funeral customs

The gift of life is a sentence of death

17 September 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: funeral customs

From the Indian Express

Contrary to the usual norm of life, one gypsy tribe from Rajasthan actually rejoice and revel in deaths in their family counting them as one of the happiest events in their lives while treating births as occasions of great grief … what distinguishes the Satiyaa community from the other tribes is after a death in the community, the funeral and cremation of the deceased becomes an event of celebration.

“We wear fresh garments, buy sweets, dry fruits and local liquor on the occasion,” says Jhankya Satiyaa, a Satiyaa. The dead body is taken to crematorium in a procession of dancing and twisting groups of near and dears on the tune of drums. After the funeral pyre is lit, members from the tribe arrange a feast, consume locally brewed liquor and dance with vigour until the body is completely reduced to ashes.

“Death is a great occasion for us as it liberates the soul from the physical prison,” says another member from the community who points out “birth and living life is a great punishment by God to sinful souls”.

Arun Kumar Saxena, a senior journalist who has researched the tribe says Satiyaas consider life to be a curse from God.

“However, the girl child is given more attention and care in the community as she becomes a source of earning for the family through prostitution,” he says.

When someone is born in the Satiyaa community, it becomes an event of mourning and grief with the new born receiving curses from everybody and the family of the baby does not even cook their daily meals at home.

Even though they reside alongside the “hustle and bustle” of cities, the tribe is extremely withdrawn and mistrust outsiders.

The Satiyaa community comprising about 24 odd gypsy families scattered across the state live in temporary shelters along roadsides and in empty spaces rely solely on disposing off the dead bodies of cattle from the roads.

Mostly illiterate, these tribes are notorious for their addiction to liquor. With their deep brown complexion and athletic physique, women of the tribe have been known to indulge in prostitution.

Kota Anwar Ahemad a social activist points out that despite providing members of the Satiyaa tribe houses under the Indira Residential Scheme (Indira Awas Yojana)around a decade ago, the members allegedly sold them off. Also, he says children in the Satiyaa tribal community are also not sent to schools and grow up illiterate.

Did you?

13 September 2012
Charles
25 Comments
Categories: funeral, funeral customs, Hearses, Plan your own funeral, shroud

Did you like it? 

I’d be inclined to give it 10 out of 10. 

Last night’s BBC2 programme Dead Good Job is well worth watching. If you missed it, it covers: 

a Muslim funeral company’s attempts to bury the dead as quickly as possible in accordance with Islamic tradition, a terminally ill mother of two who chooses to plan and arrange her own funeral and a high speed send off for a biker who gets his wish of a final ride in a motorcycle hearse.

Next week, we are delighted to see that they will be following Rachel Wallace, funeral photographer. We’re huge fans of Rachel here at the GFG-Batesville Tower. 

Catch it on the iPlayer here. 

Don’t miss Gail’s 30 Day Challenge

4 September 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral customs, music, Poetry

I can’t keep up these days, dammit. To my great grief I missed the start of one of the great events of the year, Gail Rubin’s annual 30 Day Challenge. She attends 30 funerals in 30 days, and each day writes each one up in great detail in a values-neutral narrative. Goodness knows where she’s got to. 

Apart from being feats in their own right, Gail’s marathons offer very interesting insights into funeral customs, readings, music, etc in the US. In years to come sociologists will pore. But there’s no need to wait til then. 

Gail posts daily. Play catch-up now. 

So silly to take sides

4 September 2012
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: DIY funeral, funeral customs, funeral directors, green funeral, home funerals, Rights of the bereaved

A few weeks ago I bumped into a funeral director I like and admire. He was bursting with something he had just learned and needed to share: Ken West is not bonkers, official. He’d met Ken at some do or other and had revelled in a feast of reason and a flow of soul with the great man.

The news did not come as a bombshell. Ken’s thinking runs with all the clarity of Pennine springwater, as all who know him will attest. No ranter he. Very nice man, to boot. 

Whence could such a misconception have sprung? From his long association with the Natural Death Centre? Did – does –  the NDC still evoke antipathy in undertakerly circles? In spite of their diplomatic efforts to heal rifts and work collaboratively with the ‘mainstream’? In spite of the success of the natural burial movement, one of Britain’s most successful cultural exports in the last fifty years? Are they still reckoned chattering class undertaker-bashers?

I don’t know. You tell us. 

What we do know for sure is that the deathcare industry tends to be chary of scrutiny, as the recent exposé of Co-operative Funeralcare reminds us. In the face of seeming adversity, the trade/profession circles the wagons, hunkers down and gets snarly.  

It’s not an easy mindset to analyse. You’ll be able to give us some pointers. Many undertakers have, in addition to justifiable pride in their work, an acute sense of amour propre. They can be prey to feelings of self-importance and we-know-best. They can be reflexively conservative. They are often happier dealing with things rather than ideas. In a word, prickly. Many, not all. 

It’s a shame. It’s a shame when perfectly decent people write off as a hostile force other perfectly decent people who feel they have important or interesting things to say. On a personal level, it is unjust, and that’s the point of this piece. 

Over in the US, where undertakers tend to suffer from the same abiding vices as so many of our own, a man called Todd Van Beck writes about his native funeral industry. He calls himself a ‘funeral educator, consultant and historian’. He’s very much an insider.

In appraising the home funeral movement, so buoyant over there, he concludes that the mainstream industry ought to consider commodifying this nonaligned and insubordinate practice by offering an “old fashioned home funerals package”. In doing so, the industry can outflank and marginalise those idealistic pioneers who developed home funerals and, at the same time, make some money out of a custom which is founded in self-help and altruism. 

In arguing his case, Mr Van Beck makes no attempt to hide his disdain for the home funeral movement. He also derides one of its pioneers, Holly Stevens:

I just finished reading a horribly boring article regarding home funerals published by Ms. Holly Stevens (a self-proclaimed funeral consumer advocate).

The article rehashed the negative feelings concerning  funeral undertakers, like Lisa Carlson has done for years (and has seemingly made a living doing so).

One new twist Ms. Steven’s took was referring to us funeral undertakers as “commercial morticians.”

I haven’t heard that one before.  Snappy title though…“Commercial Mortician.”

The piece goes on in similar snarky vein. 

Lisa Carlson is a doughty battler. She can look after herself. And she has the added advantage of being alive. 

Holly Stevens is dead. She died just over a year ago of cancer. She was was a highly intelligent and humane Quaker beloved of all who knew her.  Perhaps her most notable attribute was her gentleness. I never knew her, but I was/am a Facebook friend. You can probably find her memorial page there. Holly was one of the authors of Undertaken With Love: A Home Funeral Guide for Congregations and Communities, which you can download free. 

Let’s try to agree about two things.

First, there is no such thing as an alternative funeral and no such person as an alternative funeral director. Our dead belong to us, and so do their funerals. Everyone has the right to their own opinion and their own practice.

Second, debate is not merely useful, it’s vital. So is mutual respect. Digging trenches is silly. 

In the words of Thomas Lynch, the eminent US undertaker: “Some want to be empowered, others to be served, others not to be bothered at all. Our job is to meet them where they are on this continuum and help where we can when we’re asked.”

Taboo or not taboo?

3 September 2012
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, Death education, Dress codes, funeral customs, medical interventions in dying, Natural Death Centre

Posted by Michael Jarvis, onetime Manager of the Natural Death Centre

For very many people in the UK ‘death’ is a subject left unmentioned. If you are reading this then you are part of a minority. A minority, furthermore, who would generally like to see more public openness regarding dying, death and funerals. We know the benefits: peace of mind from discussing one’s individual wishes, removing an unnecessary burden of decision-making from the bereaved, possible financial advantages from advance planning, and so on. 

Death seems to be a taboo subject for many, but does the general reticence to mention death, let alone discuss it, make it so?  We need to understand how it this has come to prominence. It wasn’t around in the time of our Victorian forebears despite their sensibilities in many areas (skirts on piano legs, for example). Rather, it was paraded with openness in art and literature and surrounded by a great deal of etiquette and ritual. Type ‘Jay’s of Regent St’ into a search engine to see details of a whole store devoted to mourning dress and accessories. So what happened in the last century to bring about such a seismic change? 

First, war and a pandemic. The First World War brought death on such a massive scale that repatriation was not feasible and Victorian and Edwardian notions of mourning were unsustainable. The scale of loss of life was immediately surpassed as a result of a global ‘flu pandemic and in the aftermath ‘death’ as a subject began to be swept under the carpet.  

Second, and there’s a degree of irony here, better living. In the 20’s and 30’s homes fit for heroes might have been a bit thin on the ground, but improvements in medicine and sanitation brought about a significant rise in life expectancy which had been less than 50 years for both men and women in 1900. Conversations http://www.mindanews.com/buy-cialis/ which began “We should talk about what happens when I die” would increasingly be answered by “Don’t be silly, you’ve got years ahead of you!” 

Third, and perhaps most relevant, is the simple fact that death is now largely institutionalised. Death happened in Victorian homes; now the event is most likely to occur in a hospital, outside the home and away from friends and family. It is most likely too that they will not see the body which will be removed by undertakers. Undertakers themselves would prefer the use of the term ‘funeral directors’, another example of the dead being at a distance from the family.  

Taboo? Perhaps on reflection it’s not so much that death is a forbidden topic as that for many people death happens to others, elsewhere, and is dealt with by someone else. And here’s the rub, denying the existence of death is unhealthy. Unless we can change that mindset we run the risk of creating psychological problems and we lose control: control of that which we wish for ourselves, that which will ease the pain of bereavement and even lessen the likelihood of family disputes and squabbles.  

Put bluntly it is my view that we would all be the  better if more people felt able to have conversations about death and its various implications. Projects such as the Good Funeral Guide and the Natural Death Centre have done and are doing sterling work but there’s a lot that individuals could do. Think of all the clubs and societies in your area – from the W.I. to Rotary via Probus, Lions, Mothers’ Union and countless others, the one thing they have in common is that from time to time they struggle to find speakers. Offer your services. Challenge them to put death on the agenda.

 

Is ceremony dying?

9 August 2012
Charles
17 Comments
Categories: ceremony, crematoria, direct cremation, eulogy, Formality vs informality, funeral customs, funeral trends, Memorial service, Requiem Mass, Ritual

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

This seems a strange question just after economically-challenged Britain has hosted the Olympics, a no-expenses-spared ceremonial games that unites nations in celebration of sporting prowess.

But as the cult of individuality nibbles away at established social conventions, more and more people seem to be caring less for ceremony on a more intimate level. It didn’t seem particularly surprising when a woman of my acquaintance announced on facebook she’d just had a quickie marriage in a register office, adding friends would be invited to a bash some months after the honeymoon. I’ve also attended a memorial drinks party several weeks after a no-frills committal to which only family were invited to the crematorium. As we tucked into canapes, the only significance of the occasion was that we all knew the reason for being there, and our conversation reflected this fact.

Even those who opt for ceremony can sometimes offer reasons other than a deep emotional or spiritual need to mark a profound rite of passage. Some admit to getting little satisfaction out of the ceremony itself, saying it’s just the bourgeois thing to do—and a means to the end of gathering people together for that social jolly afterwards.

It goes without saying there are many ceremony options available, though more for marriages than funerals. If a register office is deemed too sterile to get married in and you don’t want a church ceremony, you can choose any number of venues from a beach on a paradise buy cialis online melbourne island to an aristocratic stately pile. If a crematorium is deemed too soulless for your funeral plans, the alternatives are more limited.

Some non-religious folk opt for a church funeral followed by a brief committal at the crematorium, seeing this as the best way to do justice to the dead through words and music before the final farewell. However, while some liberal churches allow risqué eulogies and secular music, traditional churches remind us we’re in a house of God. When in Rome…

Some again opt for graveside ceremonies in woodland cemeteries, seeing this as solving the time problem of the crematorium, but with natural surroundings which might appeal more than incense-scented churches, with their icons making visible religious purpose.

Meanwhile, others are opting to get the cremation over with swiftly so they can plan a ceremony with the ashes rather than the body. This can, of course, be anything from the aforesaid memorial party, with urn of cremains in attendance, to something more ritualistic such as the scattering of ashes in a favoured, natural beauty spot.

Time and money are important considerations in life, and both can be found more readily with pre-planning. But there’s more to meaningful ceremony than advance scheduling and financial planning. Whether it’s a hit-the-spot celebration-of-life speech or a requiem mass, providers must provide, and receivers must be open to their cathartic potential. It’s a two-way process. Or is apathy as relevant a consumer choice as any other?

New Orleans comes to London

2 August 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Art and death, funeral customs, funeral music

Posted by Vale

Celebrant Kim Farley went to Abram Wilson’s memorial service a week or so ago. He was a young American Jazz Musician who died unexpectedly aged just 38. She writes: ‘There was a procession from the South Bank to St John’s in Waterloo and once inside the relative cool of the packed church, there was more music and singing and readings and a brilliant eulogy by his young widow. I didn’t know him, but she helped everyone get a strong sense of his vibrancy, humour and spirit.

They were together for 3 years. He died at 38. She spoke of how he’d usually be talking to her so happily in the morning that he’d join her on the walk to the tube station when she left for work. And then like as not, stay with her, down to the platform. Where she would miss the first train. And the second. And then usually get the 4th, on which he might just have decided to accompany her anyway. “It’s just a train ride, Baby”.

Here’s Abram himself playing some modern New Orleans Jazz (by Wynton Marsalis)

First impressions

25 July 2012
Charles
9 Comments
Categories: celebrants, Formality vs informality, funeral customs, Religious funerals

By Richard Rawlinson

You want celebrants to say good things well, but how do you want them to dress? If you’re opting for a civil funeral, do you want them business-like in a dark suit or to join in any sartorial theme requested by the departed? If you’re opting for a religious funeral, do you prefer traditional vestments or those favoured by the more progressive clergy?

Mourning glory

24 July 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: ashes, Dress codes, Etiquette, funeral customs, funeral trends, memorialisation

By our funeral historian, Richard Rawlinson

Ashes into Glass is a jewellery company that inserts cremation ashes into crystal glass rings, pendants, earring and cufflinks. See the results here

“It has helped me feel a little calmer about losing my dear Mum by knowing that a little part of her is always with me,” says Teresa Evans Mortimer in one of the customer testimonials.

There’s something rather Victorian about companies marketing their products specifically at the bereaved (bereaved people). Queen Victoria made jet beads soar in popularity along with lockets holding curls of hair from deceased loved ones. 

Stationers such as Henry Rodrigues of Piccadilly offered black bordered note paper and envelopes, and the London General Mourning Warehouse advertised in The Times (1 November 1845) that “millinery, dresses, cloaks, shawls, mantles, &c., of the best quality can be purchased at the most reasonable prices.” Such an emporium would be a Goth’s paradise today.

Then again, when Victoria died, the Secretary to the Drapers’ Chamber of Trade, wrote to The Times (26 January 1901) to suggest that the 12 months of Court Mourning would profoundly impact on the retail drapery trade which ordered colourful cloth three or four months in advance. 

Ironically, although expected to mourn, women were generally advised against attending funerals. Cassell’s Household Guide for 1878 discourages the practice pointing out that it is something done by female relatives in the poorer classes.

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.