Attitudes to death

Generalising from the particular

14 October 2010
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, ceremony, Formality vs informality

I enjoyed this article from the Catholic Herald by Francis Phillips:

I was at a Requiem Mass this morning; nothing unusual in that, of course. Yet this Mass was highly unusual in this respect: there was no panegyric of the dead. The deceased man had made it clear to his widow before he died that he wanted the homily to focus on the faith – specifically the theology of death and resurrection, with accompanying prayers for the dead – and not on him.

This must be the first funeral I have attended since the death of my father more than 30 years ago when a “celebration of the life” has not been a central feature of the service. How and when did it creep in that a funeral has to concentrate on a deceased person’s achievements, foibles and lovable frailties – indeed, on his or her imminent canonisation – to the exclusion of almost everything else?

…

There you have it: no mournful pop songs, no tributes to the deceased’s love of a pint at his local pub, his efforts on behalf of mankind; just natural grief at the loss and hope in the mercy of God. I left this morning’s funeral more comforted and consoled than at many a funeral I have attended in recent years.

Splendid spiritual confidence and theological integrity!

Read the whole piece here.

Claire’s last word

13 October 2010
Charles
11 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, celebrants, Co-operative Funeralcare, funeral directors, Humanists

Everyone looks at other people differently according to what they do. Hairdressers scan your hair, dentists your teeth, snobs your shoes… Undertakers? Why, they measure you for your coffin of course.

Surveying a funeral, the preoccupations of an undertaker are quite different from those of anybody else. Ordinary folk take in the procession, the flowers, the demeanour of the close family (grief bravely borne if they’re doing it by the script). But undertakers want to know who got it – who got the job. Their beady eyes home in on the registration plate of the hearse and decode the letters. Ah, CDF 1, Change and Decay Funeral Service (dignity assured, Daimler fleet, open 24 hours). They scrutinise the demeanour of the conductor (that watch chain’s a bit over the top), they log the condition and cleanliness of the cars and the aspect of the bearers. Who supplied that coffin? One of Wainman’s?

It is from this viewpoint that they will regard the funeral of lovely Claire Rayner, who died on Monday. As the chair of the Co-operative Funeralcare Forum (2002) Claire abetted this admirable organisation in its mission to bring about a “major shake-up in the UK’s funeral provision” and meet the “need for more information to help people make every funeral special.” So will she go with Co-operative Funeralcare? Why not?

What could possibly go wrong?

Claire was also a president of the British Humanist Association. It’s no surprise, then, that she will have a humanist farewell ceremony. This may pose a problem for the celebrant (if they use one), a problem which is becoming increasingly common. Humanist celebrants have, most of them, always gently outlawed hymns from funerals. Now they’ve got a new ontological problem with their clients. For though they may profess themselves to be hardened atheists, they later reveal a fuzzy belief in an afterlife of some sort, a freestanding heaven where no one’s in charge, a cake-and-eat-it sort of a place. Atheists are not the rigorous (left-leaning, often puritanical in the best sense) rationalists they used to be. They just don’t like, I don’t know, authority figures?

Whatever, Claire, who revealed a capacity for inconsistency when, as a lifelong republican she accepted an OBE, uttered these last words:  “Tell David Cameron that if he screws up my beloved NHS I’ll come back and bloody haunt him.”

Only joking, for sure. But Claire, I hope you will.

Thanks to Tony Piper for popping these mischievous thoughts into my head

Parish notices

11 October 2010
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: alternative funerals, Art and death, Attitudes to death, Books, green funeral, natural burial, Plan your own funeral

First, an event, Dying to Live.

It is organised by Archa Robinson at Living and Dying Consciously and is billed as: Suitable for anyone facing death in the next 90 yrs… a reflective, meditative, poignant, life changing and fun weekend !

Here’s more:

We live in a society conditioned to deny death. It’s a taboo subject and is often seen as a failure or at best ‘unfortunate’. We live as if we live forever, ignoring the truth of change and impermanence. Yet the acknowledgement of them holds the key to life itself. To be truly

conscious in our lives and present to each moment means to ‘let-go’—to die to the last moment and open to the next—to live and die consciously, moment to moment. Death is the ultimate ‘let-go’. From the moment of our birth our bodies are dying, so the more we face the fears of our own death the more we are able to love and celebrate our lives now.

We will use image-making, meditation, writing and other experiential ways  of exploring these themes   To support participants on their own inner journey they  will be asked to stay in silence during the workshop.

Venue: Boswedden House, Cornwall.

Dates: 12, 13 & 14 November.

Cost: £125, with an early bird fee of just £95 if you book before 22 Oct. B & B available at £96 for 3 nighsts; £70 for two. Sounds like terrific value!

Further information and booking here.

Boswedden House

Second, a survey conducted by Jean Francis, author of Time to Go and one of the team at ARKA Original Funerals.

Jean conducts workshops on funeral planning and would love you to respond to a survey she is conducting into the importance people place on environmental considerations when planning a funeral. It’ll take you less than five minutes (I know, I’ve done it myself). You’ll find it here.

Dem bones

8 October 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death

Here’s one of those ‘only in America’ stories:

The owner of Memory Gardens Cemetery says he did nothing wrong disposing of human remains that were used for medical research. A resident called police after finding the piles of bones out in the open on cemetery property … Parker says he’s sorry if people are hurt, “It tends to get sensationalized because it’s a taboo subject. It’s death. This is the family’s choices to donate the bodies and if they wanted the remains back they certainly could have said so at any time.” Sgt. Ben Renya says there are no charges to file because there is no law on the books which says this is illegal.

Full story + video here. Hat-tip to Funeral Consumers Alliance for this — a beautiful body which, if you don’t know it, you need to set aside an hour or two to check out.

The only way round is through

6 October 2010
Charles
10 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, bereavement, Co-operative Funeralcare, Dead people's rights, Death; Good death, funeral directors, Plan your own funeral

Once upon a time people dreaded dying. They couldn’t be sure it would be painless. They dreaded being dead, too. Some feared the unknown. Others lamented the end of their existence.

A very few people had no fear whatever of being dead because they trusted in a joy-drenched afterlife. But even these people dreaded dying.

Death was a big deal.

In those days, people affected by the death of someone were called ‘the bereaved’. They experienced grief. Even people who were certain that their dead person had gone to paradise were sad because they missed them. So funerals were sad occasions. There was no way round this. It was because everyone was sad.

Because dying could be such a horrible thing, people didn’t talk about it. When they were dead, this made life difficult for everyone. The undertaker would gently say to the bereaved, “What do you want to do?” and the bereaved would reply, “What she would have wanted.” The undertaker would gently ask, “What was it she wanted?” and the bereaved would reply, “We don’t know.”

The pre-need funeral plan people gazed sadly at their unsold pre-need funeral plans and said, “What hope for us when everyone’s in denial?”

People who know what’s best for people saw that what death needed was an image makeover. “It’s not so bad when you talk about it,” they said. And they had a point – up to a point. “It has been said,” they said, “that what we fear most about dying is the associated loss of control. By empowering patients to express their wishes, that control can be restored.” “Does it bollocks,” said the people with neurodegenerative diseases.

The pre-need funeral plan people proved, with smoke and mirrors, that grief can be bypassed by partying. And because no one wants anyone to be sad when they die, everyone flocked to buy their very own pre-need, knees-up party plan.

So now when relicts go to the undertaker, the undertaker says, “Hello.” And the relicts say, “What’s next?” And the undertaker says, “This, this is what’s next. This is what you’ll do, this is what you’ll wear, this is what you’ll listen to, this is how you’ll feel. It’s all laid down and it’s all paid up.”

And the relicts say, “Sorry, we feel too sad, we miss her.” Or, “Are you joking, mate? We couldn’t stand him.”

And Death says, “Right. You’ll do it my way.”

One to see

4 October 2010
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Art and death, Attitudes to death, funerals in other cultures

There’s an exhibition on at Compton Verney, 13 November til 12 December, entitled Kurt Tong: In Case it Rains in Heaven. It’s a photographic celebration of the Chinese custom of burning paper consumer goods of all sorts — clothes, cars, iPods — in order to provide for the dead person in the afterlife. It’s a custom that probably makes little intuitive sense to anyone not brought up in the tradition, by which I only mean that it makes little intuitive sense to me.

As well as being a lovely place with a very good restaurant and a tradition of excellent exhibitions, Compton Verney is home to the largest single piece of stone ever taken from the Isle of Portland. It’s a boulder 5 metres high and weighs 100 tonnes. Its installation was the inspiration of artist John Frankland. They had a heck of a job getting it off the island, I remember it well, and having got it to its destination the best name Mr Frankland could find for it was ‘Untitled’, which sounds a bit like artspeak for ‘Er…”

I digress. If you’d like a foretaste of Tong’s snaps, have a look here.

The great unsung

23 September 2010
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, crematoria, Formality vs informality

I’ll never make a funeral director. Yesterday’s experience reinforced that. No presence of mind. No eye for detail. In any case, I like things to hang loose, come a little unravelled if they will. But the mourning public likes to be held in a reassuring grip, I was reminded. They like someone to look to; someone commanding. To what extent this is a conditioned response, the product of strict timetabling brought about by the exacting demands of crematoria, I don’t know. But there is a decidedly British funeral behaviour and there’s more to it than Britishness. It goes with a lot of glancing at watches. Everyone except the dead guy, that is.

It all went well, just in case you’re wondering. Along the way I met some great people. And herein lay another reminder. Some of the nicest people we’ll ever meet work in the funeral industry. There was Richard who prepared the body and was so happy to be told what a very good job he’d done. There was Mandy at Adlam’s, where the body was being looked after. She couldn’t have been kinder or more generous. There was Margie McCallum, the celebrant. She gave up most of her day to this funeral and conducted the ceremony with clarity, intelligence and unhurriedness. And there was lovely Dave of ClassicRentabug whose fun lim followed me in the estate car in which poor Margie was crammed against the dashboard because the coffin was 6’ 8”.

Once at the crem my essential incompetence was made manifest. I even found I was unable to reassure myself that the coffin goes in feet first. So I threw myself on the mercies of the crematorium manager, confessing myself to be an imposter. This might have made him disdainful. It didn’t. With great magnanimity and gentleness he didn’t tell me what to do, he took over. He briefed the bearers, who were intent on shouldering the coffin. He arranged the procession. He seated everyone, and was alert to every latecomer. And while I have been to many crems and met many very nice people who work in them, this man, Nick Pearce, manager of West Wiltshire Crematorium, is, in my unwavering opinion, the Best in Britain. His staff are lovely, too.

Perhaps you have your own local hero whom you would like to nominate. Please do. I’d be happy to settle for equal best (if grudgingly).

Site I like

21 September 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: alternative funerals, Attitudes to death, bereavement, DIY funeral, funeral cost, funeral customs, funeral trends, memorialisation

There’s interesting work going on over in Boston, Massachusetts. Two women, Ruth Faas and Sue Cross, offer a range of services to the bereaved. They have a reading room where people can sit in comfort and find out about death and dying. They offer advice and contacts to those wanting a green or self-managed funeral. And they have  an art studio where people can come and make something commemorative, or simply work through their emotions.

Have a look for yourself here.

(Hat-tip to The Modern Mourner for this link)

Memento mori

20 September 2010
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Art and death, ashes, Attitudes to death, memento mori, memorialisation, Plan your own funeral

An interesting thread here in a US forum about the custom of stopping to show respect for a hearse passing. I don’t suppose it’s a custom to be found anywhere in Britain any more. Pity. Any reminder that the bell tolls for every single one of us can’t be a bad thing. “We slowly drove, he [Death] had no haste.” That’s the way to do it.

On the subject of reminders of our eventual demise, I rather like this over-the-top urn cover which Shirley (I hope I’ve got that right) at Modern Mourner has commissioned. She says: “I plan to keep my most precious personal possessions in it for now, and when my time comes my ashes can kept sheltered in this most stylish cover. If my ashes are scattered at some point, I hope this wrap can be used to store meaningful mementos.”

Whatever you think about Shirley’s urn cover, wouldn’t it be a good thing if everyone kept their end of life docs in a dedicated hollow object which all members of the family know all about? I’m collecting mine in a wooden ashes pyramid that I bought from Carl Marlow. It’s satisfying to point and say, “It’s all in there.”

Helpers fail, comforts flee

20 September 2010
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Assisted suicide, Attitudes to death, Death; Good death, euthanasia, Exit, Humanists, medical interventions in dying, self-deliverance

I enjoyed this piece by David Nobbs, creator of Reginald Perrin, in yesterday’s Observer. Here are some extracts.

My mother died on 7 August 1995. I didn’t realise, that day, my life had changed … My mother died, as she had lived, unselfishly. After she’d died, my wife Susan and I were just in time for Sunday lunch at my aunt’s. That may sound frivolous, but it was so typical of her I actually believe that some unconscious influence was at work.

She had lived about as happily as it was possible to live in the 20th century, for almost 95 years. She had been ill and in hospital only for the last two weeks. At times, during those two weeks, she had been restless and disturbed, but that Sunday morning she became more and more peaceful. Her breathing began to get slower. She had worried for Wales, and I had no doubt this contributed heavily to her worry lines, but now all those lines disappeared – her face became smooth and she looked young again. Her breathing faded and slowed so imperceptibly it was hard to recognise the moment she actually died.

I can honestly say, on reflection, that witnessing her death took away from me all fear of my death. (Not of my wife’s death. I fear loss dreadfully.)

That doesn’t mean I welcome the ravages of old age. I fight against them. In my 70s I have taken on a fitness trainer and last month I began to tweet! I hope that I will not die in great pain or in an old people’s home. But I no longer fear the moment when I will cease to exist

But the most important thing that happened to me in the wake of my mother’s death wasn’t the strengthening of my feelings against religion. It was the strengthening of my feelings for disbelief. I believe that there are just as many of the “Christian virtues” to be found among the faithless as the faithful…

Loss of faith. It sounds so negative. I didn’t lose faith. I gained faith. Faith in people. I am proud to describe myself as a humanist.

This growing conviction has had quite an effect on my writing – on the novels, at least. I am sometimes described as a comic novelist, but I describe myself simply as a novelist. I write about life, and in life I see much humour and much tragedy, and that is what I write about.

An irony of all this is that if my mother could hear me, could read this, she would be very distressed and would be horrified to think that her death had led me down this road. Well, there it is, it’s what has happened and luckily I believe (know?) that she can’t.

Read the entire article here.

David Nobbs talks about how he is dealing with ‘the ravages of old age.’ I guess that, as we embark on an era when, for most of us, we’ve never had it so old, there will be more and more writers dealing with if and how ageing can be made endurable as physical debility advances and we are deserted by all interest in sex and shopping. A book which has been well reviewed is Jane Miller’s Crazy Age: Thoughts on Being Old. There’s article by her in the Guardian here. The social problems thrown up by an ageing population will become more and more apparent in the next 20 years and I suppose the answers to them are, for the time being, unthinkable. But not for very much longer.

Over on BBC Radio 4 tonight at 8pm there’s a challenging-sounding if uncheerful-sounding  programme, Exit Strategy, by Jenny Cuffe about assisted dying and self-deliverance. “The debate over whether we should legalise assisted suicide is not going away. But whilst we flounder over the grey areas of the British legal system, a radical Australian doctor has found a loophole. Because physically helping someone to die is illegal, he is providing information to paying participants on how to die peacefully and painlessly kill themselves … Talking with geriatricians, psychologists, campaigners and elderly people she explores society’s last great taboo: death. She asks why so many people approaching old age are scared of dying. Are they being failed by our care system? Are advances in medicine extending quantity but not quality of life? Or is even discussing assisted suicide for the elderly symptomatic of an ageist society that undervalues the old? Should the ‘I want’ generation be able to make the choice of when we die and have the right to plan our own Exit Strategy?” If you miss it, you can always catch it on the Listen Again.