memorialisation

“Tendagrave is a free service for people who cannot for whatever reason tend a family or friend’s grave. It will put you in touch with other people in a similar situation. You then offer to tend a grave in your local area and, in return, your loved one’s grave will also be lovingly looked after.”

 It’s a very simple and therefore beautiful idea with the potential to do a lot of good. It’s free – the idea is that no money changes hands – and the site owner, Jennifer Barsby-Robinson, will make no money out of it.

Call to action: 

1) Consider making a donation. Here at the GFG we’re skint, but we’ve stumped up a tenner.

2) If you’re a funeral director, consider doing something promotional in your window.

3) Find Tendagrave here. 

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

On the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month of 1918, the Germans signed the Armistice, making 11 November our Remembrance Day when thoughts turn to members of the armed forces who have died in the line of duty since World War I.

We may be moved by the two minutes’ silences, the laying of a poppy wreaths and singing of hymns such as O Valiant Hearts, Jerusalem and I Vow To Thee My Country, but our finest war poet Wilfred Owen can be relied on to remind us of the horror of the Great War with his bitter ‘Dulce et Decorum est’.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Redditch, where I live, is a town most people would only visit by mistake. It is a 1964 new town, a dreamy planner’s dud. We have Britain’s only cloverleaf roundabout. It’s not something I’ve ever heard anyone brag about.

Yet we boast our eminent citizens. John Bonham and Charles Dance were born here; Rik Mayall grew up here; John Taylor, co-founder of Duran Duran, went to school here. And we hit the news from time to time. Our dead heat swimming pool water. Brian Haw, anti-war campaigner, hailed from here. I looked out for signs of commemoration of Brian in our town centre yesterday. Nothing.

And I thought back to a recent discussion on Gloria Mundi’s blog, sparked by Thomas Friese’s idea that all people need permanent memorials, where GM reflects: “Maybe we can find ways for public commemoration, and re-think our commemoration of more “ordinary” people,” by which I suppose GM meant B-list famous people – Phil Lynott, for example.

And that set me thinking about unlisted celebs known only to their local communities, probably not even of interest to their local paper; the sort of people we might call local heroes.

I’ve done a few funerals for people like them. All celebrants have. This is what I said about the first:  Grace’s passing serves to remind us, perhaps, that the people we miss most, when they are gone, are not the grand, flashy folk who live out their lives on the big stage and make a big splash in the media. No, the people we miss most are the extra-ordinary ordinary folk; the ones who live among us. These are the people who make all the difference to us and to our lives. Grace’s passing was not announced on the news, yet her passing has touched you much more directly that if it had been. Because Grace was a local hero. I’ve used variants of that wording many times since.

There are lots of famous people who aren’t famous in the newsworthy sense, but whose lives were nevertheless outstandingly generous. They deserve commemoration by their communities. Wouldn’t it be good, I thought, if every city, town and village had its centrally situated Monument to Local Heroes serving as a focus for people’s appreciation?

And then I thought about how such a thing would be managed. Who would be eligible and who not? How long would you give for flowers and messages before clearing them away and incising the person’s name on the monument? How would you handle anniversaries? How would you handle more than one at the same time?

Haven’t a clue. But that’s what thinking-outside-the-box-Monday is all about.

There’s the usual row going on in a cemetery (Colchester, actually) about who can dangle what from where, if anywhere, and what is decorous and what is simply grieving trash strewn by frightful common people mad with grief and commonness. Yes, the great memorialisation debate will run and run. I say memorialisation, but used not commemoration to be a perfectly good word for it?

Thanks to The Funeral Company for the link. Apols to Ms Goodall for breaching copyright: I can’t find your contact details to ask your permission. Mail story here.