Reasons to go to a funeral

What would you like to see on your TV?

19 June 2013
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: ceremony, death and funerals, funeral, funeral customs, funeral trends, funerals in other cultures, memorialisation, Reasons to go to a funeral, Secular approaches to death

When media people phone the press office here at the GFG-Batesville Shard, their requests for information often conform to whatever they suppose to be trending.

“We’re doing something on living funerals. Are these catching on?”

“No.”

“We’re doing a documentary about the dying process and we want to film someone actually dying. Can you help us?”

“No.”

“Arranging a funeral?”

“No.”

When they say they want to expose malpractice, we urge them to shine a light on good practice, too, in the interest of fairness and balance.  We can introduce you to lots of good undertakers, we say. They always promise. They never do.

Today we received an enquiry about the growth of professional mourners in the UK. We replied a little perfunctorily that there hasn’t been. Actually, there’s an outfit called Rent A Mourner but we’ve always thought it must be a spoof. Have you ever encountered a professional mourner? We thought that would be the end of it.

But the enquirer, Malcolm Neaum of CB Films, pursued the topic on a broader front. Are British funerals being in any way cross-fertilised by multiculturalism, he wondered. And it’s a good question because, even though they haven’t to any remarkable degree, we have from time to time, on this discount cialis coupon blog, discussed the desirability of respectfully and gratefully adapting rituals and observances from other cultures with which to enrich our own ‘secular’ funerals, many of which are beautifully and expertly scripted, but are characterised by a DVT-threatening inactivity on the part of the audience. Funerals are going to go on evolving. The question is whether they are going to evolve in the direction of elaboration or extinction. 

Malcolm is keen to make a documentary about funerals — has been for some time. He tells us: ‘I’ve been working in documentaries for 15 years and have never been able to get a commissioning editor interested in even approaching the topic of death.’ 

He adds: ‘My grandfather died last year and I can’t help but feel that so much of the symbolism and power has been stripped from a modern day funeral. Hopefully, an interesting programme may be an opportunity to you explore the funeral ritual in modern times.’

Malcolm has asked me to ask you what you think. What could he most usefully make a programme about? 

It’s a rare thing to be asked what we think. I hope you will tell him. He says, ‘it’s very exciting to think what we will hear back.’ 

Go on: excite him!

Always go to the funeral

15 October 2012
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Reasons to go to a funeral

I believe in always going to the funeral. My father taught me that.

“Always go to the funeral” means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don’t feel like it

In going to funerals, I’ve come to believe that while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture, I should just stick to the small inconveniences that let me share in life’s inevitable, occasional calamity.

On a cold April night three years ago, my father died a quiet death from cancer. His funeral was on a Wednesday, middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days cheap cialis uk suppliers when, for some reason, during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful and humbling thing I’ve ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.

These words are taken from a short essay by Deirdre Sullivan. It’s well worth reading. 

If you’re a celebrant, you might consider commending your congregations for having made the effort to come (something I signally failed to do at the funeral I led on Friday.) 

We need to talk about funerals

24 August 2011
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: alternative funerals, ceremony, death and funerals, funeral customs, funeral directors, Reasons to go to a funeral, Secular approaches to death, traditional funerals

Posted by Vale

But, I hear you say, we do already. All the time. Interminably.

And, of course, we do.

This website springs from the Good Funeral Guide and the blog is full of discussions about new ways to dispose of bodies, about wild and wonderful flights of imagination in the services that are being created and lots of talk about the funeral industry itself. There is even room for philosophising in the many posts that consider what funerals are for (click on the category Ceremonies at the bottom of this post for a full listing).

But it struck me recently that, interesting and important as this talk is, most of our posts are about what happens in and after the service. We talk much more rarely about what happens before, even though this is where, for the people involved, all the important decisions are taken. It is also where funeral directors have an  opportunity to make a real difference to the quality of the service provided. To understand how, you first have to recognise what is happening.

Think about the traditional way that funerals were commissioned (and allow me to exaggerate and oversimplify for a moment). In a religious context it is the priest/ rabbi/ immam or whoever that acts as the guardian of the process. They may well be involved before death. After they act both as guardian and guide to what is to be done, in what timescale and with what rites. Funeral director, the family themselves, every player in the funeral process submits to this approach.

For the people involved in – and who are happy to identify themselves with – the process there is a great deal of comfort in this. It is often rooted in community. It will express contains both tradition and continuity, and it satisfies the requirements of faith. There is the added satisfaction of  knowing that all that is right and proper has been done.

Of course the direct link between family and faith – even as a cultural association) has been weakening for a long time now. In this census year a UK survey by the British Humanist Association suggested that two thirds of us do not regard ourselves as religious. While, internationally, another study claimed that data collected over a number of censuses (censi?) showed that in nine countries there was a trend that would lead in the end to the extinction of religion.

In these circumstances what should families do? The GFG is unequivocal. People should be given the information, advice, time and support they need to work out what sort of funeral service they want.

But, without access to another wise guide, funeral directors have, by default, acquired a huge new responsibility. More often than not they are the ones that families turn to as they begin to face up to the question of what sort of service it is that they need to commission. It has to be a real concern that – with some notable, brilliant and inspiring exceptions – too many still feel that the old process is the best – even where it lacks all legitimacy or meaning in the lives of the people affected.

This is why we need to talk about funerals. Meaning, spirituality, grieving, the comfort of community are all possible outside of religion, but only if the right questions are asked at the start. What needs to happen to make sure that more funeral directors are willing to ask them?

Godsmacked

18 November 2010
Charles
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Categories: celebrants, ceremony, Reasons to go to a funeral, Religious funerals

It could have been a funeral-home scene out of a “Sopranos” episode. At the wake for crime author Philip Carlo, Tony Danza angrily interrupted the priest, claiming he was talking too much about God and not enough about the best-selling biographer of mass murderers.

“Tony, who was one of Carlo’s closest friends, walked right up to the priest and said angrily, ‘Excuse me, but this is not about you. It’s supposed to be about my friend, and if you can’t do that, maybe you should let someone else speak!’

“People were stunned, while the priest was visibly shaken. He tried talking about Carlo before quickly wrapping things up. Danza took over and eulogized Carlo with memories from their younger days.

Source

Death in the community

11 November 2010
Charles
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Categories: Attitudes to death, funeral customs, funerals in other cultures, Reasons to go to a funeral

This put a spring in my step. It is extracted from a letter to the Irish Times:

I never cease to be amazed at how we Irish continue to celebrate and embrace death so excellently.

The morgue is now giving way to families’ increasing desire to bring the body home for a wake, not just for a few hours but overnight, so that neighbours and friends can gather as a community for lashings of tea, cakes, sandwiches, etc, all prepared by the neighbours as genuine gestures of friendship and community.

The importance of the community wake is also to be seen in the new development of taking the body directly from home to church, not on the evening before burial but on the morning of the service, with the community present in full support to the bereaved.

We Irish celebrate and embrace death so well that a good funeral is still a more social event than a good wedding.

The whole letter is worth reading here. It is a response to this article here.

Showing up and just being there

9 October 2009
Charles
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Categories: Reasons to go to a funeral

This is Tom Lynch:

There’s this wonderful essay that was written — I have it framed in the hallway there; the woman’s name, I think, is Sullivan who wrote it. She talks about how in her life the difference was not between doing good and evil. It was just doing the next right thing.

I needed to read that piece because I’m disinclined — when someone’s sick, when someone’s out of sorts, when someone’s dead — I’m disinclined to be around that. I mean, it’s uncomfortable, and I don’t know what to say any more than the next guy, and I don’t do strawberry rhubarb pie. But I find that if you just show up, if you just walk in the door, people think you’re a hero. And I have found that, whether I’m walking in the door with a stretcher and one of my own to help carry their dead out, or if I’m going to the hospital to visit a sick relative or friend, or if I show up for a funeral at another place, you know, at a distance, they thank you for that.

Here’s Sullivan. Deirdre Sullivan. She’s a lawyer in Brooklyn.

Always Go to the Funeral

I believe in always going to the funeral. My father taught me that.

The first time he said it directly to me, I was 16 and trying to get out of going to calling hours for Miss Emerson, my old fifth grade math teacher. I did not want to go. My father was unequivocal. “Dee,” he said, “you’re going. Always go to the funeral. Do it for the family.”

So my dad waited outside while I went in. It was worse than I thought it would be: I was the only kid there. When the condolence line deposited me in front of Miss Emerson’s shell-shocked parents, I stammered out, “Sorry about all this,” and stalked away. But, for that deeply weird expression of sympathy delivered 20 years ago, Miss Emerson’s mother still remembers my name and always says hello with tearing eyes.

That was the first time I went un-chaperoned, but my parents had been taking us kids to funerals and calling hours as a matter of course for years. By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals. I remember two things from the funeral circuit: bottomless dishes of free mints and my father saying on the ride home, “You can’t come in without going out, kids. Always go to the funeral.”

Sounds simple — when someone dies, get in your car and go to calling hours or the funeral. That, I can do. But I think a personal philosophy of going to funerals means more than that.

“Always go to the funeral” means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don’t feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don’t really have to and I definitely don’t want to. I’m talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex’s uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn’t been good versus evil. It’s hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.

In going to funerals, I’ve come to believe that while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture, I should just stick to the small inconveniences that let me share in life’s inevitable, occasional calamity.

On a cold April night three years ago, my father died a quiet death from cancer. His funeral was on a Wednesday, middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days when, for some reason, during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful and humbling thing I’ve ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.

Desert flowers

11 May 2009
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Reasons to go to a funeral

Why do people go to funerals? After all, the dead person won’t be there—not in spirit.

I always think, when I survey a crowd at a funeral, that these people are being as unselfish as people can possibly be—and what a very rare thing that is.

What’s the motivation? To be there for the dead person. To be there for their family. Ask them what they feel about the dead person. They say “She’ll be much missed.” Note the use of the passive tense. They don’t say “I’ll miss her very much.” Self-interest doesn’t come into it. Do they come looking for comfort? They will certainly be comforted if the funeral is any good: if it does justice to the dead person But no, they do not come looking for comfort. Comfort is an unlooked for by-product. They are not there for I.

I’ve read two accounts of funerals this week, both on this theme. Both of them were for people who were unsuccessful in a worldly sense, but just happened to be incredibly nice human beings. Both accounts give us grounds for believing that, however horrible the human race can be, people are essentially good.

The first is told by a funeral director. He concludes: The feeling of love that poured out of these people for him was immense. The recurring theme was that he truly loved everyone he came in contact with, and that the feeling was reciprocated by all he met … You see, you don’t have to be a well-known politician to have a positive affect on the lives of others. You don’t have to be magnate of industry or a famous actor to make the world a better place.

The second is told by journalist Matthew Parris. His conclusion: People do detect goodness in others. They do respond. Nobility of soul does find its echo from other souls. Was Thomas Gray, in his ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’, right to say that ‘Full many a gem of purest ray serene/ The dark, unfathom’d caves of ocean bear/ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen/ And waste its sweetness on the desert air?’ No. We speak carelessly of the ingratitude of others, and the loneliness of virtue; but I think that when in some way a person rings true, many can hear it and they respond.