministry of Justice to demonstrate that our revised inspections regime and comprehensive industry code of practice (The Funeral Director Code), which has been created in consultation with consumer bodies and representatives from across the sector through the work of the FSCSR, and our work to create the Independent Funeral Standards Organisation (IFSO), an independent body which will oversee standards monitoring, inspections and complaints, will provide Government with the assurance it needs that the funeral sector is committed to acting with transparency, high standards and in the interests of bereaved people.”

(The FSCSR is an initiative by Dignity PLC that began in 2018 and was quickly expanded to include other ‘stakeholders’ and an independent chair. The FSCSR is funded “through the funeral industry through the NAFD with additional financial support from Golden Charter, Funeral Zone and Ecclesiastical Planning Services.” We wrote about it in a blog post in 2019 here.)

The IFSO was set up by the NAFD as a ‘new regulator in a previously unregulated space’, according to the advertised role of chair of the board and was done so to ‘provide the Government with a viable solution to address the CMA’s (and our) concerns about the limitations of the current voluntary regulation of the funeral sector,’ as outlined in the article on the NAFD website.

So. In summary.

  1. The Competition and Markets Authority has recommended that government step in and regulate the funeral sector in order to protect and benefit bereaved people.
  2. Government has declined to follow this recommendation.
  3. The National Association of Funeral Directors (the trade association representing the interests of funeral directors) has set up and funded a ready-made ‘independent regulatory body’ as a solution.

We offer no comment on this generous action.

Conclusion

After years of hard work by the team at the CMA investigating the funeral sector, it is dispiriting and dismaying to see their recommendation to government being dismissed.

It feels like a missed opportunity, one that has been 20 years in coming since the Office of Fair Trading Report published in July 2001 called for more openness and transparency, warning that the funeral industry could be taking advantage of bereaved people.

We feel that in choosing not to follow the CMA’s recommendation for regulation, government are ignoring bereaved people and downplaying the vulnerability of bereaved people as consumers.

We would like to ask one simple question to government.

If now is not the time to move to wholescale regulation of the funeral sector, then when will be?

Postscript

While doing research for this article, it was fascinating to come across the new look ‘All Party Parliamentary Group for Funerals and Bereavement’.

It has a shiny new website, and has moved up in the world by including not just MPs, but also members of the Deceased Management Advisory Group  (DMAG) – a collective of organisations representing both funeral directors and those who manage, provide and work in cemeteries and crematoria. The DMAG was formed to address the challenges posed to the funeral sector by the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is a very interesting and new development.

In the past, we have approached the APPG for Funerals many times, requesting that the Good Funeral Guide be allowed to attend meetings with MPs to represent the views of bereaved people (referred to in the full title of the group) but in each instance we have been turned down – although, we were assured in the polite refusals from various Chairs over the years that occasionally guest speakers were invited and one day that invitation might come to us. It never did.

The NAFD historically has been the only outside organisation involved with this particular APPG  – indeed it is referred to by a former President of the NAFD as ‘the NAFD’s APPG’ in an article commemorating the bestowing of Honorary Membership on a colleague – ‘Nigel has been involved with the NAFD’s APPG on Funerals and Bereavement since its inception in 2002 and has worked with 6 different Chairs in that time. All of whom he has ensured have returned excellent value for the NAFD.’

In the past, the APPG for Funerals was the beneficiary of a secretariat funded by the NAFD, however, from a skim through the minutes of the new-look group, a new public affairs agency, JBP Associates appears to have taken over this role. The funding for their services is not apparent in the public register (see page 609, to save you ploughing through all 1,239 pages).

Anyway, we digress. The new ‘APPG for Funerals and Bereavement’ offers direct access to parliamentarians for members of the DMAG, which are as follows:

The National Association of Funeral Directors

The Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management

The Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors

The Federation of Burial and Cremation Authorities

The Funeral Furnishing Manufacturers’ Association

The Association of Private Crematoria and Cemeteries

The Cremation Society

(You might note the absence of organisations representing bereaved families among the list above, hence why we choose to refer to this particular APPG as the APPG for Funerals.)

According to the APPG for Funerals’ glossy brochure, downloadable here, the first stated intent of the group is:

‘Fair and Proportionate Regulations – We are campaigning on behalf of the sector for fair regulations and suitable legislative change.’

We offer no comment on whether this campaigning is proving effective.

 

Love writ large

10 April 2021
Fran Hall
1 Comment
Categories: Absolute Beginner - A Personal Story of Grief, Covid-19

 

 

Love writ large.

That’s something I heard a passer-by say quietly as they walked along Albert Embankment this week. They were walking along the National Covid Memorial Wall, with tears running down their cheeks. Thousands and thousands of others have walked the 500m length of the wall of 150,000 painted hearts, often stunned into silence at the immensity of this piece of art, created by ordinary, bereaved people and sympathetic volunteers helping us.

I’ve been there all day, nearly every day, for almost two weeks, immersed in an experience that has lifted my soul and my spirits and made me feel alive again amongst strangers. After the long, long, icy isolation of grieving in lockdown, grieving in a pandemic, what these last two weeks have given me is precious beyond words.

On Monday March 29th I took an early train into London and walked along the South Bank towards Lambeth Bridge. The previous week, I had seen a post asking for volunteers to take part in a commemorative art installation that was being planned by the campaign group Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice – a group I’d joined after Steve died after struggling alone in hospital for twelve days battling the virus. At the time, I didn’t know what I was signing up for, but as I have all the time in the world now, I thought I might as well offer a few hours to a good cause.

On Friday 26th we had been invited to a confidential Zoom briefing where the details were outlined to us. We were to be part of the creation of the National Covid Memorial Wall, painting a single heart for every single person who has died in the UK with Covid-19 on their death certificates since the pandemic began, along the wall on the South Bank opposite the Houses of Parliament.

The artistic impression was breath-taking, and the power of the messaging, the positioning of this stunning reminder of our immense collective loss was instantly understood. Right in the heart of London, visible to those who are making the decisions about us, decisions that have led directly or indirectly to so many thousands of deaths and the heartbreak of loss.

The legal briefing was sobering – we didn’t have permission to do this, and technically, by painting on a wall as planned, there was a possibility of arrest, particularly on the first day – we could be at risk of being prosecuted for criminal damage, with fines of thousands of pounds and a potential prison sentence. The legal advice that had been received was that this would be an unlikely outcome, given the poor PR that would result from arresting bereaved people creating a commemorative memorial to their dead family members, but still…

I actually remember feeling even more compelled to be involved at this point, there’s a rebellious side to my nature where I see injustice or a cause that I believe in, so, along with everyone else at the meeting, I was undeterred. I committed to doing a shift of three hours on the first, most risky day.

Over the weekend, I let my children know what I was doing and what the outcome could possibly be, and also remembered to tell Jane and Isabel, my fellow executive directors at the GFG – I thought it might not be a good look for the CEO to be arrested without them having prior warning of the possibility, even though I was doing this in my personal capacity and not representing the Good Funeral Guide at all. Everyone was amazingly supportive, although my daughters were obviously a bit concerned.

So, there I was, half an hour early, sitting on a bench looking at the Houses of Parliament waiting for the 08.00 meeting at the assignation point. Gradually people drifted together, a group of perhaps twenty of us gathered by a coffee van, the small number of organisers laying out tabards and branded face masks and handing out paint pens and hand sanitiser – and with a brief instruction of how to get best use of the pens and the size guidelines for the hearts and the importance of social distancing at all times, we were put into small groups, donned our tabards and set off back towards Westminster Bridge to begin painting on the wall.

Each group had a section of perhaps 20 metres length of the pale sandstone wall. It’s about 2 metres high. The hearts we had been asked to draw were about 10cm in height. We had 150,000 to do, each one painted for one person, one family. It was important to do each one with reverence and mindfulness of what we were representing.

As I painted the first heart, I felt a brush of air and a strong sense that Steve was close to me at that moment. It was very strange, but it felt like I was doing something really important. For him, for me. I was placing his memory where his name would stay to be seen by thousands of people. I think I cried as I painted. It was very, very emotional.

Then, with Steve safely named on the first heart that I drew, I set to work. For others. Alongside me, at a distance, the other volunteers worked quietly. Gradually a scattering of hearts began to gleam on the wall. Quiet conversations began as we worked, the occasional offer of coffee, passers by stopping to ask what we were doing. The organisers had everything set up beautifully, replacement pens were ready when we ran out of paint, boards went up proclaiming this to be the National Covid Memorial Wall, the recently appointed Campaign Manager for the group, Nathan and his lovely Campaign Assistant Clara who was starting her first day in her new job were amazingly supportive and effective, and we worked and worked. As the morning went by, camera crews began to arrive – the pre-event PR had been extraordinarily good, and word was out that something important was happening.

We painted and painted, and gradually talked and talked, to each other, to passers-by, to journalists and presenters and camera crews, to anyone who wanted to know what we were doing and why. I told Steve’s story over and over and saw the shock and sadness in strangers’ eyes when they heard he had become ill the day after we married and died just three weeks after our wedding. And because I was able to speak to cameras about it, Clara asked if it was ok to bring news crews to interview me, and I said of course, and the day began to be filled with journalists from international news stations and newspapers, all asking me about Steve. Politicians came too – first Florence Eshalomi MP, who I was introduced to, then Sir Keir Starmer arrived and met some of the volunteers, voicing his support.  Councillor Jack Hopkins, leader of Lambeth Council came on that first day and committed to trying to help make the wall permanent.

My three-hour shift had turned into a whole day, and I was so captivated by the immensity of what we were doing, I promised to go back the next day to help again. And the next, and the next – I cancelled everything I had planned that week and just went back to the wall every day, to help make it happen. It cost me a fortune in rail travel (is there still such a thing as a rush hour? Tickets for the early trains cost 50% more than the ones running after 10am, why on earth is that, during a lockdown?) The later trains were no good, I’d lose three hours painting time. I was on the 06.26 train each day to get me there for 8.

We were desperate for more volunteers, each heart was taking around a minute or so to paint, and at one point one morning there were just three of us, me, Richie and Sophie. But the media coverage was growing. The support from Opposition MPs was growing. The wall was capturing people’s hearts as we painted, and members of the public began offering to help.

 

As days went by, the wall was news across the world. We had coverage from international news organisation Reuters, articles in US newspapers The New York Times, The Washington Post, French radio (France Inter, France Info and France Culture), Ireland’s RTE, Australian ABC TV – Japanese, German, Czech news teams and so many others too all found their way to talk to me and many of the other volunteers

Here in the UK, The Guardian picked it up on the first day, as did ITV and BBC London news channels early last week, and as time went by we had more and more coverage on our national media. LBC Radio covered it, Sky News covered it, Emily Thornberry MP tweeted a lovely video of her visit which has been viewed almost 40,000 times. On Good Friday we had an early morning live to air piece on BBC Breakfast which I was asked to do, and they showed photos of Steve as I talked. The numbers of volunteers soared after that, and the wall kept growing and growing and the camera crews kept coming, and the politicians came too.

I took the weekend off to do Easter with the family, although it felt strange not to be in London after five days of such intensity. Then on Monday, I went back again and was astounded at the amount of hearts that had appeared over the weekend. I spent the day on the desk, handing out pens and tabards to the steady stream of volunteers who had signed up to help, then planned on having two days off to catch up with work.

It had been exhilarating and extraordinary, and not a little exhausting. We had painted in all weathers, rain, wind, sun and snow, and the days had been long and emotionally draining, even though I had loved being there all the time. But then I had a call on Tuesday afternoon, asking me to come in to do a piece for Newsnight with Emily Maitlis, so I had to quickly change into something suitable for the wind chill along the river and get back to the South Bank.

 

On top of all the many media channels we’ve had interest from, the extraordinary coverage we received from the BBC in the two pieces that were aired on national TV means that millions of people now know about the wall, and both Charlie Stayt on Breakfast and Emily on Newsnight were so very supportive and kind – generous with time and so gentle in their questions.

The target of 150,000 hearts was reached on Wednesday evening, then the ONS released the latest figures on Thursday morning, so the organisers scrambled to add another several hundred more hearts, to bring the wall up to date before the official ‘Come and Walk the Wall’ ceremony at 12.00.

Having inadvertently become the featured spokesperson for the project, I was asked to talk to the assembled press, and then paint the final three hearts. I can’t remember exactly what I said into the microphone, for the first time speaking to cameras, I felt the emotion welling up and overcoming me at the immensity of what we had done for the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who are unseen in their grief. It was overwhelming, and I had to choke back the tears and turn away from the lenses to paint the last hearts.   

         

For the rest of the day on Thursday, I walked along the wall, reading the inscriptions, taking in the huge, huge toll we have paid, tears close to the surface all the time. The messages that had been added to some of the hearts, the names – so, so many names – the heartbreak that had been given a home, a place of honour – to have been part of helping create this was completely humbling. 

I was so proud, and so, so sad. Everything that I had said into countless cameras over the previous ten days was absolutely true. We need to see the scale of the horror of what has happened, we need a place where the grief and the loss and the anger can be channelled into a powerful visual rage at our loss. A statement that cannot be ignored by the people in power, across the river in the Palace of Westminster.

On one of the walks, I was accompanying Dawn Butler MP, and halfway along we met London Mayor Sadiq Khan. They were both impacted as much as everyone who has seen the wall, the length of it and the horror of what it represents. Nobody could fail to be moved. 

 

The media coverage of the completed wall on Thursday went across the world, thanks to a piece from the Press Association by Caitlin Doherty – it has been picked up by many, many news outlets, in places as far away as Barbados. It’s a source of tremendous private pleasure to me that Steve has been publicly proclaimed as ‘my husband’, far and wide, to millions and millions of people. Our three weeks of married life were the worst they could possibly be as he succumbed to Covid, apart from me for almost all of the time, but he is forever now my husband. (Just Google ‘Steve Mead news’!). But he is needlessly dead, he shouldn’t have died when he did, in the way that he did.

More than one hundred and fifty thousand people have gone. Vanished. Dead. Before they needed to be. They died, mostly, alone. These hearts that we have painted represent the beating hearts that have stopped. That have been stilled. Every single one a life. A person.

And their bereft families have been grieving alone. I have met some of them during my time at the wall, and we recognise our own pain in each other’s eyes. We know this unique loss, this guilt, this common feeling of being the nation’s guilty secret, the thing everyone needs to move on from, the weight that is stopping everything from really going back to normal, the fleeting thoughts that perhaps we should have done things differently, never called for an ambulance, never let our darling person go to hospital, never had to break a promise to be with someone we loved until the absolute end. We know the raw jolt of pain at hearing the deaths of our beloved fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, grandfathers, our flesh and blood, our kin – described as numbers, statistics by which government action or inaction is judged. We know what it is to grieve for a life lost to a pandemic, to be completely alone, unhinged, unhugged, uncomforted. 

A community has grown through our commitment to do this thing – I have met the most wonderful, wounded souls who have a fierce determination that our dead people WILL NOT be brushed away from our nation’s memory. My own grief has been reflected back to me with love and kindness and generosity by people who understand. And we have a determination to work together, to channel this grief we share into a collective good.

I cannot thank enough the two people whose idea this was – Matt and Jo, both bereaved by Covid, the founders of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign group. And the extraordinary team who helped make it happen – Ollie, James, Nathan, Clara, Veronica, Alex, Dom, Jack and others whose names I am sorry, but I’ve forgotten. Thanks also to London Mayor Sadiq Khan for his support in our quest to keep the wall as a permanent memorial, and to Dawn Butler MP for offering to ask a question in the House of Commons about the government’s support for this aim.

After the long, long, brutal isolation of the winter, it has been a balm to be back among people again. I’ve met so many lovely people over the last two weeks. Wonderful fellow volunteers – particularly Becky and Richie and Sioux who were there so much. Catherine and Sophie and Leena and Karen. I’ve cried as I’ve heard the anguish, the sorrow of the stories I’ve been told. Strangers who stopped to talk, kind passers by offering us money and gratitude and hot chocolate and food. People who travelled from all over the country to come and be at the wall for their dead family member, for themselves, for their grief. Old people, young people, children, dogs. I have been surrounded by people for the first time since Steve’s funeral, and I feel alive again. I’ve spoken so much, to so many people, and I have been privileged to be asked to be the voice and the spokesperson on behalf of all of us who have had someone die from Covid-19.

It has been a profoundly important thing for me to have been involved with, and a healing and cathartic experience that I will always remember. I hope that Steve would forgive me for committing criminal damage – I think he would approve, after rolling his eyes and sighing at my unruly behaviour. He believed in justice, and this wall, this beautiful harrowing wall, is a call for justice. It’s a profound piece of art. It’s soaked in grief and pain and tears. It’s a place of loss, and reflection and community. It’s a living, people’s memorial.

I’m so proud to have been part of it.

 

NB – To date, no government minister or Tory MP has visited the National Covid Memorial Wall.

Every MP received an invitation to do so, at the start of the first week. Perhaps, when they all come back from their Easter recess, they will all have the decency to walk across Westminster Bridge and turn right to walk along the wall*

*Update 28.04.21 – apparently the Prime Minister visited the wall ‘under cover of darkness’ during the evening of Tuesday 27th April. Helpfully avoiding meeting a single bereaved family.

 

 

Finding words

24 March 2021
Fran Hall
1 Comment
Categories: Absolute Beginner - A Personal Story of Grief, Grief

 

I think I understand now why the sea is so often used as a metaphor when talking or writing about emotions.

When I’m trying to understand how I’m feeling, the descriptive words in my mind are almost always found in analogies to do with the oceans – the waves, the storms, the undercurrents, the sense of going under, of staying afloat, of drifting, of floating, of swimming against the tide, of sinking, of drowning, of being unmoored, of being ‘all at sea’. All of these words richly describe those invisible emotional states in such a simple, comprehensible way, painting pictures of feelings.

Just thinking about the sea, the endless oceans, the emptiness, the richness, the depths, the mythology – it fits exactly with the moods and emotions and feelings that are part of living with grief, allowing me to describe my state of mind to myself, in a way that makes sense.

The sea represents the enormity of everything – the huge, unknowable expanse of waters that stretch away to the horizon, the power and the mystery of the sea – all this correlates exactly for me with the vastness of the unexplored feelings that surround and subsume me.

I can explain myself to myself by thinking of my life in the context of water, water representing the depths of emotions that I have experienced, am experiencing.

Perhaps if I write it then it will make more sense. It might be helpful, both reading it back myself, and also for others to have a glimpse into how it is being me, being grieving, right now.

You will have to come with me in my imagination as I explain it.

This is what it’s like. Here is my sea analogy of my life.

Imagine a beach. A beautiful, sunny, sandy beach. It’s as if, for years, for my life, along with everyone else around me, I have been wandering along this beach, through the shallow waters, wandering the edges of the beach where the wavelets splash and sparkle in the sun, the waters rhythmically coming and going, trickling pleasantly over my feet. Around me, everyone else is doing the same. Wandering in the shallows. Laughing and playing, smiling as we pass each other. Living life in the sun.

Occasionally a bigger wave might come, surprising me and unbalancing me a little, perhaps un-footing me as the sand beneath my feet suddenly felt less stable, but then a few more steps and the gentle lapping of the water resumed. On I went. This was how life was.

When I fell in love with Steve, he joined me on my metaphorical beach. We wandered along together, hand in hand, feeling the waves of life gently sloshing over our feet, steadying each other if there was a rogue push or pull or splash from the water, from troubles or problems. We did this for years, easy together, happy together, strong and steady together, loving each other, laughing, enjoying being alive. Wandering in the shallows.

And then one day, things changed. He was diagnosed with cancer. We were suddenly wading through deeper water together, much deeper. We’d somehow left the shallows, those sparkling splashy carefree wavelets, without noticing. We were suddenly waist deep. This was suddenly different. Still holding hands, still walking together, still supporting each other, still catching each other when we stumbled – but there was a new sense of separateness from others, from the rest of the world still splashing happily, back in the safety of being on the beach. We were apart from everyone now. Everything had changed.

Suddenly we were a little further away from land than everyone else, sensing colder undercurrents brushing past us, beneath the surface. We were still at the beach with everyone else, but we were not quite with them now. The waters around us had a different feeling, more urgent, swirling more strongly, pulling a little. I held tighter to his hand as we got used to being further out to sea as we walked on. Steady, together, but no longer so carefree.

You do get used to it, being deeper in the sea. The darker emotions of fear. You get used to the chill, your stride lengthens a little to compensate, your feet find solid footing under the water. You keep going, walking through your life. Wading through the water. You allow yourself to notice where you are and note that you’re not still paddling in the sparkling froth on the sand, you’re in a quieter place, a lesser-known place, a little unnerving in its strangeness. And if you lift your eyes and look around you, you remember the immensity of the ocean stretching beyond. How deep it is. How unknown it is. You don’t want to think about that, it’s too huge, too incomprehensible. So you carry on being in your new depths.

But then suddenly everything starts to change. Waves arise in the distance and bear down on you, the currents around your legs strengthen and grasp you and drag you, and you feel a sense of panic beginning to grow as you suddenly realise that you’re in danger, you’re both in danger. And you hold on for dear life to the hand of the person you’re with, the warmth and tightness of your grip giving each other strength and hope, even as the waters pull you further away from everyone else oblivious on the shore. Further and further out you go together, helpless as you’re pulled, clutching each other tight, heading to the unknown, to certain death, as they say.

And then it happens. Quicker than you can comprehend. An enormous wave thunders relentlessly towards you and crashes over you and tears your hands apart and tosses you under the surface and steals him away instantly, dragging him into the depths, never to be seen again.

That’s what it feels like, looking back now to when Steve caught Covid and suddenly became so ill and then died. It was as if a tsunami came roaring in to my life and swallowed everything that I knew, ripping everything apart, tossing and turning and hurling me upside down and around and around and churning me out into a different landscape.

The sheer feeling of horror, of fear, of desperate searching and casting around and surfacing empty handed and alone and bereft is palpable and real. This is what haunts my dreams and wakes me with my heart racing. This memory is visceral, the dreams are allegorical and vivid and full of deep, deep loss and helplessness and despair.

And now it feels as if I am standing alone, in the sea, deep, up to my neck. Buffeted below the surface by powerful forces that pull and push and drag. Great waves of grief come and go. Sometimes the waters recede a little and I feel freed and lighter, and then they rise again, and I am back, trying to keep upright and stop myself from drowning. Occasionally I get pulled under, down, down, down into smothering depths of emotions that threaten to overwhelm me. Mostly I am just balancing, on tiptoe, trying to withstand.

Back on the shore, far in the distance, the sounds of laughter are carried on the breeze. The people there don’t know that one day they too will be where I am. Pulled out to sea, gone as far as I could go with Steve, before he was gone forever. I don’t know how to get back. I don’t know if I want to go back. I don’t think I can go back. I have to stay here, feeling the force of the sea of emotions. As far as I could go with him – this is where my new place is.

I have to learn to get used to it, to being smacked around the head by loss, to having mouthfuls of salty sorrow forced on me, to being pulled under the water by despair, to coming up spluttering and gasping for breath every time I go under, to defiantly keep living in these new deep waters of emotions I never wanted to discover. I’m furious and terrified and dreading the time ahead of me swirling with the currents that surround me.

If I look around me, there are others. Alone. Deep out to sea, standing in their grief, their depths, their quiet. Pummelled and pounded invisibly under the surface. Standing brave and strong and resistant and silent. Getting used to where they are now. The lonely survivors.

We all know how this ends.

19 March 2021
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: Books, death and funerals, funeral reformers, Progressive funeral directors, The future of funerals

We have been asked to write about a new book,  ‘We all know how this ends’ by end of life doula Anna Lyons and progressive funeral director Louise Winter. It was published yesterday by Bloomsbury and celebrated with virtual tea and cake in a moving, inspiring Zoom session last night.

Our thoughts?

 

Buy it. Today.

 

That’s it.

Honestly.

This beautiful book should be on every bookshelf in every home in the country. It should be in every library, in every hospice, in every doctors’ surgery, in every workplace. It should be handed out to anyone when they are given a terminal diagnosis, offered to everyone facing life changing illness, shared and shared and shared again.

Once you have read it, you will want to buy it for your friends too, and for anyone you know whose life is touched by the knowledge that we are all going to die.

Everyone who reads it will find something empowering, comforting and wise within the pages, something that will help change the way you think about dying and death and funerals and bereavement. It’s a treasure trove of nuggets of beauty, woven together by expert hands who want to share what they have learned with us all.

We know Anna and Louise well and admire their work at Life. Death. Whatever. tremendously. They are dear friends and strong advocates of the Good Funeral Guide, and their wise, gentle voices take you through the book, weaving stories and thoughts and insight that they have collected from the many, many people they have worked with.

This book is a collective call for change, a sharing of experience, of heartbreak and tears and humour and wit and wisdom. It’s inspirational and informative, written by real people who want you to know what they’ve learned.

Buy it now. You need to read it.