The Good Funeral Guide

We may or we may not grow bored with people who tease and tantalise our appetites for new stuff we don’t actually need. Whether you’re the sort of person whose ears prick up when the ads come on, or whether, like me, you go fill your glass with yet more red wine, we accept that this is, for better or for worse, the way the world is, the way we are. It’s a game. And because it’s the baser instincts that feed the furnace of our getting-and-spending economy, there are thousands of cunning people out there (creatives, they call themselves) dedicated to devising devilishly alluring schemes to part us from our money.

I may sound grumpy and jaundiced. Perhaps you think it’s all terrific fun. I don’t want ever to fall into the error of supposing what I think to be right. But we probably all agree that, while we are prepared to tolerate or even embrace those who would address our living needs – a better motorcar, a cleaner toilet, a sunnier holiday – we draw the line when they fatten themselves on death. It is, therefore, with unmixed feelings that I recoil from Co-operative Funeralcare’s new media campaign to sell more funeral plans. Here’s how it works:

The £190,000 ‘Life is amazing. Pass it on’ campaign was devised by Cheltenham agency TDA and aims to rekindle childhood memories of learning to tie shoelaces, being taught to ride a bicycle and ‘cooking with mother’.

Confused? Told you it was cunning.

“The campaign follows in-depth focus groups, a survey of Co-operative members and ongoing analysis,” says Adeline Bibby, marketing manager for The Co-operative Life Planning. “The resulting insight showed people are extremely interested in their heritage, and they want their lives to be remembered and have relevance in the future too.”

She says heritage, she means legacy, poor thing.

They are beating a path to your heart. They are coming in sheep’s clothing. Want to get to the bottom of this? Go here. Then have a look at the dedicated webpage, where you can pass on your advice to the next generation. Very, very tempting. Here.

My Dead Girlfriend is a Canadian blog written by a man with a to-die-for name, Abra Cadaver. How we all wish we’d thought of that. He’s more of an occasional blogger, these days. But when he reaches for his keyboard he’s really worth reading.

If you haven’t wandered through his archive, do. But start with his two most recent posts first. The video sketch Funeral Sex is psychologically acute. And I love Abra’s (now revised) wish for his own funeral: “if I am to be there in deceased form, they should trot me out on a big silver tray with an apple in my mouth.”

I’d hoped to have a sprightly little post for you yesterday on the matter of funeral costs. The trade body representing the interests of independent funeral directors, Saif, commissioned Ipsos MORI (how apt, that MORI!) to research funeral directors’ charges. A friendly funeral director emailed me to tell he’d just got the report, would I like him to send it to me? I told him not to go to the trouble: I’d get it from Saif itself.

I rang Saif on Monday afternoon. I was promised the report by email. Nothing. I rang in a reminderly way on Tuesday morning and was promised a call back. Nothing. I rang once more in the afternoon. My request was being scrutinised, I was told, by the brightest and best at Saif, and the conclusion seemed to be that the Good Funeral Guide, a resource for consumers, dammit, is reckoned not to be a fit repository for such information. It seems that they don’t like references to “your dead person”. The only acceptable term for a dead person is, I am told, “the deceased.” I am still waiting for official confirmation of this from someone called Alan, and I confidently expect to have to wait ’til the Crack of Doom itself.

I dislike velveteen euphemisms that insulate us from the reality of things. I especially dislike that hush-and-awe, neuter word “deceased”, the way it slithers and hisses. This is not everybody’s position. There is no vocabulary that will satisfy all. Too bad. We use words in this country both to assign meaning and to set ourselves apart, and there’s something both marvellous and detestable about the ways in which we do it. What a pity it is that we cannot use the plain words of our language to stake our place in neutral territory. As things are, meaning comes in shades of the most delicate, deadly hues. I shut the door, she closes it. We inhabit different worlds.

Everybody’s friend is nobody’s friend. Against the sanctimonious self-rightousness of Saif I would set the words of one O Hetreed, who wrote this to me: “Thank you for this excellent website. It’s been really helpful at a difficult point and refreshingly free of cant and bogus solemnity.” I was even more gratified when I found out who O Hetreed actually is.

I’m cross with Saif and disappointed. And amused, of course. I know what the Ipsos MORI report says, but I’m not telling you. Do you find yourself beginning to suppose that it can only reveal that independent funeral directors exhibit an appetite for exploitation which borders on depravity? I couldn’t possibly comment.

We worry about our football clubs. Many are encumbered by stonking debts. Manchester United owes £716 million.

What of our big undertaking businesses? Well, Dignity Caring Funeral Services has just published figures which provide the current answer to that question. And the answer is (sit down, please, and clutch your whisky) that Dignity are leveraged to the tune of £250 million.

Bad news: in 2009 they performed 3,700 fewer funerals than in 2008.

Good news: profits rose 6 per cent to £37.5 million.

Bad news: price per funeral rose by 6 per cent.

Good news: shareholder payouts are up by 10 per cent.

Conclusion: caring for investors, crapping on consumers.

Marvellous, isn’t it, the feats of ingenuity those of an entrepreneurial bent are capable of in dreaming up schemes to part the bereaved from a pretty penny?

I love Eternal Voicemail. They transfer a dead person’s mobile phone voicemail message to a voicemail box. Anyone who’s got the dead person’s phone number can call, listen to the dead person’s message, and leave one of their own.

Just don’t expect a call back any time soon.

Check out the website here. Any takers?

It seems unthinkable that the practice of direct cremation, direct burial – the rapid and unceremonious disposal of the dead – could land on our shores. It’s been preying on my mind. Now I’m not so sure.

Here’s a view from Rabbi Mark S Glickman writing in the Seattle Times about what he calls the “desire to de-emphasize or avoid focusing on death”:

My Aunt Margie died a few weeks ago. And now that she’s gone, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.

I hadn’t seen Aunt Margie very often for the past several years, but we were very close when I was a boy. She had a kind smile, she took genuine interest in our lives, and it was rumored that nations had gone to war just to get a piece of her famous chocolate roll. My brothers and I did, too.

Aunt Margie lived near San Francisco, and as her death approached, I began making plans to go to her funeral. I was attending a conference in Southern California. Maybe I could reroute my return trip through the Bay Area.

The call finally came when I was in Santa Monica, just before lunch. I was enjoying the warmth and the sunshine, but then my mother’s name flashed onto my cellphone screen. Yes, Aunt Margie had died. The end was peaceful. In accordance with her wishes, there would be no burial rites. Her body would be cremated without ceremony.

No funeral? Not even a memorial service? But … but … she had just died! What was I supposed to do? I felt like I needed to do something about her death — to honor her, to memorialize her somehow. Was I supposed to just go on as if nothing had happened?

He concludes:

Judaism teaches that a spark of God burns within every human soul, and that, therefore, when a person dies, a part of God dies, too. The divine presence shrinks with the death of every human being.

In response, after a person dies, Jews recite the Kaddish, our prayer of mourning, in an attempt to restore God’s presence to the world. “Yitgadal v’yitkadash shmei rabbah,” it begins, “May God’s great name be magnified and sanctified.”

I won’t presume to tell you how you should mourn your loved ones’ deaths, or what preparations you should make for your own. I will, however, encourage you to remember that human life is awesome and mysterious; that a person’s death is often sad and always significant; and that we mourn best when our actions reflect these great truths.

My dear Aunt Margie has died. The sun no longer shines quite as brightly as it used to. May God’s great name be magnified and sanctified.

Read the entire piece here.