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From this morning’s Times:

A Christian group is to be allowed to claim “God can heal” after an Advertising Standards Authority ruling. Healing on the Streets, based in Wiltshire, can use the phrase only on its website, which the authority has said is outside its jurisdiction and not in printed material. 

Outside its jurisdiction?? Bafflement reigns here at the GFG-Funeralcare Tower™

It was with great sadness that I heard that Linda Robinson died at the weekend. 

I received a telephone call from Diane Thomas, of Humber Woodland of Remembrance, to let me know that Linda had died. Diane didn’t know that we were in fact expecting Linda to arrive any minute with a sample of her fabulous Burial Cloud shroud for us to promote. Linda had made plans to join us at various country shows around the UK during the summer months. It was difficult to understand how such a force of life could be gone – we had only started to get to know Linda, but from the moment we met her we loved her and were inspired by her enthusiasm, openness and joyful spirit.

At the recent launch of the Burial Cloud at Diane’s workshops in Risbury, I met a group of people keen to show their support and full of affection for Linda (or Demelza, as I found out she also called herself). All touched by a colourful, extraoardinary and lovable person.

Linda put her heart and soul into the development of the Burial Cloud – a simple, natural, product; soft, gentle and warm. It is ethically produced using traditional crafts and is perfect for natural burial.

Linda leaves her partner Louis and son Ruben, to whom our hearts go out. Louis will be continuing to produce and market the Burial Cloud and I am sure that all those in the natural burial community will want to offer their support to him.

James Leedam is the founder and ceo of Native Woodland Ltd

NIGHTMARE FUNERAL?

No one likes funerals but have you had an especially bad experience?

Did it cost far more that you expected?

Were you poorly treated?

Was it simply not the send-off your friend or relative deserved?

ITV are making a film investigating the funeral industry and we want to hear about your experiences. Please get in touch by emailingduranben@mac.com or calling 02072 53 27 82.

Ed’s note: duranben is Ben Anderson. 

“The challenge in our industry is that our families have almost no idea what benefits they want, much less what they need. The obvious result is a focus on price.”

Lajos Szabo, US funeral director

In the US, funeral directors are required by law to give funeral shoppers a copy of their itemised General Price List (GPL). You can see an example here.

A funeral director must also give you this price information over the phone.

Time moves on, and the internet is now, for many funeral shoppers, their first interaction with a funeral home. The state of California has become the first state to  bring things up to date:

As of January 1, 2013, a funeral establishment that maintains a Web site will be required to post the list of funeral goods and services that are required to be included in the establishment’s General Price List (GPL), pursuant to federal rule, and a statement that the GPL is available upon request via a link from the home page, unless a phrase containing the word “price” links to the establishment’s GPL.

Here in Britain the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) requires the following of its members:

PRICE INFORMATION

1) The funeral director shall have available and on display a price list or
lists showing:-

a) a brief description of The Simple Funeral Service;

b) itemised charges and descriptions of the constituent parts of the funeral
director’s services (other than for The Simple Funeral Service);
ie professional services; removal charge; coffin or casket;
embalming; vehicle charges and all other services available;

c) descriptions of other types of funerals available.

2) The funeral director shall make copies of the price lists available to be
taken away by clients or prospective clients.

3) The funeral director shall ensure that all literature detailing coffins and/or
caskets available shall include prices, and that coffins or caskets
displayed on the premises are accompanied by the price.

In addition to ensuring that this requirement is observed, is it not time the NAFD required all its members with a website, however crap, also to display their prices on it? 

Many funeral directors would regard this as very bad form, simply not done, wholly at odds with their noble calling. Here at the GFG, having in mind the beastly backstabbery and the dark and nasty underhand arts practised by many funeral directors to ensure a steady supply of dead people, we submit that open competition is the best disinfectant.

Read the excellent Federal Trade Commission consumer guide to funerals here. 

This blog is asserting its freedom to say and do whatever it likes by decamping to the seaside for a few days before heading to Scotland for the birth of a granddaughter. 

During this time it is likely that normal service will suffer some dropout as the team here at the GFG-Batesville Tower sports in the surf and generally chillaxes, their tiny minds unclouded by dark ponderings on mortality, their excitable hearts unmoved by tasty industry gossip.

We feel we’re letting you down, of course. If the blog has become a habit, try reading some old stuff that you missed. It won’t seem all that dusty; time stands still in the deathcare business. 

It is likely that Lyra Mollington will be here as ever on Friday morning. It is always worth bearing in mind, though, that Mrs Mollington, young at heart as she so commendably  is, is also (this is strictly between us, please) well advanced in years, and her health is not as trusty as once it was. 

This is as good an opportunity as any to remind you that the GFG is a platform for all who wish to deliver themselves of a point of view. If you would like to have your say here, then so long as what you say is opinionated or informative, but not self-promotional (though by all means talk about your work), we will be delighted to consider up to 800 words on owt that floats your boat. Send it to charles@goodfuneralguide.co.uk

Happy sweltering!

Posted by Lyra Mollington

Apart from a brief encounter with cancer when I was in my forties and a slightly dodgy back, I am in good health for a 74 year old.  Neverthless I was perturbed to discover that I am only six months older than Jane Fonda.  However, as my mother used to say, it’s not what’s on the outside that counts…  She also used to advise me to study hard because I was unlikely to bag myself a rich husband or indeed any husband at all.  How wrong she was!

This morning I awoke (always a good start to the day) to the dulcet tones of James Naughtie and a nice cup of tea made by Mr M.  By the time I was in the kitchen preparing Colin’s breakfast, it was Thought for the Day.  Have you noticed how they cleverly begin with something topical and then, before you know it, they’re talking about Jesus? 

On Tuesday I was especially interested to hear Canon Angela Tilby telling us about death.  I don’t know how I missed it, but apparently it’s Dying Matters Awareness Week.  She was just getting to her point – how to talk meaningfully about something we don’t really understand – when Colin started barking at one of the cats who occasionally risk life and limb by straying into our back garden.  Frustratingly, I heard only the words scepticism, brutal and metaphor which made me even more desperate to know how it ended. 

Later that day, when my grandson Sebastian popped in after work, I asked him to show me how to find Angela’s podcast.  I could have done it myself of course but I like him to think that I rely on his expertise.  Which, come to think of it, is how I bagged the husband my mother said I would never get.

With Colin safely curled up in his bed, Mr M. preparing supper and Seb surfing the web, I listened again to Tuesday’s Thought for the Day.

As Canon Angela concluded with the words, ‘Death, though a change of state, is not the end of being,’ I noticed Seb rolling his eyes.  I was perplexed – Angela had spoken so movingly about how she helps people come to terms with death through the language of faith.  As a family I would say we are all at the agnostic end of the Anglican spectrum.  However, I’m beginning to think that Seb might be one of those aggressive atheists one hears so much about. 

He asked me if I had ever seen a ‘brilliant and funny’ website called Platitude of the Day.  I told him that I might take a look if I had some spare time.

I have to confess that the moment Seb left, I clicked on the link.  I am afraid that Mr Peter Hearty (the author of Platitude of the Day) had deliberately misinterpreted Angela’s wise words.  Indeed, I was taken aback to discover that he does this to all the contributors of Thought for the Day.  However, to my great shame, after reading his archives, I was addicted. 

Where Angela speaks of how we soften the language of death by the use of metaphor, Mr Hearty writes, ‘You would think that people… would be more candid when one of your loved ones dies, and say things like, “Well that’s the end of your husband that you’ve been married to for the last 50 years. He’s gone, dead, kaputt, finito, so you just better get used to it.” Oddly, they don’t. They tend to try and soften the blow, even though they don’t believe in the invisible magic afterlife.’

He then gives her a rating of 5 out of 5 – extraordinarily platitudinous.

Angela and Peter are both sincere in their beliefs. I am grateful to both of them for giving me so much to think about in this week of Dying Matters Awareness.  I am also grateful to Seb for finding me this article and video about Ms Fonda’s plastic surgery — here. 

It’s quite a year for anniversaries from the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee to the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens. It’s also a year when deaths are commemorated from Captain Scott’s failed mission to the South Pole in 1912 to the sinking of the Titanic in the same year.

Less well known is that 2012 is the bicentenary of the assassination of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, shot in the central lobby of the House of Commons on 11 May, 1812, by loan pistolman John Bellingham.

The only British PM to have been assassinated (Margaret Thatcher had a near-miss when the IRA bombed her Brighton hotel during the 1984 Conservative Party conference), Perceval’s political preoccupations bring his era to life.

He witnessed crises including the madness of King George III, economic depression and Luddite riots. He opposed Catholic emancipation and reform of Parliament and supported the abolition of the slave trade. He held hunting, gambling, adultery and drinking in disdain, preferring to spend time with his 12 children.

Perceval also supported the war against Napoleon. With wars popularly marked by anniversaries, it’s also the bicentenary of Napoleon’s failed attempt to invade Russia, his thwarted imperial ambitions notably commemorated by Tolstoy in War and Peace and Tchaikovsky in his 1812 Overture.

Talking of French failure, expect the British media to indulge in a bit of jovial French bashing in 2015 when we mark the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt and the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo.

But anticipate far greater commemoration surrounding the victories, defeats and deaths in battle in 2014 when we have the centenary of the start of WW1 and the 75^th anniversary of the start of WWII. I always find it a poignant reminder that there were just 25 years between these wars.

To Spencer Perceval. May he rest in peace (even if he didn’t like Catholics or claret).

Posted by Lyra Mollington

Nearly twelve years ago, I was with my grandchildren in the queue for the newly opened London Eye when we saw an elderly man collapse.  Paramedics arrived quickly but by the time the man was lifted onto a stretcher, a blanket had been pulled over his head.  It took me a few seconds to realise the implications of this. 

In the intervening years I have often thought about that balmy summer evening.  I wondered whether his family, having recovered from the initial shock, had been able to accept that there are (much) worse ways to go.  Perhaps they shared what had happened at his funeral.  Something like, ‘He’d had a brilliant day out with everyone he loved most in the world.  And we all know what he would be saying to us now: “After queuing for an hour, we were nearly at the front.  Why on earth didn’t you go on the Ruddy Wheel?”’

From the funerals I’ve attended, it seems that information is hardly ever given about how the person died; apart from being solemnly told that she/he passed away peacefully in her/his sleep.  Understandably we are kept in the dark when there are unpleasant details.  Few would want to know that their neighbour was discovered dead on the toilet, however painless and quick her death may have been.  Or, even worse, that the body wasn’t discovered for several days, but at least her beloved cats didn’t go hungry.

We were told by the vicar at one funeral, ‘On the morning Charlie passed away he was looking forward, as always, to the regular visit from his great friend Derek.  He was up and about, clean shaven and smartly dressed, with a couple of tots of whisky ready for Derek’s arrival.’ 

Everyone agreed that this was what Charlie would have wanted.  But afterwards Derek told us that the vicar had missed out the bit that Charlie would have loved the most.  After nearly jumping out of his skin, Derek downed the contents of both whisky glasses, having carefully prised one of them out of Charlie’s hand.

Lilian, a dear friend of mine, insisted that the clergyman tell the story of how her 95 year old mother had died during a singing session at the care home.  Lil’s mum had been joining in with gusto all afternoon.  When the other residents had retired to their rooms, one of the assistants discovered the old lady slumped in her chair, slightly warm but extremely dead.  Lil was shocked but she soon started saying that this was ‘the perfect way to go,’ and that her mum had died ‘with her boots on’.  Or, strictly speaking, her orthopaedic Velcro slip-ons.

Another friend was proud to inform everyone that her husband had collapsed and died whilst buying a present for their granddaughter in ‘an independent book shop’.  For years she had worried herself sick that he would die face down in the gutter as he staggered home from his local. 

The widow of a chap who died half way round the golf course asked one of his golfing chums, Maurice, to read the eulogy.  He began, ‘Jack had been playing really well that fateful day.  He said he’d never felt happier and that when we got back to the clubhouse he was going to buy everyone in the bar a drink.’ At this point, Maurice lowered his voice.  With a straight face and through gritted teeth he continued, ‘There and then, I KNEW he was a goner.’

The Who famously sang, ‘I hope I die before I get old.’ Well I hope I die before I get too decrepit and in such a way that my family are able to say at my funeral, ‘She died happy, with her walking boots on.’