death and funerals

The GFG goes international (part 1)

28 November 2023
Fran Hall
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Categories: death and funerals, Death; Good death

It’s almost three weeks now since Isabel and I set off to be part of the K smrti dobrý festival – ‘A Festival about death and its presence in our lives’, which took place in Ostrava, in the far eastern part of The Czech Republic. We were invited after our fabulous patron, Zenith Virago, was one of the headline speakers last year and suggested that the Good Funeral Guide should be involved with this fantastic event.

We spent months exchanging emails and holding zoom calls with Jana Slavice, the quietly unassuming woman who works as a death doula and is the powerhouse behind the festival. She gently guided us towards agreeing to offer a  two-hour workshop, a lecture and Q&A session and a two-day workshop at the festival, and she organised all the travel and accommodation for us, as well as the translators that we needed. We simply needed to turn up on time at Stansted airport.

So, we did. I spent the morning measuring and weighing my carry-on luggage after being warned of Ryan Air’s over officious attitude to cabin bags – this turned out to be the most stressful part of the whole experience (and all unnecessary as nobody looked at the extra cm of length, width and depth of the bag I was carrying). Then I joined the queue for security and immediately remembered how hostile the whole process of flying is – it’s been a while since I was on a plane. The whole ‘your mascara is a liquid and therefore must be placed in this tiny plastic bag along with every other item that could ever possibly be described as not a solid, and if the bag can’t be closed you have to decide which items to place in our enormous bin for contraband’  just hurt my head. (It was travel size shampoo, shower gel and conditioner that didn’t make it to Prague in my case. Or not in my case, in fact.)

Anyway, once that drama was over and Isabel and I found each other in departures, the adventure began. And what a time we had! We met amazing, inspirational people, that was the most wonderful part of our week. We had a glimpse of the beautiful city of Prague by night, cabbage soup in a bread roll for supper, an extraordinary, high speed 400km train journey for under £20, a stay in a beautiful villa in the forest outside Ostrava, kind volunteers to drive us to and from the festival and an insight into the vibrant, rapidly growing interest in improving dying, death and funerals in this part of the world.

Hundreds of people had travelled from across Czechia and Slovakia to be part of the festival, which was impeccably organised and run in the cultural centre in Ostrava. Everything was beautiful, the exhibition of delicately decorated coffins in the lobby, the displays of crystals, hand-made shrouds, musical items. And loads of other things, the dressing of the main stage, the stunning painting of the Guardian Owl that had been created especially for the Festival – Jana’s eye for beauty was everywhere.

The packed programme had something for everyone, with talks, music and film screenings in the main auditorium throughout the weekend while workshops took place in smaller rooms. We missed a lot, as there was so much going on, and of course everything was in Czech. We had translators for our workshops and talks, but the rest of the weekend was a hubbub of a language that neither of us had managed to learn more than a few words of. It didn’t matter at all though, as we were really busy. 

We attended workshops run by our first-night-in-Prague-housemates and fellow Brits (no translators needed) Alexandra Grace Derwen, renowned author, ceremonialist and leading facilitator on the doula training course at Sacred Circle Training Co. CIC and Alison Stoecker, former political advisor and writer about grief and trauma. We were gifted the most beautiful books of photographs of dying people by renowned photographer Jindřich Štreit and were also given little pots of chocolate ganache topped with white chocolate skulls. We learned about the Czech customs and laws around funerals, and we discovered that Ostrava kitchen staff find the notion of vegetarianism unusual, (and that fried cheese is a thing…).

We ran an introductory 2-hour workshop on the Friday, delivered a talk about the impact of Covid on funerals in the UK on the Saturday, and then facilitated a 2-day workshop on the Sunday and Monday, introducing a concept that we have been developing together called The Power of Liminal Time.

We had a room full of experienced practitioners who were incredibly generous in sharing their wisdom and knowledge. At the end of the two days, the overwhelming consensus from everyone involved was a deep appreciation and understanding of the potential of the time before, during and after death as a profoundly important opportunity to really experience inner wisdom and peace.

We left Ostrava the following day, returning to Prague for our last hours in Czechia. This time, our train tickets were for business class seats, which apparently involve complimentary Prosecco and pastries, even at 10am. Our fellow travellers clearly were accustomed to this way of travelling, but we opted for orange juice – our whole experience had been bizarre enough without adding in alcohol before lunch!

We came home to the UK early the following morning, feeling both replete and inspired. Being part of the festival had been so nourishing, meeting so many extraordinary people and having so many conversations about the thirst for shared knowledge about how to do death better. 

The Festival in Ostrava is an incredible achievement by Jana, who is already planning next year’s event as something even bigger and better. It has given Isabel and I a springboard from which to launch a series of events here in the UK next year, and we are working hard developing our model and exploring where and when we can offer people an opportunity to come and be part of this exciting new work. Having launched it in Czech (with the assistance of our fantastic translators) we can’t wait to bring it to everyone here. 

Watch this space!

We all know how this ends.

19 March 2021
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: Books, death and funerals, funeral reformers, Progressive funeral directors, The future of funerals

We have been asked to write about a new book,  ‘We all know how this ends’ by end of life doula Anna Lyons and progressive funeral director Louise Winter. It was published yesterday by Bloomsbury and celebrated with virtual tea and cake in a moving, inspiring Zoom session last night.

Our thoughts?

 

Buy it. Today.

 

That’s it.

Honestly.

This beautiful book should be on every bookshelf in every home in the country. It should be in every library, in every hospice, in every doctors’ surgery, in every workplace. It should be handed out to anyone when they are given a terminal diagnosis, offered to everyone facing life changing illness, shared and shared and shared again.

Once you have read it, you will want to buy it for your friends too, and for anyone you know whose life is touched by the knowledge that we are all going to die.

Everyone who reads it will find something empowering, comforting and wise within the pages, something that will help change the way you think about dying and death and funerals and bereavement. It’s a treasure trove of nuggets of beauty, woven together by expert hands who want to share what they have learned with us all.

We know Anna and Louise well and admire their work at Life. Death. Whatever. tremendously. They are dear friends and strong advocates of the Good Funeral Guide, and their wise, gentle voices take you through the book, weaving stories and thoughts and insight that they have collected from the many, many people they have worked with.

This book is a collective call for change, a sharing of experience, of heartbreak and tears and humour and wit and wisdom. It’s inspirational and informative, written by real people who want you to know what they’ve learned.

Buy it now. You need to read it.

Stop all the clocks

7 November 2020
Fran Hall
4 Comments
Categories: Absolute Beginner - A Personal Story of Grief, death and funerals

 

 

Time. Time and space and dates and days.

Right now, I am finding these measures all bent out of shape. My perception is warped by profound events that I have experienced since the last post I wrote for the blog, in September. 

But I can see a thread that binds the dates and days, and stretches through time, bringing the past into sharp focus, and blurring recent days into an age ago.

November 3rd, 2010

I was the manager of the largest woodland burial ground in the UK. A beautiful place that I had been part of since before planning permission was granted. I loved it there. We had created an ofrenda, an altar, for Dia de los Muertos – the Day of the Dead – in the stunning Woodland Hall.

On the altar on November 3rd that year, the day after the Day of the Dead, were many photos and offerings to those who had died. Among the photos were pictures of my partner Steve’s parents, who had both died earlier that year. He had brought the photos there and placed them himself, among the colourful gifts and food and offerings.

The ofrenda, before the photos and offerings were placed.

November 3rd, 2012

I was asleep in our flat. I heard Steve’s voice calling my name. It was pitch black. The flat was on fire, and Steve had woken to the sound of the smoke alarm. He had seen the living room ablaze, and tried to put the fire out, before stumbling to the front door to get a breath of air through the acrid black smoke. The door slammed shut behind him. Somehow, he broke down the door and felt his way along the walls towards the bedroom, shouting my name. He kept calling until I woke into the thick choking smoke and fumbled my way towards his voice. I can hear him now, calling urgently ‘Just come to my voice, keep coming’. His lungs were burned with the amount of smoke he inhaled, calling and calling me. He was in hospital for five days. He saved my life.

We kept the clock from the living room that had melted in the heat to remind us always of how lucky we were to be alive. And from then on, we celebrated November 3rd as our joint birthday. The day we should have died.

 

November 3rd, 2020

I sit in the Woodland Hall. The same beautiful building that I had watched being created and lovingly built by Graham Brown and his team, all those years before.

This year, on November 3rd, the day after the Day of the Dead, there was no ofrenda in the Woodland Hall. Instead, before me was the coffin, draped in the flag of the Metropolitan Police, containing the body of my darling man.

He had died from Covid-19 on October 18th. The day before his birthday. Three weeks after our wedding day. He had been living with cancer for two years and had been told it was terminal earlier in the summer. Immediately after his divorce was finalised, we had booked a wedding, at the first possible opportunity. It was the happiest of days. And the last day he was well. Three days later he tested positive for Covid.

Time shifts and stretches and contracts. The past crashes back and imposes itself on the present. The man I love, the man who had spent so many sunlit days in that woodland with me, the man who has been the centre of my world for so long, is dead. Everything has changed.

I have much to write about the extraordinary experience I have been through.

About being given a terminal diagnosis. About facing mortality full on, fearlessly and bravely. About the complexity of anticipatory grief. About pain and suffering and sadness and worry. About the unbelievable gift of planning a funeral together, before illness sweeps you up into a blur of anxiety and worry about pain relief and equipment and aids. About death during a pandemic. About knowing that when you made the phone call for help, you would be setting in motion an unbearable parting.  About having to isolate when you have tested positive and being alone and going almost mad with despair at being apart from the one person you need to be with. About the relief of being allowed to visit him but despair at the knowledge that the reason for this was because he was going to die. About sitting vigil with your soulmate as they journey through their last hours. About the similarity of being at a deathbed with being in a labour ward, as the moment of death / birth approaches. About watching death steal across the face of the man who is part of my soul. About the extraordinary transformational power of a good funeral. About navigating social distancing when you’ve been bereaved and when all you want is to be comforted in the arms of your friends.

There is so much to write. But I need to let time give me the perspective. Right now, it’s too new. It’s just three weeks since he died. It feels like a lifetime.

I just wanted to let readers of the blog know the reason for the GFG’s recent silence, at such a profound time for our society. And to tell you that it is possible to have the most perfect, perfect funeral – even when it seems everything is against it.

I will forever be grateful to Lucy Coulbert, of The Individual Funeral Company, who cared for Steve and for me as if we were her own. And to Isabel Russo, who wove together the most beautiful authentic ceremony, navigating sensitive family dynamics and an extraordinary number of swear words. And to Colin Liddell, Louise Winter, Shaun Foulds, Rachel Wallace, Suzie Wight, Ian Franklin, Alex Meaden, the Blue Knights – and everyone else who helped make Steve’s presence so vivid, and his funeral so extraordinary.

The film of the entire funeral can be watched here – and just a reminder, there is a not-insignificant amount of profanity involved, just as Steve wanted.

Five Things

17 April 2019
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, death and funerals, funeral reformers, The future of funerals

Our friends over at Life. Death. Whatever have created an extraordinary movement that is inspiring people around the world who follow them on social media.

Five Things is a collection of five things that LDW collaborators want people to know about life, death and everything in between. Since the launch earlier this month, the LDW posts on Twitter and Instagram have attracted a huge following.

As Louise and Anna (the two forces of nature who co-curate LDW) explain, “We need to talk and let each other know what helps, what doesn’t help, what we want and what we don’t want. Sharing best practice, sharing ideas, sharing stories, sharing lessons, sharing experiences.”

Some of the posts have been extraordinary, some heartbreaking, some informative, all inspiring. The authors of contributions range from leading practitioners in end of life care, through professionals working with those who have died and bereaved people, to individuals sharing the things they learned through personal experience of grief.

We were delighted to be invited to send in our ‘Five Things’, which you can find here, sitting alongside contributions from many of the people we most admire in funeralworld.

Among these, a number of GFG Recommended funeral directors have offered their ‘Five Things’. You can see thoughts from Lucy Coulbert (The Individual Funeral Company) here, from the team at Poppy’s Funerals here,  from Sarah Jones (Full Circle Funerals) here and from Toby Angel (Sacred Stones) here.

If you would like to contribute your own ‘Five Things’ then e-mail Anna and Louise at submissions@lifedeathwhatever.com.

And if you’d like to follow the project as it evolves, then follow Life. Death. Whatever. on their various social media platforms using the hashtag #FiveThings

Five Things will culminate in an event in central London in October – we’ll definitely be there to see the installation in its full glory.

Going Green at Brookwood Cemetery

22 July 2018
Fran Hall
2 Comments
Categories: death and funerals, funeral trends, funeral wishes, green funeral, natural burial

 

It’s been twenty five years since the inspirational Ken West MBE opened the very first natural burial ground at Carlisle cemetery, and here at GFG Towers we felt that this landmark anniversary needed to be acknowledged. Members of the Good Funeral Guild felt so too, and, under gentle pressure from Stephen Laing we have co-opted fellow Guild members Emma Curtis and Sarah Weller to help us organise a celebratory day to commemorate Ken’s achievement at the beautiful, iconic Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey on Sunday September 9th, between 10.00 and 17.00.

Since 1993 when the very first natural burial took place, over 300 sites around the UK have been opened, and countless thousands of people have chosen this gently, environmentally responsible alternative to cremation or traditional burial. Despite this, natural burial lags behind in the statistics, being the choice of only around 1% of the population, which we think is a real shame. We’d love to help raise awareness of natural burial generally, so this celebratory day is a starting point for us. Watch this space for further developments.

In the meantime, the event on Sunday 9th September will be open to everyone to attend, with an opportunity to explore the fabulous historic Brookwood Cemetery as a bonus. The London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company was established in 1852 to provide ‘a great metropolitan cemetery situated in the suburbs, large enough to contain all of London’s dead for ever’, in response to great public concern about the state of London’s cemeteries. Two years later, Brookwood Cemetery was opened and the London Necropolis Railway ran between Waterloo station and two private stations in the cemetery, carrying coffins and mourners directly into the cemetery grounds. Since then, over 240,000 people have been buried here, and the cemetery is a hidden wonder of beautiful landscaping, quietly fading memorials and mausolea, immaculate military cemeteries and gems such as the only Zoroastrian cemetery in Europe and the St. Edward Brotherhood, a small Orthodox Christian monastery.

Set in the heart of Brookwood Cemetery is the natural burial area, Gillian’s Meadow, and it is here that we will be gathering to commemorate the establishment of natural burial as a viable alternative to the existing funeral choices. The Open Day will run from 10.00 until 17.00, and along with the ceremonial tree planting, there will be activities throughout the day to encourage guests to explore incorporating nature and ritual in their end of life decisions.

Death cafe picnics will run alongside rustic crafts, mandala and garland making, story telling,message writing and a ‘Time to Altar Grief’ installation, there will be a book tent where you can browse through all kinds of books on death and funerals, a chance to meet and chat with people working in the funeral industry who can answer any questions you might have, an opportunity to see a grave prepared for a natural burial, and Sound in the Woodland. We will also be offering Forest Bathing walks, allowing the opportunity to learn about the healing benefits of being among trees and nature, in the perfect setting. Bring a picnic and a rug and come and spend the day immersed in the beauty of Brookwood.

It will be a wonderful day, commemorating a hugely important movement inspired a quarter of a century ago by the brave innovation of Ken West and Carlisle City Council. We’ll be inviting all of the UK natural burial site owners and operators to come along and join us in acknowledgement of Ken’s influence, as well as local dignitaries and friends of Brookwood Cemetery. Members of the Good Funeral Guild will be coming along too, and the day will be open to the public to come and be part of.

Oh, and there will be cake. Lots of cake. With a very special centrepiece cake created by Conjurer’s Kitchen.

Details about Going Green at Brookwood can be found on Facebook here.

 

Dead and Gone

17 April 2018
Fran Hall
3 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death, death and funerals, funeral trends

We’ve been pondering on an important subject.

In 21st century Britain, many of us may not have seen or spent time with the body of someone who has died. We may not have witnessed the profound absence of person in the familiar features of a corpse, nor experienced the thoughts and emotions of being in the presence of a dead person.

Death has become increasingly separated from our busy lives, most frequently occurring in hospitals or hospices, rather than at home surrounded by a family keeping vigil.

Most dying people are thus set apart from the rest of us, and once death has occurred, their bodies are usually collected by a funeral director, who keeps them in their custody until the date of the funeral. Our dead no longer stay among us.

Spending time with our dead has become something that needs to be arranged by appointment, usually in the unfamiliar surroundings of a ‘chapel of rest’ at an undertaker’s premises.

In addition, in recent years, the incidence of ‘no funeral’ funerals has risen, with a large increase in the number of direct cremations. Often this means that the body of the person is not encountered again at all, not even in a closed coffin.

We’ve decided that we would like to learn about this separation between the living and the dead. We think there’s something significant happening and, as far as we know, nobody is examining it.

If you could let us know about your own experience, this will help us begin to compile a picture of where our relationship with our dead is in 2018.

We have compiled a short, anonymous survey that takes just a few minutes to complete – the link to it is here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/OurDead

We’ll publish the findings here on the GFG website.

Depending on what we discover, the results even encourage more scholarly academic types to instigate some formal research into the changing shape of connection with our dead.

Thank you in advance

Team GFG

Collaboration not competition.

29 March 2018
Fran Hall
4 Comments
Categories: death and funerals, Good Funeral Awards, The future of funerals

According to Twitter, the website and an e-mail bulletin sent out yesterday, the Good Funeral Awards will be taking place this year in Bournemouth in September.

We think it worth noting that the Good Funeral Guide is no longer involved with these events and will not be attending.

We ended our involvement with the awards as joint organisers last year, having been very much part of the awards since they began in 2012.

The decision was taken for various reasons, but in essence, we feel that the time for competing against one other in funeralworld has come to an end and that progressive, intelligent people working together and collaborating in best practice is the way forward.

Across the UK, good people serving bereaved families face the relentless pressure of large corporates seeking ever larger ‘market share’, the growing issue of unregulated funeral planning, negative media coverage of the funeral industry, the race to the bottom in pricing, ‘ ‘disruptive’ online ‘experts’ adding their two penn’orth to information in the public domain – and the ongoing stress of working daily directly with death and the aftermath.

We feel that all who are trying to improve the way we do funerals in the UK are stronger together, supporting each other and sharing fellowship, rather than competing against each other, and allowing themselves to be set apart by judgements of who is the best in each field.

We also feel that the role of the GFG is done when it comes to awards within the funeral industry.

We want to concentrate on what we think essential. Reaching out from inside the funeral bubble of talking to each other about each other and actually talking to the people who matter most. The public.

The role of the Good Funeral Guide is, and always has been, to support, empower and represent the interests of dying and bereaved people, and we will continue to do our best to do so in the future, rather than getting sidetracked with event planning.

Look what’s cooking.

22 November 2017
Fran Hall
17 Comments
Categories: Arranging a funeral, death and funerals, End-of-life issues, funeral trends, Hospice, independent funeral directors, perceptions of funeral directors, The future of funerals

There’s something afoot in funeral world. Letters have been pinging into the inbox of funeral directors around the country advising them of a shiny new entrant into the world of undertaking.

“Over the next few days you may read about a new funeral company called Hospice Funerals LLP.  It has been set up by St Margaret’s Hospice of Somerset in order to allow local hospices to extend their care to the local community by providing a caring, transparent and personal funeral service..”

A joint operation between St. Margaret’s Hospice and Memoria, this partnership is, at first glance, a match made in heaven.

Expert end of life carers join with expert provider of state of the art crematoria and low cost funeral services to offer communities across the UK a new, better alternative when it comes to funeral arrangements.

But let’s take a closer look.

Memoria’s CEO, Howard Hodgson, is well known in the funeral world. Here’s a little background, taken from an article by Tony Grundy in 2015:

‘For example, in a classic UK television documentary some years ago, former undertaker and entrepreneur Howard Hodgson told of how he led the transformation of the industry through a combination of acquisition, consolidation, value innovation and cost management. In his book ‘How To Become Dead Rich’ Hodgson set out his vision of how to run his funeral business as economically as possible, with an efficient set of local operations providing up to several funerals in a day, making much better use of facilities such as cars, storage and sales facilities. Alongside this he pioneered a more extensive range of services, optimising the average price.

This hugely widened operating profit margin and increased return on net assets. This vision became the model of the Great Southern Group, which Hodgson sold out to and which, after a period of being owned by US company Service Corporation International, is now called Dignity, one of the UK’s top players. These changes also reduced competitive rivalry in the UK market, where a higher proportion of the market had previously been fragmented, made up of ‘mom and pop’ independents.’

St. Margaret’s Hospice announced their plans earlier this month, without mentioning their new partner. The role of funeral director was advertised at £36,000 plus car. One of their existing charity shops is being converted into suitable premises in Taunton – a town in which there are already 12 other undertakers.

The Hospice Funerals website states:

HOSPICE FUNERALS’ VISION

To provide all hospice communities with the choice and experience of hospice funeral services that uniquely reflect the dedication, warmth and reputation of the hospice movement – an extension of exemplary hospice care – caring, transparent and personal.

HOSPICE FUNERALS’ MISSION

To bring choice, quality and affordability to families in our communities, so that they can celebrate the lives of loved ones with a unique and individual funeral that respects their wishes. This is achieved by only engaging highly trained staff with unwavering attention to detail and compassion – so ensuring a caring, transparent and personal funeral to all whatever their budget.

This sounds absolutely wonderful.

Although the top benefit for hospices electing to become a provider listed in another part of the website is:

‘Participation in a new enterprise that will deliver sustainable and growing income going forward and thus helping to bridge the considerable funding gap that stands between government funding and the annual needs of the hospice.’

And in the brochure for ‘hospice partners’ it clearly states:

The partnership will operate as a franchise scheme. These are the facts:

  • Hospice Funerals signs an agreement with the partner hospice (the partner Franchise Agreement – samples available)
  • The hospice partner will be entitled to operate exclusively within the defined area
  • A hospice partner can acquire more than one area if it so wishes
  • Hospice Funerals will give each partner a demographic survey providing a death profile of the granted area and will be able to advise the partner on this issue
  • Hospice Funerals will issue a list of products and prices that the partner will need to purchase in order to create their funeral service.
  • The hospice will be supported to deal directly with these suppliers, shop fitters ad other trades. This means that Hospice Funerals is not involved in the invoice chain and so is making NO margin on the set up of the unit.
  • Hospice Funerals support you with a turnkey service and are on hand throughout the set up period, signing off the premises when complete.
  • Thereafter, the location will be inspected prior to opening and all snagging signed off.
  • Hospice Funerals will select, train and manage the partner’s funeral staff, while being accountable to the partner.
  • Memoria will also carry out the majority of funeral administration for the partner.
  • Memoria will also install and teach the partner’s funeral director how to operate a bespoke software system for making funeral arrangement.

Hmm. So, perhaps not quite so in line with the hospice movement set up to look after the dying and their families by Dame Cicely Saunders then.

It’s a franchise scheme, dressed up in the hospice’s clothes, making money for both the ‘hospice partner’ and Memoria alike.

Here’s what we think.

It’s hard to criticise the idea of the much loved local hospice continuing to care for those who have died after death (albeit charging for this part of their service, while everything else until the last breath is taken has been free of charge.)

Why wouldn’t you choose to use them?

Hospices are pillars of the community after all, caring for the dying in the most wonderful way. And your money will be going to help support this admirable cause instead of lining the pockets of those men in black, the stereotypical undertakers.

It’s easy to see what a brilliant idea this is – piggybacking on the reputation and respect held by the hospice to give an immediate advantage over the funeral directors who are so widely and relentlessly pilloried in the media as greedy, money-making vultures who prey on the vulnerable bereaved.

With the helpful assistance of the self-serving life insurance companies generating fear of soaring funeral costs in their annual cost of dying reports, and the media focus on funeral poverty (driven by high charges from corporate funeral businesses including Dignity, Howard Hodgson’s baby, plus austerity cuts and shortage of space impelling local authorities to keep raising the cost of cremation or graves), funeral directors en masse are tarred with the same brush.

The public won’t take much persuading to look elsewhere for help with organising a funeral. And it’s available to everyone, not just hospice patients – again, from the Hospice Funerals website:

‘It is important to note that it is intended that everyone needing the services of a funeral director will be able benefit from the caring, transparent and personal service offered by Hospice Funerals. Therefore, our services are available to everyone in the community – irrespective of whether or not they have been a hospice patient.’

Well, not quite everyone.

This from Howard Hodgson’s letter to funeral directors yesterday:

‘The Directors of Memoria have no desire to compete with its funeral directing clientele. Therefore, in order to prevent a conflict of interest, it has been contractually agreed that NO Hospice Funeral operations will be set up within a 20 MILE RADIUS of ANY existing MEMORIA crematoria. 

This agreement will be on going and so will prevent funeral directors within the declared 20-mile exclusion zones from facing this new competition now or in the future.

We hope this act demonstrates our loyalty and gratitude to ALL of our funeral directing clients, whose close working relationship we highly value.’

Nice of him to consider how funeral directors might feel about this idea, although only the ones who operate in the vicinity of one of Memoria’s crematoria. The rest of the funeral world is clearly fair game.

What concerns us about this genius return to the world of funeral provision by Howard ‘How To Become Dead Rich’ Hodgson is what it will do to the wonderful, dedicated, desperately hard-working, ethically run, generous, kind and principled undertakers who have devoted their lives to starting up and running small businesses to serve their communities.

They are everywhere, working day and night to do the absolute best for the families they care for, often living hand to mouth and struggling to stay afloat as the corporate companies relentlessly target them by opening branches nearby. Many of them can be found here on our recommended funeral director list. We applaud and salute them for what they do, and we fear for their future with this latest new player in the game.

These really good people don’t have the massive marketing budgets to pay for TV advertising and PR campaigns, unlike Dignity, Co-operative Funeralcare and now Hospice Funerals, but they are providing vital services for their communities. And they are offering real, informed choice.

Hospice Funerals could spell the end for many of these artisan, genuine, small undertaking businesses, people who have been battling against the corporate expansion into funerals for years, as money men have scented the opportunity to get rich by taking advantage of economies of scale. The Hospice Funeral idea is likely to be a pressure too much for many if it spreads around the country.

If this idea were vision-driven, altruistic. non profit making, a real community venture motivated by a genuine desire to really make a difference to our society , we’d respect it, we’d be completely behind it and we’d be promoting it as far as we can reach.

But it’s not, it’s a clever, clever commercial move.

Maybe the public, those who volunteer and fundraise and support their local hospices might see it for what it is, but probably most people will just think it’s a great idea and not give it any more thought.

And sadly, we expect that the advent of this new hybrid beast is likely to be greeted with delight by hospices around the country as a means of generating the much needed income to keep them afloat. Without thinking about the wider implications.

We’ll find out tomorrow – it’s on the agenda at two high profile hospice meetings, the Hospice UK National Conference in Liverpool and the Legacy Foresight Workshop in London 

We’ll be at both events.

Minister of the Year 2017

23 September 2017
Fran Hall
1 Comment
Categories: death and funerals, Good Funeral Awards, Minister

Another category with a small number of finalists this year, it appears that clergy are reluctant to put themselves forward for an award, and that their colleagues forget to nominate them..

The two runners up in this category are both dedicated to their work, to the mysticism of their beliefs and to supporting the bereaved families they serve.  They both adapt their work and their personal beliefs to take funeral services for people of any faith at any time, which is thoroughly applauded.

The winner was chosen because of the powerful description of his approach to his ministry by the person who nominated him:

 “He is a young minister who enjoys funeral work, and unfortunately that is very rare. He has a performance arts background which allows him to be much more flexible with running order and ‘set scripts’. Whilst many other ministers may frown at his methods he is by far the best minister at caring for a family, preparing a fun lighthearted service but also providing serious pastoral care when needed.’

 

Winner – Fr. Christyan James

Runners up – Emma Curtis and The Right Revd. Charles Muglestone

 

 

The 2017 Good Funeral Awards were generously sponsored by Greenfield Creations

Our role in their wishes

3 August 2017
Fran Hall
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Categories: Arranging a funeral, death and funerals, Etiquette, Formality vs informality, funeral wishes

We noted The Sun newspaper’s report on a floral tribute this week, pointing a mild gosh-look-at-this finger at a family’s ambition to let funeral wishes be carried out – to the perfumed, petalled letter.

However, it was the throwaway inclusion of another story, further down the page, that caught our eye. Moving on past the report of a Royal Artillery sergeant’s coffin being transported on a gun carriage – de rigueur perhaps – The Sun has a picture of a JCB at the head of a funeral cortège with a coffin secured carefully in its bucket.

A little background research revealed that Tony Law had always worked with plant machinery. As a digger enthusiast, he’d not only specified the mode of transport to his own service but also had his wishes extended by the family: instead of traditional, low-key or formal dress, everyone wore hi-viz jackets to mark the occasion. ‘Tony Law’s Last Ride’, they said.

Happily, in most situations these are far from being seen as irreverent gestures. They are endearing; a little eccentric, perhaps; but intended without malice to bridge the gap between the absent character of the person who has died and people who are coming together to commemorate that person’s unique life.

Flowers, saying ‘BARSTARD’? Traditional limousines on the one hand, but a bright yellow JCB to carry your coffin? It may not be the done thing to suggest it up-front without knowing the family’s background, but if the situation is the right one then – for a good funeral – these gestures are not out of place.

However, specific wishes like these may cause significant dismay, pain even, if they are set out in a funeral plan but not shared in advance. Karen Anstee’s short film, Rachel, brought this into sharp perspective last year. Anstee’s 10-film explored the relationships between religion and family: Rachel had rejected her conservative Jewish upbringing for a more bohemian life and wanted her ceremony to reflect those life choices. Rachel’s family wanted to reclaim her body for burial in the traditional way, and the story unfolds to reflect both points of view.

In the 21st century, diverging preferences are becoming more common. Families are, sadly, more dysfunctional than they once were. Couples of all ages may come together from different cultural backgrounds and pass on new traditions or beliefs to their children. Whereas, once, intimate rites of passage served to bring families and communities together at a difficult time, today the expression of individuality has the potential to stimulate conflict.

Nowadays the expected form for a funeral may bear little or no resemblance to the unique, individual service or ceremony that’s requested either by a partner, a close family member, or – prior to their death – by the persons who have died. And as a result, funeral directors and celebrants may find themselves in a difficult situation.

Questions, then.

We hear much, still, about the importance of making a Will and ensuring it’s valid and kept up-to-date. What more could we do to reappropriate the term ‘funeral plan’, or is it too toxic to contemplate?

Would it not help us all if we could encourage the solicitors or Will-makers we know, locally, to include detailed funeral arrangements as a part of that process, and to highlight the benefit of communicating these details in advance? Or would that be too complicated in itself?

And should we consider ‘how to tell people what’s happening’ guides as an integral part of the information we all provide – or do you do this already?