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Eagerly awaited by many in the death industry and its attendant commentators—the croaking classes?—was Richard Wilson’s Two Feet in the Grave on BBC last night.

It marks an encouraging evolution in the media’s handling of death and dying away from fixations with wackiness—way out coffins, seriously outrageous funeral songs—to a considered survey of the development, in an increasingly secular and individualistic society, of new death rituals.

There are strengths—sequences behind the scenes at the crem and the hospital mortuary. There are weaknesses. We visit Jane Austen’s cottage where people are dumping ashes furtively on flowerbeds, but this is not placed in the broader context of ashes scattering. We spend ages at Sheila Dicks’ embalming school without learning just how invasive embalming is, and we spend another age with Glennys Howarth looking at post mortem photos from long ago. This is a custom still awaiting revival (I’m all for it).

But we spend only fleeting moments in a natural burial ground with Ken West. Natural burial is of far greater interest to people than post mortem photography. Environmental arguments against cremation are urgent. This was a serious imbalance.

For all that, it was good to see some of the great and the good. Carl Marlow had his say, and the blessed Paul Sinclair. And there’s no arguing with the programme’s conclusion: talking about death takes away its sting and enhances a love of life.

Yes, it’s worth an hour of your time. Natural burialists will have their hour another day.

Find it here.

There are times when we feel acutely that the UK and the US are ‘two countries separated by a common language’. When our common language is voiced by the monstrous Republican right, the gulf looks unbridgeable.

But where funerals are concerned we have much talk about and much to learn from each other. And there’s a healthy symbiosis going on: they like our natural burial; we like their home funerals. In almost every area of debate Americans are more passionate and dynamic than the Brits. The US has a far more powerful, predatory, scandal-ridden, eco-hostile funeral industry than ours, so they have more to react against, more to talk about, and more urgently. For all that, the issues are shared: the role and value of the funeral director; the rights and responsibilities of the bereaved; the purpose of a funeral; and environmentally responsible funerals. Elemental stuff.

In the matter of consumer protection, the US has its excellent Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA), run by the acute and indefatigble Josh Slocum. Its website is a treasury of information. It also has the Funeral Ethics Organisation (FEO), run by the redoubtable and completely splendid Lisa Carlson. We have nothing like campaigners of this calibre here in the UK.

The US has the best writers, too. We have our Tony Walter, but no one has written more thoughtfully or brilliantly than Thomas Lynch, an undertaker and poet whose prose, arguably, is even better than his verse. His two books of essays, The Undertaking and Bodies in Rest and in Motion, condense thought, experience and wisdom, and express them through a high intelligence and a god-given, delicious prose style. His concerns are elemental ones: “funerals are the way we close the gap between the death that happens and the death that matters. It’s how we assign meaning to our little remarkable histories.”

He is critical of the way things are. He observes how the parlour, that room in old houses where babies were born and the dead laid out, has been converted to accommodate Mr Thomas Crapper’s invaluable invention, the toilet: “Since Crapper’s marvellous invention, we need only pull the lever behind us and the evidence disappears, a kind of rapture that removes the nuisance … having lost the regular necessity of dealing with unpleasantries, we have lost the ability to do so when need arises. And we have lost the community well versed in these calamities. In short, when shit happens, we feel alone. It is the same with our dead. We are embarrassed by them in the way that we are embarrassed by a toilet that overflows the night that company comes. It is an emergency. We call the plumber … And just as bringing the crapper indoors has made faeces an embarrassment, pushing the dead and dying out has made death one.”

This looks like a manifesto for home funerals. It is. One of Tom’s most-repeated dictums is this: “Ours is a species which deals with death by dealing with our dead.” He acknowledges that most people don’t want to be that involved, and that’s where the funeral director comes in. He says, “some want to be empowered, others to be served, others not to be bothered at all. Our job is to meet them where they are on this continuum and help where we can when we’re asked.”

For all that, Tom fell out with Lisa and the FCA over his defence of the right of the State of Michigan to appoint funeral directors to superintend the filing of paperwork pertaining to a funeral, even that of home funeralists. Interestingly, anomalously, the state does not pay these funeral directors for their supervision, the family does. And, as Lisa has it, “When a state requires a family to hire a funeral director, that body becomes a hostage of the funeral industry. The funeral director is suddenly in a position of authority with his meter running.”

The falling out was so acrimonious that Tom sued Lisa and the FCA for libel.

The news is that Tom’s suit has just been thrown out of court.

And the saddening pity is that all parties are high-minded, admirable people.

I don’t feel culturally qualified to have a view on all this, so I’m nailing my trousers to the fence. Sure, we share a common language…

Read the FCA response and the court ruling here.

The trees are coming into leaf

Like something almost being said

I read those lines of Philip Larkin at the funeral of a 16 year old boy who’d died of cancer. They were just right for all sorts of reasons. It was May. Sam, a good artist, had a thing for painting trees. All through his dying in that delayed spring we had looked forward to the trees coming into leaf. What does Larkin mean when he says “Like something almost being said?” I don’t know that poetic meaning translates into words. Poetry uses words to transcend words and touch the mystery of things, that’s its sorcery. Let’s not be reductive.

It was as sad as sadness gets, of course it was, Sam’s funeral. And it was brave and beautiful. Over in Ireland his grandmother threw an armful of dogs into the car and came over to do the flowers. Together they were in the church for the better part of a week, raising up and blending huge, lovely, idiosyncratic vase-fuls. When the undertakers drove Sam’s body over on a morning heavy with mist and rain and sunshine, his friends stood in line to see him brought in, hushed and thoughtful as it came home to them, the death of one of them. Simon, the school rebel, whom Sam, very staid, had always wanted a part of, was in charge of seeing people to their seats. His best behaviour was engagingly loopy. We professed our sadness, spoke the truth about Sam, laughed some. The choir sang ‘God Be In My Head’ soaringly with outbreaks of huskiness, Sam being up there in the midst of them. He was buried in the steep village churchyard. When almost everyone had gone the gravediggers, unseen till then, rose up suddenly and came down the slope in that timeless way of theirs to heap the earth. His mother, a sculptor, later installed the memorial at the top. That’s Sam’s parrot you see and, at the foot, his dog

Out of sadness can come the strangest and most wonderful beauty. Sam was too young, his death as bleak as it gets. His people might have succumbed to the nihilism of it all. They might have capitulated numbly to emotional and organisational best practice, worn drawn faces, griefwalked through some seamless, soulless ceremonial and back out into the world, unhealed. But Sam’s funeral broke the bonds of all that. There was a defiant vitality, a creative anarchy at work which made sense of it all precisely because it did not.

And that’s exacty what Larkin does, I think. Here’s the complete poem:

The trees are coming into leaf

Like something almost being said;

The recent buds relax and spread,

Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too.

Their yearly trick of looking new

Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.

Last year is dead, they seem to say,

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Everyone’s got a book in them. Best place for it. Throw away the key, I say, you’ll embalm the illusion that way.

Illusion? Almost certainly. You think you’ve got something precious and important to impart? You think there’s a lot of tosh coming off the presses, surely someone’ll print mine?

Try getting it published.

First you’ve got to let it out by writing it down. My favourite poet, archy, describes writing as ‘frightfully difficult literary labour’ and his diction sums it up perfectly if understatedly.

Then you’ve got to find an agent. Agents live on authors, but the way they tell it you’d think they’re trying to wean themselves off them. You send them your stuff. You wait. And wait. Then: “We like it – but not quite enough.”

Sisyphus knew something of what this feels like. But he had the better deal, rolling that boulder.

I’ve got to hand it here to Graham Maw Christie. They took me in and they’ve looked after me wonderfully.

There’s a rule of thumb which has it that finding an agent is harder than getting published. Don’t put faith in that, especially in the middle of a recession. Especially if you’re writing about death. At no stage should you ever get your hopes up.

In the case of the Good Funeral Guide it took a while to find a berth. Eventually Continuum recognised a gift horse when they saw it. I whoooped, then reflexively unwhooped. I won’t whoop, I said, till I’ve signed the contract.

Last weekend I did that (see pic above). Still I didn’t whoop. I’ve got to send them the completed text by 1 September. It’s got to be the best I can make it. Bye-bye summer.

And, of course, if that best isn’t good enough, they’ll send it back turned down.

When do I get my whoop-opp? I can’t see it.

Will this make me rich?

I can give you the figures if you ask. The long answer is no, very not rich. The short answer is skint.

The loneliness. The self-doubt. The terror of falling short. I don’t want congratulations, I need pity and I know I’m not going to get it.

Got a book in you?

How stubborn are you?

Friends, this blog will, for the next two months, go on the blink somewhat. In the meantime, if you’re the sort who takes lessons from those who don’t do as they say, learn to love the day job.

Beautifully written account of the death of an unloved one.

Read it here.

Date: 12-14 June (choose your day or come to all three).

Venue: Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire.

Event: National Funeral Exhibition.

This trade show is a biennial shindig. Funeral directors fly in from all corners of the country to feast their eyes everything new in the world of funerals. Not that there is anything new, of course. Variations on the same old same old might be a better description. Coffins made from corn cobs. Hearses so big they could double as squash courts. I’m joking. Only just.

Where coffins and transport and headstones are concerned, it’s all about guessing what look clients are going to want next. There will be all sorts of brave start-ups offering new-look merchandise which may or may not catch on. Much of it will be green-themed, doubtless. Wholemeal funerals have been reckoned to be the future for a few years now. Uptake hasn’t yet matched the razzmatazz and press coverage.

Funeral directors are finding they’re needing to be futurologists. There may be undertakers out there now who are getting away with doing things exactly the same way they were doing them 60 years ago, but they won’t 60 years hence.

You need to be a bona fide member of the funeral industry to attend. I rang to ask why. It seems they reckon some of the stuff – mortuary equipment in particular – is the sort of stuff bona fide members of the public don’t need to see. Fair point.

If you want to go, but you have no links to the industry, ring, make your case and negotiate. I’d have thought they’d be happy to admit you so long as you make it clear you know what you’re in for. They just don’t want people dropping in curiously, then running out screaming.

Huge fun, lots of people to talk to – and, brooding over us, the spirit of Joe Orton.

What’s a good collective noun for a convocation of undertakers? Give yourself a bit of gentle brain gym. Come up with something spot on. Leave a comment.

There are very few funeral directors in the UK with a web presence. Many of those who do fail to understand that the job of a website is twofold: first, to offer a relationship of warmth and trust; second, to proclaim capability and professionalism.

A good many undertakerly websites simply advertise ineptitude. Clumsy prose, wonky spelling and inaccurate punctuation reflect disastrously on a funeral director’s competence. It is a job which requires, above all, obsessive attention to detail.

Here is some text from the website of the hapless Samuel James and Sons of Birmingham. A roomful of chimps on typewriters could have done better than this.

Much of the work that the Funeral Director does is discreet and is not always readily apparent what duties care carried out. These include :- Service The Funeral Arrangements themselves can be mode of anytime just by contacting us. We can call and see you

The Arrangement and Payment of Fees and Disbursements relating to the funeral include; Crematorium and Cemetery Fees, Parochial Fees, Press Announcements, Floral Tributes, Hymn Sheets, Attendance Cords, Catering arrangements either at home, our Funeral Home or on external venue, plus any other detail requested by the relatives of the deceased. Where necessary a grove will be purchased and tees paid.

Thank you, Samuel, for Attendance Cords. They will keep us chuckling all weekend.

In the United States, Thomas Lynch, sage, poet, writer and undertaker, has been denounced by industry watchdogs the Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA) and the Funeral Ethics Organization (FEO). Both of these organisations exist to protect consumers, expose malpractice, shame shysters and explore ways in which funerals can be cheaper and more meaningful. Both organisations are keen for families to reclaim funerals from funeral directors. You could sum up their philosophy like this: ‘We deal with death by dealing with our dead.’

The Good Funeral Guide supports all of these objectives wholeheartedly.

What are the watchdogs saying about Tom Lynch? In essence, they are saying that he is “vocal against families caring for their own dead.”

Lisa Carlson of the FEO says: “Tom Lynch has stated to me personally that he will lobby against [a] change [in the laws] that would allow families to care for their own dead without a funeral director.”

Wendy Lyons of the Funeral Consumers Information Society is campaigning in Tom’s state of Michigan for the repeal of a 2006 law mandating that the handling and disposition of a body “shall be under the supervision of a person licensed to practice mortuary science in this state.” She wants the state to “enact a law protecting the rights of families and faith communities to care for their dead without assistance from a funeral director.”

What’s all this got to do with us in the UK? A heck of a lot. No one has written with more intelligence and humanity about death and its rituals than Tom, nor more quotably. No one, arguably, is more influential. If we find out now that he is nothing more than a money-grubbing fraud our disillusionment will leave us feeling grievously foolish and terminally dismayed.

I asked him what this was all about.

First, that 2006 law. It was brought in after some abusive parents burned the body of their child. The state now requires that someone supervise the handling, disposition and disinterment of a dead person, someone, in Tom’s words, “having some oversight, some witness to the verity of who died, of what, and what was done with the corpse … In our state of Michigan the occupational group charged with collecting and registering these vital statistics and medical certification is licensees in mortuary science … an occupational class which it licenses and regulates”

Tom goes on to say (and I include this exclusively for its word-music): “In Milford we can’t burn leaves in the autumn, bury our trash in the back yard, drive an unlicensed vehicle or tend to the duties of our toilet in public.  Nor can we hunt squirrels, coyotes, deer or dogs in town.  “We the people” have made our laws, on these and a million other matters.  Including the dead.”

Does this give Tom a stranglehold over families who would wish to care for their dead themselves?

I put it to him. “Would I,” I asked, “in the State of Michigan, be able to keep [my dead wife, Sharon,] with me and tend to her and take her to her place of final dissolution (earthly or fiery) without the intervention of a funeral director except in an administrative capacity as the envoy of the state government? Would I be able to engage a funeral director in a consultative capacity to drop in, say, twice a day and deal with the stuff that’s coming up out of her nose, but stay his hand in matters I wanted him to keep out of?”

Tom’s reply: “What you describe as what you want for you and your Sharon, and the partnership or collaboration that you have control over with the funeral director, is PRECISELY allowed under the law and ENCOURAGED (right word) by me and everyone who works with me.”

What that 2006 law means is that (Tom’s words) “any legal next of kin may make any decisions about handling, possessing, burying, burning, scattering, disinterring a body, and is not prevented from doing so at their own home, in their own style, at their own pace, with their own people … It DOES NOT MEAN that only a funeral director may handle or dispose of a body.  It only means that a funeral director must supervise.  What level of oversight might be involved is up to the agreement between an individual family and the individual funeral director. ”

Wendy Lyons says there’s a human rights issue in this. Can’t see it, Wendy.

There’s an insane irony here. It is this. The watchdogs and Tom share, mostly, the same values. All of them want to help families to hold funerals which accord best with their wishes and values. That phrase about dealing with death is Tom’s, not theirs.

Let’s hand the microphone to Tom: “I’m the one, after all, who has preached for thirty-five years that OURS IS A SPECIES THAT DEALS WITH DEATH BY DEALING WITH OUR DEAD.  And that part of the funeral director’s job is to embolden families to do all that they can themselves.  But you are right, some want to be empowered, others to be served, others not to be bothered at all.  Our job is to meet them where they are on this continuum and help where we can when we’re asked.”

I rather think that admirers of Tom can come out from behind the sofa. If you’ve yet to read him, read him.

It’s a busy business, an undertaker’s, at this time of the year. Jan and Feb are the popular months to die, and why wouldn’t they be? Nature imparts no vitality. The spirit ebbs with the seeping daylight.

In between the bagged bodies coming in and the boxed bodies going out there are families to see, funerals to coordinate (a flurry of phone calls), doctors dropping in to certify lifelessness and visitors in the chapel of rest contemplating it.

If that schedule leaves scraps of time for undertakers to sip a cup of coffee and dunk a grateful Rich Tea, it also gives them time to savour their latest FSJ — their Funeral Service Journal.

It can’t be easy, writing for undertakers, because there’s never much news to tell them. The FSJ’s editor, Brian Parsons, does a valiant job and tries to get his readers thinking and talking. In December’s edition he presents us with some mildly contentious issues and delights us all with a new sans serif typeface.

He shows us, as ever, photos of undertakers opening new or refurbished funeral homes, undertakers standing beside new hearses, undertakers winning training awards. A director of a coffin manufacturer celebrates 40 years’ service with a new numberplate for his car: COF 1N. A man in Australia has invented an embalming machine powered by compressed air. There are ads for coffins, cremfilm, mortuary cabinets, remembrance items and frockcoats, single and double breasted. There’s a scholarly article about biers and another describing the work of Dr W Edwards Deming, “credited with one of the most significant paradigm shirts in history.” Ah, the FSJ wouldn’t be the FSJ without its typos.

There’s a good account of a meeting of Anglican clergy and undertakers guaranteed to make any insider smile. The clergy are cross. They object to undertakers trespassing on the liturgy by passing on requests for secular readings. They object to undertakers asking families what hymns they want to sing. They object to undertakers booking a slot at the crem without consulting them, planning the printed order of service and using retired clergy in favour of the incumbent.

Of course, the clergy are quite right. The funeral itself is none of a funeral director’s business. They are also quite wrong because a funeral can only happen if hearse, crematorium, organist, service sheets and officiant synchronise. Even the dead must meet deadlines. The person responsible for achieving that complex coincidence is the funeral director. If the officiant isn’t answering his or her phone, a funeral director is quite rightly (and urgently) going to find someone who will. Where requested hymns and readings are concerned, the funeral director is only acting as the agent of the family.

As a celebrant, I am always pleased to know what a family wants. It’s good to know that they have started thinking about the funeral, because time is short. If they subsequently change their mind, that’s not a problem. Funeral directors are always open to the charge of being control freaks, but almost always in a good cause. Compared with what I do, I’d describe much of their work as drudgery and I am extremely grateful to them for doing it. Only once has a funeral director tried to influence one of my ceremonies, and even then only for good, if misguided, motives.

The editor of the FSJ invites his readers to write in and say if there ought to be a code of practice between clergy and funeral directors. I’d like to think he includes secular celebrants, too. My suspicion is that not many will, but I hope I shall be proved wrong.

We all have to be ready to jump when the funeral director rings; it’s the nature of the business. The clergy will not reclaim funerals with displays of pettish self importance.

I am looking forward to another year of FSJs. I wish Brian Parsons and his journal the compliments of the season — and all readers of this blog, too.

Judge for yourself. A while back Mr Slocum engaged in a spat with Tim Totten’s engaging blog, Finalembrace. Take a ringside seat and follow it, round by round, here. Be sure to read the Newsweek article.

Slocum’s mistake is to suppose that fervid indignation is persuasive. It is not. It is repulsive and it distracts from the admirable cause he represents (so badly).

Tim Totten is one of the industry’s nice guys. It matters not whether you like his cot covers. What’s clear to see is that he is honest, well-meaning and kind. To see him attacked is to leap reflexively to his defence no matter who the attacker, no matter what their cause. This is Mr Slocum’s strategic mistake and it is a grave one.

It matters not whether Tom will prevail in a court of law. What matters is that he is one of the great thinkers and writers about death and funerals. He is a man of integrity and intellectual rigour with a reverence for goodness and truth. He is wholly undeserving of this treatment. You do not have to agree with what he says to honour him.