Attitudes to death

Bereavement Counselling in the NHS (Taking the sting out of death)

10 October 2011
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, bereavement, Death; Good death, End-of-life issues

Posted by Vale

Pat is a Bereavement Counsellor working in an NHS Trust hospital. Her job is to help people affected by a death in a hospital, supporting them through their grieving. Pat is the subject of a long article inSaturday’s Guardian. It can be found here.

It’s a heartening read. Death in a hospital can be a very fraught business. Treatment, perhaps in intensive care, is hard to comprehend, and the workings of the institution are often alienating and frustrating to people who want to support someone they love at the end of their lives. And death comes in so many forms that it’s sometimes difficult simply to come to terms with what has happened.
Pat’s role – carried out, it is clear, with great love and understanding –  is to help people come to terms with what has happened. Sometimes it is a matter of looking at notes, talking to doctors and taking time to explain why someone died. Sometimes it is just about making space for grief. Pat:

“has a mantra that “nothing is wrong in grief”. She almost always honours requests from bereaved relatives, however unusual. A common wish is to touch the body of a loved one: hold their hands, or kiss their foreheads or even wash their face. One woman asked Pat if she could help her retrace the journey her 15-year-old daughter’s body made from the hospital to the mortuary, after she died from a very protracted illness. She then wanted to see where she had been blessed in the mortuary. “And there’s nothing wrong with that,” she says.”

It’s good to know that hospitals are recognising that the death of a patient is both an ending and, for bereaved family and friends, the beginning of another vital process – the need to grieve, mourn and say farewell. Important too that they recognise that their role in this next stage is crucial. Reading about the work that Pat does, however, did make me want to ask more questions about the way that the NHS treats people at the point of death.

If there is recognition of these human issues after death, is there the same concern for people as they die? How well are patients supported at those last moments? How easy is it for people to sit with the person they love; hold them and comfort them; share in the business of dying?
I’ve tried to find the relevant NHS guidance, but with little success. I did, however, turn up a Scottish NHS report called Shaping Bereavement Care – a framework for action. It has 14 recommendations, some of them recognisably relating to the good work that Pat does. The recommendation relating to the process of dying though is this one. It is a commitment to:

“undertake a review of all current policies and procedures relating to care of the dying patient, and care of the deceased, to ensure that they reflect good quality care and to assess and reduce any real or potential negative impact of these processes on those who have been bereaved.”(Recommendation 3)

It suggests that there are important connections yet to be made in this area – in the Scottish NHS at least. Although, surely, it’s not hard to join the dots between the way that people feel when they are not involved in a death and the need to involve them more in the process of dying itself? It seems clear enough to me that if the humanity, care and understanding that Pat so clearly brings to her work after a death could be brought into the hospital itself and allowed to take their place at the bedside of the dying patent, then acceptance, understanding and the grieving process itself would be immeasurably improved.

But maybe the NHS in England is already there?

If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?

6 October 2011
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death

Steve Jobs

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Whole speech here. 

Euphemisms 2: Pushing up daisies

29 September 2011
Charles
11 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death

Posted by Vale

As an industry, the funeral business is often told it should be careful about the use of euphemisms – (Collins English Dictionary – euphemism
the deliberate or polite use of a pleasant or neutral word or expression to avoid the emotional implications of a plain term, as passed over for died.)
At it’s best a euphemism can help someone talk about what can hardly be faced or imagined. At its worst, of course, it can sound mealy mouthed, dishonest or even – for the funeral trade – like the  professional language of death.  

But we all do it. I found this list on mylastsong.com:

Assumed room temperature (popular among mortuary technicians);
Bit the big one;
Brown bread (Cockney rhyming slang);
Carked it, (or karked);
Fallen off the perch;
Hopped the twig;
Been taken from us;
Gone somewhere better;
He’s now with (name of closest deceased loved one;
It was his time to go;
Not hanging around any more;
Threw a double-six;
Kicked the bucket;
Put out to pasture;
He/she bought the farm (US military]);
Gone West (RAF, to ‘Go West into the setting sun’);
It was curtains (as in the crematorium curtains, or the curtains coming down when the play ends);
Faced the final curtain;
It was tickets for him;
Walked through the Pearly Gates;
Gone to a better place;
Checked out;
Gone to the great …in the sky;
Turned up his toes;
Snuffed it;
It was a ‘take out’ in a body bag;
Croaked;
Pushing up the daisies;
Feeding the worms;
Feeding the fishes;
Sleeping with the fishes;
Dead as a Dodo;
Dead as a doornail;
Dead as a doormouse;
Passed over;
Passed on;
Having his final sleep;
The Late …;
Lost (as in ‘We ‘lost’ my father);
Not dead but ‘gone before’;
Drawn his last breath;
Departed this life;
Shuffled off this mortal coil;
End one’s days;
Peg out/To peg;
Given up the ghost;
Gone to see his maker;
Met his maker;
Never woke up;
Keeping the angels company;
Singing with the angels;
Popped his clogs;
Been deleted.

My favourite ’he rolled over and stuck his spoon into the wall’ (from a Georgette Heyer novel of all places) isn’t on the list – what’s yours?

Death Cafe

27 September 2011
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, Death; Good death

This post is reproduced with permission from Jayd Kent’s One Queer Femme Anatomy blog. It describes the first-ever pop-up death cafe, the brainchild of Jon Underwood, curator of the Death Cafe blog and one of the nicest and, underneath that, brainiest people you could meet. A death cafe is long-held dream of John. How marvellous to see it take flight.

Jayd Kent

I attended something called a ‘Death Cafe’ today. 

I was terrified at the concept of sitting in a room, with a random group of people I had never met, to talk about the one thing that terrifies me more than anything in the world – DEATH. I had been worrying about it quietly all week. 

A little background before I tell you of my experience – 
I have always had an innate fear (and nobody really knows this) of dying. I have ‘visions’ every day, sometimes multiple ones in any given day, of my own death. They are often violent and abrupt, and I keep this to myself for fear of being judged a madman – so now I am coming out. I have had them for years, the first one I recall when I was only 13 in a Graphics Class at School – of a man breaking in and stabbing me. They are often horrific accidents where I witness my own death, and sometimes take me out of ‘real space’ for a few moments, to which I then return and try and sweep it under the carpet. In times of stress they worsen and become more frequent, and when I’m happy and life is plentiful they become less so. But they are ALWAYS there. Constantly reminding me of my mortality and fucking with my head.

So, I had a wonderful whipping and sensory session with my good friend Faerie one time recently, and we were talking about my persistent coughing, to which he thought it could be a nervous cough due to underlying anxiety issues. When he asked me if I had any I could think of, I took a leap of faith and told him about my ‘visions’, and he told me about the ‘Death Cafe’.

I spoke to a delightful man via email who had organised it, and he reassured me that I had nothing to be scared of, and gave me the details of the venue. It was in somebodys house this time, being the first one of its kind in the UK, with a hope of getting a venue in future. The offer of tea and cake was there too, which made it hard to refuse. I decided I would go, although I was still terrified of what would come out that day.

Upon nearly getting lost on the way there, I came across a beautiful road tucked down the side of Hackney. It was lovely sunny and warm, so I had enjoyed the cycle there from mine – and decided it was a gorgeous day to talk about death in this contrast in the weather.

I was welcomed by the host, and we all introduced ourselves. Everybody seemed very outgoing and friendly, which comforted me, as well as the fact one of my friends was there – the very same close friend who had suggested I go in the first place. God, I needed that hug when I saw him. 

So, we were ushered into a vintage dining room with wooden floorboards, to a wonderfully presented table with plates and such laid out. Then, the conversation began. Before I even had time to let it sink in, I had started to well up. That’s what’s so bizarre about my relationship with death – I’m so scared of it, I can’t even think about it without being reduced to tears, so sitting here with all these people openly chatting about their past experiences with it made me instantly emotional. It’s not something I have ever been open about before either – something came up in discussion about how our British Society has quite a stiff upper lip regarding this subject, and talking about it upsets others so we should just shut up. 

There were times where I felt like I was going to walk out before it was even my turn to speak.

Then it came to my turn – and why I was here. I told the group of 7 or so about my ‘visions’ – the moment I had done, I broke down. It felt awful, and I carried on talking through my tears, telling of not wanting sympathy because it was something I couldnt control, and warned of possible further outbursts later on in the session – my coping mechanism of trying to declare my problems are tiny in comparison. But this was a place where people questioned me instead of making me feel like I couldnt talk about it, they were drawing it out of me instead- bringing more of the food for thought to the table. I learned ALOT about myself, and here are some of the key points, which could be life changing to me.

Q.) How do I deal with scary death-like situations in real life?
A.) I take control, and deal with them head on. Like when Fiona (my mother) got liver cancer, and I held everyone together and became the driving force the day she had her liver transplant, or the time my house caught fire and nearly killed me and my gf when we were 19 and I just woke up and sorted it out and put the fire out, without thinking about it.

Q.) Do I have any phobias?
A.) Yes, I have a phobia of shock tactics on TV and in real life.
(To which somebody pointed out my phobia sounds the same as my visions, and perhaps it’s connected to my phobia of shock rather than my fear of death?)

These two revelations on their own were INCREDIBLY helpful, and I have got more from this one session talking to some amazing people, than I would have ever got out of say, a counselling session.

At the end of the session, we changed the subject to what we said we had achieved in life, what our obstacles were – this was kind of intended to be said on our deathbed so to speak.

It was so freeing to tell a group of strangers my life story, my achievements, hear theirs, and all share praise and thanks. We were then asked to place all the obstacles into an envelope, along with some of the fears of death we had written on pieces of card earlier, and they were ritually burned in a ceremony accompanied by some beautiful chanting melodies. We watched everything burn in that fireplace in silence, until there was nothing left. I cried quietly to myself, hoping nobody had noticed. I felt such a symbolic sense of relief watching those 15 years of fear go up in flames.

And then I ate cake afterwards, with a cup of tea to ground myself.

I can’t tell you how much this has helped me, and I feel compelled to sit here on my computer the moment I have cycled home and write down the whole experience, so I will never forget it, and never forget what those kind people have said, and try to not forget their faces on a day that will sit with me for years to come.

Perhaps the memorable day that I changed, and started on my path to ‘letting go’.

Faerie can be reached at his website
www.londonfaerie.co.uk

and The Death Cafe can be found at
www.deathcafe.com

Keep calm and carry on

23 September 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Attitudes to death, bereavement, bureaucracy

Posted by Charles

There is a tendency among some visitors to this blog vastly to overrate the significance of death. How salutary it is, therefore, to remind ourselves that our legislators keep mortality both in perspective and in its place.

Maternity leave

As an employee you have the right to 26 weeks of Ordinary Maternity Leave and 26 weeks of Additional Maternity Leave making one year in total. The combined 52 weeks is known as Statutory Maternity Leave. 

Paternity leave

As long as you meet certain conditions you can take either one or two weeks’ Ordinary Paternity Leave. You can’t take odd days off and if you take two weeks they must be taken together. 

Compassionate leave

If you are an ’employee’, you have the right to unpaid time off work to deal with emergencies involving a ‘dependant’ – this could be your husband, wife, partner, child, parent, or anyone living in your household as a member of the family.  

When a dependant dies, you can take time off to make funeral arrangements, as well as to attend a funeral.  

If you need time off to cope with a situation that doesn’t fall under the ‘time off for dependants’ right, you may have a right to time off under your contract of employment. Many employers will have a scheme for compassionate leave and details should be included in your contract or company handbook. If the situation is not covered by any scheme then you can still ask your employer for the time off, although they do not have to agree to your request. 

Source: directgov.co.uk

The bitter spice that sweetens the dish

23 September 2011
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, bereavement, celebrants, ceremony

Posted by Jonathan

A celebrant said today:

“Even when funerals are designed to be a celebration of life, I nearly always begin by acknowledging people’s grief and sadness.”

Jose (see his thought provoking blog post of 19th September), ever enquiring and studiously leaving no stone unturned, wants to know about incorporating grieving and celebration of life in the same goodbye ceremony.  His tenaciousness is stimulating for us celebrants, who must every day question our way forward.

His query:  “Which are the elements that you use afterwards to move the mourners and their emotions to a more positive feeling?” is not an easy one to answer.  I never thought of it in terms of involving ‘elements’, and I never thought of grief as being any less positive than celebration of life.

Grief has to do with sadness, not unhappiness.  There’s a big difference between the two. Unhappiness is isolating and unattractive and faces towards depression.  We’ve all been there.  It’s not grieving, it’s self pity.  Sadness, particularly about death, is beautiful even when it’s unbearable.  It’s feeling sorry not for yourself but for your loss – loss is not separate from you, but it is not you; it encompasses you, and it’s helpful to share it with others. We’ve all been there, too.  It is a noble feeling, and one I certainly wouldn’t want to be deprived of after even a tragic loss.

Following the last funeral I conducted, when I was trying to ‘let it go’, I found I couldn’t do so until I’d understood what it had taught me.  I was feeling uncharacteristically sad that it had ended, but I didn’t want to stop feeling sad because I knew if I did I’d miss something very important.  So I sat at the pavement table outside a café, watched the human beings go by with all their inner concerns showing or not showing, had a fag and a double espresso, and I thought deeply and wrote down what these last ten days of ‘funereality’ had given me.  Why was I reluctant to release it, this recent experience that my sadness was holding so close to me? 

It was only then, after I’d understood just what I was losing, that I was prepared to say goodbye to it and feel glad I’d had it while I did.  That’s what a good funeral does, too.  You could say it bequeaths you with a greater energy, a wisdom, as this did for me.  It crystallized into a poem, which I kept to remind me why I do this (and incidentally why, unlike some bereavement workers tell me they feel, I actually find myself energized rather than burnt near the furnace of recent death).  It also approaches the matter of our relationship with, and our role in, others’ grief, so I can happily share it with you here:

‘The funeral nourishes me
by embrace in the humanity of strangers.

I relieve them of their bewilderment
and reveal them to themselves in the majesty of their pain,
with words, with voice, with actions.

I touch their hurting hearts
to know they are not in isolation;
that their own grief is universal;
that healing lets love in and does not banish it;
that anguish is their invited guest;
that tomorrow will still come.

And then I leave.’

OK, I was only losing an experience, not a real live person, but the principle is the same; you have to be aware of what and whom you have lost, and the desirable pain to which love commits you, to move you on from just the raw feeling of pure loss before you can celebrate what you did have and what you still will have.  The pain of loss doesn’t go away with celebration of life.  It just becomes less overwhelming and more manageable when you’ve identified your loss, and understood that you still have something real and priceless, yours to keep.  And it brings to your attention that we are all human, and that this is the deal.

If a bad funeral damages you by making you unhappy, that detracts nothing from the healing value of a good one, even a good sad one.  And I think there’s something to do with loyalty where grief is concerned.  We can’t in good conscience abandon our dead by just getting intoxicated at a hooray party, any more than we could by indulging in the misery of a self pitying orgy, or going through the motions of an irrelevant tradition. 

Our dead leave us through no fault of their own.  We have to include their absence in our funeral for them, painful as it is, and I believe we owe them our mourning as much as our appreciation.

 

A good funeral: part 1

22 September 2011
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, bereavement, burial, ceremony, death and funerals, DIY funeral, funeral

Posted by Sweetpea

In the light of our recent discussions about the merits of secular, civil and religious funerals, one interesting thread started to appear.  Namely, what should a funeral not fail to include?  Can a funeral ever really be meaningful to anyone?  Does any funeral do the things that people need it to do? Well, for the sake of clarity, I’d like to leave the actual ritual contents of a civil or secular funeral for another day.  For the moment, I think we should go one step further back, to examine how the foundations of a good funeral rite are laid. Cutting through all the arguments about the contents of a funeral, be it of whatever shade, I think the key to the success of a funeral rite (and I have no doubt that a successful funeral is possible) is one overarching thing:  Relevance.

And the mechanism for allowing the door to open to Relevance?  Well, that begins with well informed people who instinctively know what will be right for them, and just as importantly know where to find it.  Failing that, a knowledgeable and empathetic funeral director who can guide those people towards what is the best path for them.  And failing that, an experienced and skilful celebrant/member of the clergy/friend to offer advice and support to bring them to where they need to be.

The notion of Relevance should permeate the entire proceedings from beginning to end – from funeral preparations to the enactment of the rite itself.  It doesn’t happen by accident, and needs empathetic, practical and experienced people working together to make it happen.  As has been so wonderfully written elsewhere by Jonathan: ‘if you just listen to a family it brings it all down out of the whirlwind in the sky and settles it more easily on the ground.  Stop.  Do nothing.  Tell me how he died; how do you feel about his death; where does that leave you now; let’s look after him gently while we all decide what to do and, far more importantly, why we’re doing it and what we hope it will achieve. Does that involve some choices?  Okay, let’s deal with them in our own good time, it’s not the choices that matter anyway.’    

This simple, intuitive and effective process leads eventually to arrangements which, as Tom Lynch states ‘get the dead where they need to go and the living where they need to be’.  This might be a whole day spent on a hillside, with a grave dug and filled by friends on their own land, singing around a campfire until the early hours, it might be a requiem mass, it might be a twenty minute ceremony at a crematorium, followed by a celebratory knees-up at a favourite pub, it might be a C of E service followed by ham salad and scones in the village hall.  If it’s relevant to these people, then that’s the nearest we are going to get to achieving those aims.

But let’s be under no illusions.  Real emotional pain and damage is caused to grievers when a rite has no relevance to them – it’s traumatic and stays with them until their own dying day.  We are perhaps more familiar with stories of religious rites leaving people disorientated and even more bereft because of a mis-matching of their needs and its expression.  But this can be just as true for civil or secular funerals, something which I have observed when, say, a religiously inclined adult child has been painfully overruled or excluded from religious or spiritual expression by a surviving parent.  Which leads us to part 2 – what should or shouldn’t be included in a successful funeral rite?

Euphemisms 1: Officials and officiousness

21 September 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Art and death, Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death

Posted by Vale

Euphemisms are all about not facing up to reality. We like to think we use them for good reasons, but they have a darker side too. This poem, written by Harold Pinter in 1997, uses one of the words we often shy from, yet it too is a euphemism. It was written in the year that his own father died and I think that, writing about death in this way, he was describing something of his own experience of the way that deaths are managed and, in the midst of the form filling, the way that language can help us hide from what has happened and what we have both done and not done.

Because it is Pinter, of course, I think he was also making a point about the way that being ’official’, can lead to the denial of both feelings and humanity at many different levels. Of course the poem is an extreme version of unfeeling officiousness but does it remind you at all of the way that some funeral businesses handle their first contact with families?

Death (Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953)

Where was the dead body found? Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead? Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body Did you close both its eyes Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

The poem was silkscreen printed on 7 hospital bedsheets and 7 forensic dissection tables surrounded by the smell of lysol.

Should the British mourn or celebrate their dead?

19 September 2011
Charles
31 Comments
Categories: Academia and death, Attitudes to death, ceremony, funeral customs, funeral reformers

Posted by Jose Antonio Estevez Garcia

When my best friend died at the age of 38 it was a drama – not only his unexpected loss but also his funeral which, far from helping us to face that moment, only added more pain to those grievous days.

The reason is quite simple: when Angel died his parents were in shock and the funeral was designed following what tradition dictates. This resulted in an event that betrayed his memory and created terrible memories that are difficult to forget – for example, memories of the viewing.

Viewing is a mandatory element in Spanish funerals and it is aimed to allow people to “physically” farewell the one who passed away. When I was told that my friend had died I thought nothing could be so painful until I saw him in the coffin with a broken gesture in his face. Until that moment I only had memories of him smiling and sharing all the goodness he brought to my life. Seeing his dead body in a coffin only opened a new wound. Many people who attended the funeral shared a similar feeling. In my opinion, tradition should only rule our lives if it helps us in any way, otherwise it may be time for a change.

I quit my job in Spain to come to the UK to explore my most creative side, so I started a master’s called “Applied Imagination” at Saint Martins College (one of the most prestigious centers of Art and Design in the world).

Within the master I am developing a research project where I am analyzing ways in which traditional industries to evolve in response to demand for personalized innovative services by customers. To develop this idea I am researching into how creative methodologies such as “Design Thinking” and “Lateral Thinking” can challenge conservative industries with innovative business models co-created by the customers of the previously mentioned personalized services. In summary, it is a bespoke innovation driven by customer demand in traditional industries as a way to disrupt their current business model.

To develop and test my findings I have chosen the funeral industry which, because of strong tradition, is quite reluctant to change. The funeral of my beloved friend made me think that a change in this sector could help other people. The approach proposed in this application case of my project is not against tradition; but in favor of opening our minds to personalized funerals in which traditional and/or innovative elements may help relatives and friends feeling as better as possible, given the circumstances.

In my opinion, the key to reconcile opposed views about the arrangements among those who will attend a funeral is that the deceased makes a decision about it before dying. Exactly like what people do when they choose whether they prefer burial or cremation, but getting into all the other details, like in a wedding (a funeral is not less important as to not give them a thought, specially if you care about the ones who will live your farewell).

To test my proposal I have prepared the video of my funeral, whose aim is to avoid mourning my death but to celebrate my life, what I call a “happy funeral” i.e. a funeral in which all the elements are thought to avoid creating sad memories and aim to generate a positive state of mind. The video is posted above  and has been watched to date by 1130 people.

In addition to the video initiative, I have can you buy cialis online interviewed different stakeholders and gatekeepers and gathered amazing experiences shared by the people who have answered the survey published with the video. I am also researching into funerals in different countries, cultures and religions, trying to determine which elements can help change the state of mind in a funeral from a sad one into a positive one as, in my understanding, this will play an essential supporting part in the required process of accepting and fighting to overcome the pain of the loss of a loved one.

I have had the chance to talk with the sister of a 26 year-old guy who died in Spain last August. It seems that, some weeks before passing away, they had occasional conversations about death where he said he wanted a party if he died.

Unfortunately this happened and his family decided to respect his last will. The death notice they published in the local newspaper was later diffused at national level because it was the first time in Spain a funeral had been announced as if it was a party. And it was a party. A special one where there were moments for tears, but also moments to sing and dance and smile, reminding everyone of the most outstanding feature of this guy: his happiness.

She explained to me that when you have to face the death of a loved one the primary feeling you have is suffering, in her words, a selfish feeling because you only care about your pain without taking care of how that pain will have a negative effect in all the others attending the funeral (aren’t tears as contagious as laughter?). Overcoming the pain and making an effort to be happy to celebrate all the love and the good moments her brother had given to them was seen by her as a generous feeling because it demonstrated care for how others would live that moment. She had lost her brother one month previously, but she talked about him and his funeral in a positive and peaceful way.

When I told her about the funeral of my best friend I realized I still struggle to overcome certain memories that seem like open wounds in my mind. In our conversation it seemed that the “happy funeral” of her brother had helped her more than the traditional one I experienced when I lost my best friend. Apparently it also helped the family and friends of this guy. Even those who had a traditional opinion about the arrangements accepted Aitor’s last will, understanding that it was faithful to his personality and thus a respectful way to honor him.

Along with my video I have published a survey, anonymously answered so far by 220 people. Between 80% and 90% of them have said they would like a happy funeral; but most of them mentioned that they had never thought of the possibility of arranging a funeral in an alternative way. It seems that when people are given options, they open their minds to personalized solutions that may take elements from tradition but which also incorporate issues related to their own life.

And here is where the industry can make a difference, since less than half of the people stated in the survey that the funerals they had been to had helped them feel better. In several cases they state the opposite.

Isn’t this a motive for the professional sector to question whether traditional funerals effectively serve a positive purpose?

What do atheists profess?

12 September 2011
Charles
35 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, celebrants, ceremony, funeral customs, funeral trends, Religious funerals, Secular approaches to death

Posted by Richard Rawlinson, religious correspondent

Vale makes interesting points in the thread beneath my Beyond the Abyss post, which discusses the gap between secularist individuality and religious communal ritual:

We (I) believe that community and the communal celebration of key events is important – yet secularism, at least as it finds expression in the west today – tends to be individualistic. Not surprising, perhaps when the only common bond is a lack of belief.
My own feeling, though, is that we are in a transitional phase and will over time evolve new and meaningful rituals to reflect the reality of people’s sense of personal meaning and purpose.

At first these will ape the religious ceremonies we are familiar with – because they are the ones we know. But they will diverge and in time consolidate new norms, patterns and meanings.

Actually, look at any civil ceremonies, the start has already been made’.

I’m trying to be open but find it hard to imagine meaningful death rituals devoid of any spiritual belief in an afterlife. I agree that non-religious funerals help bring comfort and closure, but wouldn’t a truly atheist ritual do this while professing the faith that God and souls don’t exist? Would it not be crucial to celebrate the fact that the deceased, however fondly remembered, is now nothing, incapable of pleasure or pain?

Some political and intellectual atheists can cope with such a nihilistic philosophy, but we seem some way from popular demand for rituals reflecting such secular realities.

Some stats…

Each year, around 500,000 people in the UK die, according the annual mortality statistics published by the Office for National Statistics. Over 30,000 funerals a year are currently non-religious, according to the National Association of Funeral Directors. This is around 6 per cent of deaths, or over one in 20 households affected by death.

This figure is increasing as families turn to celebration-of-life ceremonies rather than services conducted by a priest, either in church or crematorium. There’s certainly a growing willingness to admit non-belief, encouraged by secular educationalists, politicians and media pundits.

Of the four in 10 Brits who claim membership of the Church of England, it’s clear many are secularists, who increasingly see hypocrisy in using their church simply for baptisms, weddings, funerals and the Christmas carol service.

The NAFD has confirmed that most of those choosing non-religious funerals were ‘hatch, match, dispatch’ Protestants. Lapsed Catholics remain more likely to uphold the ceremonial traditions of their forefathers, hedging their bets, so to speak. This is borne out by weekly Mass attendance figures among the genuinely faithful – for the first time in the UK, CofE and Catholic attendance is neck and neck, each attracting between 800,000 and 1m a week, even though the starting pool of Catholics is smaller than those claiming to be culturally CofE.

But just as there are people of half-baked religious faith, so there are ‘atheist-lites’ for whom the fond belief in some sort of afterlife prevents them from totally parting ways with religion-inspired ceremonial.

Funeral direction

The muddled masses are only likely to reach clarity on one side or the other by authoritative guidance. In a nutshell, they need to be evangelised by fundamentalists, not in the nutty Creationist or Islamofacist sense but in the sense of inspirational leaders persuading others of their creed, be it religious or godless.

This is where the problem lies for anyone trying to devise new rituals devoid of quasi-religious elements. In the case of civil funeral celebrants, it doesn’t matter if they settle for a client-driven compromise. Who really cares if high priest of atheism Richard Dawkins disapproves of them perpetuating religious rituals? After all, he’s a biologist, not a philosopher or social worker, and, even then, considered a sloppy intellect by most of his academic peers.

In the case of priests, their vows in the Sacrament of Holy Orders mean they must serve God and the faithful of His Church by obeying and teaching God’s laws, handed down by the Holy Bible and Apostolic Tradition – the Mass with its divine liturgy and rituals as the focal point.

It’s at this point that Catholics must briefly digress – yes, there are priests who attempt sacrilegious ministry, and, of course, a minority who have committed vile crimes in the eyes of secular law, as well as mortal sins against God. But the point I’m making is that the way forward for the Church is not the same as for secular ritualists: a priest who dons layman’s attire for a civil funeral should be defrocked; a civil celebrant’s a la carte service, complete with religious appetiser, offers choice.

As Gloriamundi makes clear in his/her recent blog, ‘What You Need to be a Celebrant’, such choice forms a compassionate collaboration between celebrant and the bereaved. By the same token, the Church is being compassionate and indeed true by being relatively inflexible, as touched on in my post, ‘Individuality in the Requiem Mass?’.

True atheists and theists are dogmatic, not pragmatic. They are not relativists as they believe in orthodoxies: that we are just physical beings, or that our mortal bodies are vessels for eternal souls, saved by the grace of God.

Some religions do indeed seem to be committing slow suicide, but there are also fresh buds, a growing hunger for reverence among many younger Christians. In a parallel world, generations are growing up not even as cultural Christians, meaning they’re less likely to behave as their grandparents would have done when confronted by death.

But this seems more social consequence than conscious movement: has the average person really embraced the belief that a world without religion would be a better place, even if they do prefer living in the moment and banishing thoughts of life after death?

Apathy has wounded religion but a creed that denies belief cannot equal it, certainly not communally. True atheist diehards (die-easies?) will never replace religion as you have to fill a void with something, not nothing.

‘Teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen’. (Matthew 28:20)