An account of a home funeral:
This is the first time I am so close. There is a body bag on the table, waiting to be opened. Our best friends’ 22-year-old son’s body is inside. His mother and father are across from me, brothers beside, with several women gathered to form the circle around the table. These women will become my sisters in the next five hours, as we prepare the body together.
Read the whole article here.
I’ve been sitting on a nice email which arrived a few days ago from Back2Back, a TV production company:
I just wanted to let you know that our documentary is airing on Thursday 10th Jan, at 10pm on Channel 5.
Cripes, that’s tonight already, isn’t it?
They add:
Thank you so much for all your help and contribution towards the making of the programme.
By that, they mean lots of chats on the phone. The GFG acknowledges no responsibility for anything you don’t like and max responsibility for anything you do. I seem to remember they were unhappy with the sensational title, Bizarre Burials, and I seem to remember also that their intentions in making the documentary were good.
Here’s the blurb:
From themed funerals to death masks and ashes tattooed onto loved ones, discover the variety of strange and sensational ways to make your mark when you die.
Nottingham-based bespoke-coffin specialists Crazy Coffins will take on any request from skips to Rolls Royces, no matter how strange. One client, 78-year-old Malcolm, has commissioned a bright-orange aeroplane coffin as a homage to his favourite football club. He has also written his own crematorium committal song, called ‘Burn me, turn me, roast me tonight’. To his wife’s dismay, he even rehearses his own funeral.
Wendy had other plans when her mother died. After collecting her from the morgue, she took her on a four-day trip around her favourite spots before digging her grave – proof that all you need for a
funeral is a big heart and a shovel.
Death masks are not new, but they are unusual in this day and age. Nick Reynolds has made one for his mum, but he has also had commissions from the rich and famous, including Ken Russell and Malcolm McLaren. Former client Rachel finds her ex-boyfriend’s mask a powerful reminder of her loved one and tearfully reveals that she hides it in her closet.
Another hoping to cash in on the fad for fantastic funerals is self-confessed Delboy Darren Abey. His promotion campaign for his ‘Only Fools and Horses’ hearse stretches from the annual ‘Only Fools’ convention to Peckham, before he realises that life in the funeral trade is tougher than he thought.
Meanwhile, the death of Julie White’s husband has left such a huge hole in her life that she is taking the radical step of having his ashes tattooed as a portrait into her skin. It makes a huge difference that his indelible ‘cremains’ will be with her always.
As these and other peculiar partings reveal, death can be full of black humour as people find their
own unique ways of meeting their end.
If ten to night is no good for you, you can catch it on Demand 5.
Hat-tip to Jonathan for the memory-prod.
From an article by Cassandra Yonder, home funeral guide and death midwife:
The difference between home and “traditional” funerals is subtle yet significant. When families choose to stay present to care for their loved ones in death they come to understand in a real and meaningful way that the physical relationship they had with the person who died is ending. While this can be a painful transition, it offers grieving people an opportunity for adaptation which is difficult to grasp when post death care is handled entirely by professionals. Participation is transformative. Those who stay involved seem to have an easier time locating the continuing bond they still http://laparkan.com/buy-vardenafil/ share with the one who has died, and utilize those aspects of the relationship which survive death to move forward in their own lives.
Above all, home funerals bring dying and post death care back to the intimate setting of home. Families who choose to care for their own are usually those who accept that death is a normal and natural part of life that does not necessitate professional intervention. The intimacy of providing post death care for loved ones (as has been done throughout history) is a final act of love which can be surprisingly life affirming.
Join Cassandra’s Facebook group here. Find her website here.
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.”
Posted by Charles
I’ve always liked the idea of Viroqua, Wisconsin. It seems to be the hometown of a lot of very nice people, all four and a bit thousand of them. Viroqua was dubbed ‘The Town That Beat Walmart’ in 1992 because its small businesses are able to compete with the monster and hold it at bay. It has a flourishing food co-op and farmers’ market.
Viroqua is also the home of an active and influential group of home funeralists, the Threshold Care Circle. They work with anyone who wants to care for their dead at home. They are skilled in body care and other aspects of waking a dead person. They provide a complete alternative to professionalised funeral directors.
They don’t charge for what they do. If they did it would mean that they were trading as unlicensed funeral directors. Thank goodness we are free of this unnecessary regulatory nonsense in the UK.
Here’s a piece about them by a Viroqua blogger:
The women did their work – researching, educating and supporting – quietly and diligently for years until, in May of 2010, our community was engulfed in tragedy and grief when two 18-year-old boys were killed in a car accident in the early-morning hours of Mother’s Day. Living in a town as small as ours, no family was left untouched by the heartache of this tragedy, and once again, the community rallied together. This time, however, there were more resources in place for grieving family members who might wish for an alternative to the traditional choices of funeral and burial. With the care and guidance of the Threshold Care Circle, the family of one of the boys chose to bring his body home, bathe him, and hold a 3-day vigil on their front porch. The home-vigil was new to almost everyone who experienced it, and the family’s choice to do this undulated outward, reaching an unexpectedly large group of people. But in the midst of unimaginable despair, those who were sharing the experience were finding extraordinary moments of truth and beauty. All were profoundly moved and forever changed through exposure to such tender caring and collective grief. A wide segment of our community had been initiated into an alternative view of death and dying, and it deeply touched a place of longing and need. [Source]
I have a feeling that our funeral industry hasn’t the vision to coax us out of the dismal rut that we dignify with the name of tradition. In any case, it would be hard for it to survive commercially if it did.
It’s inspiring to consider a way of doing things which offers an alternative to the present lo-cost craze which is sweeping our country. The irony is that, as alternatives go, a home funeral is actually a lot cheaper, despite being several hundred times more valuable.
On Wednesday we shall look at a community enterprise in the UK which, perhaps, points the way ahead.
In the meantime, spend some time on the Threshold Care Circle website here.
Josh Slocum, Executive Director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance in the USA, is a major hero to all who toil at the GFG-Batesville Tower. Here he is talking on the telly about funeral pricing and home funerals.
It’s interesting to note the similarities with the British funeral industry, in particular consumers’ disapproval of the marking up of coffins. We unquestioningly accept mark-ups in all other commercial transactions, so why do we find the marking up of coffins so objectionable? Does it say something about our unease with a for-profit business model of funeral directing? If so, what can we do about it?
Josh talks about the Federal Trade Commission’s Funeral Rule, the sort of document we badly need in the UK. It’s very well written. What a pity the Office of Fair Trading has never written a version for British funeral consumers — or funeral shoppers, as Josh terms them.
Josh talks, too, about the emotional and spiritual value of a home funeral as ‘personal, family event’, an alternative to turning your loved one over to strangers. In the US, the home funeral movement is growing. In Britain it has most regrettably stalled.
Find the Federal Trade Commission Funeral Rule here. Hat tip to the Funeral Consumers Alliance to alerting us to this interview.
The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition
A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, Maggi Hambling, Graham Harvey, Gary Lachman, Nick Reynolds, and Dignity in Dying.
It’s out in May 2012!
“Someone will wash the body. Someone will dress the body. Someone will close the eyes for the final time. Someone will. At the critical moment of death, someone will perform these tasks for the person whom we have loved and cared for all our lives. Why would we give those meaningful rituals away to a stranger? Why do we give away the best stuff?”
Anne O’Connor here.
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
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.
