celebrants

My first funeral

7 October 2014
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: celebrants

Posted by John Porter

I think a personal reflective piece is in order following my delivery yesterday of my first fee-paying funeral ceremony as a recently qualified Funeral Celebrant. I will not forget it for several reasons.

The first reason is that I was sunning myself beside a swimming pool on a sun-drenched Greek island when I got the call from the funeral director on my mobile. I rarely answer it on holiday but for some reason decided to. I said “yes” without hesitation, took down the details and called the client straight away. The line sounded like a load of crickets having a tele-conference but we somehow managed to set up a meeting for the following Monday. The funeral was on Thursday. My mind started to tick. I sent a couple of emails and quickly established that the family did not want an order of service – phew! One obstacle out of the way with a tight timescale.

The interview went very well, I sent a draft script the next day and resolved a miscommunication between others about version of music – it pays to be very picky on this point! The son and grandson were both speaking during the ceremony about their matriarch’s character.  One would read, the other would do it off the cuff with some notes on his iPhone. I was not nervous about this as there were no funeral ceremonies to follow. 20-25 people would be there including 8 grandchildren which I was very pleased about.

Thursday 2nd October dawned a beautiful day. Chilly start but soon became unseasonably hot. The ceremony was at 2pm. I was working at the hospital until noon (p/t administrator in Transforming End of Life Care Team) and was fully prepared. I fancied lunch on the pier and then a short cycle ride to the crematorium – allowing 30 mins before the start to check everything. I was calm.

The second reason I will remember my first funeral is that 2nd October 2014 was my partner and I’s 21st anniversary – since we met. I was feeling very happy.

The third reason I will remember my first funeral is my accident! I left work as planned at noon and set off on my fold-up Brompton bicycle, suited, booted and tanned, to the bus stop for a ride to the pier. The sea beckoned. Within 30 seconds from leaving my office I cycled past a van that was blocking my way onto a grass verge and then suddenly hit a hardly visible hollow and summersaulted over the handlebars collapsing in an undignified heap! No-one came to my rescue as I guess they did not witness my acrobatics. Those first few seconds are very hard to recall. My first thought was “The funeral!”, the second “My clothes!” I scanned myself, nothing broken, no obvious holes in the suit – just a bit dusty. Phew! I did not notice the blood dribbling over my twisted Brompton. It was coming from the tip of my finger. “Right, back to base I think”.

Twenty minutes later I stepped out into the sun’s heat, suit brushed, blood washed off, tie straightened, finger smartly decorated with a plaster, bikeless but reasonably relaxed. A bus and taxi (I don’t drive) got me to the crematorium 30 mins before the ceremony as planned. I determined not to mention any of this to anyone until after the ceremony. I could feel some pain in my elbow but dispatched some adrenalin to suppress its pleas for attention.

My ceremony script was in a folio that only just fitted into the lectern (worth checking this in advance methinks). Two buttons: one for music, I noticed later it activates an audible door bell to alert the chapel attendant to play a piece from a CD (quaint!); the other to close the curtains, well-positioned so that I needed to face the coffin to easily press it.

As I climbed into the pulpit to start the ceremony I saw an envelope from the funeral director with “fee for John Porter…” written on it. It was cash. It would be impossible to pick up during the ceremony without being noticed. I let it be and hoped it would become invisible to the family contributors. Mercifully they were too focussed on what they needed to say and appeared not to see it. Another phew!

I closed the ceremony, cued the music (that’s when I heard a distant doorbell chime), left the pulpit, bowed to the closed curtains and stepped into the heat once more. I did not feel relieved. I felt a profound sense of respect for the family that had lost their matriarch, gratitude for the trust they placed in me and overwhelmed by the privilege to help them say farewell.

The family said wonderful things to me. The funeral director said he would email the other FDs in the area as I had done such a good job. I felt very thankful.

The final reason why I remember my first funeral is because 30 minutes later I was sitting in the A&E department of the hospital I work in waiting for an X-ray on my extremely painful elbow. People were being rushed in with life threatening injuries and conditions. The circle of life. I was eating a very late lunch – not the one I anticipated earlier gazing out to sea from my favourite café on the pier.

That was my first funeral.

Branding

26 September 2014
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: celebrants, Christian belief, Religious funerals

Posted by John Porter

Strangeways prison, Manchester 1982, pre riot. I was a student on placement and during my first week asked an officer what the red and white cards meant outside each cell. “White means CofE and red is for ‘left-footers’ – Catholic.”  Nothing for Jewish, Muslim, Sikh or any other religious flavour! I saw “HIV” on two cards! The red/white categorisation was, of course, a gross generalisation. Many said CoE because there were no other options being offered. Default religion. Not far from the truth, as the CoE remains firmly intertwined with the establishment by statute. Thankfully, the Queen, as “Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England” is not yet seen as a literal stone figurehead in churches!

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Yer gotta hav it!

15 September 2014
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: celebrants

Guest post by John Porter

Anyone who says to me “You have to”, I nearly always reply with “why?” and then “why?” again!

The fact is I don’t have to do anything. I can choose whether to or not – that’s different. “Not so,” I hear some say, “you have to have car insurance – it’s the law!” Well, as a magistrate I can safely say that many people who have appeared before me have chosen not to have it (or can’t get it as they are disqualified – much more serious m’lud – “take him down” I hear!). The repercussions are great – fines and increased cost of policies being just two, but the fact remains they had a choice, exercised it, broke the law and either did or did not have to face the consequences. Some offenders weigh up the risks and simply see being caught as an occupational hazard!

Let me turn to the issue that is on my mind as a funeral celebrant. “You need insurance”. There it is again. “Why?”, I ask.

Well someone might sue you if you get the deceased’s/other key names wrong or if you don’t make it to the funeral ceremony on time.

Do these questioners really understand the legal concept of negligence? The question is likely to be asked by funeral directors before taking on a new funeral celebrant. “Five million is the usual cover” I have heard some say. The “flavour” is usually public liability which I think is rather odd. I am a guest in peoples’ homes when I interview them and a professional celebrant at a chapel or wherever that I have no legal responsibility for. So is this right? If not, then is it professional indemnity? This goes back to the negligence issue and could be pretty tricky to prove.

I asked an insurance expert (not impartial) who advises funeral celebrants about this and he said:

“I have had many conversations with Insurers and Civil Celebrants on the question of Professional Indemnity as opposed to Public Liability and would comment as follows: The usual basic cover wording for Professional Indemnity Insurance is as follows –

 ‘To indemnify The Insured, subject to the indemnity limit and excess, against any claim for any civil liability which arises out of the conduct of professional business by reason of any negligent act, negligent error or negligent omission occurring or committed in good faith by the insured and or others expressly authorised to act for or on behalf of the insured.’ 

Other similar wordings are sometimes used but the essence remains the same and the full cover of course includes defence costs, intellectual property etc. etc. but the above extract is the clause that needs explanation as regards Civil Celebrants. 

The words ‘civil liability’ are important as this means that a Court has to agree that a Celebrant has been negligent – it would not be the case that an insurer would simply pay a Celebrant the cost of a missed funeral for the client to be reimbursed by the Celebrant. The Celebrant’s client would have to prove in Court that the Celebrant was liable and had been negligent. I imagine that this would perhaps cause more upset than the original missed appointment or late arrival etc. Secondly there is always an excess on the policy which may be higher than the cost of the funeral although perhaps if the whole event was cancelled there may be other costs involved but it is still possible that the total financial loss would fall within the excess. 

If a funeral did proceed late or at a later date, I do not think the Court would be able to agree on a financial or emotional loss. Negligence has to be proved in Court and insurers feel this would be neigh on impossible to quantify. 

In essence then John, my feeling, and that of insurers, is that the risk of Public Liability is far greater than that of Professional Indemnity and it is the case that many crematoria and halls hired for the purpose of a funeral or function are now insistent on the hirer or organizer having a valid Public Liability policy in force before hiring the premises in case of accident or damage.” 

They can insist for all they like as far as I’m concerned – I am not the hirer of a crematorium but a contracted disbursement of the funeral director – the person who hires is the client. “Ah, but then we won’t take you on” – a mild threat that hovers in the background in funeral parlours. It’s as clear as mud to me.

So what am I to do? It’s not a huge amount of money; I was quoted £120 for both types of insurance but I am struggling to see what the real risks are. Being a magistrate I’m a stickler for keeping my nose clean. This is different. There seems to be an implied sense of obligation for risks that are not, in my view, that great.

So: “I ain’t gotta hav it” may be my chosen course. Perhaps there are folk out there who can see the elephant standing behind me and set me on the straight and narrow path to insurance enlightenment!

Give others a chance to help pay for child funerals

3 September 2014
Charles
10 Comments
Categories: celebrants, Children, funeral directors

What an interesting debate that was, the one about whether undertakers and celebrants should charge for the funerals of children. A great many people followed it silently; the 25 comments represent a tiny fraction of the overall readership.

The debate was not conducted on a level of dispassionate logic, so neither side prevailed, but the heart-over-head faction had the greatest numerical support.

Lucy defined a rationale for charging: “I understand completely why other funeral directors on here wouldn’t charge, but if we applied the same emotional response to every family who walked through the door, we wouldn’t be in business for very long … people die in exceptionally tragic circumstances every day … why don’t they get a free funeral?” 

Gloria Mundi defined the heart-over-head position: “We can’t charge according to some personal tragedy-meter. Rationally, I can see no reason for not charging, but ‘the heart also has its reasons.’”

X Piry agreed: “On a logical level, I know that charging is the right thing to do, but it just doesn’t sit right with me.”

Any cool-headed rationalist will be driven potty by all this. If the parents of children who have died are worthy of financial help then, by the same measure, so too, surely, are those adults who, in Wendy Coulton’s words, “have become full time devoted carers of a relative who has been in their life for over 50 years. They are often living on the breadline because they gave up work to look after their loved one. Their loss is profound, not only for the person who has died but their own identity and sense of purpose. They have no concessions on funeral costs.”

Why not? Because they don’t tug at the heartstrings in the same way, obviously. And what this inconsistency illustrates is that, while some causes are more glamorous than others, the less glamorous are no less deserving. This accounts for why, for example, Help for Heroes has raised a sum approaching £200 million for wounded servicemen, but charities who work with the disproportionate number of ex-servicemen who are in prison or sleeping rough struggle to raise anything at all. Research into breast cancer fundraises more effectively than prostate cancer. This is mostly down to relative anatomical attractiveness.

For all their robustness, rational arguments don’t win converts. It’s the way of the world. But let’s at least not kid ourselves: funeral poverty in the wider population is a cause of equal value.

Where we can probably agree is that what all parents of children who have died value more than anything else are the abstract qualities of compassion, kindness and support.

The same as for all bereaved people.

We can agree that these are not qualities most articulately or effectively expressed by knocking a bit off a bill. Yes?

But what some (not all) parents of children who have died also value is ‘concrete’ help with paying the bill.

As do lots of other bereaved people.

In the matter of children’s funerals there are almost certainly lots of people unconnected with the funerals business who would like to help.

The new Child Funeral Charity enables them to do this. Undertakers and celebrants can give them a chance to chip in by publicising it and sharing the load.

Anne Barber, trustee of the CFC, writes:

The charity will be giving financial help to families who cannot afford to pay for their child or baby’s funeral, referred to us by professionals who work with them, (probably including most of the readers of this blog!). The payments will start from October 1st. Not only payments, but access to suppliers who are prepared to help by giving their products and services at cost or free. We are working hard to fundraise and are optimistic that the families who we can help will be the ones who really do need the help.

We know that the Social Fund is meant to help those on benefits to pay for funerals but as yet they have declined to tell us how many funerals for those under 16 they actually pay anything towards. Not many, we suspect, we will persevere until we get some statistics. But let’s not re-open the Social Fund debate.

The families we believe we will help the most are those who might be in work but are young and on low incomes, some even teenagers themselves, with absolutely no savings or hope of paying for a funeral. Often family, especially grandparents step in, but often they can’t.

The costs they might have to pay, as so rightly already pointed out here, vary enormously and they won’t know that if they went to a different funeral director or a different crematorium it could be less. Some funeral directors we have spoken to do far more than give their professional services, they actually pay ALL the fees for the family, so families do not spend one penny.

Overall we have been overwhelmed by the support that is out there and that we have been encountered already. Health professionals have contacted us keen to use the service and we have had calls from those rejected by the Social Fund as they aren’t on the ‘right type’ of benefits.

Our challenge is to make sure that we help in cases of real need. We will do our very best.

At last, another celebrant trainer

8 August 2014
Charles
50 Comments
Categories: celebrants, funeral directors

A flurry of forwarded emails flies into our inbox. “What do you think of this?!?” they all demand.

This?

The NFFD’s freshly launched celebrant training venture. The consensus is that it stinks.

What do we think? Well, let’s have a look.

The NFFD’s given reason for entering the celebrant training market is “growing demand”. Some will question whether, in a supersaturated market, there is any demand whatever. The answer is that market forces may confidently be relied upon to eliminate the less competent. There’s always room at the top.

What quality assurance can the NFFD offer? Selection for training is via “a telephone screening process”. The course, which seems not to be externally accredited, has been “Designed and developed in close conjunction with a number of industry experts” none of whom is named. The course is delivered at an intriguing venue, “our private church chapel” by “Rev Victor Johnson … an Ordained Priest of the Church of England” with “over 20 years’ experience conducting contemporary, civil-celebrant funeral ceremonies.”

The NFFD reckons that “funeral directors … are ideally placed to perform this valuable, satisfying, and lucrative, [celebrancy] role,” which sort of makes you wonder why they never thought of it before. The NFFD adds: “if public speaking isn’t for you, but you have a more confident driver, bearer, or other member of staff, why not give them an opportunity to develop their skills by enrolling them on the course instead?” Whoa, there’s one from out of left field.

The NFFD reckons “There’s rarely more than an hour or two’s work involved” in researching and writing a funeral ceremony. Our view is that if a celebrant were to use a laminated script on which he or she simply rubbed out an old name and wrote in a new one, that time could be halved. There are a lot of celebrants who reckon a bespoke funeral takes at least 10 hours to write but, let’s face it, they’re making a bit of a meal of it, aren’t they? You can’t be any good if you find it that difficult.

The NFFD is keen to help its celebrants to maximise their business. Projected earnings are given as “between £100 and £200 per hour,” a rate they describe as “incredibly lucrative”. Isn’t it, just? And if that isn’t enough, “You will also be invited to attend a one-day course FREE OF CHARGE to teach you how to supplement your income through the sale of pre-paid funeral plans. Given the environment that celebrants routinely work in, selling funeral plans is a brilliant way for you to easily generate an extra £500 – £1500 per week on top of your earnings as a straightforward celebrant.” There aren’t many vocations that make you this sort of dough.

The NFFD has made a name for itself as a creatively disruptive force in a highly conservative industry. It has certainly made feathers fly.

It has exposed itself to market forces and consumer scrutiny, which may be trusted, we think, to do their Darwinian work.

If you wish to comment, please be aware that the NFFD is retributive in the matter of libel.

Responsibility for your own conduct

8 July 2014
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: celebrants, crematoria, funeral directors

By celebrant Wendy Coulton of Dragonfly Funerals

The Plymouth Herald ran a story recently about a family complaint that the funeral service for their relative was disrupted by the loud and distracting sound of laughter and conversation outside by a large number of people waiting to attend the next funeral. They included senior leading council figures because the funeral was of a former councillor.

Instead of holding their hand up and unreservedly apologising for any upset they caused, one councillor blamed the crematorium staff for not marshalling the crowd properly and the council statement said this was an issue they would take up with the funeral director. This just added insult to injury to the family who said their funeral was spoilt.

I was incensed that the crematorium staff were the scapegoat and was delighted when the Herald ran my letter prominently with the headline ‘Take responsibility for your own conduct.’ Grown adults shouldn’t need to be reminded or marshalled on how to behave in a cemetery outside a chapel when they know a service is being conducted.

It is a challenge managing large numbers of attendees at the council crematoria because of the back to back service activity and limited areas to congregate but at the end of day it may come down to that simple saying ‘Silence is golden.’ The wake reception may be the better time for banter and a good chat.

Mother of all swear words

18 June 2014
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: celebrants, funeral

Posted by Wendy Coulton

Recently I had a dilemma in that a funeral I was planning and conducting was for someone who was known among their close friends for using the expletive C*** (C U Next Tuesday) with affection and as a genuine term of endearment.

I winced when I heard this because it is the mother of all swear words and I shuddered at the thought of having my mouth washed out with soap if I cursed (a threat my mother made when I was a child). But equally I understood and respected that it wasn’t regarded as offensive within the tight knit social circle of the deceased.

I knew that I would not myself be able to say the C word as an individual with my own values and also in my professional capacity as a funeral celebrant.

The friends were rallying their support by producing the Order of Service and they wanted to include this particular word on it. When I spoke to the mother of the deceased to research the tribute I became increasingly uncomfortable that her generation of the family could be offended by this language and I shared my concern diplomatically with the friend who was organising the Order of Service.

The friend was very gracious and acknowledged the point I raised. They came up with their own compromise which I thought worked brilliantly. A differently worded version of the Order of Service was produced for the family mourners and another with the C word in it was produced and handed out to friends who attended the service.

Doing them justice

7 May 2014
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: celebrants, eulogy

Over on the Mindfulness and Mortality blog, in a discussion about funeral eulogies, Gloriamundi asks a good question:

“Why do we seem to feel the need to sum up a life and pass judgement on it?”

He goes on: “The torrent of unqualified praise that falls on someone who has just died is an expression of sorrow and compassion, of course.” He wonders, though, if  “the only way to set the balance straight and strive for a more balanced, seemingly accurate picture would be to talk about the less angelic side of someone’s nature.”

Gloriamundi concludes: “Who are we to pronounce judgement upon the flickering, shimmering transience of a personality? The imperfect wonders of a human life? Let’s accept the limits of human judgement and not encumber a funeral with verdicts.”

Instead: “How much better to have people tell us, directly or via the celebrant, what the person meant to them. How much better to have anecdotes and stories that illustrate some well-known characteristics; they bring about the smiles of recognition and affectionate grief, they mean much more than generalised and abstract judgements.”

It’s a perennial question: what exactly is the purpose of a funeral eulogy within the context of a funeral rite?

Well, what are the expectations of the audience?  Do those who come to a funeral expect an evaluation of the dead person?

Yes, they probably do, don’t they? Religious people, for sure, believe that death is when we render our final account to God and receive, in awe and trembling, some sort of verdict on our life. As the Bible says, on the Day of Judgement, “who shall stand when he appeareth? for he [is] like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap.”

God is less like fullers’ soap nowadays, more of a mate, but nonetheless: there’s a widespread sense among the unchurched, too, that death is a time for totting up and taking stock. Unbelievers and those of fuzzy faith want their celebrant to deliver a final reckoning, albeit with a much massaged bottom line  – more soft soap than fullers’.

So perhaps Gloriamundi and her/his kind ought to view a eulogy as, essentially, an exercise in creative accounting.

But for a eulogist to try and meet the expectations of the audience if those buy cialis malaysia expectations are no more than a cultural hand-me-down is, some would argue, no longer useful nor necessary — it’s time, now, to set aside the traditional funeral in favour of a more apt vehicle. If so, what would that vehicle look like?

As it happens, the eminent humanist Harold Blackman designed one. He questioned the focus on the corpse and the usefulness of the public funeral ritual. He favoured a private, corpse-free (‘unencumbered’) funeral ritual – he called it a memorial meeting – featuring, in the words of his eulogist, Nigel Collins, a “reasonably full, frank and above all honest account of the subject – so, crucially, more a multi-faceted tribute than an idealised eulogy.” This looks very close to the Gloriamundi position.

In Blackman’s words: “Modern humanists should not make much of funeral rites, disposal of the body, attendance on it at the tomb; rather, they should encourage friends and relatives to come together to contribute from their memories and impressions to the creation of a new image of the person they knew, harvesting what was cultivated and produced in life.”

Again: “Even for the most private person, the unencumbered memorial meeting is the real tribute to the dead and the real admonition to the living, for it helps to redeem the loss in a living image and it asks for a life worth valuing. The concentration and collective contribution of the memorial meeting can raise and reinforce the image of the lost person with the sharpness of finality that survives dispersion. This should be a harvest ritual rather than a tomb ritual.”

When Blackman first proposed these ideas to the Royal Society in 1967 he encountered “violent protest … Many of [the Fellows] at least could not tolerate the idea of not paying respect to the dead in the customary way.”

That was almost 50 years ago. Blackman died in 2009 at the ripe age of 105 and was accorded a memorial meeting according to his own model — here.  He would be interested to observe the waning of the focus on the corpse that seems to be under way today. And he’d probably like the cut of Gloriamundi’s jib.

A new choice of funeral venue for bereaved of Plymouth

4 May 2014
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: celebrants, funeral directors, Funeral venues

Devonport’s historic Guildhall is to be offered as a venue for funerals. 

Built in 1822, the Grade 1 listed building has, over the years, served as a town hall, magistrates court, library and even a mortuary. It is now a community hub which hosts exhibitions, community group activities, events, weddings and conferences. 

The initiative has been driven by celebrant Wendy Coulton supported by  David Parslow of Walter C Parson funeral directors. Wendy has for some time been a doughty campaigner for venues that are more funeral-friendly than a crematorium — see here. 

Wendy says: 

“For a city population the size of Plymouth, the bereaved are poorly served at the moment in terms of providing choice of venue for non-religious funerals. The majority are held at the local crematorium and on a lesser scale in the non-denominational chapel at Ford Park cemetery and occasionally at Plymouth Albion rugby ground.

“I approached Devonport Guildhall about hosting funerals because the building is special. The Main Hall is beautiful and welcoming but it is also versatile in the way the room can be used for funerals attended by 50 to 200 mourners. Traditional chapel settings have regimented pew seating and fixed lecterns. At Devonport Guildhall we can use the space and arrange the seating and layout as the bereaved wish. It will enable Plymouth families to pay their respects and give thanks for the life of the person who has died in their own way and in their own time.

“Devonport Guildhall should be commended for recognising that this is a wonderful way to serve the community and I hope other appropriate venues in Plymouth will be more open-minded about hosting funerals, wake receptions and memorial events. If the person who has died had a particular affection or connection with a place it may be more comforting for the bereaved to hold the funeral there when the time comes.

“We are very grateful to David Parslow of Walter C Parson funeral directors for supporting this initiative from the outset and providing valuable practical guidance to ensure the building is fit for this purpose. In time it would be fantastic if city funeral directors could offer their clients a range of venue options for non-religious funerals.”

Devonport Guildhall’s Commercial Manager Claire Burgess says: “The beauty of the Main Hall is that it is a light, airy and versatile space so that we can create a personalised setting for any occasion or event.

“When visitors walk into the Main Hall they comment on how beautiful and impressive it is, but also how intimate and friendly it feels. We want to provide a venue which meets the needs of all generations in the city – from naming ceremonies and weddings to funerals and memorial events.

“We understand that more people in Plymouth are choosing a non-religious funeral and throughout its history Devonport Guildhall has adapted in the way it serves the community.”

Here at the GFG we think this is terrific. Go Wendy! 

What’s for love and what’s for money?

31 March 2014
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: celebrants, funeral cost, funeral directors

If there’s one thing that really vexes people in the funerals business it’s the question of who gets paid for what – and how much.

Take the business of conducting a funeral. In England, when C of E clergy moved their fee up to £160 + travel, lots of people howled. Everyone in England is entitled to a C of E funeral whether they attend church or not. The C of E is the state church. Vicars are paid wages to lead parish worship and attend to pastoral duties. How therefore can they define a funeral as an extra? Well, up in Scotland, where the Church of Scotland is the national church, not the state church, ministers make no charge for conducting a funeral. But the C of S is running out of money and looks like not being able to afford to do this for much longer. Conducting funerals for nothing is a luxury it cannot afford. Every altruistic enterprise needs revenue streams.

In the case of secular celebrants, the contract with clients is apparently clearer cut. They sell their skills for a price the market will stand. Theirs is unmistakably a commercial service. A good many celebrants are thereby able to generate a reasonable income by knocking out up to 10 or so funerals a week, working from a template with slot-in readings, etc  — a liturgy by any other name, nothing wrong with that — comprising also a treatment of the life of the person who’s died which probably goes little deeper than rapidly gathered facts + dates + a few notable attributes.

Alongside these fast-food merchants are the altruistic adherents of the Slow Funerals movement for whom the creation of a funeral is an evolving process requiring much talk, much listening, much thought and, as a consequence, a treatment of the life lived which calls for a great deal of ‘frightfully difficult literary labour’. The result is a funeral which goes deeper and is more personal. A better funeral, in other words. But to work in this way, and conduct a very few funerals a week, requires either acceptance of poverty or the existence of another form of income, whether in the shape of a pension, an inherited fortune or a supportive partner. In commercial terms, it is an uneconomic way of working.

So: how much of the time put in by these Slow Funerals people do we count as being given for nothing? What part of their work, in other words, counts as voluntary work?

This question doesn’t apply only to celebrants. There are undertakers, too, who believe in Slow Funerals, and who may also believe in doing their best for those who struggle to find the funds for a funeral. They generate a great deal of social capital but many of them don’t bank a lot of cash. It’s the same with every vocational occupation, of course, the difference being that most vocations we can think of pay at a level that makes going the extra mile an affordable luxury. Many of our most caring undertakers, by contrast, live close to the breadline. Many, but by no means all.

Funeral shoppers have always had a difficulty with acknowledging and accepting that a funeral is a consumer product just the same as any other. That’s changing. Two factors above all are responsible. First, it’s a product which 1 in 5 people struggle to afford. Second, it’s a product whose experiential value is being increasingly questioned.

Did I say two? Add a third. Until recent years, the state enabled everyone to buy a decent one-of-those, what-everyone-has, funeral. Any notion that the value of the Social Fund Funeral Payment will be restored in this, the era of the benefits cap, looks delusional. So something’s got to give, and that something’s almost certainly the way we do it now.

The time-consuming part of an undertaker’s and a celebrant’s work, which calls for high expertise and wisdom, is the emotional support of the bereaved, helping them come to terms with, and make some sense of, what has happened. The easy bit for an undertaker is the care of the person who’s died. Any good celebrant will tell you that only a small proportion of the value of their work can be judged by the script they read at the funeral.

You’ll not find the pastoral element of the work itemised and charged for at an hourly rate on any bill submitted by an undertaker or any celebrant. You can’t place a commercial value on that, you can’t charge people for kindness. If you’re an undertaker, it’s the care of the body that has to cover it. If you’re a celebrant, the rate for a template funeral. Reputation will help, too, of course. You can put your prices up a notch if everyone agrees you’re worth it — but you might not want to do that if it means making you unaffordable to people of slender means.

Whatever you think of all that, the fact remains that the what-everyone-has funeral, reckoned expensive by those who can afford one, is now out of reach to an increasingly large segment of the population. We need something more affordable.

A conference held at the International Longevity Centre in February this year proposed a cheaper way forward that we’ve discussed on this blog: There is considerable potential to review the funeral service itself, separating the ritual from the committal. This could enable people to have more time to consider the ritual aspects and costs of the service, separate from the more functional aspect of managing the remains. When they say committal, they mean disposal, of course. Do read the report, it’s good.

Separate the disposal from the ritual. Take the corpse out of the funeral. Bring in cheaper cremation and the re-use of graves, and the costs begin to tumble. If, that is, the resulting ritual is reckoned timely and satisfying. Not everyone will be persuaded, of course. 

Kate Woodthorpe at the University of Bath takes it a step further and proposes that there may be roles for “public, private and third sectors in both preparing individuals and their families pre-death, and when bereaved.”

That’s interesting. Third sector. Volunteers to share the work of listening and supporting bereaved people. That would redefine the roles of undertakers and ritualists. But is it really a viable alternative to the way we do things now?