funeral directors

Poppy is hiring

9 April 2014
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: alternative funerals, funeral directors

Poppy Mardall is looking for her young company’s third full-time employee.

Her fresh approach to the business of funerals makes this a job more suitable, perhaps, for someone outside the industry. But she is very open to applications from those within it who feel that her philosophy is also their philosophy.

She says:

This is an exciting opportunity to become a major part of growing a small company with big ambitions. As our third full time employee, you will be in an excellent position to progress as the company grows. You will be based at Poppy’s office in Tooting, but will
frequently be: meeting families at home, running funerals, at the mortuary and out and about getting things done. Like Isabel and Poppy, you will do whatever needs doing. Standard hours: 8am-5pm but expectation to work flexibly, and beyond these hours if
necessary. Full training will be given, and support and guidance whenever needed.

If you’d like to know more, you can download the full job description here: POPPY’S Co-ordinator Job Description

What’s for love and what’s for money?

31 March 2014
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: celebrants, funeral cost, funeral directors

If there’s one thing that really vexes people in the funerals business it’s the question of who gets paid for what – and how much.

Take the business of conducting a funeral. In England, when C of E clergy moved their fee up to £160 + travel, lots of people howled. Everyone in England is entitled to a C of E funeral whether they attend church or not. The C of E is the state church. Vicars are paid wages to lead parish worship and attend to pastoral duties. How therefore can they define a funeral as an extra? Well, up in Scotland, where the Church of Scotland is the national church, not the state church, ministers make no charge for conducting a funeral. But the C of S is running out of money and looks like not being able to afford to do this for much longer. Conducting funerals for nothing is a luxury it cannot afford. Every altruistic enterprise needs revenue streams.

In the case of secular celebrants, the contract with clients is apparently clearer cut. They sell their skills for a price the market will stand. Theirs is unmistakably a commercial service. A good many celebrants are thereby able to generate a reasonable income by knocking out up to 10 or so funerals a week, working from a template with slot-in readings, etc  — a liturgy by any other name, nothing wrong with that — comprising also a treatment of the life of the person who’s died which probably goes little deeper than rapidly gathered facts + dates + a few notable attributes.

Alongside these fast-food merchants are the altruistic adherents of the Slow Funerals movement for whom the creation of a funeral is an evolving process requiring much talk, much listening, much thought and, as a consequence, a treatment of the life lived which calls for a great deal of ‘frightfully difficult literary labour’. The result is a funeral which goes deeper and is more personal. A better funeral, in other words. But to work in this way, and conduct a very few funerals a week, requires either acceptance of poverty or the existence of another form of income, whether in the shape of a pension, an inherited fortune or a supportive partner. In commercial terms, it is an uneconomic way of working.

So: how much of the time put in by these Slow Funerals people do we count as being given for nothing? What part of their work, in other words, counts as voluntary work?

This question doesn’t apply only to celebrants. There are undertakers, too, who believe in Slow Funerals, and who may also believe in doing their best for those who struggle to find the funds for a funeral. They generate a great deal of social capital but many of them don’t bank a lot of cash. It’s the same with every vocational occupation, of course, the difference being that most vocations we can think of pay at a level that makes going the extra mile an affordable luxury. Many of our most caring undertakers, by contrast, live close to the breadline. Many, but by no means all.

Funeral shoppers have always had a difficulty with acknowledging and accepting that a funeral is a consumer product just the same as any other. That’s changing. Two factors above all are responsible. First, it’s a product which 1 in 5 people struggle to afford. Second, it’s a product whose experiential value is being increasingly questioned.

Did I say two? Add a third. Until recent years, the state enabled everyone to buy a decent one-of-those, what-everyone-has, funeral. Any notion that the value of the Social Fund Funeral Payment will be restored in this, the era of the benefits cap, looks delusional. So something’s got to give, and that something’s almost certainly the way we do it now.

The time-consuming part of an undertaker’s and a celebrant’s work, which calls for high expertise and wisdom, is the emotional support of the bereaved, helping them come to terms with, and make some sense of, what has happened. The easy bit for an undertaker is the care of the person who’s died. Any good celebrant will tell you that only a small proportion of the value of their work can be judged by the script they read at the funeral.

You’ll not find the pastoral element of the work itemised and charged for at an hourly rate on any bill submitted by an undertaker or any celebrant. You can’t place a commercial value on that, you can’t charge people for kindness. If you’re an undertaker, it’s the care of the body that has to cover it. If you’re a celebrant, the rate for a template funeral. Reputation will help, too, of course. You can put your prices up a notch if everyone agrees you’re worth it — but you might not want to do that if it means making you unaffordable to people of slender means.

Whatever you think of all that, the fact remains that the what-everyone-has funeral, reckoned expensive by those who can afford one, is now out of reach to an increasingly large segment of the population. We need something more affordable.

A conference held at the International Longevity Centre in February this year proposed a cheaper way forward that we’ve discussed on this blog: There is considerable potential to review the funeral service itself, separating the ritual from the committal. This could enable people to have more time to consider the ritual aspects and costs of the service, separate from the more functional aspect of managing the remains. When they say committal, they mean disposal, of course. Do read the report, it’s good.

Separate the disposal from the ritual. Take the corpse out of the funeral. Bring in cheaper cremation and the re-use of graves, and the costs begin to tumble. If, that is, the resulting ritual is reckoned timely and satisfying. Not everyone will be persuaded, of course. 

Kate Woodthorpe at the University of Bath takes it a step further and proposes that there may be roles for “public, private and third sectors in both preparing individuals and their families pre-death, and when bereaved.”

That’s interesting. Third sector. Volunteers to share the work of listening and supporting bereaved people. That would redefine the roles of undertakers and ritualists. But is it really a viable alternative to the way we do things now?

Window displays that move

5 March 2014
Charles
15 Comments
Categories: funeral directors, Marketing

Posted by Richard Rawlinson  at his eye-watering best

The multiple windows of Harrods, and the eye-watering budget for the displays in these windows, are a far cry from your average undertaker’s window onto the high street. However, moving installation is perhaps one trend any retailer can take from London’s leading stores.

Last Christmas, Harrods windows became Orient Express-style train carriages filled with mannequins modelling the latest seasonal partywear. Behind these beau monde passengers, passing scenes of a Winter Wonderland rolled by the carriage window—video screens creating an illusion of movement along the railway track.

A flat screen at the back of an undertaker’s window could perhaps engage passers by. An uncontroversial video for said screen could perhaps be one of those time lapse videos on a loop: the rising and setting sun; flowers budding into bloom before shedding their petals; the ebb and flow of the tide; a race through the seasons—winter, spring, summer, autumn. All these natural scenes are appropriate, too, provoking thought about life, death and rebirth, the beauty, frailty and eternal optimism of life cycles.

There are also videos of ageing faces morphing from baby, toddler and teen through to the various stages of adulthood. The time lapse video could become synonymous with FDs, rather like those woodland scenes now ubiquitous on FD websites, even those not specialising in eco-funerals.

The eye-catching screen could set the scene for props in the window, too. A time lapse nature scene would be harmonious with displays of, say, wicker and cardboard coffins and urns, generously festooned with wild flowers and foliage.

A display of sleek modernist coffins and urns could be set in a more minimalist backdrop with the screen showing the numerals of a digital clock’s hour, minutes and seconds ticking away. Again, it says something about time passing. Traditional coffins could be accessorised with more formal floral displays beneath a screen of flickering candles, evoking a mood without risking health and safety. A film of poppy fields might serve as the prerequisite WWI anniversary display.

Undertakers’ window displays market not just funeral products and services but brand personality, meaning the display brief is wide open to creative and conceptual ideas.

A window with a lonely coffin and mean flower arrangement in a single vase says, no imagination. And when it remains unchanged for months at a time, it says, no effort, which could be construed as apathetic service, even when this is not the case.

Creative and changing displays attract attention in themselves and also make people anticipate the next visual surprise. It’s worth investing in an artistic window dresser and the props that are the tools of his/her trade in order to build awareness and identity of brand.

Good windows can stimulate sufficient buzz to even inspire media attention, thus doubling up as PR as well as direct marketing to consumers. Even publicity initially criticising a window as controversial can turn into a plus, giving you the opportunity to explain its positive message. Never any harm in thinking out of the box.

Wonderful world

41 years in 60 seconds

How full-service and niche undertaker websites use words

26 February 2014
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: funeral directors, Marketing

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

While many undertakers’ websites offer useful information for those planning funerals, they’re understandably not impartial, being the marketing platforms of commercial companies. Compare and contrast, for example, these words from both mainstream undertakers and specialists in their given niche (simple funerals, woodland burials etc).

A full-service, family-run chain says this of direct cremation:

Direct cremation may be the least expensive but we’d advise that it’s not for everyone. There is no ceremony at the crematorium. The funeral takes place at a time and date to suit us. This pared-down service is designed for people who want minimum fuss and who may wish to have a larger ceremony at a later date.  As funeral directors, we are conscious that the evolution of traditional funeral rites reflects our need as human beings to bid farewell to a life with a degree of ceremony and communality which helps us to bear our loss.    

A direct cremation specialist says:

Using my service removes so much of the stress from an extremely difficult time, and provides the family with their loved one’s ashes, complete in solid wood casket, for whatever style of farewell they may then wish, and at a time and location of their choice.

A traditional undertaker says this about embalming:

Embalming is a temporary preservation process which is required where the deceased is to be buried overseas. It is also advisable in the following circumstances: where there is to be viewing; when there is going to be a delay between the date of death and the funeral; in times of exceptionally hot weather. Whether or not embalming is appropriate in any particular case is a matter upon which we would be pleased to offer you advice.     

Green undertaker scarcely mention embalming at all, except perhaps as an aside:

[Woodland burials] offer an ecological alternative to traditional burials and are sometimes but by no means always less expensive. The land is managed with the environment in mind and the land is reverted back to woodland or meadows. Instead of a traditional headstone, sometimes a tree is planted with a plaque and environmentally friendly coffins made from materials such as bamboo, wicker or cardboard are used. The body is not embalmed with harmful chemicals.

A large funeral director says this of humanist funerals (a slight bias towards the less exclusively-atheist civil celebrants perhaps?).

The term ‘humanist funeral’ is often used to describe a non-religious funeral, or one which may have religious elements, but is not led by a religious leader. In fact, a Humanist funeral is essentially atheist rather than agnostic or multi-faith. When the congregated mourners are of many faiths or the deceased was an agnostic, the most fitting approach may be to use a civil, non-religious or secular celebrant. These celebrants are open to the inclusion of readings, prayers, hymns and music which derive from any spiritual or religious traditions relevant to the deceased and the congregation. 

Meanwhile, an undertaker somewhat renowned for its religious funerals seems keen to make clear its diversity:

As a company, we represent no single culture, race, religion or nationality and will assist you in whatever requirements you have. Should you need help in finding a religious or non-religious celebrant to conduct the funeral or advise you regarding a religion that may not be your own, we will gladly help. We warmly welcome people from all cultures and all religions or none. 

Man for all seasons

6 February 2014
Charles
9 Comments
Categories: funeral directors

“No fuss? You’re absolutely sure about that? You’ve taken into account the emotional needs and expectations of your family and friends? … Yes, we have our simple package. Yes, if you’re sure it’s right for you we can do that for one nine nine five all inclusive.”

I am sipping tea in the office of Neil Bareham, Life Events Director, in a pretty market town in Kent. Never heard of a Life Events Director? That’s because Neil is the first, and I have come to find out what he’s all about.

Neil puts down the phone and instinctively pushes a box of tissues over to me.

“Funeral?” I ask.

“No, wedding. They want a no-fuss affair so we’re laying on our direct nuptials service for them. Collect them from work, transfer by Galaxy to Gretna, night in a B ‘n’ B then home. It’s a niche service, but it’s growing. They don’t want the razzamataz and the mothers-in-law but they do want a bit of romance.”

Neil began life as a funeral director but was ambitious to grow his business. He didn’t have the patience for drawn-out wars of attrition with competitors, laying siege to them by opening branches next door amid the charity shops and Cash Convertors that have colonised our defunct high streets. “Undertakers, they’re like rats in a sack” he says. “Far too many of them, all red eyes and yellow teeth, all glaring at each other. Nasty. There ought to be a cull.”

Neil’s innovative growth strategy has been vertical integration — with a twist. He says, “Undertakers think vertical integration is Dip FD jargon for burial. No imagination, that’s their problem. It was one of my celebrants who gave me the idea, actually. She does funerals, weddings, baby namings, all sorts. I thought, ‘I’m basically an event planner, I’ll have some of that.’ So I do em all, now, all life events. Funerals and weddings, mostly, but we’ll do anything. Latest thing is home removals. Shift their stuff, get it all in for them, then em-cee the housewarming. Get all their friends over, drive the missus up in a limo and he carries her over the threshold — or one of our men can do that for him.  Yes, make a bit of a thing of it. People need a bit of ritual when their world’s made new, you know.”

He uses the same grey-uniformed staff, the same silver-grey vehicles for most of his events. “Sometimes you forget which one you’re doing,” he says. “But if you’re walking up an aisle and everyone’s in tears, you know it’s a wedding.”

Neil sees himself as the cool logistical head who restores order to people’s lives “when they’re a bit doolally — when they can’t think straight.” Death, birth, love, divorce, redundancy, retirement: these and other major life events bring on, he says, mild to severe derangement, calling for empathetic supervision by a skilled third party. “Come unto me all ye whose minds are all over the place,” he says, “outsource it all to nice uncle Neil. Sorted.”

Wedding planners, he feels, have been getting it wrong for far too long. Wedding traditions compel families to do more than they can cope with — it spoils their day. Everyone’s happier if they can just turn up and have it all done for them. So Neil now plays the part of the father of the bride and leads her up the aisle while his pallbearers carry the bridal train. Neil’s role is ceremonial. Once he’s delivered the bride to the vicar he makes a discreet exit and may well go straight on to a funeral, leaving a specialist team in charge to ensure the smooth running of the event, returning for the cutting of the cake. Neil has teams for all occasions.

Neil is in reflective mood today. “People just won’t talk about it before it happens, that’s the big problem nowadays,” he muses. “Then, when it does happen, it hits them like a thunderbolt.” “Death?” I ask. “No. Love,” he says, gazing into the middle distance. “Death too, of course. All of these big life events.”

“The expense” he says. “The debts people run up, the loan sharks…”  “Yes,” I agree, “funeral poverty is a growing problem…” “No, I’m talking weddings,” he says. “Yeah, funerals too, of course — but they’re a lot cheaper.”

“It could happen any time, you know. People just don’t seem to realise that. We as a society need to face up to it, put money aside for it. But they say, ‘I’ve got a bit longer yet, I’ll do it tomorrow’. “Funerals?” I say. Neil says, “Yeah, them as well. But we never know when we’re going to fall in love, do we? People say ‘I’m not going to get married til I’m 29’. Next thing they know, wham. When it happens they’re no longer in any fit mental state to make responsible financial decisions.” Neil proudly shows me his wedding pre-payment brochure with a variety of payment options. “Silver Charter, I call it, all monies safely invested. Actually, it’s not regulated by the FCA but they don’t need to know that. That last bit is off the record, by the way.”

I bring him back to funerals. How’s business? His principal competitor was a thriving sixth generation family business. It was wound up two months ago. “Flat on its arse. Even FSP didn’t want it.”

“I didn’t put them out of business, my customers did,” says Neil, “and I’ll tell you for why. The big change around here is that I am there for the people of this town in all the changing seasons of their lives. We marry them, move house for them, name their children and bury their dad. We don’t carry any stigma. We’re one of them.  We become family friends. When I was a funeral director I lived on the margins of this town — my next door neighbour could’ve been the public hangman. Now I’m right in there next to its beating heart.”

Not in front of the children

4 February 2014
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: funeral directors

The information revolution has done huge damage to the funeral industry. Recent TV exposés of goings on behind the scenes in a Co-operative Funeralcare and a Funeral Services Partnership mortuary went viral when they aired and endure in the public memory. That the NAFD did not, in the aftermath, suspend or expel FSP called into question its claim to discipline its members when they breach its Code of Practice, a matter it is currently addressing with an urgency that might be lacking if people were not watching. 

The information revolution has also done the funerals business an enormous amount of good. Sky’s documentary in the Great Little Britons series profiled some of the great people who work in the business and showed them to be the kindest and most dedicated human beings anyone could hope to meet anywhere, ever.

Latterly, the Coronation Street plotline around Hayley’s suicide and subsequent funeral has got people talking and thinking in all sorts of positive ways.

And when people start talking and thinking about stuff these days, they tweet, they facebook, they text and email; above all, they google. In the wake of Hayley’s funeral the GFG has been awash with people looking for, and exchanging, information — especially about coffins they can buy online, of course. And celebrants. The BHA website will also have enjoyed a great deal of traffic.

Funeral people are understandably protective of the image and the good name of their industry. They worry about being brought into disrepute — as you might expect when any scoundrel can call themselves an undertaker and open a shop. 

At last year’s Good Funeral Awards, an event which prides itself on celebrating diversity and bringing funeral people of all sorts together in a spirit of fellowship, some ‘respectable’ FDs, people for whom the GFG has a high regard, were disturbed by the presence of what buy cialis uk next day delivery they felt to be one or two gothy exotics letting the side down, giving a poor impression. They had misgivings about how the event might have been portrayed by the media with the help of mischievous edits and selective quotes. We hadn’t expected that, Brian and I. It it caused us some amazement and heartsearching.

We reflected that we’ve had a media presence, including TV cameras, at both awards events. We court the media, dammit, we work hard to publicise the best in the business; that’s the whole point. We reflected that media portrayal of funeral people at the event has never been other than 100% positive. The event reflects the diversity of British society. There are all sorts of undertakers out there catering for all sorts of people. Where’s the shock horror in that? 

The story of last year’s Awards, if you want to remind yourself, was in the Spectator magazine. Sheer class.

Funeral people worry about things getting out. Reputation management used to be all about blind eyes and cover-ups, of fudges and dissembling, of closing ranks and putting up a front. Not any more it ain’t. In this new, floodlit age, everything can be known and everyone is accountable.

So you want to protect people’s feelings? So you think there are things it’s kinder not to tell them? Well sorry, it doesn’t work like that any more. They’re not children. In any case, that was always a patronising way to treat people.

If you want to suture the mouths of your dead, fine, just be sure to have an answer when you’re asked about it. If you want to embalm, be ready for the trocar question.

There’s no hiding place any more. The genie ain’t going back in the bottle. Don’t blame the sunlight. Everyone has the right to make informed choices. Deal with it.

Empower the bereaved and they’re a joy to work with

3 February 2014
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: funeral directors

Once in a while we get to hear what a difference the GFG has made to people – especially since we upped the amount of info we offer on our website. We’ve recently added heaps of helpful, informative documents that people can download. It’s proving very popular.

When a family organising a funeral decide exactly what they want before they get to the undertaker – when they march in with a complete list of arrangements and simply ask the undertaker to get on with it – isn’t that very disempowering for the funeral director? Doesn’t it downgrade them, detract from their status, devalue them?

No. And here’s the reason. It alters their role – in all sorts of positive ways.

In this altered role the client-funeral director relationship is essentially collaborative. The empowered client sees the funeral director as a partner and enabler. The arrangements are enriched by the advice and guidance of the funeral director, whose consultancy value remains, of course, high – funeral directors know what works and what doesn’t. The empowered client doesn’t know it all: the funeral director is still the expert. As I said, it’s a partnership.

The resulting safedrugstock order cialis online html funeral is in every way far more fitting and meaningful and creative and rich. When it’s over, the family punch the air. A happy client is a proud client – proud that they found out what they could do, proud that they found the right partner to help them do it, proud that they did all they could, and proud that they got it right. Such a client is also a grateful client.

For the funeral director and the celebrant, a funeral created in this way is a joy from start to finish.

And it’s really nice not to have to start, for once, with: “Do you know if Mum wanted to be buried or cremated?”

Needless to say, empowered clients find their funeral director from our list of accredited, recommended funeral directors.

Clients like these are going to multiply. There’s an enormous amount of information available, it’s readily googlable and nothing’s going to put the clock back. The information revolution is not to be feared and resented.

There’s a discussion to be had about what information it is irresponsible to broadcast. We’ll deal with that tomorrow.

Window dressing

28 January 2014
Charles
27 Comments
Categories: funeral directors, Marketing

An email arrived here recently from a person who has been struck by the way undertakers dress their windows. ‘Dreadful’ is one of the adjectives she used, ‘depressing’ another. She’d like to set up a small business and put them right.

Whether or not undertakers’ windows are on the whole dressed badly is a matter of perception. An assortment of tombstones, the window sticker of a trade association, a vase of faded artificial flowers and a fan of pamphlets selling Golden Fleece funeral plans – is that okay or is it dreadful and depressing? In truth, you rarely see much in most undertakers’ windows to raise the spirits of yer average potential customer, nor evidence of the exercise of much imagination, aesthetic intelligence or marketing acumen.

Did I say customer? I meant client, of course. Funeral Directors are professionals. They term themselves Funeral Directors to distance themselves from the unlettered, scurrilous undertakers of yore. The modern use of the word undertaker denotes an artisan funeral director, an altogether different fish, one we can dissect another day. Artisan, of course, doesn’t mean what it used to mean, either; it’s gone (socially) upmarket like artisan toast.

What other professional operates out of a shop? I mean, I was going to say, lawyers announce their presence with nobbut a discreet brass plaque, but actually, come to think of it, a lot of them now have something of a shopfront. As do banks, and banking is a profession, right? What are estate agents?

Does it matter? You can tie yourself in knots arguing one way or the other about whether undertaking is a trade or a profession and it’s only status anxiety that causes undertakers to fret about it. Journalists don’t. (They’re trade.)

Undertakers aren’t there to flog you stuff, so you wouldn’t expect their windows to follow the retail model. Nor is there anything they can put in them to tempt people to avail themselves of their services before they absolutely need them — it’s only sad necessity that draws them over the threshold.

Nevertheless, a window is a potent marketing tool – and as they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. It’s a place where you can transmit key messages about your professionalism which will bear fruit when people find themselves bereaved.

What messages should a shop window transmit? Answer: what people want to hear, of course. Here are some.

The attribute that bereaved people rate most highly is empathy. Kindness if you prefer.

They want to know that you are a member of the human race and not one of those weird sotto voce types from planet BlackMac.

They want to know that you possess specialist skills and expertise of a high order.

They want to know that you have a vocation; that you are motivated by altruism (not greed and an ambition to sell out to FSP as fast as you can).

They want to know you are honest and open in your commercial dealings.

They want to know you have organisational skills.

They want evidence that your qualities are endorsed by someone on the side of the consumer.

You’ll tell me which ones I’ve missed.

How you get all or even some of those messages into a window display I haven’t a clue. But if I were an undertaker I’d be working on it. If you can create in people a warm regard long before they need you, you can probably halve your advertising spend.

The stalemate of funeral choice

22 January 2014
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: celebrants, funeral directors, funeral music, Personalisation, Religious funerals, Requiem Mass, Secular approaches to death

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

Cherishing freedom of speech we often quote the line, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. So democrats proselytise in order to influence others, and sometimes those influenced leave one tribe and join another. A far cry from relativism, the message is, choice is good, but don’t choose them when you can choose us.

Funeralworld is no exception, and no more so than in matters of faith. To illustrate the point, let’s fisk the views of an Anglican priest who embraces the clarity of set liturgy over the burden of unfettered individualism. Fisking in red.

Father Edward Tomlinson writes:

‘In the last few years it has become painfully obvious that many families I have conducted funerals for have absolutely no desire for any Christian content whatsoever’.

Yes, it’s clear many folk book the funeral services of C of E priests without any real enthusiasm for religious significance.

‘I have stood at the crem like a lemon, wondering why on earth I am present at the funeral of somebody led in by the tunes of Tina Turner, summed up in pithy platitudes of sentimental and secular poets and sent into the furnace with ‘I Did It My Way’ blaring out across the speakers. To be brutally honest I can think of 100 better ways of spending my time as a priest on God’s earth’.

If you were saying noone should ever choose Sinatra, I’d call you a snob and busybody. As you’re saying, ‘why Sinatra and me, a priest?’, I sympathise. So what are you going to do about it? You could perhaps create a sensitive compromise that gently allows God’s presence to resonate: for example, people who haven’t been to a service in years might value their choice of, say, the Beatles’ Can’t Buy Me Love being linked to the words from 1 Timothy that ‘we bring nothing into this world and we take nothing out.’ Granted, you might be scratching your head to find such a link with some secular songs. ‘My Way’? If this smacks of fudge, your other option is to decline bookings unless they request pure liturgy.

‘Today the norm is to place the liturgy in the hands of a humanist provider or ancient crumbling cleric who will do as told, in short those who will not trouble undertakers with unavailability’.

The norm is not to place the liturgy in secular hands, although civil celebrants are indeed increasingly chosen for non-liturgical services. However, you’re right that undertakers have retired priests on speed dial due to their availability. But you did say working priests were quite busy enough doing priestly things without sitting through Tina Turner at the crem. Also, it’s uncharitable to refer to old people as ‘crumblies’. ‘Wrinklies’ is more acceptable.

‘I am troubled that pastoral care is being left in the hands of those whose main aim is to make money. And I am further concerned that an opportunity for evangelism is slipping through our fingers’.

It’s wrong to assume civil celebrants and retired priests are just in it for the money. Secondly, while it’s our duty to bear witness, evangelising of a finger-wagging nature is likely to score an own goal at a funeral where mourners have not specifically requested Christian liturgy. I return to the two C of E options: decline the booking or accept it, limiting evangelism to taking the secular elements and gently and resourcefully relating them to God’s universal truths.

‘It is my passionate belief that a requiem mass and the Christian prayers of ‘commendation and committal’ are not mere aesthetic choices in a market place of funeral options. Rather something real and significant is happening, on earth and in heaven, when these take place. Because I am a priest, I want to point the way to Jesus Christ. Naturally there will be those who disagree with my beliefs, I think they should have the right to exercise this choice, even if I think they’s misguided. But if this is your position, why invite me to the party?’

I agree Christian funeral liturgy is profound and sacred, and we both hold it can’t be imposed involuntarily on those who don’t share the faith, whether atheists, Jews, Muslims or Hindus. If you don’t feel you can point the way to Christ within the context of a funeral with secular elements, there’s no alternative but to opt out.

Your frustration is no doubt caused by genuine concern that people are missing out by choosing ‘Simply the Best’ on a sound system over prayers of commendation and committal. Perhaps your exasperation is heightened as you believe more people would share your view if they truly thought about what they wanted from a funeral. Some Christian-lites might, but decided atheists would not. The purpose of a funeral is in the eye of the beholder. That’s not relativism as we can still hold firm views for ourselves.

Footnote 1: I deliberately didn’t fully identify the priest until now as there’s a twist in this tale. Father Ed homlinson shared the above views while he was C of E vicar of St Barnabas church, Tunbridge Wells. He’s since converted to Catholicism where what can and cannot be done within the requiem mass are clearly defined. So no more hand-wringing conflicts between priestly obligations and pressure to offer secular choice. The menu is set, not à la carte. It’s now down to the free will of members of the Church to choose to dine or lapse elsewhere.

Footnote 2: At the time of speaking out, Fr T got a mixed response. ‘I think that most cremations I have been to that have been run by a humanist have all been more than off key,’ said Jane Greer. ‘Give me a good burial with a proper vicar anytime. It’s the difference between Cod’s Roe and Caviar.’ Denise Kantor Kaydar disagreed. ‘It should not matter if someone wants Verdi’s Requiem or Frank Sinatra. I think he is being a little insensitive, but he could be trying to incite a debate.’

Funerals, who needs em?

19 January 2014
Charles
24 Comments
Categories: celebrants, funeral, funeral cost, funeral customs, funeral directors, funeral trends, Secular approaches to death, traditional funerals

When England first played Scotland, on 30 November 1872, both teams employed formations that would raise eyebrows today. Scotland went for a cautious 2-2-6 while England employed a more swashbuckling 1-1-8. The game was all kick-and-rush in those days.

Kick-and-rush. It’s how businesses, anxious to futureproof themselves, respond to prophecy. Some bright spark peers into a crystal ball, dreams a dream and holds up a trembling finger. No matter that their vision is little more than a projection of their wishes and values, everyone rushes towards it.

Remember the Baby Boomer Hypothesis which held that, just as baby boomers reinvented youth culture, so they would reinvent death culture? Pretty much everybody bought that, including the entire advisory council of the GFG. The theory was that these free radicals would reject bleakness and embrace creative, themed, personalised, sometimes iconoclastic celebrations of life. The good news for the industry was that there would still be good money to be made from funerals so long as undertakers made the switch from cookie-cutter to bespoke; from being po-faced solemn-event planners to bright-eyed party-planners adding value through accessorisation and offering concierge-level service and red-carpet delivery. Pretty much the package Alex Polizzi tried to sell to David Holmes in The Fixer.

It’s not happening, is it? And as we take that in, we reflect that baby boomers have, yes, always been insouciant about what went before and unsentimental in their rejection of it. They’re re-inventors, not renovators. And they’re not all going the same way.

The evidence seems to be that baby boomers are increasingly asking themselves what good a funeral would do, really. More and more of them see little or no emotional or spiritual value in the experience. They’re not all rejecting them out of hand all at once. Some are dressing trad funerals up in a gently creative way with wacky hearses, jolly coffins and startling music choices. But on the whole they’re whittling them down. The reasons are complex and we’ve rehearsed some of them here before.

Dissatisfaction with the value offered by a funeral is probably most widely evidenced in the near-universal belief that funerals are too expensive — ie, they’re not worth what they cost. The strength of this rejection of funerals is evidenced in people’s unrealistic incredulity that a basic funeral should cost much more than having an old washing machine taken away.

Read the comments under any broadsheet article about funerals. The evidence of rejection is everywhere. If the effect of a funeral is to leave you feeling, next day, beached and empty, that’s not surprising. A funeral is supposed to fill a hole, not leave a void. Here are some recent comments in a discussion forum on Mumsnet, of all places:

My MIL has said … she wants the absolute bare minimum in terms of coffin and cremation. No service, no ‘do’ afterwards. Then she wants close family to either go somewhere nice for the weekend together. 

I had it put in my will that i don’t want any sort of funeral when i die. I think the money funeral directors charge for the most simple of services is utterly abhorrent

[My mother-in-law] died recently, she didn’t care what we did by way of funeral (I think her only words on the subject were that we could drop her off the pier for all she cared…)

My uncle didn’t want a service – he just went straight to the crematorium.

I wouldn’t want to burden love ones with the cost, I have life insurance but would want the cheapest option

It is criminal how the respectful disposal of our loved ones has turned into a million pound industry!

I have left strict instructions that I am to have no funeral service and I have made sure everyone knows about it. It is written in my will and my family would never go against my wishes. They know how strongly I feel about it.

Immediate cremation, ashes in a simple box and then take me down our local and stick me on the bar whilst everyone has a quick drink. Next day, throw my ashes in the sea at the place I grew up in as a child. That will do. No order of service with dodgy photos and poems, no wittering on about my life and no-one failing miserably to pick out my favourite songs. Boo hiss boo.

I am a crematorium manager, and can confirm that plenty of people choose to have no funeral service.

I just don’t get the whole thing. I’ve only ever been to one funeral that was really a lovely rememberence and not out of duty of what they thought they had to do. I would much rather my family used money to go on holiday to our favourite place and remembered me there.

My FIL keeps saying he doesn’t want a funeral and wants to be cremated asap with no ceremony or fuss.

We chose not to have a funeral for my dad when he died. Cardboard coffin, cremation with no service. I think he would have been pleased but I tend not to tell anyone as I have some judgey reactions as if we were being cheap (was not relevant) or he was not loved (he was very much).

The Mumsnet discussion includes a few objections on the lines of: ‘To be fair, it’s not really about you. It’s about the loved ones you left behind, it’s an essential grieving process.’ But the overwhelming majority can see no good in a funeral.

This would seem to overturn the supposition that excellent secular funeral celebrants and empathetic undertakers would save the public ceremonial funeral by making it meaningful once more. But there’s a growing realisation that you don’t need to put a corpse in a box and tote it to the crem in blackmobiles, you can create a perfectly satisfying, private, informal farewell event with ashes. Direct cremation, already growing rapidly, looks set to skyrocket.

I know that there are lots of people who believe that reports of the demise of the funeral are exaggerated. They tell me to stop being so pessimistic, things are getting better. But I had lunch with Fran Hall, chair of the Natural Death Centre on Friday, and was struck to discover she thinks as I do. She said, “One day soon the industry is going to wake up and find itself dead”.

It’s possible that there’s no saving the funeral — it’s had its time. After all, it’s not just Britain that’s saying nah. But funeral people, overly focussed on commercial concerns, are putting up absolutely no concerted philosophical defence.

If the public, ceremonial funeral is worth saving, now is the time for the best in the business, from all walks of belief, to come together and be an influential voice in public discourse about funerals, much of which remains incoherent. If the emotional and/or spiritual health of the nation is at stake, who better to do it? Ans: among others, the people whose livelihoods depend on it. Come on, don’t go down without a fight. Do we really need funerals? If so, why?

Don’t all rush, I could be wrong, this may not be a Dunkirk moment. But crisis or no there still exists a pressing need to make a considered, rational and persuasive case for funerals — if, that is, you truly believe they do any real, deep and lasting good. Do you?

There are an awful lot of people out there who don’t. If you can’t demonstrate the purpose and value of your product, who’d want to buy it?