The Good Funeral Guide

Most people think of a memorial as a sole-purpose ‘something’, there to do exactly what the shot-blast lettering says it’s there to do. A headstone, for example.

Headstones are self-absorbed, stand-alone symbols. They add nothing to their surrounding headstones, neither do they detract from them. They do not beautify the landscape; they may uglify it. They are contextualised only by their massed-ness in an area decommissioned and set aside for the burial of the dead.

A memorial doesn’t have to be such. It can be architectural, like the mausoleum at Castle Howard, above. It can take its place in what James Leedam likes to call ‘the vernacular landscape’, so it can be an obelisk, a shrine, a tree, a cairn. Or a bunch of flowers at the roadside.

We are not confined to just one memorial, either. We can, both, mark the spot where the dead person lies and also keep the memory alive at another location or in other ways, privately or publicly. When I was writing the GFG I came up with: “A memorial can also be a folly, a charitable trust, a web page, a campaign, a horse-race, a half-marathon or a drop-in centre.”

My list was far from exhaustive. For, as Pat McNally made me aware in his post the other day about the Memo Project, “Public memorials can take the form of libraries, concert halls, schools, endowments, and even airports and battleships.” He makes reference also to heroic equestrian statues which “interest pigeons more than people”, and to memorials to the many, not just the one: the Vietnam Memorial, the Holocaust Memorial.

Reading Pat’s post I wondered what we’d missed, what’s new, what’d be appropriate and what wouldn’t.

Veuve Cliquot champagne commemorates Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin very aptly. So the world of food and drink offers opportunities for memorialisation – though it’s unlikely that this could be appropriately accomplished by a new pasta sauce.

What else? What memorialisation opportunity can you think of? What have we missed? Think, think, think! Then hit the comments’ box below.

Thank you!

Here are some latest extracts from my favourite obituary pages, in the Times Colonist, Canada.

What I admire about the best of these is their lapidary nature, their restraint, their decorum. Above all, I admire the careful thought that has gone into epitomising the person who has died. In just a few words a person’s nature is made palpable. You feel you know them.

Charlie, who enjoyed skiing until he was 65 yrs of age, was quick to laugh and was quite a prankster in his youth. He was always first to fill his plate at family gatherings and constantly tell tall tales of the hardships of growing up on the farm.

He had a keen sense of justice & fair play. His analytical mind made him reasoned & articulate in conversation or debate & he always remained open-minded & congenial.

He was never one to seek recognition for himself or take credit. Dad was a gentle & thoughtful man, reserved in any judgment of others & honourable in all facets of his life.

Dad was a survivor; a man of few words with incredible wisdom, strength & courage. He took solace in maintaining his independence & sharp mind, exercising practicality & never seeking entitlement.

Lastly, this, which speaks so tellingly of the feelings of the bereaved:

PARKER, Eileen Elizabeth (Ward) March 31, 1930 – May 12, 2010 Kind, loving, caring – good and decent to the core of her being – Eileen was taken, inexplicably, unfathomably and unmercifully, by pancreatic cancer on Wednesday, May 12, 10 days from diagnosis to death, only weeks from apparent health to her last breath.

A very good programme on BBC Radio 4 about online memorialisation on Facebook, dedicated memorial websites and YouTube. Features MuchLoved‘s Jon Davies, a GFG Hero.

Well worth half an hour of your time. Catch it on Listen Again — but be sure to do so within the next seven days. Click!

The Moonies, followers of that well-known oxymoron Sun Moon, want to create a one-acre natural burial ground in the village of Stanton Fitzwarren, near Swindon.  It’s not just for Moonies; the villagers are welcome, too.

The villagers aren’t happy, of course. The English are not natural-born embracers of change (or even of each other); they are more given to stopping things than making things happen. Count all the campaigns you are aware of. I bet they’re all to stop something.

With what do the villagers take issue, do you suppose? The exotic beliefs and alleged cult practices of the Moonies, of whom Sun Moon himself said: “Looking at the Moonies from the normal, common-sense point of view, we certainly appear to be a bunch of crazy people!”?

No. Nothing so high-octane. In the words of parish councillor Liz Bannister: “It’s because of the parking more than anything.”

How English is that!

Read the story here.

A good funeral song in its own right, especially poignant when it was played at Jennyfer Spencer’s funeral last Tuesday.

Find the lyric here.

The Good Funeral Guide is published today! Available from all good bookshops, one or two very bad ones and all the usual online suspects.

Here’s the news I’ve been dreading and, if you’ve been following Carla’s blog, you will have been, too. In her own words:

Carla Zilbersmith, born December 15, 1962, died today, May 17th, 2010. Carla Zilbersmith died in her  home this afternoon of Lou Gherig’s disease, also known as ALS.  Carla Zilbersmith was mother to Maclen Zilber, her only son…that she knows of.  She was also daughter to Jack and Velma, sister to Jason and Stephen.  Friend to an amazing group of caring, creative and competent friends, and lover to several very lucky and largely undeserving men.  Although ALS is a fatal and incurable illness,  Carla never gave up hope that one day her death would be surrounded by a cloud of controversy and speculation.  Her final words, spoken through a clenched jaw were “oil can.”  The memorial is tentatively planned for the afternoon of, Saturday, June 5th. Details will be emailed as soon as they are determined.  It is guaranteed to be the funniest funeral that you have ever attended  or your flowers back. Costumes encouraged but optional.

A wonderful and terrific person. A very sad day.

My thanks to Pam Vetter for letting me know.

Photo stolen from the Sentiment blog

The GFG motored purposefully south yesterday afternoon to Chiltern Woodland Burial Park. It was a three-birds-with-one-stone mission: to have a look at this well-heeled natural burial ground; to hear the great Dr Bill Webster talk about grief; and to meet up with Louise from Sentiment and Jon from MuchLoved, two of Funeralworld’s Good Guys.

I think I’ve reached a stage now where I don’t know what I think about natural burial. On the one hand, there is the seductive loveliness of the best burial grounds; on the other, the seeming forgottenness of those whose gravesites have resolved themselves into indistinguishability. We are all forgotten eventually, of course, and our graves unvisited for some time before that. What would make the best sense of the environmental mission of Chiltern would be a re-use of graves policy—impossible under present legislation. In the meantime, I wonder if they’re burying enough people to recoup investment. The buildings are either very beautiful if you like that sort of thing, or unobjectionable if you don’t. There’s a gathering hall and a ceremony hall with lots of glass and a lectern a little like an elaborate bird table. The design of the site conforms to an elaborate conception of the architect that your experience should mirror “the inner journey that we humans make as we honour and release the body of a loved one to the grave”.  This is not necessarily apparent, of course, but, in addition to money, a lot of thought has gone into this place.

Outside the hall I was greeted hospitably by Dr Bill, whom I had not met before, and invited to join his group of tea drinkers. Dr Bill is sharp, funny and humane. He talks a lot of sense, and in a way which people can relate to. I was a fan in around 1 second, possibly less.

A great deal of what he said about grief counselling related to funerals. Here’re just some of the things he said that I jotted down: “You have to make the words with which to put someone to rest—that which cannot be put into words cannot be put to rest … Put the dying and the death into the context of the whole life lived … Empowerment is the antidote for loss of control. Never do anything for those who grieve which they can do for themselves.”

There’s a big lesson here for funeral directors and celebrants, I think: “Never do anything for those who grieve which they can do for themselves.”

Do have a look at Dr Bill’s website. It’s full of excellent resources. Click here.

Thanks, Andrew!

“The woman seated next to me on the plane told me her name was Stefanie but that she went by Adventure Girl … Then Adventure Girl asked me what my brand was. No one had ever asked me that before.”

Thus begins a quest by Joel Stein to find his brand.

“To get my brand out there, I consulted Amy Jo Martin, whose company, Digital Royalty, creates social-media strategies to increase the reach of people like Shaquille O’Neal. Martin wanted to define my brand further and asked me to describe myself. I told her I was lazy, self-involved and sexually frustrated. Martin, who is very good at her job, turned “lazy” into “needing stimulation,” which she then turned into “dynamic” and finally “rock star.” She transformed “self-involved” into “open.” Starting to get it, I suggested that “sexually frustrated” is really just “sexy.” “I think the first two for sure,” she said.

“By the end of our conversation, Martin had convinced me that in the age of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, putting out an exaggerated version of your personality is necessary. Sure, we want the people in our lives to have a full understanding of us, but controlling our shorthand is a good idea. It’s like our superhero costumes, only not necessarily supergay. If you don’t give your brand some thought, you become the guy whose funeral is all about how much he loved the Mets.

“”A funeral is the ultimate brand evaluation,” Martin said.”

What an interesting idea!

Read the whole piece here.