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Posted by Charles

Yesterday (15 September) Hilary Benn asked this question in the House:

May we have a statement on reports that the Government propose to ask bereaved relatives, including those on low incomes, for payment when they go to register the death of a loved one? The charge, estimates of which vary from £100 to £180, is apparently intended to pay for a new system to check on causes of death, but the cost, which is no longer to be hidden in funeral directors’ charges, will be collected when families turn up, often in a distressed state, at the register office, or they will be sent an invoice later. Given that the Conservative party made such a fuss at the last election about a so-called death tax, will a Minister explain at the Dispatch Box why they now plan to impose one?

Does anyone know anything about this? 

Source

Posted by our religious correspondent, Richard Rawlinson

“Show me the manner in which a nation cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals.”

Sir William Gladstone 

Following the recent spate of arson attacks and looting sprees, it’s easy to conclude some of England’s more feckless vandals have been dragged up expecting rights without responsibilities, and that we’re doomed unless we rein in aspects of the liberal social experiment of recent decades.

One of the challenges of society today is the nature and speed of cultural change, in particular how people seek meaning and hope. Ritual has always played a part in helping us process life transitions, whether from bachelor to husband or wife to widow.

In today’s pluralistic, late-modern world, fewer people are using religious rites of passage to help understand meaning in life and death. Secular state-endorsed civil marriages and funerals are providing an alternative. But even when humanistic services include religious elements, do they not tend to be consumer-driven – ‘what the client wants, the client gets’?

If the Church is trying to revive her relevance, I don’t think the answer is accepting requests for ‘Fly Him To The Moon’. So what does she offer that’s different, what’s her ‘unique selling point?

Regular church-goers receive community support and consideration of bereavement beyond the funeral. But so, too, do those surrounded by friends and family in a secular community, so pastoral care alone is not a justification.

The true answer also won’t wash among non-believers: faith in God and the hope of His love for eternity. It’s a chicken and egg dilemma for the Church. No faith, no gain. No gain, no faith.

So the question is how to inspire faith, and increasingly the answer is a return to traditional liturgy and rites, not yet more guitars, tambourines and pagan-style dancing in the sanctuary. This traditional revival, driven by His Holiness Pope Benedict, is not about empty aesthetics, but about liturgy and ritual showing how beauty and truth connect with one another. Interestingly, it’s the young who get it and are cheerleaders for the cause. They’re fed up with Vatican II aging hippies making them cringe as they try desperately to be ‘in touch’.  

Posted by Cadaverous

This week, like much of the country, I have been watching the riots that ripped apart our communities. I don’t only mean watching the incessant news updates and reading the reams of angry and insightful comment. I was immersed in events themselves with riot police at both ends of my street, and local youths bombarding police with bricks. On Wednesday night you would have founds me bolting my windows tight and worrying about the safety of my children. 

The local area was taken to pieces. Cars and shops were set on fire and passersby and the emergency services attacked. Surprisingly, the rioters even took exception to Hackney’s branch of Co-operative Funeralcare whilst other surrounding shops survived unscathed.

With the freedom of the city the rioters didn’t march on parliament demanding equality and justice. No, they went shopping. When there weren’t designer goods to be had, anything seemed to do with even pound shops being looted. Rioters were hitting the streets with a brick in one hand and a clutch of empty bags in the other. 

In some way this riot shopping is not surprising. The quest to consume has become a dominant soundtrack to our lives. But it’s not only the rioters who go to rotten extremes to get what they want, as the grotty behaviour exposed in the NOTW phone hacking scandal shows. The world often looks so damn unfair. Blowing up the financial system seems to win you a state subsidised bonus and many of our MPs have been caught quietly swindling the taxpayer.

An insightful friend recently said that ‘consumer capitalism is driven by death energy.’ I think he means that we’re not very sorted about death and dying, and this manifests in our prevalent value system. We’re looking for value without context and our fears work to shift a lot of product. 

This makes sense if our awareness of mortality is linked to how well we live our lives. That this is part of the human condition is the subject of a “venerable line stretching back to the beginning of written thought.” (Yalom). The Stoic philosopher Seneca said “No man enjoys the true taste of life but he who is willing and ready to quit it.” For us, blanking out death means we get overly attracted to gaudy baubles such as glamour, riches, fame, power and luxury. 

The riots have resurrected talk of ‘Broken Britain’. Britain, and indeed much of the world, certainly looks pretty shaky if not broken, but there seems to be a distinct lack of alternatives about what we need to do. Cracking down on rioters might stop the riots happening again, but will it really address what ails us? It often seems that there’s nothing with integrity left. 

My suggestion for our response to this situation is a bit different. I think we should step up our work to get people to engage with death. 

Maybe this might result in more people doing what’s really important for them right now. Maybe we’d be less attracted to stale models of what a good life looks like. Maybe we’d decide we need less stuff instead of more. 

Just maybe.

Cadaverous hangs out at Death Cafe. 

Posted by Sweetpea

On holiday, I bought myself a new book of poetry by one of my favourite poets, Billy Collins, published by Picador Poetry.  What a treat:

Every morning since you disappeared for good,

 I read about you in the daily paper

 along with the box scores, the weather, and all the bad news.

Some days I am reminded that today

will not be a wildly romantic time for you,

nor will you be challenged by educational goals,

nor will you need to be circumspect at the workplace.

Another day, I learn that you should not miss

an opportunity to travel and make new friends

though you never cared much about either.

I can’t imagine you ever facing a new problem

with a positive attitude, but you will definitely not

be doing that, or anything like that, on this weekday in March.

And the same goes for the fun

you might have gotten from group activities,

a likelihood attributed to everyone under your sign.

A dramatic rise in income may be a reason

to treat yourself, but that would apply

more to all the Pisces who are still alive,

still swimming up and down the stream of life

or suspended in a pool in the shade of an overhanging tree.

But you will be relieved to learn

that you no longer need to reflect carefully before acting,

nor do you have to think more of others,

and never again will creative work take a back seat

to the business responsibilities that you never really had.

And don’t worry today or any day

about problems caused by your unwillingness

to interact rationally with your many associates.

No more goals for you, no more romance,

no more money or children, jobs or important tasks,

but then again, you were never thus encumbered.

So leave it up to me now

to plan carefully for success and the wealth it may bring,

to value the dear ones close to my heart,

and to welcome any intellectual stimulation that comes my way

though that sounds like a lot to get done on a Tuesday.

I am better off closing the newspaper,

putting on the clothes I wore yesterday

(when I read that your financial prospects were looking up)

then pushing off on my copper-coloured bicycle

and pedaling along the shore road by the bay.

And you stay just as you are,

lying there in your beautiful blue suit,

your hands crossed on your chest

like the wings of a bird who has flown

in its strange migration not north or south

but straight up from earth

and pierced the enormous circle of the zodiac.

Posted By Charles

The Good Funeral Guide Blog is off on its travels again and, although I can now connect to the Internet while I journey, expect only  intermittent and – even by this blog ‘s standards – erratic postings.

But you are all on holiday too! In fact there are, apparently, 14 million of us on the roads today. Let’s hope the sun shines on us all.

Back in August – see you then!

Posted by Charles Cowling

Coming soon, A Giving Tribute — ‘the caring alternative to funeral flowers’ — a project I wholeheartedly endorse. 

Over in Canada, “Cartoonist Adrian Raeside once placed an obituary in the Times Colonist in which he asked mourners to send singlemalt scotch and Cuban cigars in lieu of flowers.” [Source] 

What’s your alternative to funeral flowers? 

Family and friends carry the coffin of Rex ‘The Moose’ Mossop, rugby league legend, at his funeral. In his eulogy, his son said this of him: “He was an insufferable pain in the arse sometimes but I loved him to death.”

Respected voices don’t much like this arm’s length carrying, but I do. We don’t disagree, we just think differently. You can do that in Funeralworld.

Story here.

Briefly, homeless man Kevin McClain falls ill with lung cancer and is taken to hospital, thence to a hospice. His dog, Yurt, is taken to a shelter and rehomed. Close to death, Mr McClain asks to see his dog one last time. Yurt is brought to him. Two days later Mr McClain died.

There’s a damp-eyed start to the week for you.

Hat-tip to the splendid Funeral Consumers Alliance for this.

Thomas Friese, an old friend of this blog who has often made us sit up and think hard about memorialisation (commemoration if your prefer the perfectly good old school word) breezed into my inbox yesterday and again today with some characteristically thought provoking ideas.

His ideas derived from a tomb in Mount Olivet, Nashville and an accompanying post from a member of the Facebook Taphophiles group. Taphophiles are people who love burial grounds; you could describe them as niche social historians. You have to apply to join the Facebook group but the bar’s not high; they let me in.

The tomb in question is that of railroad baron Vernon King Stevenson, and you can judge the size of Mr Stevenson’s self-importance when you discover that his tomb is a replica of Napoleon’s. Stevenson did well materially, but he did not do good. In the Civil War, charged with evacuating Confederate supplies from Fort Donelson, he deserted his post and fled, leaving the spoils to the advancing Federal army. Years later he was involved in some dodgy share dealing. The upshot is that, while Confederate graves at Mount Olivet are tended to this day and decorated with Confederate flags, Stevenson’s conspicuously isn’t. So you could describe his tomb as ignominy on a grand scale, a huge monument to a less than little man.

Thomas makes the point that ‘this image and related story are a good example, albeit on a bit of a pompous scale, of why lasting tombstones are reference points, indeed building stones, of history and culture.’ He goes on to say, ‘While this aesthetic may no longer appeal to us, in its time it probably had more meaning and certainly more art in it than most of the pap offered today. Life moves on and new forms have to be discovered. But let’s stay objective and only approve of things when they have reached a level worthy of approval!’

According to Thomas’s analysis we are in a state of transition, fumbling our way towards ways of commemorating our dead which are meaningful to us now and which, we hope, will be meaningful to people in the future. Where we are now isn’t it. Certainly the aesthetic of any contemporary local authority cemetery will be unlikely, come tumbledown, to excite the efforts of conservers.

I think he’s got a point. Not, though, that we’re likely to arrive at a single convention. There’s plenty of debate about how to mark a life (and what to do with the ashes) in a society which cremates 75 per cent of its dead and I guess it is going to lead to all kinds of diversity, much of which will not endure.  I’m beginning to think that online memorial sites are now beginning to look like a fad, just as Facebook is weathering sudden, unexpected indifference from its once feverish users. I’ve collected at least 25 virtual memorial sites; I wonder how they’re doing. The stampede there has certainly abated.

Yes, I wonder where we’re going…   You probably know.

If you’re feeling a bit glum today, or even if you aren’t, have a look at this new blog.