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The young wife of a man who has died of cancer goes to see him one last time at the funeral director. She is destroyed by grief and asks her celebrant to go with her for support.

She spends quite some time with her husband. As she turns to leave, the celebrant asks her, “Would you like to put the lid on his coffin? Then you will be the last person ever to see him.”

“Am I allowed to?” she asks.

“Of course you are.”

So she does. 

And it makes all the difference — an enormous difference.

It’s a true story — it happened last week. 

And here’s the moral for any funeral director who’s missed the point. Ask not what you can do for your clients, ask what they can do for themselves. 

 Press release issued this morning by Promessa UK and reproduced here word for word.

Regrettably Promessa UK has decided for several reasons to sever all ties with Promessa Organic AB (Sweden).

 Promessa UK is not comfortable with the lack of progress in the development of Promession technology by Promessa Organic AB. In Promessa UK’s professional opinion and after a lengthy period of due diligence Promessa UK believes Promession is still at concept stage.

 Promessa UK feels a responsibility to convey its position to all interested parties.

 Promessa UK is wholly convinced that the natural composting of remains is the way to address the environmental, practical and sustainability issues posed by current burial methods.

 A further statement will be issued in due course.

 Posted by Richard Rawlinson

The Cremation Society of Great Britain this month publishes its international cremation statistics for 2010. See here.

The country with the highest percentage of cremations is Japan at 99.9%, and the country with the lowest percentage is Ghana at 3%. But, for me, the most interesting comparison, is between the UK and Italy.

The UK, which has 260 crematoria nationwide, had 413,780 cremations, which is 73% of the total 565,624 deaths. Italy, which had a similar number of deaths to the UK, had 488,756 fewer cremations. Italy’s 76,868 cremations amount to 14% of the total 585,448 deaths.

I confess to being a bit of an Italophile but it strikes me Italians celebrate life with verve but treat death with a dignity that’s also practical and realistic – an approach that’s perhaps lacking in some Protestant countries where death is more taboo.

Italian funerals and wakes remain sombre occasions where most people wear black. When someone dies in a village, he or she is still kept in an open coffin at home and friends and neighbours visit to pay their respects. The family often decorate the door of the house and put up notices to tell people about the death and the funeral. They have a full mass at the funeral service and neighbours and friends follow the pallbearers to the cemetery in a procession while people watch respectfully.

The cemetries are well kept, too, and the graves seem to be cared for with love, often displaying framed photos of the deceased and newly-placed flowers.

The cemeteries outside the Mediterranean towns are among the best. They often have wonderful views, with coffins placed in niches of high walls, each with their own light and vase.

Long may these traditions last. The crass festival of Halloween is sadly slowly taking the place of the Day of the Dead when, on 2 November, Italians visit the graves of their relatives and friends with chrysanthemums and candles; churches hold services for the dead, and children are given toys and presents by the ‘muorti’.

When the newly married Grace Kelly put a vase of chrysanthemums on a guest’s bedside table, her Prince Ranier of Monaco berated her. ‘Don’t you know these flowers symbolise death in Europe?’ he said.

Find the Cremation Society of Great Britain here. 

If the Daily Mail didn’t exist, would the schtoopid things it reports ever happen? Probably not.

Here’s what we mean. 

A Bristol woman opens a letter addressed to her newly dead brother. It is headed

claim ended: cl death

Your claim for benefit has ended with effect from the above date for the reason shown. If you wish to reclaim housing or council tax benefit, please do so without delay.

Normally benefit will be paid from the Monday following the date we receive your claim. You can obtain a claim form and advice by ringing the helpline service.

Please note – please return your completed application form immediately, even if you do not have all the required documentary evidence. You may lose benefit if you delay sending us your application form … you must tell us if your circumstances change

If you don’t believe us, click here. 

The weekend yielded three newspaper articles about funerals.

The Indy’s is a way-to-go survey. It begins by reflecting the current morbid fascination with the demise of enormous people and the consequent indignities of going out big, making play of wardrobe-size coffins and cranes used to lower them. Health is the new morality, of course, so going to your grave in a JCB amounts to judgement. For the rest, we’re not at all sure that the article tells anyone anything they didn’t already know. The writers talk of caskets, not coffins. They quote the average funeral cost as £7,248. They display the customary media attraction to wackiness — Crazy Coffins, for example. Oh and promession, in development since 1999 and yet, as far as we know, to render anyone to biodegrable powder. Verdict: dull. Score: 3/10. Find it here. 

There’s a much better piece in the Guardian by Amanda Mitchison and Caleb Parkin about ashes and what people do with them. Richard Martin over at Scattering Ashes was thrilled that his Viking longship got a mention, though no name-check for him. Or for the GFG, which begat the concept. 8/10 for this and, at the time of typing, we are waiting for Ms Mitchison to take to the air on R4 and talk to us about ashes. Listen-again link later. Find the Guardian article here. 

Finally, the Daily Mail plays to the zeitgeist with a shamelessly sensational piece about a man too large to fit into a mortuary refrigerator and ‘left to rot’… ‘Plans for an open casket funeral have been scrapped because his body is too decayed.’ What’s all this casket talk we’re getting these days? Score for this piece 0/10 or 10/10 depending on the altitude of your brow. Find it here. 

Happy Monday, everyone. 

If you come to this blog wondering what’s kicking off, chances are you’ve got something to say yourself. 

If so, we’d like you to.

The GFG’s a talking shop. We don’t have an editorial line, we don’t have a manifesto. Come one, come all; we’re Funeralworld’s Speakers’ Corner.

If you’d like to sound off about anything at all, do get in touch. 

Posted by Vale

“You’d better get busy, though, buddy. The goddamn sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I’m talking about. You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddamn phenomenal world. … I used to worry about that. I don’t worry about it very much any more. At least I’m still in love with Yorick’s skull. At least I always have time enough to stay in love with Yorick’s skull. I want an honorable goddamn skull when I’m dead, buddy. I hanker after an honorable goddamn skull like Yorick’s.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

There’s one of those curiosity stories in the Daily Mail that may tickle you. Briefly, a 95 year-old Chinese woman died. She was coffined at home and spent the following days being farewelled by her neighbours. 

Six days later — the day before her funeral — neighbours arrived to find the coffin empty. A search discovered the dead woman in her kitchen and, actually, not dead at all. Having not eaten for six days, she was making herself something to eat. 

Read the full story here. Enjoy the photo of the sort of coffin the idiotic Mail thought she may have occupied — a British one in a ‘chapel of rest’ standing in front of a crucifix. 

You remember Kathryn’s post here setting out the rules of the Two Things game? Here’s how it goes:

For every subject, there are only two things you really need to know.  Everything else is the application of these two things, or just not important. 

Example: 

The Two Things about Arranging a Funeral

1. Do what needs to be done.
2. Do NOT do what doesn’t need to be done.

Ru Callender

1. The bereaved are free to arrange pretty much whatever they want for a funeral.
2. The bereaved are often too blasted by grief to know what they want.

Kathryn Edwards

Today’s challenge: 

The Two Things about Funeral Directing

Customary GFG cigar to the best entry. 

For readers who find our diet worthy, dull and occasionally pretentious, here’s something to gladden your eye from the New York Daily News:

A “creepy” Colorado father accused of pawning gold teeth he took from cremated remains at several funeral homes claims he did it to provide for his eight children, police said.

Police said Adrian David Kline also swiped gold crowns from corpses before they were embalmed.

Go get it all here.