Someone needs to say it.
With the heaviest of hearts, today we are going against everything that the Good Funeral Guide has become known for over the years, and calling for funerals to be stopped completely.
Now. Today. Just stop.
The decision to exempt funerals from the current ban on social gatherings was undoubtedly made for compassionate reasons, but the current lack of clear instruction and direction is leading to anguish and suffering beyond imagination.
By allowing funeral ceremonies to continue in some form or other, bereaved people – and all those supporting them – are genuinely risking their health and even their lives by gathering together to try and have a funeral like the ones we are used to, yet in most cases, grieving people are ending up with a funeral that has been pared down to something almost unrecognisable. Almost everything we are familiar with in a funeral ceremony has been stripped away by the attempt to slow the spread of Covid-19. What we are left with is worse than nothing.
This cannot continue. It’s breaking people’s hearts, hurting family members and friends. It’s confusing everyone. It’s putting lives at risk. It’s making everything impossible for people who are already reeling from shock and grief. Heart-breaking decisions are being asked of people – decisions which are too much to bear. The current situation is not compassionate or kind, it’s devastating and destructive.
We will probably never know the damage that is being done daily to people’s hearts and souls, their emotional and mental wellbeing, their ability to grieve and survive in a newly empty, frightening world. Confusion and uncertainty casts a heavy weight that is doing untold damage to individual people everywhere. Families are being made to choose who can attend and who must stay away. Friends and lifelong companions are being excluded from being present for a ceremony through multiple individual interpretations of the phrase ‘immediate family’. If numbers are drastically limited, someone has to decide who has the most right to be there. It’s unbearable.
Funeral venues and funeral companies are interpreting the new rules in different ways, meaning that, depending on whereabouts you are, you may only be allowed to have 25 – or 20 or 10 or 6 or 4 – people attending a ceremony. Crematorium staff in some places are being required to monitor the numbers of people arriving and restrict entry – one crematorium has stated that the chapel doors will be locked and the police called if more than a certain number of people gather for a funeral. Yet in other crematoria, no restrictions have been imposed. Everywhere is doing things differently.
You may have travelled in a limousine, or the cars you wanted may have been cancelled. You may be asked stay two metres apart outside the chapel while you wait. Or maybe nobody is willing to step in and tell you to stay away from other people gathering there. You may be asked to sit separately inside, or the seating might have been re-arranged to make sure you don’t come into contact with anyone. The coffin may be wheeled into the chapel, not carried. The curtains may have to close around the coffin to prevent anyone from touching the surface. Hymn singing may be discouraged – hymnbooks have been removed from many crematoria. Video-links may or may not work, leaving excluded mourners at home without a connection to those who are attending, unable to see or hear what is happening even remotely. There are licensing issues with music choices being broadcast, even where video links are available. It’s impossible for everyone who is trying to make things work right now.
Funeral ceremonies are where our deepest humanity is called for, to steady and support the faltering broken hearts of people whose worlds have been shattered by the death of a person they love. We show up to be silently present, to demonstrate our love by being there for the final time in the presence of the physical body of the person whose life has ended.
We come together to grieve as a family, a community, a society who stands together to bear witness to the loss of one of our own. We reach out our hands and our arms to comfort and hold each other, we lean on each other for support and safety. We weep together, we rest our heads against familiar loving shoulders and feel the warmth of strong arms holding us upright.
This is what a funeral is.
Now, none of this is possible.
The current confused and confusing situation is dangerous. It’s frightening. It’s unfair on everyone. It has to stop.
If a clear directive came from government that funeral ceremonies must stop now, we are certain that the incredible people who dedicate themselves to supporting bereaved and grieving communities will quickly find new ways of creating ritual and meaning in a safe way. Over the coming weeks we will share thoughts and ideas and ways of commemorating the lives of those who have died without risking the lives and wellbeing of those who survive. We welcome guest posts from anyone who would like us to share their ideas.
But for now, for today, for the foreseeable future, for your sake, for our sake, for the sake of all of us, please, please think the unthinkable.
Unattended burial or cremations are the safest, kindest, simplest way to deal with our dead right now.
Funerals, as we know them, cannot go on.
