funeral customs

Death Matters

11 June 2010
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, funeral customs

I don’t know if you ever wander over to Death Matters. It’s a descriptive title for a website and blog which is trying to awaken in a death-denying people a full and informative awareness of their mortality – in order that they may live better and remember better. It’s a one-person enterprise. We don’t know the writer’s name, so let’s settle, for convenience, for DM. DM’s mission statement is this:

“The best medicine for living peacefully and thankfully in a trying world is a direct and constant awareness of one’s own mortality and that of everyone around one. This awareness is also the necessary first step on the path to transcending Death.”

DM’s explanation for the way we ignore, diminish or trivialise death is encapsulated in this statement:

“As a child is furnished with organs to facilitate and allow birth, so man also possesses organs for death, the formation and strengthening of which belong to theological practices. Where this knowledge is extinguished, a form of idiocy spreads with respect to death; this reveals itself in an escalation of blind fear, but also in an equally blind and mechanical disdain of death.” Ernst Jünger, The Adventurous Heart

Whether or not this means that DM thinks that atheism generates idiocy, I don’t know. That statement would seem to make it clear that he/she does, but I’m not so sure.

Death Matters is a thought-provoking place to spend time. I especially like DM’s analysis of awareness. There is intellectual awareness of our mortality without emotional awareness; there is emotional without intellectual. There is physical awareness brought on by ageing, which we banish by putting our trust in cosmetics and medics.

I’m not sure exactly by what process and by what practices DM thinks we may best assimilate a full and proper sense of our own mortality.

DM’s latest blog post asserts that “death is the negation of all material progress,” yet that a sense of this may be dissolved in the consideration that though individuals die, society marches on, resulting in “a simultaneous loss of importance of the individual at the hands of the collective”. DM rates this a “’booby prize’ in comparison with the Grand Prix of personal continuity through eternity.”

I don’t know that I think DM is right in this. The funeral of a materialist can yield more and greater consolations than that at least this death won’t stop Apple from developing its next glittering gizmo. What else goes on? Memories, of course. And DNA—let’s not overlook DNA—because aspects of intellect and character are passed on, as are physical mannerisms. Lastly, values and example are passed on, and are commemorated in their emulation. Sure, that doesn’t compare with an everlasting crown, but it’s still a pretty rich legacy.

Having said which, I don’t know that I have understood DM completely. There’s an intellect deficit on my part which leaves me with a floundering feeling. I need some help here. Help!

Perhaps DM him/herself will help me out.

I recommend adding Death Matters to your blog feed. And I commend the YouTube sermon above, preached by a man of whom I think DM would approve.

I wonder if anyone is having problems in posting comments? One reader certainly is. It seems to be something to do with cookies. If you are, please let me know and I’ll get My Man to sort it.

All comments are as far as possible unmoderated. All first-time commenters come to me first for approval, in case they’re spam, I guess, after which all their subsequent comments are posted without my say so. I never, ever get rid of anything I don’t like.

The difference between you and it

10 June 2010
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: bereavement, ceremony, funeral customs

I think we’ve all done some good hard thinking, over the last few months, about the value and role of the dead body at a funeral. The discussion of this, and other matters, has elicited some extremely interesting ideas and some statements which, to my eyes, look likely to become axioms. I’m thinking of Gloria Mundi’s “A funeral is not an artefact.”

And I think there’s a sentence in a comment Jonathan left on a recent post which will go the same way. The entire comment deserves another outing. If you missed it, enjoy and marvel. If you didn’t, well, it bears any amount of re-reading.

It is interesting to reflect that, while the comments columns of so much online content attract all manner of beastliness sheltering behind anonymity, the comments column of the GFG is of no interest to such. Long may it remain so. I’m sorry that so many comments from previous blogs were lost in the translation from Blogger to WordPress. But the blog is extant in Blogger and can be reached through your Blogger account.

When I allowed myself to love you, and you me, we entered into an unspoken pact: that one of us would come to grieve the other, that it would be the worst possible experience to put a loved one through, yet we willingly agreed to do it to each other and to ourselves for the sake of our love. We may not have given it a moment’s thought, but we both knew, and we didn’t shy away from our inevitable pain then. So why do it now?

Can you remember howling for lost love? Of course you can. So if someone offered you a painkiller, would you have taken it? I wouldn’t, because although grief hurts me worse than any physical pain it’s a pain I want. If I’m really honest with myself, I actually enjoy crying for the loss of someone whom I can’t bear the thought of living without. It’s the nearest thing to the comfort of physical contact with them I can find at that time. Don’t ask me why; it’s an animal thing as much as anything. But it’s your body I’m grieving for, as much as grieving for you. When I think of you, I see you still in it; all your dear characteristics expressed in its movements and gestures and sounds and appearances and and and… It’s how I came to even know of your existence, and how I came to love you. I still love you in your body – your dead body, yes, aren’t I foolish! – and now I’m going to have to love you out of it, and that’s a transition that doesn’t happen straight away. So I want your useless, dead husk here with me when I put you – yes, you, even though I know it’s not you, it’s it – into a cremator or a hole so that I can begin to make sense of the difference between you and it. That’s why I put on this funeral for you.

So what’s wrong with a celebration of your life? Nothing. In fact it’s essential, unless it takes the place of mourning for your death. I’m celebrating even my pain of your loss because if it hadn’t been for you I’d have had nothing to lose, and no pain to tell me how fortunate I was to have had you in my life for the precious time we had together. I’m celebrating you to prolong the agony in a way, to be completely and unbearably aware of just what, just how much, I have lost because that’s all that makes sense of my grief.

So yes, Charles, anything that trivializes or masks the agony of grief in the name of ‘celebration of life’ should be shot down in flames. It is a betrayal to celebrate you without railing against the dying of your light, or without shouting my anger at you for bloody well dying on me.

And if I go first, I want it to hurt you just as much.

Here’s an extract from another blog entitled “No funeral service, no headstone … can these be good things?”

A friend died recently. At his request, there were no services of any kind. Since he left his body to a medical school, there is no gravesite to visit … I always found him to be an interesting person, but the details in the obituary made him even more interesting than I had imagined. I looked forward to learning more about him when friends and family would gather to celebrate his life. Sadly, I never had that opportunity … and I feel cheated. While I totally respect his right to leave this planet in any way he chose, I wish he had chosen another path … No services, no headstones. How do you suppose either of these affects a person’s long-term legacy?

Find the entire post here.

Maggie Brinklow on what makes a good funeral

9 June 2010
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: alternative funerals, ceremony, DIY funeral, Formality vs informality, funeral cost, funeral customs, funeral trends, home funerals

Everyone agrees that choice in funeral arrangements is a good thing. Even the UK’s most Jurassic undertakers are nodding their heads fervently on this one. They’ve come round at last (sort of). It’s the mantra in Funeralland: Personalisation x 3 (I can’t be bothered to type it).

There’s money in it, of course. Because personalisation (x3) can merely = accessorisation (x3). Instead of a bog standard box, why not this lovely one here, look, emblazoned with bluebells and kingfishers and a steam locomotive at 3x the price? There are lots of ways to personalise. We know what they are. They overlook making your own box, a very useful exercise in grief therapy. They overlook picking flowers from your own garden, not even tying them at the stems, and taking them home after, if it was a cremation.

There’s pressure in personalisation. The media love to pick up on wacky funerals, outrageous dress codes, iconoclastic songs. Trad is so last century, so gloomy, so boring.

This exerts an expectation. “So what are we going to do? He loved his veg, especially his leeks, so, er, let’s tell everyone to dress up as a leek??” There’s a tyranny taking hold.

There’s personalisation (x3) and there’s costly and unnecessary distraction (x3).

So it’s really good, this morning, to publish this post (the first of many, I hope) by Maggie Brinklow, a celebrant, member of the Association of Independent Celebrants (AOIC), who is keen to broaden her skills to include body preparation. She hopes shortly to do a course with the distinguished Mark Elliott, one of the best in his field, and I hope she’ll tell us all about that. Maggie says “I am passionate about putting the funeral back in the hands of the family.” She reminds us that trad has legs.

What makes a good funeral?

I’ve just got back home from a funeral.  Nothing unusual in that – I’ve been to so many family funerals that I’ve lost count.  I’ve also acted as a celebrant at quite a few as well, so what made this one any different?  Well, this is the first funeral where I acted as the Funeral Arranger, working on behalf of a small independent company.  It wasn’t anything special, a church service followed by interment in the local cemetery – a hearse and limo, the usual flowers and mourning dress and then back to the house for the ‘do’.

So, why am I writing about it?  Well, it got me thinking.  What makes a good funeral?  Is it the gold coffin with stretch hummers and 300 mourners or, is it the small intimate gathering, the cardboard coffin pulled on a hand bier while the children sing, before being laid to rest at a woodland site?  For me, it’s both and neither of these options – personally I’d like people to take up the alternative ideas, but it’s not my decision.  I offered the family the different venue, transport, coffin etc etc but, in the end, the traditional route was the right one for them.

Like I said, today’s funeral was nothing unusual, but it was what the family wanted, and really, isn’t that what it’s all about?

A trappist funeral

17 March 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral customs

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

Brother Felix McHale, one of the founders of Utah’s 63-year-old Trappist monastery, was sent out of this world Tuesday the same way he lived: simply.

After a funeral Mass in the chapel at the Abbey of the Holy Trinity, Felix was lowered into his grave on a plywood slab, taking his place next to a couple dozen other monks whose lives are marked with plain white crosses.

In the tradition of Trappist monks, there was no casket. The body had minimal preparation; there was no makeup to disguise death.

Felix — a monk known for corny jokes and spontaneous singing — wore his simple white habit, the cowl covering the top of his head, and black socks.

“We brought nothing into this world, and it’s certain we can carry nothing out,” said the Rev. Leander Dosch, who led his fellow monks in chanting psalms and other prayers over their 93-year-old brother’s body in the shadow of the church, snow still covering much of the ground.

Read the rest of the report here and don’t miss the video!

Ambivalence 1

25 February 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: ceremony, funeral customs, funeral directors

Interesting, isn’t it, how two contrary opinions need not be mutually exclusive? When one opinion does not displace the other you’re left either tonguetied with indecision or, if they merge, ambivalent. Ambivalence may be seen as fence-sitting, but I think that’s simplistic. To honour two opposed points of view equally seems to me to be a perfectly grown-up way of resolving a problem.

That’s the way my mind was working as I drove home yesterday after seeing Andrew Smith, a funeral director in Macclesfield with a two year-old but already booming business. Andrew does old-school bigtime. It’s what his clients want. And, here’s the point, he does it not for cosmetic reasons, nor to make himself feel important, but in order to create and serve (these are my words, not his) the particular sort and sense of occasion that his clients want. A funeral is something we rise to. And, yes, it is a performance, it is theatre, and any funeral director worth their salt needs to have thought about this, about how the parts are to be played. Any performer who betrays the least self-consciousness or disengagement is fatally flawed. If you can’t lose yourself in the part, all anyone else can see is someone failing to be something they’re not. That’s why costume or uniform is so important. Anything less than perfection begets inauthenticity; it corrupts performance, relegates it to tawdry playacting and renders it meaningless. What goes for the funeral director goes, too, for the spear-carriers – in the case of funerals, the bearers. They need to rehearse. They need to be filled with a sense of occasion – to get into role. And they need to be dressed right. In the bearers’ changing room at Andrew’s funeral home you’ll see a row of immaculately polished oxfords. Not Clarks oxfords, Loake oxfords. The best it gets. Fantastic.

Andrew supposed me to be anti top hat, but I’m not. I’m anti prat in a hat. He also supposed me to be anti-embalming. I am. I am also for it. I can see both sides and I take neither: I am serenely ambivalent. It all depends on how it’s done, why it’s done and the code of conduct in the mortuary. Andrew has a strong feeling about how the dead should be looked after, and he reminded me of something Sean Lynch says in the PBS documentary about Tom Lynch’s funeral home in Michigan: “I have memories as a very young boy of being brought over here with my father as he was working, and watching him and his colleagues dressing and casketing bodies, you know, very quietly, very reverently, doing something for someone that can no longer do anything for themselves, and even at a young age, before I could articulate the importance of that kind of work, I recognised it as something very significant and essential.” If you watch Parts 3 and 4 of the documentary you can see what he means. It’s why Andrew is pro-embalming. He wants people to have the best possible memory of their dead person. Echoes here of Tom: “Watching my parents, I watched the meaning change of what it is that undertakers do, from something done to the dead to something done for the living, to something done by the living, every one of us. Thus, undertakings are the things we do to vest the lives we lead against the cold, the meaningless, the void, the noisy blather and the blinding dark.”

I admire Andrew enormously. I liked the look of Macclesfield, too. Nice place to live, I should think. Certainly a good place to die.