funeral directors

Somewhere between all and nothing

2 December 2010
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: funeral directors, home funerals

An email arrives – an enquiry. Can we transport the body ourselves? Do we have to use an undertaker? The enquirer is not limbering up for a home-arranged funeral some time in the imminent future. No, the death has already happened. The undertaker’s men came to take the body away. Their spooky lugubriousness horrified my enquirer. Now she wants her mother back and ne’er another dismalist anywhere near her.

There are a great many undertakers who do removals a lot better than this. I was talking to Darren Lloyd of AJ Lloyd, Coventry, recently, and he told me how his firm does it. Exemplary to the very last detail (which I won’t reveal in case it’s a trade secret). And when it comes to a removal from a nursing home he will not countenance using a service door at the rear. No, “They came in through the front and they go out through the front.” I was tempted to offer him a high five, but I don’t know him well enough. I offered a restrained whoop instead.

Over in the United States there’s a gulf opening up between the funeral directors and the growing number of home funeral consultants. Over there you need a licence to operate as a funeral director so the consultants have to be certain that they don’t trespass on FD territory. Families don’t need a licence to do it themselves in most states, though.

In the UK the common perception is that you choose your polarity: all, or nothing. You outsource the whole shebang, turn up on the day and do what you’re told. Or you do it all yourself, every last thing, displaying a resourcefulness beyond the power of 99.9 per cent of the population – which is why they say of home funerals that they will never take off.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. Where Muslim and other faith communities are concerned, it isn’t. And the point is that while there are some who want the all package and some the nothing package, there are lots and lots who’d rather have something in between.

US funeral directors resist any erosion of the fully-serviced funeral. They have a lot to lose because their funerals are very expensive and an increasing number of Americans don’t want to stump up that much. Which is why there is an increasing number of home funeral consultants offering an alternative.

There are funeral directors in the UK (not many) who offer and encourage participation. But there are none, so far as I know, who offer a home funeral option on the model of that offered by home funeral consultants in the US.

Here’s an example. It is from the website of Peg Lorenz in Massachusetts:

What Does a Home Funeral Guide Do?

Pre-planning — We meet and explore options for how the family would like the process to unfold. Having a plan in place can provide the security of knowing that your wishes will be honored. This allows the family to focus on being with the loved one.

We can advocate for your needs and work in conjunction with a funeral director if you choose to work with a funeral home.

After death — We can advise and support the family with:

–       Washing and dressing the body

–       Preparing the body for a stay at home

–       Creating a peaceful atmosphere for visitors

–       Making necessary arrangements for transport and burial or cremation

–       Completing necessary paperwork such as the death certificate and other documents

You need not be alone at this time.

Is this really so radical and alternative? Is there any reason why a UK funeral director cannot offer this service as part of a range of services? I’d have thought that any who was to do so would establish a significant commercial advantage over his/her competitors and, more important, offer funeral consumers what they want.

The more that people can engage with the care and farewelling of their dead, the greater the emotional value of the experience – this much we know. Which is not to say that families should be urged to do what they feel they can’t. But their readiness should be carefully explored. Choice isn’t about what colour box you want, nor personalisation about dead people’s playlists. It’s not about the what, it’s about the how.

It is too late for my enquirer to identify where on the continuum from all to nothing she would have expressed a preference to be. The next few days are going to be terribly gruelling. And empowering. It’s a shame she’s come to see the funeral industry as a place where she can’t find the help she wants.

Check out Peg Lorenz’s website here

Hard graft

18 November 2010
Charles
11 Comments
Categories: Care homes, funeral directors

The alternative to government regulation of the funeral industry is not self-regulation (too flabby) but implacable consumer scrutiny. That’s the libertarian way of looking at it, it’s a case I like to argue, and I concede that it may be ineffectually idealistic.

If only consumers knew. If only they knew what goes on behind the scenes they’d be on to it. Yes? Appalling things go on in funeral directors’ mortuaries. So let’s tell em. If you want to be reminded of how some dead people are treated, have a look at this version of a removal.

If only consumers knew about the dark arts of deathtrade marketing they wouldn’t be fooled when a helpful care home staff member recommends a lovely local funeral director. Because they’d suspect that the staff member had been bought by a smarmy bastard.

What goes on is not fair on consumers and it’s not fair on the good guys in the funeral trade. Here’s an email I have just received from a funeral director I admire very much:

I’ve been really tormented recently about how various funeral directors are so corrupt, bribing nursing homes, care homes etc.  I was sent an email the other day about an anti-bribing law coming in next April, and this brought everything to the surface once again, as there is no way it would affect the funeral industry.

The area where I work has numerous nursing / care homes and many of the friends of a member of my staff work in them. They all use one funeral director who supplies them with large flat screen T.V.s etc. We have spoken with the carers and they all admit that they are told to use this certain funeral director but they are frightened to approach the persons in charge to ask them why this funeral director is contacted every time someone dies. It’s a case of ‘more than their job’s worth’.

I’m such an honest person that this kind of dishonesty always enrages me and my hands are tied. I’m aware that this world is a very corrupt one and it’s a case of ‘you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours’ but I refuse to be part of it and one day want to announce that we are proud of the fact that we have never had to lower ourselves to bribing care homes for our existence.

I don’t know nearly enough about the codes of practice that govern care homes and nursing homes. A code I believe to be widely observed is that of the Nursing and Midwifery Council, which prescribes the following:

Be impartial

  • You must not abuse your privileged position for your own ends
  • You must ensure that your professional judgment is not influenced by any commercial considerations

I guess Trading Standards will have an opinion on this. Easy enough to establish a pattern when most dead residents go to the same funeral director. But what’s philanthropy and what’s a bung?

I’d be very interested to hear what you think about this. If you’re a funeral director and do not want to comment publicly, why not send me an email? Mark it confidential and, as many will testify, it’ll go no further. Find me here: charles@goodfuneralguide.co.uk

If only they knew…

17 November 2010
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, Embalming, funeral directors

There’s a new blog over in the US which describes itself as “a revealing look from beneath the veil of silence. The purpose of this blog is to bring truth to funeral consumers, which is often masked by an industry driven by profits. What makes this site different? The creator is a licensed funeral director & embalmer who, after many years in the profession, became disenchanted with many of the tactics and unethical practices of the industry.”

It probably doesn’t tell any readers of this blog anything they didn’t already know. It’s revealing all the same.

The practice of embalming polarises opinions like nothing else. For all its ungentleness its best practitioners are some of the gentlest and most caring people in the deathcare industry.

In his latest post, the blog’s author, Mark DeSteffan, discusses embalming with the aid of video clips. Well worth reading. But here’s a caution: don’t watch the clips unless you’ve got an especially strong stomach.

How much should funeral consumers know about what goes on in a funeral director’s mortuary? For those who reject embalming, how much do they need to know about how the mouth is closed?

What constitutes informed consent?

Find the Business of Death blog here.

Unmasking the wolves

10 November 2010
Charles
14 Comments
Categories: Co-operative Funeralcare, Dignity, family funeral directors, funeral cost, funeral directors, SAIF

Over in the US, Service Corporation International (SCI) the multinational deathcare conglomerate which, here in the UK, begat Dignity, is in hot water. Again. One of its funeral homes, trading under the name of Stanetsky Memorial Chapels, mixed up two bodies. When they realised what they’d done, it seems that they illegally exhumed the one they’d already buried (it had enjoyed a good Jewish funeral first), and reburied it in the right place. Read the story here.

Were we to generalise from this in the light of our experience in Britain we might easily reach the conclusion that big chains of funeral directors are especially susceptible to Wrong Body Syndrome. Not all, mind. I’ve never heard of our Dignity making that mistake.

Yet I think we might agree, nonetheless, that even when they don’t make egregious mistakes, big chains are systemically incapable of giving the grieving public what they want. They know this, of course. It’s why they trade under the names of the families they’ve bought up. It’s the vital point the financial journalists always miss when writing about the trading position of Dignity, talking up the attractiveness of its shares. The market, they say, as if it were an unravished bride, is ripe for consolidation. Orthodox economics teaches us that consolidation’s what’s best for markets. But funeral consumers want small, intimate, private and personal. They want boutique. If they can have that at a lower price than the big beasts charge, they who enjoy economies of scale which they do not then pass on to consumers, it’s win-win for consumers all the way. Dignity shareholders urgently need to know this.

Again over in the US, “At least seven funeral homes say Robert Christiansen, director of Christiansen Funeral Home in Greenville and a cremation service in Wyoming, engaged in “cybersquatting” by registering variations of their Internet sites.” He then had all traffic to these sites redirected to him. Darkly devious. Read it all here.

If we are to generalise from this, those of us who know the funeral industry would probably agree that over here in the UK we, too, are aware of some pretty dark arts in the matter of marketing. And I use two examples of US malpractice simply to show that there’s nothing peculiarly British about the British way of undertaking.

Let’s come home, now, focus on the matter of transparency of ownership and celebrate the victory on 22 September 2010 of Daniel Robinson and Sons over LM Funerals trading in Epping as DC Poulton and Sons. Daniel Robinson complained to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) about three press ads:

The first press ad stated “SERVING THE LOCAL COMMUNITY SINCE 1888 … DC Poulton & Sons is one of the area’s longest established funeral directors, proudly serving the community for over 120 years”. The ad also featured an image of Howard Poulton.

The second press ad stated “Serving the local community since 1888 … DC Poulton & Sons is one of the area’s longest established funeral directors, proudly serving the community for over 120 years!”.

The third press ad also featured an image of Howard Poulton and stated “The Original and Traditional Funeral Directors Caring for families since 1888 …With over 70 years combined experience, Mr Howard Poulton, his Funeral Director Peter Wright and their team of funeral professionals are available to assist you”.

Daniel Robinson & Sons Ltd challenged whether:

1. the claims “Serving the local community since 1888” in ads (a) and (b), and the claim “The Original and Traditional Funeral Directors Caring for families since 1888” in ad (c) were misleading because they understood that the company that owned Poulton & Sons was established in 2003; and

2. the image of Howard Poulton gave the misleading impression that the business was still family run because they believed that Howard Poulton had retired.

The ASA upheld 1 (above). “The ASA noted that the certificate sent by DC Poulton showed they had provided services to the residents of Epping since 1890, but noted it did not state the type of services being offered. We considered, therefore, that it did not constitute evidence to demonstrate that they had been in business as funeral directors since 1888 as claimed. We also noted that the company had been acquired by LM Funerals in 1997 and that they had continued to operate under the name DC Poulton since that time. We considered that the claims “DC Poulton & Sons is one of the areas longest established funeral directors” and “The Original and Traditional Funeral Directors Caring for families since 1888” implied that the company was still owned by the Poulton family, that ownership was “original” and unchanged, which was not the case. In the absence of a prominent statement making clear that the business was owned by LM Funerals, we concluded that the ads were likely to mislead.”

The ASA did not uphold 2 (above): “We noted that Howard Poulton was still employed by DC Poulton and involved in the business and had not retired. We therefore concluded that the ads were not misleading.”

The ASA directed: The ads must not appear again in their current form. [Source]

For all that, DC Poulton continues to make this claim on its website: “D. C. Poulton & Sons was founded in 1888 as a builders and undertakers”.

Transparency of ownership is a hugely sensitive issue in the funeral industry. Independents rage about it, the big beasts chuckle at their impotence, and all the while funeral consumers are, basically, conned. They find out too late, if at all.

Some local authorities, bless them, try to warn consumers with this no-holds-barred text on their websites: “There has been a decline in recent years of the local family operated funeral director. Few people notice that large firms now own many family funeral directors throughout the country. The new owners may not be disclosed on shop signs or Letterheads. These firms may continue trading upon the inference of the caring qualities and local connection of the old family firm. Similarly, older people tend to reflect upon the past socialist principles of the “Co-op” funeral services, which may no longer apply.” [Source] I especially approve of the way they consign the Co-op’s socialist principles to history.

On 14 August 2008 Birmingham Trading Standards officer Derek Hoskins, in a letter to SAIF, detailed the laws concerning transparency of ownership:

“from 26th May 2008, the true ownership of a business must be conveyed to a consumer before he makes a transactional decision. I.e. if a company is trading as “I’M A SOLE TRADER FUNERALS LTD.”, is owned by “NATIONAL FUNERALS UK LTD”. The customer has the right to know whom they are really dealing with BEFORE they make their choice.” [Full text here]

It’s only fair and right that they should, of course. But is the law working as Mr Hoskins thinks it ought? No. The wolves continue to parade themselves in sheep’s clothing.

How do the big funeral chains get away with camouflaging themselves as they do? I hope a reader with a good legal brain will enlighten us.

At the same time, I very much hope that the ASA judgement above will renew the determination of independent funeral directors to look very closely at the ads of their wolf competitors and take them on with renewed zeal. You don’t just owe this yourselves, you owe it to consumers, too.

And should you need any more impetus to do that, consider this: Marks and Spencer are thinking about entering the market. Read and despair here.

Thirty funerals in thirty days

1 November 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, celebrants, ceremony, funeral directors, funeral trends, funerals in other cultures, Grief, Memorial service, Plan your own funeral, Secular approaches to death

Over in Albuquerque, Gail Rubin has set herself the task of attending and writing up thirty funerals in thirty days. She got under way on Saturday. It’s going to make for a very interesting social document.

At this stage, of course, many of those whose funerals she will describe are as yet still alive…

Lovingly Managed responds to its critics and doubters

25 October 2010
Charles
18 Comments
Categories: funeral directors, Plan your own funeral, pre-need plans

When I wrote this post I guessed what the responses were likely to be. The funeral industry does not like to be interloped. Catherine Corless of Lovingly Managed has posted the following comment and, for fear that you might miss it, I am re-posting it here:

Well, we do seem to have ruffled a few feathers although, having said that, it was encouraging to see some positivity filtering through the fog of suspicion and cynicism. We did wonder about replying, as we don’t want to appear defensive – we’ve got nothing to be defensive about  – but in the end, in case people are reading this and getting what we consider to be the wrong impression of us and our business, we felt we would address the points you have all raised.

In response to Rupert Callender

In our funeral package ‘much’ of what we do is not, in fact, done by the funeral director – they don’t register the death, many don’t arrange the venue and catering for any post-funeral hospitality, they don’t ring relatives and friends to inform them of the death or write thank you cards for flowers and donations. (By the way, this isn’t an accusation against funeral directors, just a statement of fact.  The point is, we pick up where the funeral director’s service generally ends).  So yes, ‘some’ elements of our funeral package may be undertaken by the funeral director, or may not be, but ‘much’ is not. When my father died, the funeral director did indeed organise the flowers but I don’t recall them offering to arrange the design and printing of the Order of Service. This is why we have given people a choice in this respect, as we anticipate that flowers will be the remit of most funeral directors whereas the Order of Service is less likely to be. And if the funeral director takes care of both, then, as we state, very clearly, people can request alternative services as part of their package or just ask for them to be removed and we will reduce our price accordingly. The last thing we want to do is create additional costs for the bereaved.

Having said that, if people want additional help that isn’t available from their funeral director, but is provided by us, and they are happy to pay for that extra help, why shouldn’t it be available to them? When you set up your business in 2000, as you state on your web site, what you wanted was ‘to offer an ecological alternative to traditional funerals’. Good for you. You wanted to give people choice. So do we. And you know, somewhere back in the mists of time, when some bright spark decided to relieve people of the task of having to bury their own by offering to do it for them for a fee, I wonder if he was accused of being surplus to requirements and creating an unnecessary expense for the bereaved. After all, up to that point, people must have managed perfectly well without the services of a funeral director. But obviously people wanted this service and were prepared to pay for it because look where we are today.

I take issue with the brick-bat that we are ‘advertising’ for franchisees on our web site; I must have missed the ‘Buy A Franchise NOW!!!” banner in bold, black type on a luminous yellow background. Yes, we have a ‘Franchise opportunities’ tab on our home page which, if people are interested, they can access.  Most commercial organisations have a ‘Vacancies’ page on their web sites. We see our ‘Franchise opportunities’ page as no different to this.

You state on your web site that “we were moved to become funeral directors through our beliefs and experience of bereavement and its aftermath”.  All of us at Lovingly Managed, although our business has gone in a different direction to yours, are in our business for exactly the same reasons as you are in yours.
It is not only the next of kin that can register the death. See http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/Death/WhatToDoAfterADeath/DG_10029642
Finally, I’m pleased to hear that you like many of our other services aimed at the elderly so thank you for that.

In response to Jonathan

Below are two quotes which I’ve lifted from Rupert Callender’s web site:
“……thank you, you’re providing such a very special service to people – special because of the love you give to all you do and that love works its miracles.”

“The process of death has often paradoxically been linked with that of birth. I can see those links now. Just as you would want the best midwives and the best experience of giving birth at the start of life, so you would want the same at the end of life. The first welcomes and gently brings a child into the world, the second says goodbye and gently prepares a child for their moving on from this world. Both are acts of the greatest love.”

You may notice that the word ‘love’ crops up in both these testimonials. I guess it’s about knowing your market and giving your market what it wants. Market testing demonstrated that, from the several options presented, our target market overwhelmingly preferred the name Lovingly Managed which is why we selected it as our company name.

Thanks for your story about your son and his girlfriend. I had a really good laugh at that!

In response to Gloriamundi

1) Re. our name, see response to Jonathan.

2) Yes, we are pulling together many services that already exist, but that’s the point. We are also providing other services which don’t currently exist. The total sum of that is a one-stop-shop. At a time when people are already under pressure, they can make a single phone call and we can relieve them of as much or little of that pressure as they wish. And you may have known of situations where an FD organises the post-funeral hospitality and live music out of ‘kindness’, but how many situations? I can’t believe that it happens very often and why should it? In my experience, it’s not generally part of an FD’s core service offering and they’re not charities. They’re businesses. And what about all the people whose FDs don’t provide these services out of ‘kindness’? Are they supposed to be left swinging in the wind? Well, now they have options.

You also seem to have a very one dimensional view as to what people’s situations are when they or a family member dies which is far removed from the reality for many. You state that the services we provide “many – most – people can actually do for themselves, or their friends/family can or should.” What exactly is a dead person supposed to do for him or herself?; and regardless of the fact that many families could do what we do, many don’t want to and others really can’t, for any number of reasons, and it’s certainly not up to anyone else to say they ‘should’ do it if their preference is to pay someone else to do it.

Another thing you say is that “It’ll be a sad day when friends and family don’t offer this sort of support – I know there are people who die utterly alone, and there may be more in future – but it’s not that common, is it?”

You’re right.  The number of people dying absolutely alone is, at the moment, small but it is increasing.  However, I’m sorry to say that the ‘sad’ day of family and friends not offering this sort of support is already here and not necessarily because they don’t want to but often because they’re not able to, either because they live too far away, they’re old themselves or they may be too ill. As our population continues to age, families become increasingly dispersed and the number of people living alone continues to increase, more and more people are going to face this type of situation.

A few pertinent statistics:

Research by Dignity in Dying found that almost 25% of Welsh people live alone, the highest proportion in the UK.  recent report by WRVS, entitled Home Alone1, predicted that by 2021, the
Office of National Statistics:

Over the last 25 years the percentage of the population aged 65 and over increased from 15 per cent in 1984 to 16 per cent in 2009, an increase of 1.7 million people. By 2034, 23 per cent of the population is projected to be aged 65 and over. The fastest population increase has been in the number of those aged 85 and over, the “oldest old”. In 1984, there were around 660,000 people in the UK aged 85 and over. Since then the numbers have more than doubled reaching 1.4 million in 2009. By 2034 the number of people aged 85 and over is projected to be 2.5 times larger than in 2009, reaching 3.5 million and accounting for 5 per cent of the total population.

Older women are more likely than older men to live alone and the percentage increases with advancing age. In 2008 in Great Britain, 30 per cent of women aged 65 to 74 lived alone compared to 20 per cent of men in this age group; and for those aged 75 and over this increases to 63 per cent and 35 per cent respectively.

You make the point that ‘I think what we need are local networks of information and support, not a franchised national service.’ There are already many local networks of information and support, which are essentially franchised national services without the commercial element e.g. Age UK, Cruse, but none are offering what we are.  You also say that “The accompanying/supporting/house clearing stuff really should be done locally.” Well, it is being done locally across South Wales, by us, and if our business grows as we hope, then Lovingly Managed franchisees will be providing the service ‘locally’ across the UK.

I get the impression that your real objection to our business is the very fact that it’s a commercial business and not a charity.  Further evidence of this comes from you saying that we are “adding to the expense unnecessarily.” Unnecessary for who, exactly? Certainly not for the son/daughter living abroad who has to get back to their family and job and has no time to clear their parent’s home and get the house on the market and can’t afford to be flying back and forth. At the beginning of your comments you accuse us of making sweeping statements; I have to say the words pot, kettle and black come to mind. I mean, who are you to decide for everyone what is an unnecessary expense?

Finally, you say ‘But I’m not tutting.’  Really?  You could’ve fooled me!

In response to Death Matters

To be honest, I’m not sure what you were saying but I think the premise is that if people aren’t stressed out and struggling to cope then they don’t experience the correct degree of loss. Says who? If people want the experience made easier for them then that’s their choice. It’s not up to anyone else to dictate to them what help they should or shouldn’t receive in order to adhere to some arbitrary, subjective standard on what makes a bereavement ‘too easy’. Having said that, I totally disagree with your sentiment, anyway. To say that helping people deal with the practical aspects of death means their sense of loss is somehow minimised is, to my mind, offensive. It’s like saying if a woman has a baby with the aid of drugs then she doesn’t really experience the wonder of giving birth because she hasn’t suffered enough pain. As a woman who, during the course of a 39 hour labour ended up having every drug going, I can assure you that this couldn’t be further from the truth.

In response to Graveyard Bunny and Gloriamundi

How ‘delightfully’ commercially naïve of you not to realise that ‘elderly escort service’, far from being a blunder, was a totally calculated decision to drive web site traffic. After all, we are trying to raise awareness of our company and this was just one means to an end. Who’s to say that a man searching for an escort service doesn’t also have an elderly parent who he might want help with, either then or at some point in the future? And if he’s aware of our web site, he knows we exist and might just tell his friends about us.  Apparently our company has been mentioned on a forum on West Ham’s web site. Now how did that supporter find out about us, I wonder?

That’s it. If we’ve offended, apologies. It’s not personal but we weren’t about to let these comments pass without presenting our point of view.

BLOG OFF. This blog is going to take a few days’ holiday on its beloved island in da sun — so you can have a few days’ holiday from it. See you next Monday. Have a great week!

Shovel-and-shoulder work

21 October 2010
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: alternative funerals, Art and death, Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death, bereavement, ceremony, Children and funerals, DIY funeral, funeral customs, funeral directors, funeral poetry, Good books, green funeral, home funerals, natural burial, shroud

The words that follow are by Thomas Lynch, a hero to so many of us in the UK. (In the US there are those who reckon him paternalistic, but we don’t need to go into that. It’s complicated.)

Funerals are about the living and the dead — the talk and the traffic between them … in the face of mortality we need to stand and look, watch and wonder, listen and remember … This is what we do funerals for — not only to dispose of our dead, but to bear witness to their lives and times among us, to affirm the difference their living and dying makes among kin and community, and to provide a vehicle for the healthy expression of grief and faith, hope and wonder. The value of a funeral proceeds neither from how much we spend nor from how little. A death in the family is an existential event, not only or entirely a medical, emotional, religious or retail one.

“An act of sacred community theater,” Thomas Long calls the funeral — this “transporting” of the dead from this life to the next. “We move them to a further shore. Everyone has a part in this drama.” Long — theologian, writer, thinker and minister — speaks about the need for “a sacred text, sacred community and sacred space,” to process the deaths of “sacred persons.” The dead get to the grave or fire or tomb while the living get to the edge of a life they must learn to live without those loved ones. The transport is ritual, ceremonial, an amalgam of metaphor and reality, image and imagination, process and procession, text and scene set, script and silence, witness and participation — theater, “sacred theater,” indeed.

“Once you put a dead body in the room, you can talk about anything,” Alan Ball [creator of the HBO show Six Feet Under] wrote to me once in a note.

Source

Claire’s last word

13 October 2010
Charles
11 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, celebrants, Co-operative Funeralcare, funeral directors, Humanists

Everyone looks at other people differently according to what they do. Hairdressers scan your hair, dentists your teeth, snobs your shoes… Undertakers? Why, they measure you for your coffin of course.

Surveying a funeral, the preoccupations of an undertaker are quite different from those of anybody else. Ordinary folk take in the procession, the flowers, the demeanour of the close family (grief bravely borne if they’re doing it by the script). But undertakers want to know who got it – who got the job. Their beady eyes home in on the registration plate of the hearse and decode the letters. Ah, CDF 1, Change and Decay Funeral Service (dignity assured, Daimler fleet, open 24 hours). They scrutinise the demeanour of the conductor (that watch chain’s a bit over the top), they log the condition and cleanliness of the cars and the aspect of the bearers. Who supplied that coffin? One of Wainman’s?

It is from this viewpoint that they will regard the funeral of lovely Claire Rayner, who died on Monday. As the chair of the Co-operative Funeralcare Forum (2002) Claire abetted this admirable organisation in its mission to bring about a “major shake-up in the UK’s funeral provision” and meet the “need for more information to help people make every funeral special.” So will she go with Co-operative Funeralcare? Why not?

What could possibly go wrong?

Claire was also a president of the British Humanist Association. It’s no surprise, then, that she will have a humanist farewell ceremony. This may pose a problem for the celebrant (if they use one), a problem which is becoming increasingly common. Humanist celebrants have, most of them, always gently outlawed hymns from funerals. Now they’ve got a new ontological problem with their clients. For though they may profess themselves to be hardened atheists, they later reveal a fuzzy belief in an afterlife of some sort, a freestanding heaven where no one’s in charge, a cake-and-eat-it sort of a place. Atheists are not the rigorous (left-leaning, often puritanical in the best sense) rationalists they used to be. They just don’t like, I don’t know, authority figures?

Whatever, Claire, who revealed a capacity for inconsistency when, as a lifelong republican she accepted an OBE, uttered these last words:  “Tell David Cameron that if he screws up my beloved NHS I’ll come back and bloody haunt him.”

Only joking, for sure. But Claire, I hope you will.

Thanks to Tony Piper for popping these mischievous thoughts into my head

Indy undertakers on the counter-attack

12 October 2010
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: Co-operative Funeralcare, Dignity, family funeral directors, funeral cost, funeral directors, Plan your own funeral, pre-need plans, SAIF

Saif’s  IPSOS-Mori price comparison survey published in February 2010 was dynamite. It showed that independents are generally cheaper than two big beasts of the industry, Co-operative Funeralcare and Dignity. Had Saif got the message out to the funeral-buying public it would have hit the big beasts’ bottom line bigtime.

But the message never got out, not in a big way – an eyebrow-raising non-occurrence considering the price obsession of British funeral consumers. Saif didn’t bang the drum and blow the trumpet. A number of its members are cross about this. All that money to create a weapon of mass destruction only for it to hastily hidden under a bushel. What a waste, they said.

Is Saif dumb or did it have its tongue cut out? The story cannot be told for fear of litigation. There was a rumour swirling that one of the big beasts put pressure on Saif’s suppliers to take sides: either you ditch your indies or we’ll ditch you. I don’t think we can attach any credence to that.

The advance of the clunking conglomerates has been inexorable. They have circumvented the nobody-does-it-better claim of the independents and fought the war instead on the unpropitious battleground of financial planning, employing expert messagemakers to seduce consumers with sweet-talk about empowerment. As a result, the future now belongs to the big beasts: they’ve got the paid-up pre-need plans to prove it. It’s been a strategic masterstroke. Who wants today’s car, phone, anything tomorrow? No, we want the upgrade, next generation, as-yet-undreamt of. And yet… the funeral planners have conquered obsolescence . Hats off!

How to reverse this? By playing the big beasts at their own game? Golden Charter is fighting the good fight pluckily enough, but is beginning to look like the British army in Basra. In any case, there are far, far better ways of making provision for funeral expenses, ways which do not disempower those left behind.

No. The way forward is to get back onto the battleground of value for money, quality assurance and individuality. At a time like death people want to be looked after by a brilliant boutique business, not Funerals R Us. It ought to be easy enough.

It will need concerted action, though. Ay, there’s the rub.

So it’s really good to see a togetherness initiative come out of last week’s discussion of the new Co-op website MyLocalFuneralDirector. It was sparked by Nick Armstrong. He spotted that the Co-op had failed to buy mylocalfuneralservice.co.uk and yourlocalfuneralservice.co.uk.

“I’ll give you a guess who has just bought them. I’ll get a list of independent funeral directors on there as soon as I work out how to do it. Ill post back on here when I have a template up and running.:-) … It won’t be a quick thing as I want to get it right but it will be honest that’s for certain! If anyone has any ideas on compiling the database easily please let me know.”

His challenge was taken up by Andrew Hickson:

“Nick, here’s an idea off the top of my head. Follow it up, ignore it, change or work on it, I shan’t be offended by any of them!

It seems that there’s a fair bit of animosity and dislike of the website that is being discussed here, so, how about we, ourselves, research and compile a database? By this, I mean every reader and follower of this blog, each contributing what he or she knows.

I’d be surprised if between us we weren’t pretty well-informed of the true identities of a huge number of companies.

An immense task, and one which would require every contributor to be really focussed. But, very exciting, and think of the satisfaction when it was complete.

I’d be happy to help out wherever I could, so do let me know your thoughts!

This could be big if we all made it so … the start of a collaboration of FD’s willing to challenge the boundaries of the truth with which we all contend on a daily basis?”

Nick has responded:

“Hi Kingfisher. I’m game. Any help on content etc would be appreciated as well as any help with compiling a database. Thinking of a searchable google map with premises photos and branch info might be a good start. Bit more interactive than a list.

I’ve been doing one on my website with local churches, cemeteries etc. http://tinyurl.com/2v54rzz

I’m happy to build and host the site(s) and any info would be greatly appreciated.”

So there we are then. The go-to man is Nick: office@funeralhelp.co.uk.

Let’s make common cause!

The only way round is through

6 October 2010
Charles
10 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, bereavement, Co-operative Funeralcare, Dead people's rights, Death; Good death, funeral directors, Plan your own funeral

Once upon a time people dreaded dying. They couldn’t be sure it would be painless. They dreaded being dead, too. Some feared the unknown. Others lamented the end of their existence.

A very few people had no fear whatever of being dead because they trusted in a joy-drenched afterlife. But even these people dreaded dying.

Death was a big deal.

In those days, people affected by the death of someone were called ‘the bereaved’. They experienced grief. Even people who were certain that their dead person had gone to paradise were sad because they missed them. So funerals were sad occasions. There was no way round this. It was because everyone was sad.

Because dying could be such a horrible thing, people didn’t talk about it. When they were dead, this made life difficult for everyone. The undertaker would gently say to the bereaved, “What do you want to do?” and the bereaved would reply, “What she would have wanted.” The undertaker would gently ask, “What was it she wanted?” and the bereaved would reply, “We don’t know.”

The pre-need funeral plan people gazed sadly at their unsold pre-need funeral plans and said, “What hope for us when everyone’s in denial?”

People who know what’s best for people saw that what death needed was an image makeover. “It’s not so bad when you talk about it,” they said. And they had a point – up to a point. “It has been said,” they said, “that what we fear most about dying is the associated loss of control. By empowering patients to express their wishes, that control can be restored.” “Does it bollocks,” said the people with neurodegenerative diseases.

The pre-need funeral plan people proved, with smoke and mirrors, that grief can be bypassed by partying. And because no one wants anyone to be sad when they die, everyone flocked to buy their very own pre-need, knees-up party plan.

So now when relicts go to the undertaker, the undertaker says, “Hello.” And the relicts say, “What’s next?” And the undertaker says, “This, this is what’s next. This is what you’ll do, this is what you’ll wear, this is what you’ll listen to, this is how you’ll feel. It’s all laid down and it’s all paid up.”

And the relicts say, “Sorry, we feel too sad, we miss her.” Or, “Are you joking, mate? We couldn’t stand him.”

And Death says, “Right. You’ll do it my way.”