ceremony

Interdependence

12 July 2012
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: celebrants, ceremony, funeral

Posted by Vale

We were saying farewell to a very old lady – nearly 99 – who had spent her last years living in a care home. She had no family there and, apart from myself and the organist, there were just four people present, all of them members of staff from the Care Home.

It could have been perfunctory: decent, caring even, but a bit of a formality. In the event it was one of the most moving services I have ever been involved in.

It made me wonder where our feelings come from. We are involved in funerals all the time, why is it that, even if we are always engaged, empathetic, professional, there are some services – not always the most tragic – that carry an extra emotional charge?

For me the answer lies in the relationship we have with our clients. It looks straightforward, is usually quite brief, yet in my experience manages to contain all sorts of complexities.

What happens when you meet people – family, a group of friends, carers – for the first time? You bring experience, knowledge, expertise and a commitment to helping them shape the funeral that they need.

In return you receive a commission which is both practical and almost intangible. As you go off perhaps to find poetry and music, perhaps to write a tribute, you also carry with you a responsibility to be truthful to their feelings as they would like them represented at the funeral service.

It’s not always easy. You must in some measure set aside your own reactions to a death and even, on occasion, your own beliefs about the benefit of ‘good’ funerals. But in the end your only justification is to be truthful to their need. You reflect and are validated through their feelings. You depend on them in the same measure that they are depending on you.

In the case of my very elderly lady, although she had no family two of the carers had looked after her for twelve years, had grown to love her and were passionately concerned to give her the best and most feeling send off that they could manage.

So although there was no life story and only the smallest things to remember – a saying, a look, a turn of the head – her funeral was charged with mystery, love and, in the end, a sense that together we had been able to do what was needed.

What the faith?

4 July 2012
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: celebrants, ceremony, Interfaith, Religious funerals

Posted by Reverend Noel Lockyer-Stevens, One Spirit Interfaith Minister

Ed’s note: Noel is writing in response to Richard Rawlinson’s challenging post here. 

The undertaking of a funeral service is for me one of the most privileged roles I undertake within my ministry in Dorset. I am sure that every minister, ordinand and priest feels the same or similar.

Why is privilege so important? When someone contacts me to take a funeral service it is because that it is recognised that I may be able to meet the needs of the newly bereaved family and the person who has left this mortal realm.

What are those needs? I believe they are as follows;

To be treated in a heartfelt way,

To be treated with respect for their religious or non religious belief

For the person who has passed to be honoured and their life to be celebrated despite any pain or anger from family or friends

To offer a landmark service that can be used for healing after honouring the deceased.

How can I help to meet those needs? I can arrive at the home of an unknown family as a stranger, discuss in intimate detail the life of someone I did not know and hopefully leave the lives of that family as a friend.

As a One Spirit Interfaith Minister I am not interested in tethering my belief system to the family I visit. For me anything that is respectful to the life of the departed and brings solace or comfort to the bereaved is okay in my book. The choice of music, song, prayer, poem or other reading is used as a tool for relief rather than invoking any form of guilt or shame or hurt.

I will not judge a life as right, wrong, bad or sinful, because these are points of view, not absolutes. I do not preach, I deliver soft and gentle messages of joy, forgiveness and hope. I do this in a way tailored to the beliefs of the family, whether they see an afterlife or not. Is there one? Can I say with proof positive that there is? Will I say with denial there is not?

This is not sitting on the fence, this is not a person afraid to talk about his beliefs of religion and spirituality. But neither will I tell any family what they can or cannot use to heal their pain, that there is only one brand of plaster to put on an open wound. Many brands of plaster aid healing and I am open to them all.

The order is rapidly fadin’

21 June 2012
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: alternative funerals, ashes, Attitudes to death, Body donation, ceremony, cremation, Formality vs informality, funeral customs, funeral directors, Religious funerals

Blog reader Kathryn Edwards has drawn our attention to an interesting article in the Guardian. Thanks, Kathryn. 

In it, Rosanna Greenstreet tells how her aunt Molly donated her body for medical education or research, thereby denying everyone the benefit of a funeral. Greenstreet tells us what family and friends did instead:

Molly didn’t believe in God and hated funerals, but she loved a party. So on Saturday 12 May, on what would have been her 94th birthday weekend, Stephen and Prudence held one for her. The celebration lunch was in a private room at the Michelin-starred restaurant, Chez Bruce, in south London. All Molly’s nearest and dearest came. There were photos of her through the ages and letters of condolence from her friends. It was a lovely occasion: we drank champagne as we shared our memories of Molly, and there were no tears.

Greenstreet’s father also wants to donate his bodyto Cambridge university, both for the benefit that will confer and also because it will enable him to evade a funeral. He’s written down seven reasons: 

1. Hopefully, to make some contribution to medical training

2. To spare relatives the trouble of organising a funeral.

3. To spare my estate the cost of a funeral (a “cheap” one might cost £3,000).

4. To spare possible “mourners” the trouble of attending a funeral. 

5. To avoid the hypocrisy of troubling the Anglican church to participate in a service when I have attended so few other services since I left school.

6. There is nothing that could be said or sung at a church funeral service that would reflect my views (such as they are) on life, death and fate. Anyone curious about my life can be sufficiently informed by my detailed and intimate diaries (currently 76 volumes).

7. To avoid anyone having to trouble to say anything interesting or pleasant about a life distinguished only by its lack of significant distinction – or disgrace.

Typically self-deprecating and, perhaps, peculiarly British. Anthony Greenstreet may be 83 but he’s in tune with the zeitgeist. Like an ever-increasing number of people, he can’t see the point of a conventional funeral, and his daughter is catching on to the attractions of a funeral without a body. 

Greenstreet concludes:

It’s hard to think about what we will do to remember my father when he has gone up to Cambridge for the last time. Fancy restaurants have never been his thing – he has always preferred home-cooking. Nor does he drink much – his preferred tipple is tea, taken without milk, harking back to the days when he started his career as a “humble clerk” in India. So, perhaps, when the time comes, we will sit around the kitchen table with a cuppa, make a start on those 76 diaries, and really find out what made the old man tick!

The comments under the article are worth reading. Here are some:

Mrs PunkAs

When my father in law passed away recently we respected his wishes not to have a funeral – he was non religious and wanted no public gathering so instead we hired a room at the crematorium and gave the four grandchildren an assortment of multi coloured vivid markers each. They spent a lovely half an hour drawing all sorts of stuff all over his coffin, pictures, words, memories etc. It was really good for them. It was the best send-off I’ve been to.

 Mykeff

I’d like to be stripped of all useable parts and then squashed into an old cardboard receptacle and ploughed under at a random beauty spot.
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Sandyr9 (whose father donated his body)

For my father, we reserved a chapel, placed an obituary with time and location of service, called distant friends and relatives, and had a lovely service: A minister friend presided, biblical passages were preached and discussed, and traditional hymns were played. After the service, there was a reception wherein attendees met and conversed with family. To my thinking, we had a funeral for my father.

 These sentiments are as common among Guardian readers as they are among the readers of any other paper. Each inspires the others to do something minimal or creative or alternative or all of the above. And of course, the more people exchange these sorts of views, the more they empower themselves, so that when the time comes, the more likely they are to have the clarity of mind to reject a funeral director’s conventional  offer. 

The message to funeral directors is one that Bob Dylan set to music all those years ago: better start swimming. 

Full Guardian article here. 

 

All things bright and beautiful?

11 April 2012
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: ceremony, funeral music, Humour, music

Posted by Belinda Forbes

The sun is shining again here in leafy Berkshire.  The mourners no longer need to huddle for warmth in the crematorium waiting room.  The cruel winter wind that has been whipping across the chapel entrance is now a gentle breeze.  Unfortunately, I’m allergic to tree pollen so it’s not all good news.

Although I am a secular funeral celebrant, I’m often asked if a hymn is‘allowed’.  The most common reason people give for requesting hymns at an essentially non-religious funeral is that they want to sing something.  And for many people the thought of singing something secular is just too daunting.  It is possible of course and we’ve sung along to Always Look on The Bright Side of Life (works best with two or three extroverts leading the singing from the front); Danny Boy and the fiendishly difficult Bridge Over Troubled Water amongst others.

By far the most common hymn requested by my clients is All Things Bright & Beautiful closely followed by Morning Has Broken.  A love of nature andgardening or a desire to have something that ‘isn’t too depressing or sombre’ are  the usual reasons given.

One brave family whose late mother adored her garden asked if we could sing, In An English Country Garden.  They didn’t want a choir and all the versions recorded with vocals were either unsuitable or tricky to sing along to.  So we opted for an instrumental version recorded by the Albion Song Society.  To my surprise and delight it went remarkably well.  With a little practice (at home with an understanding friend) to get the timing right, we discovered that it’s easier to sing than All Things Bright & Beautiful.  If any celebrants or choirs out there would like to give it a go, here are the words:

Percy Grainger’s An English Country Garden

How many kinds of sweet flowers grow
In an English country garden?
We’ll tell you now of some buy cialis via paypal that we know
Those we miss you’ll surely pardon
Daffodils, heart’s ease and phlox
Meadowsweet and lady smocks
Gentian, lupin and tall hollyhocks
Roses, foxgloves, snowdrops, forget-me-nots
In an English country garden.

How many insects come here and go
In an English country garden?
We’ll tell you now of some that we know
Those we miss you’ll surely pardon
Fireflies, moths, and bees
Spiders climbing in the trees
Butterflies drift in the gentle breeze
There are snails, ants that sting
And other creeping things
In an English country garden.

How many songbirds fly to and fro
In an English country garden?
We’ll tell you now of some that we know
Those we miss you’ll surely pardon
Blackbird, cuckoo and quail
Robin and turtle dove

Bluetit, lark, thrush and nightingale
There is joy in the spring
When the birds begin to sing
In an English country garden.

For those gardeners who would prefer a little more realism, there’s this version of All Things Bright & Beautiful:

All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful

The Lord God made them all.

But what we never mention

Though gardeners know it’s true

Is when he made the goodies

He made the baddies too

All things spray and swattable

Disasters great and small

All things paraquattable

The Lord God made them all

The fungus on the goose-gogs

The club root on the greens

The slugs that eat the lettuce

And chew the aubergines

All things spray…

The drought that kills the fuchsias

The frost that nips the buds

The rain that drowns the seedlings

The blight that hits the spuds

All things spray…

The midges and mosquitoes

The nettles and the weeds

The pigeons in the green stuff

The sparrows on the seeds

All things spray…

The fly that gets the carrots

The wasp that eat the plums

How black the gardener’s outlook

Though green may be his thumbs

All things spray…

But still we gardeners labour

Midst vegetables and flowers

And pray what hits our neighbours

Will somehow bypass ours

All things spray…

 

 

What price value?

26 March 2012
Charles
9 Comments
Categories: ceremony, direct cremation, funeral directors

Over at the Connnecting Directors website here there’s a rant by a funeral home consultant, Alan Creedy. In it, we see amusing similarities between the US funeral industry and our own:

Why do funeral professionals spend so much time fighting among themselves and never fighting for themselves? … Why is so much emotional energy spent on not-losing-a-call and none spent on getting 5 more calls?

Mr Creedy berates US undertakers for their passivity in hard times:

We are so addicted to our “Mr. Nice Guy” image and so afraid of offending just one person that we allow people like Jessica Mitford and Lisa Carlson and a plethora of ill informed journalists to tell our story for us. In fact, I have come to believe we no longer know what our story is.

Worse, it seems US funeral home profits have halved in the last 30 years. Mr Creedy wants undertakers to stand up for themselves:

WAKE UP! If you think people will like you because you are their doormat (which they don’t) they will like you a whole lot less when you are a public failure. Your livelihood is in jeopardy. Your wife and your family’s livelihood is in jeopardy…

…and so on. You can read it for yourself here.

Over here in the UK, times are also hard for undertakers. There are too many of them competing in a market where the death rate has never been so low.

Worse, there’s a recession on.

And to top it all, demand has never been higher for cut-price funerals. The undertakers who are doing best are the £995, bargain basement, pile em high and burn em cheap brigade. The number of people looking for direct cremation is becoming astonishing.

It is not all economic necessity which is driving this. Arguably, the significant factor is the failure of our undertakers, collectively, to make a case for the emotional and spiritual value of a funeral ceremony.

A funeral is, for many, no more than an invidious social ordeal.

And the trend is that it is becoming increasingly okay to opt out.

What makes a good funeral?

20 February 2012
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: ceremony, funeral customs

Posted by Vale

Would a traditional religious ceremony with six lacklustre hymns, a perfunctory celebrant and no mention of the person in the coffin count as one? I expect most of us would say no – but, sometimes, I wonder.

We often talk about the grand and the personal, the expressive and moving as though that sort of funeral represented some sort of ideal. They can certainly be wonderful events and, if they are what you want, there is no doubt that they can provide that sense of release and transformation that both fulfils and allows people to move on in their grieving.

But what strikes me most about grief is its malleability. It will accommodate itself to every human tradition and style. Buried like the Muslim within 24 hours? Grief accommodates this. Held for weeks while the house is made ready as they do in Ghana? Grief accommodates this, as it does for burning, sky towers or ship burials.

So what makes a good funeral? There is no common factor that I can see, other than the conviction amongst the mourners that they are doing what is right – by society and by the person they have lost. If they have confidence there then grief will accommodate whatever arrangements need to be made.

In that sense, if a family goes away feeling that a ceremony was what someone wanted and, above all, was the right thing to do, even the most threadbare won’t have been without some comfort.

So, what makes a ‘good funeral’?  Is it, in fact, a sense of duty fulfilled and not, as we sometimes seem to suggest here, the theatre or therapy of the memorable event? Discuss…

 

Thoughts of a funeral-goer

17 February 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: ceremony, funeral, funeral music, Humanists, music, Plan your own funeral, Religious funerals, Thoughts of a funeralgoer

Posted by Lyra Mollington

The lovely Mr Cowling and his little friend Vale have kindly invited me to contribute to the splendid GFG. As a lady of a certain age, I have attended more than my fair share of funerals, becoming something of a connoisseur.

I have also attended more than my fair share of dreadful funerals. On one occasion we were regaled with threats of hell and damnation by an intense and possibly psychopathic lady vicar. She clearly warmed to her theme as she saw our horrified faces. We were her ideal audience – unable to escape.

The humanists are only slightly better – why do they have to mention religion so much? Yes, we get it – you can have a funeral without God. And yes, you mean no disrespect to those of a religious faith. Get a grip for heaven’s sake! We’re not going to fall apart because you’re unable to wax lyrical about Life Everlasting. However, I do miss a good hymn. As long as it’s not All Things Bright & Beautiful! Unless the organist is playing it in the key of C, at my age I have no hope of reaching the top notes. But even that is better than Wind Beneath My Wings. Does no-one listen to the lyrics?

Anyway, it got me thinking. What if my children chose something like that for my funeral. Plan ahead – that’s the key. So whilst we were tucking into our crispy duck in restaurant in China Town, I tentatively raised the subject of my demise. It went something like this:

Me: I’ve been thinking about my funeral.

Daughter: (imagine high-pitched disapproval) Mum! We’re eating!

Me: Well we don’t often get the chance to talk like this. I just wanted…

Son: (fingers in ears) Not listening. Not listening.

Me: I’ll write it all down then.

Daughter: Fine – but it’s not legally binding you know.

Son: (starting to chuckle) Yeah, but don’t worry – we’ve got lots of ideas.

Later that evening we saw Bill Bailey’s Work In Progress and everyone howled with laughter when he sang the first few notes of “I Will Always Love You…”

Now that’s another song I don’t want at my funeral. Does no-one listen to the lyrics?

Ed’s note: the first two lines are: ‘If I should stay, / I would only be in your way.’ A very good point you make, Ms Mollington. 

Has the funeral procession hit the buffers?

7 February 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: ceremony, Processions

Posted by Charles

We’ve talked quite a lot on this blog recently about ritual. There have been times when a better and more accessible word might have been theatre.

For what is a funeral if it is not theatre?

The playscript for the drama we call a funeral, together with its delivery, is, for the most part, the responsibility of the ceremony leader. But funeral directors get to play a major part in act one, scene one, the procession, and, though they love dressing up for it, I think many of them have lost sight of the story they’re supposed to be telling and, therefore, the role they are supposed to be playing.

The story of a funeral procession is that of the last journey ever taken by a dead person here on Earth. The dead person is accompanied, as Thomas Long expresses it, with love and lamentation to the Edge of Eternity. The element of accompaniment is central. 

It’s a ritual journey, obviously. The dead person’s last actual journey was probably to the hospital by ambulance. There, on their deathbed, family and friends hopefully got a chance to say goodbye. A funeral re-enacts this ritually, theatrically: a ritualised final journey followed by a ritualised goodbye.

In the olden time a funeral procession could make its way to the place of farewell at a dramatically slow pace (there’s no practical reason for going slowly). Those whom the procession passed amongst would stop and doff their hats and bow and pay their ritual last respects. It was a good show.

That’s all been consigned to the past, borne away by traffic and indifference. Keeping a procession together now through traffic lights and roundabouts is wing-and-a-prayer stuff. The first 100 meters works well enough, the undertaker leading the hearse at a stately walking pace down the street. Like all good actors, s/he is in character. So are the understrappers. Splendid. Then we get to the main road and s/he dives in. The actors come out of character, most of them – all the while keeping up appearances. Heaven knows what talk they talk, what jokes they swap, let’s not speculate. This part of the journey is not about stately procession, it’s about getting to the crem on time. It’s a hiatus, an ellipsis. And there’s nothing we can do about it.

Which is why, in a film, unless it’s a satirical comedy, you’d jump cut to when the church or crematorium hoves into view and the occupants of the hearse get back in character. The funeral director hops out and carries on where s/he left off earlier for all of 200 metres max. And stops just short of the coffin’s destination.

If a playwright wrote it like that you’d shoot him. For this is the point at which the principal actors are joined by The Crowd. When you’ve got that many people on stage there must be ensemble action, a single focus of attention. We don’t get any of that. As the limousine doors are opened and the occupants unfurl under the indulgent but prurient gaze of The Crowd, the Men In Black Macs are, severally, easing the coffin out of the hearse and doing things with flowers.

The procession has entirely lost its momentum, not in itself fatal, but it can never regain a sense of purpose because, by the time it is ready to move on once more, it’s far too close to journey’s end. It falls over the finishing line. The Crowd was never part of a procession. The minister declaimed “I am the resurrection and the life” to empty air and an organist. The Men in Black Macs probably put the coffin on the catafalque before everyone was in and sitting. It can work out a bit better in a church, where everyone is in first, but this denies The Crowd any processional role.

Could it be staged better? In theory, yes. A procession — for those who want one — needs at least 80 metres, a decent run-up. Everyone out of cars, on foot, standing tall. Coffin out, too. People formed up in some sort of order of precedence, leader/s (optional) in front of the coffin, stepping out as one, everyone playing their part, understanding the part they are playing, and quite possibly singing, too.

In practice, no. To do all that you need a gathering-place. Most funeral venues don’t have one of those.

So we’re down to one person walking in front of a car. This does retain an element of theatre. But you can’t help feeling that the grandeur and much of the point of the narrative has been lost, and that’s a shame.

Too much me, funeral directors, not enough us. 

What I Want From A Funeral Director

1 February 2012
Charles
25 Comments
Categories: celebrants, ceremony, funeral, funeral directors

Posted by Gloria Mundi

Another opinionated passage from a sometimes-frustrated celebrant. Please remember – it’s only my opinion! So with apologies to some wonderful funeral directors I know, here goes.

I am not anti-funeral directors. I think their job is frequently stressful and demanding in ways the rest of us may hardly understand. Also, some of them (a small minority?) are open to change, and to new ideas. 

But here are a few practical suggestions and thoughts I’d like to offer to the others, because for as long as we continue to have separate funeral directors and celebrants/ministers, we really do need to get our act together.

1.     You are in a controlling situation. You phone me to tell me there is a family who might want me to work with them. That’s how it is, mostly. OK. But I want to work with you. I am not just an “additional disbursement.” In effect, I personify what the family wants for the ceremony, at this stage.

2.     If I work well, it reflects well on you. So if you care about the quality of a funeral service, you should very much care about how I do things and why. Don’t call on me because I’m convenient; work with me because I’m the right one for that family. If I’m not, then call on someone else. Please use your discretion and your judgement. You’re not just a handler of bodies and supplier of limousines. As we move towards the right, unique ceremony for these people, you’re my co-worker. Aren’t you?

3.      I know it’s a bit nerve-wracking getting the right “slot” at the crem, but will you do two things please? One – just check with me first, rather than saying “I’ve got one for you next Tuesday at 11:00.” My time may also be under pressure. Two – please get an idea about how many people might attend, and if they have any ideas about the nature of the funeral, so you can, at once, book a double time allocation if it’s needed. We can’t get 130 people in and out and have a satisfactory funeral with contributions from several people, plenty of music, a hymn and some poems in twenty rushed, anxiety-filled minutes.

4.      In fact (this should be number one) please talk to them as soon as possible about how they might approach the funeral, i.e. put the ceremony at the centre of your meeting. You see, and I’m sorry if this sounds patronising, but some of you don’t seem to get this – the sort of coffin, the announcement in the newspaper, how many cars (if any) are wanted, the flowers, the crem itself– ALL this is not the priority. It should come out of the kind of funeral they want, the sort of people they are, the sort of life that has just ended. And here’s a thought – even if there is a cremation to be carried out at some point, you can have a funeral somewhere other than a crem! Do you discuss that with them? No, I didn’t think so. Well, I can. Of course, if you’ve already booked the crem and they’ve told everyone the day and time before I can get near them, then we’re on rails again.

5.      Please don’t take a faith position as default mode for the family and the funeral. I know some of you do. “Would you like me to phone the vicar? No? Oh, well, I know this woman who can…” People without a lot of cultural confidence may well think they should fall back on the vicar, because it is somehow “proper.” Actually, that’s a bit tough on the vicar, I’d have thought. We all want to be wanted! I’m not default mode, nor is the vicar, wonderful though she may be. See number 4 above. Surely the question should be “And how much help would you like with the funeral? I’m in touch with secular celebrants, vicars, priests…” etc. And BTW, please be wary of the term “humanist.” It means little to most people, and can be confusing. If someone is or was really a Humanist, you’ll probably be told so.

6.      If, at the funeral, you sit there looking out of the window, or you are outside chatting too loudly about the football until it’s time to walk forward from the back, you won’t even know what anyone’s ceremonies are like, will you?

7.      This doesn’t often happen, but it has just happened to me, so: please don’t tell them what will happen in the ceremony, and then tell me what will happen in the ceremony, before I’ve even had a chance to meet the family and see what is emerging for them. God dammit, this thing is theirs, not ours! And I am responsible from the moment we start walking forwards at the beginning of the ceremony to the moment I leave. That bit belongs to the family, with me acting for them. I do ritual and ceremony. If you want to, fine, but let’s be clear about who does what, please!

8.      We’re getting to the crux, aren’t we? Please stop selling them a product. Find out about a ceremony, the one that is just beginning to form in their minds. Encourage that formation. Ask them to consider how much help they would like, if any, and from whom. Then phone me, or the minister, or the shaman or whoever you think fits. Then this funeral won’t be one product, with a few adjustable trimmings. We’ll have something unique that may help them for the rest of their lives.

9.      You think I’m exaggerating? Just try asking a family who has had a crap funeral ceremony. “It still haunts me.” And that’s a quote. About ten years after the event. “It was nothing. Meant nothing” Now, is that what you want to deliver?

No, because you are a compassionate human being, so let’s get working. Together. Please?