The Good Funeral Guide

Eighteen months ago Tony Judt was, by his own description, “a 61-year-old, very healthy, very fit, very independent, travelling sports-playing guy”. He had a slight shortness of breath walking up hills and found himself hitting the wrong keys when he typed, nothing more.

Then in September 2008 he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, a progressive degenerative illness that causes the cells which control movement to die.

Read the full and excellent article in the Guardian here.

Thanks to Carla.

Here in the UK we are all following, intently or wearily, the furore created by the declaration of intent by Anjem Choudary and Islam4UK to hold a procession through the streets of Wootton Basset “not in memory of the occupying and merciless British military, but rather the real war dead who have been shunned by the Western media and general public as they were and continue to be horrifically murdered in the name of Democracy and Freedom – the innocent Muslim men, women and children.”

Silly stunt, you may say. Politicians of all hues have condemned him. Many would ban him. Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), says he would be “surprised” if senior officers in Wiltshire seek to block the protest because any group has a right to march even if their views are “unpleasant and offensive … Our view is we will have to deal with it, people have a right to march. People might not like it but that is the law.”

Whichever side you’re on, it’s worth looking at this in the light of the ritual which now attends the repatriation of dead service people. That’s what I want to focus on: this new ritual.

It’s a recent thing, this bringing home our dead, only made possible by skilful morticians, refrigeration and aeroplanes. It’s a novelty. It’s also a curiosity. These processions through Wootton Bassett look like funeral processions, but they’re not. They are journeys to the coroner. When dead civilians go to the coroner they go, not in a hearse, but in a low key van of some sort (call it a private ambulance if you like) in everyday traffic. It’s a non-event and none the poorer for that. The funeral to come is the thing, after all.

It’s as if these dead service people are being given a sort of pre-funeral. Why? Don’t people have the opportunity to honour them (or protest about them) after the coroner has handed them back to their families at their funeral proper? Of course they do. So why?

It’s an invention of the Ministry of Defence. PR? It’s your call. These processions are well regarded. And bringing home the dead in this way certainly gives the country a way of counting the cost of the war in Afghanistan.

But while these processions offer ordinary people the chance to pay their respects to the dead, they have also become expressions of patriotism and militarism. Wootton Bassett is no place for pacifists or dissenters. It’s Daily Mail country. It’s got political. So it’s no surprise to see the political Mr Choudary requiring the right, in his own way, to drive home the cost of the war to Afghan civilians.

If Wootton Bassett has become a political battleground, the invention of this about-to-be-hijacked ritual is something the MoD may now regret.

No death threats, please. Use a comments box to put me right.

Far and away the most powerful image of 1979′s Winter of Discontent, when one and a half million public sector workers went on strike, was that of the dead lying unburied. There’s a peculiar horror in that; it blends dishonour with decomposition most potently. Bloated rubbish bags, bloated corpses. Bluebottles. Stench. The unburied dead of ’79 endure in our national mythology – and myth is what it mostly is. But hey, let’s not let the truth get in the way!

A cheerful email arrives from Sue Kruskopf, telling me that I ought to know about her do-it-yourself funeral planning website My Wonderful Life, of which she is the co-founder. It was “created after the death of my co-founder’s husband. It is free and you can not only plan your own funeral but leave letters to loved ones as well as music memories and photos. There are also many other features all in a very easy to use website. Members have even commented that they enjoyed filling out their book online.”

Actually, I did know of it vaguely. I last visited when it launched, maybe two years ago, and was impressed by the focus and marketing nous of the two women who run it. They’re in advertising, so they ought to know a trick or two. I hadn’t been back, nor had I given it a thought, since. You get like that with these e-start-ups: here today, phut tomorrow. I’m still mourning the loss of the online memorial website Eternal Space. It cost millions of $ to develop and went down days after going up. God, it was awful. Heaven only knows how many memorial websites have foundered, all memories drowned in the aether. Talking of which, have you seen Virtual Heaven? There’s another that won’t be around long. Don’t confuse it with Hoofbeats In Heaven, which is for dead horses.

The funeral planning website Your Death Wish sank shortly after being upstarted by some debby English journalist who, true to her trade, reckoned a little research would go all the way and make her a bob or two. That’s what it cost her.

But My Wonderful Life is very much still with us. It is unquestionably healthy. Is it any good? Yes, I think it is. There’s some wonky stuff, like their definition of a green funeral. You wish it contained more information, of course, you always wish that. But it’s clever and well thought out and, yes, useful. If you want to sit down with a bottle of good, red wine and plan your last chapter, if this is your way of doing it, it’s as agreeable a way of doing it as any. What’s more, it looks like being here to stay. Charles Darwin would be proud of it.

What else is there out there? Accompanied by my trusty sidekick Senor Google I had a gander and found just two others. First is My Finale, My Way. For $19.99 you get to fill out a worksheet, which doesn’t look like much return on $19.99, the minimum charge I would ever levy to fill out a worksheet. Dammit, MWL gives you a yummy book with your name on the cover like you’re a real author. For nothing. My Finale makes it difficult to evaluate its usefulness because, unlike My Wonderful Life, it doesn’t give you a video tour.

Another planning website I was aware of when it launched (before cocking a sceptical eyebrow and forgetting about it) is Once I’ve Gone. But it’s not gone, it’s still with us, very much so. It’s developed and beautified itself and, like MWL, offers a useful video tour before you commit. It even offers you the chance to nominate someone you’re going to haunt (it’s got a sense of humour). It, too, wins a Good Funeral Guide Charles Darwin Award. Well done, Ian!

How do they do it? Financially, I mean. Neither My Wonderful Life nor Once I’ve Gone charge a penny for what they do, neither can I see that they make anything from advertising. I’d like to know the answer to that, because sound finances underpin sustainability. So I am going to send them a link to this blog post and put it to them, and invite them to tell us anything else they think we ought to know about them. Keep a watchful eye on the comments.

Ian, Sue, tell us more, please.

Here’s a wonderful funeral picture taken at the obsequies in Canada of Mafia boss Nick Rizzuto, gunned down last Monday. Click it to make it bigger.

As the new year comes storming out of the blocks, so does the Good Funeral Guide, cheeks flushed by a few days in its rocky, island holiday home. So too does Reaper G, of course, for this is his busy time of the year. No seasonal best wishes for you, you pale loiterer. But to all readers of this blog, may I extend my best wishes for a terrific year of unalloyed happiness and uninterrupted success. Go forth and gather it in.

To start us off, here’s a guest post from David Barrington, a funeral director in Liverpool. His beef is with the high prices charged by the big funeral chains. Thank you, David.

As an independent funeral director I take pride in the fact that I offer a caring and personal service at what I hope is a fair price. My firm is not the cheapest in my area but it is also far and away not the most expensive; that particular honour goes to the larger companies. And that is the subject of this post. Why in the funeral business does the opposite happen to other sectors of the economy?

In most areas the general rule of thumb is that if you are a very large company you can use economies of scale to ensure that your charges are lower than your competitors’.

So hypothetically if a company did let’s say 10,000 funerals a year, then you would pretty much imagine that they would have the buying power to keep their costs down.

Why then do the two large companies near to me offer a simple funeral service for over £500 more than I can? That is for a no frills service as specified by the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) Code of practice. Once you start adding in extras like limousines, better coffins, etc, the gap grows astonishingly.

But what is more astonishing is that families go back to them without getting other quotes to see how much other funeral directors are or what sort of service they offer in comparison. One of the main aims of the bigger companies is to reduce the market share of the independent sector. If they succeed in this then there will be no incentive to keep prices down.

Now, bearing that in mind if you went into a funeral directors to make funeral arrangements and told the arranger you were looking for quotes from other funeral directors. If that arranger then told you to go to the other funeral directors and get a written estimate from them and they would match the new price or alternatively go £50 lower, how would you feel?

How can a company take that much off their price without compromising the quality of service provided? Would you feel you were getting a better deal or would you ask how they can manage to cut the price by that much and still provide the same quality of service? And what of the families who don’t shop around?

Is it really acceptable in a caring profession to ask a family who is in a vulnerable and emotional state to go shopping round funeral companies? Wouldn’t it be better to be able to justify the price you charge and stick to it?

We are not selling washing machines or televisions, we are offering a service that celebrates a person’s life. It is so important that the funeral director you choose empathises with you, offers you choice in the service that you want and a fair price.

A happy and healthy new year to you all.

David.