The Good Funeral Guide

From the Nameless Dead blog:

A 10-meter magnolia tree is planted in the center of Chile’s National Stadium where dictator Pinochet in 1973 imprisoned thousands of political prisoners who were tortured and killed. After planting the tree, the stadium doors are open to the public as a park; offering a space to stop, look again, and remember. An impossible, cathartic soccer match played before 20.000 people, closes the project after a week of activity.

See the amazing sequence of photos here.

Hat-tip to Tony Piper for this. Wonderful, isn’t it?

If you are one of many who has incredulously endured a funeral conducted by a minister of religion for a dead person of known no faith, spare a thought for the people of Belgium, where the language feud (Dutch vs French) means that if you’re a French speaker in a Flemish suburb of Brussels, your dead person’s funeral will be incomprehensible.

This is from the Wall Street Journal:

French-speaking Sylvia Boigelot is still upset that in 2006, her father’s funeral, in the northern suburb of Vilvoorde, was in Dutch, in accordance with a local ordinance that all church services be in the language. “There were people who had known him all his life who couldn’t understand a word,” she says. “And it happened with my grandmother, too.”

Read the entire story here.

England’s World Cup 1-1 draw against USA was brought about by the butterfingered England goalkeeper Robert Green.

By way of neat symmetry, it’s worth recalling that when the USA achieved a shock win over England at the 1950 World Cup, the star on the day was the USA goalkeeper, Frank Borghi.

And the point of especial interest for all members of the dismal trade who read this blog is that Frank Borghi was a hearse driver.

Scheduling a funeral for a loved one is not easy, especially when you can’t afford one.

That’s the situation the family of Clementina Michelle Hagin, 34, found themselves in after her death Thursday.

On Saturday afternoon, Lynn Sims, Hagin’s pastor at Life Changing Outreach Ministries off Martintown Road in North Augusta, organized a car wash in an attempt to raise the $6,000 needed for the ceremony.

While Sims and the family try to raise the money, Hagin’s body is being kept at C.A. Reid Sr. Memorial Funeral Home, owned by Charlie Reid.

“He wants us to let him know how much money we have on Monday,” Sims said. “She doesn’t have a policy, so we’re trying to do whatever we can to give him what he needs so that we can do something.”

Hagin’s three children and a number of her fellow church members were able to use the Pizza Hut parking lot, just outside the ministry’s front door, for their car wash.

Even as the temperature approached 100 degrees, the group continued to work, but it collected only $847 on Saturday.

Read the rest of the story here.

Perhaps the most important recent consumer information to reach the public domain was the SAIF IPSOS-Mori  price comparison survey (26 Feb 2010) which showed that  ”Average funeral directors’ charges are highest for Dignity funeral directors and lowest for independents. Co-operative Funeralcare branches fall between the two.”

SAIF wouldn’t share these results with the Good Funeral Guide on the grounds, that, though we make a better case for independent funeral directors than most, we were adjudged not to be fit and proper recipients. Good news will out, though. We soon had that clean linen being aired on this website. Since then, SAIF has quietly aired it on its own.

Why the shhh!? I’d have thought that SAIF members pay their subs to have this sort of information trumpeted at full blast. As we go into an era of cuts lots more people are going to be looking for a cheap funeral. Every financial journalist in the country would have picked up on a brightly-worded press release.

One possible reason has reached me in the form of swirling rumours. I say rumours and, for the benefit of Co-op Funeralcare’s lawyers, I repeat: rumours. Allegations. Baseless, doubtless.

These rumours centre on the response of Co-op Funeralcare to the release of the SAIF survey. They are ugly rumours.

Does anyone have any solid, verifiable information they’d like to share?

Don’t leave an anonymous comment below. I couldn’t trace you through it, but others, possibly, could. Contact me direct: Charles@goodfuneralguide.co.uk. Arrange to phone, if you prefer. You will just have to trust that I shall treat anything you say in strictest confidence.

It would be good to stand these rumours up or knock them down, as they deserve.

Sometimes a google goosechase can take you to interesting places.

Where did I start? I wanted to find out the current average price of a simple funeral. I found a Guardian article which concluded with a tranche of good advice from Anne Wadey, author of the Which? publication What To Do When Someone Dies. Which?, we remind ourselves, is a consumer advocacy charity. At the foot of the article was a recommendation (not by Anne Wadey, oh no) of probate specialists Final Duties. Heard of them? You have now. Read this article about them in the Guardian here.

The NAFD has its own pet probate specialist umbrella-ed under its Bereavement Advice Centre (BAC), a not-for-profit organisation. Spin Profiles has this to say about the BAC:

The Bereavement Advice Centre claims to have been welcomed by a variety of organisations from health, funeral, legal and advice sectors and their policy committee oversees development of the service and includes clergy, hospital bereavement support, legal, care home, medical, funeral undertaking and local government representations.

The BAC publishes a leaflet called “What to do when someone dies“, which is widely available in registrars, where people go to register a death, and in some hospitals. The leaflet publicises a helpline which has been accused by solicitors of promoting BAC’s commercial owner ITC Legal Services. An article in the Law Society Gazette in June 2009 drew attention to the “financial links” between the Bereavement Advice Centre and ITC Legal Services. The article says the link has “come under fire from solicitors”. Patricia Wass, a partner at Plymouth firm Foot Anstey and chairwoman of the Law Society’s wills and equity committee, is quoted in the article as saying that she is concerned that registrars ‘up and down the country’ are giving BAC’s leaflets to people when they report a death. This might imply that local authorities sanction BAC’s promotion of ITC’s commercial interests.

Over at Thisismoney, here’s what they have to say on the matter: Registrars, GPs, hospitals, churches and funeral homes are all handing out leaflets advertising the Bereavement Advice Centre. The official-looking document appears to be for a free independent advice service. But those that call a free helpline or visit the website are pointed towards ITC Legal Services, one of the biggest probate providers in the UK. ITC’s fees can be much greater than similar services offered by local solicitors. In one case, a reader was quoted £2,400 by ITC, almost three times more than a local solicitor … Despite claiming its fees are competitive with solicitors and can be half that charged by banks, ITC’s charges can be hugely more expensive than services offered by trained lawyers. This is because the firm charges a percentage of the estate, unlike solicitors, which tend to charge an hourly rate. In Manchester, this ranges between £140 and £250. ITC charges from 2.5% for estates worth between £5,000 and £19,999 to 1% for estates worth £230,000 and above … Stewart Acton, 59, was given one of these leaflets when he went to Sale town Hall to register the death of his mother, Sheila. Thinking it was an official leaflet, he phoned the Bereavement advice centre. Days later, he was visited by a woman from ITC. Mr Acton says: ‘The girl said the firm would take care of everything and that if I went to a solicitor it would take a long time and the costs could be astronomical.’ The charge for ITC’s services was £2,400. Mr Acton got in touch with his neighbour, a solicitor, who said he would charge just £850 for the same service. He says: ‘When your mum dies, your head is in the clouds and you just go with it. These people are just coffin-chasers.’

The Head of the Bereavement Advice Centre is… Anne Wadey. The author of the latest edition of What To Do When Someone Dies would hardly seem to have impeccable non-aligned credentials.

I learnt something else interesting from Spin Profiles: In 2002 Helen Parker, editor of Which, commented: “We want to see all funeral directors in the UK signed up to a standard code of practice. The code should be monitored and enforced by an independent body.” In response, Alan Slater, ceo of the NAFD gave this assurance: “We are currently mid-way through the process of improving our code … Once finalised, the new code will be sent to the OFT.” The NAFD’s Slater said this in 2002. But as of February 2009, the NAFD code of practice has not been approved by OFT. In fact, none of the funeral trades associations’ codes of practice have been approved by OFT. Approval would mean that the codes of practice would be blessed by the Consumer Codes Approval Scheme, offering a much greater degree of assurance to consumers.

In search of better news I googled ITC Legal Services. Has it cleaned its act up? Oh dear, it hasn’t. Here’s a depressing story dated 9 June 2010.

To the consumer, this all looks very murky. I must now fire off emails to the NAFD and SAIF and see what they have to say for themselves.

PS Who is the informant behind these Spin Profiles, I hear you ask? It is none other than the indefatigable Teresa Evans. Hats off, please!

I don’t know if you ever wander over to Death Matters. It’s a descriptive title for a website and blog which is trying to awaken in a death-denying people a full and informative awareness of their mortality – in order that they may live better and remember better. It’s a one-person enterprise. We don’t know the writer’s name, so let’s settle, for convenience, for DM. DM’s mission statement is this:

“The best medicine for living peacefully and thankfully in a trying world is a direct and constant awareness of one’s own mortality and that of everyone around one. This awareness is also the necessary first step on the path to transcending Death.”

DM’s explanation for the way we ignore, diminish or trivialise death is encapsulated in this statement:

“As a child is furnished with organs to facilitate and allow birth, so man also possesses organs for death, the formation and strengthening of which belong to theological practices. Where this knowledge is extinguished, a form of idiocy spreads with respect to death; this reveals itself in an escalation of blind fear, but also in an equally blind and mechanical disdain of death.” Ernst Jünger, The Adventurous Heart

Whether or not this means that DM thinks that atheism generates idiocy, I don’t know. That statement would seem to make it clear that he/she does, but I’m not so sure.

Death Matters is a thought-provoking place to spend time. I especially like DM’s analysis of awareness. There is intellectual awareness of our mortality without emotional awareness; there is emotional without intellectual. There is physical awareness brought on by ageing, which we banish by putting our trust in cosmetics and medics.

I’m not sure exactly by what process and by what practices DM thinks we may best assimilate a full and proper sense of our own mortality.

DM’s latest blog post asserts that “death is the negation of all material progress,” yet that a sense of this may be dissolved in the consideration that though individuals die, society marches on, resulting in “a simultaneous loss of importance of the individual at the hands of the collective”. DM rates this a “’booby prize’ in comparison with the Grand Prix of personal continuity through eternity.”

I don’t know that I think DM is right in this. The funeral of a materialist can yield more and greater consolations than that at least this death won’t stop Apple from developing its next glittering gizmo. What else goes on? Memories, of course. And DNA—let’s not overlook DNA—because aspects of intellect and character are passed on, as are physical mannerisms. Lastly, values and example are passed on, and are commemorated in their emulation. Sure, that doesn’t compare with an everlasting crown, but it’s still a pretty rich legacy.

Having said which, I don’t know that I have understood DM completely. There’s an intellect deficit on my part which leaves me with a floundering feeling. I need some help here. Help!

Perhaps DM him/herself will help me out.

I recommend adding Death Matters to your blog feed. And I commend the YouTube sermon above, preached by a man of whom I think DM would approve.

I wonder if anyone is having problems in posting comments? One reader certainly is. It seems to be something to do with cookies. If you are, please let me know and I’ll get My Man to sort it.

All comments are as far as possible unmoderated. All first-time commenters come to me first for approval, in case they’re spam, I guess, after which all their subsequent comments are posted without my say so. I never, ever get rid of anything I don’t like.

Shown at her memorial service. If you haven’t got to know Carla yet, go to her blog. It is one of the most extraordinary documents you will ever read. The last post has just been published. It is the eulogy Carla’s son Maclen delivered at her memorial. Find it here.

I think we’ve all done some good hard thinking, over the last few months, about the value and role of the dead body at a funeral. The discussion of this, and other matters, has elicited some extremely interesting ideas and some statements which, to my eyes, look likely to become axioms. I’m thinking of Gloria Mundi’s “A funeral is not an artefact.”

And I think there’s a sentence in a comment Jonathan left on a recent post which will go the same way. The entire comment deserves another outing. If you missed it, enjoy and marvel. If you didn’t, well, it bears any amount of re-reading.

It is interesting to reflect that, while the comments columns of so much online content attract all manner of beastliness sheltering behind anonymity, the comments column of the GFG is of no interest to such. Long may it remain so. I’m sorry that so many comments from previous blogs were lost in the translation from Blogger to WordPress. But the blog is extant in Blogger and can be reached through your Blogger account.

When I allowed myself to love you, and you me, we entered into an unspoken pact: that one of us would come to grieve the other, that it would be the worst possible experience to put a loved one through, yet we willingly agreed to do it to each other and to ourselves for the sake of our love. We may not have given it a moment’s thought, but we both knew, and we didn’t shy away from our inevitable pain then. So why do it now?

Can you remember howling for lost love? Of course you can. So if someone offered you a painkiller, would you have taken it? I wouldn’t, because although grief hurts me worse than any physical pain it’s a pain I want. If I’m really honest with myself, I actually enjoy crying for the loss of someone whom I can’t bear the thought of living without. It’s the nearest thing to the comfort of physical contact with them I can find at that time. Don’t ask me why; it’s an animal thing as much as anything. But it’s your body I’m grieving for, as much as grieving for you. When I think of you, I see you still in it; all your dear characteristics expressed in its movements and gestures and sounds and appearances and and and… It’s how I came to even know of your existence, and how I came to love you. I still love you in your body – your dead body, yes, aren’t I foolish! – and now I’m going to have to love you out of it, and that’s a transition that doesn’t happen straight away. So I want your useless, dead husk here with me when I put you – yes, you, even though I know it’s not you, it’s it – into a cremator or a hole so that I can begin to make sense of the difference between you and it. That’s why I put on this funeral for you.

So what’s wrong with a celebration of your life? Nothing. In fact it’s essential, unless it takes the place of mourning for your death. I’m celebrating even my pain of your loss because if it hadn’t been for you I’d have had nothing to lose, and no pain to tell me how fortunate I was to have had you in my life for the precious time we had together. I’m celebrating you to prolong the agony in a way, to be completely and unbearably aware of just what, just how much, I have lost because that’s all that makes sense of my grief.

So yes, Charles, anything that trivializes or masks the agony of grief in the name of ‘celebration of life’ should be shot down in flames. It is a betrayal to celebrate you without railing against the dying of your light, or without shouting my anger at you for bloody well dying on me.

And if I go first, I want it to hurt you just as much.

Here’s an extract from another blog entitled “No funeral service, no headstone … can these be good things?”

A friend died recently. At his request, there were no services of any kind. Since he left his body to a medical school, there is no gravesite to visit … I always found him to be an interesting person, but the details in the obituary made him even more interesting than I had imagined. I looked forward to learning more about him when friends and family would gather to celebrate his life. Sadly, I never had that opportunity … and I feel cheated. While I totally respect his right to leave this planet in any way he chose, I wish he had chosen another path … No services, no headstones. How do you suppose either of these affects a person’s long-term legacy?

Find the entire post here.

Everyone agrees that choice in funeral arrangements is a good thing. Even the UK’s most Jurassic undertakers are nodding their heads fervently on this one. They’ve come round at last (sort of). It’s the mantra in Funeralland: Personalisation x 3 (I can’t be bothered to type it).

There’s money in it, of course. Because personalisation (x3) can merely = accessorisation (x3). Instead of a bog standard box, why not this lovely one here, look, emblazoned with bluebells and kingfishers and a steam locomotive at 3x the price? There are lots of ways to personalise. We know what they are. They overlook making your own box, a very useful exercise in grief therapy. They overlook picking flowers from your own garden, not even tying them at the stems, and taking them home after, if it was a cremation.

There’s pressure in personalisation. The media love to pick up on wacky funerals, outrageous dress codes, iconoclastic songs. Trad is so last century, so gloomy, so boring.

This exerts an expectation. “So what are we going to do? He loved his veg, especially his leeks, so, er, let’s tell everyone to dress up as a leek??” There’s a tyranny taking hold.

There’s personalisation (x3) and there’s costly and unnecessary distraction (x3).

So it’s really good, this morning, to publish this post (the first of many, I hope) by Maggie Brinklow, a celebrant, member of the Association of Independent Celebrants (AOIC), who is keen to broaden her skills to include body preparation. She hopes shortly to do a course with the distinguished Mark Elliott, one of the best in his field, and I hope she’ll tell us all about that. Maggie says “I am passionate about putting the funeral back in the hands of the family.” She reminds us that trad has legs.

What makes a good funeral?

I’ve just got back home from a funeral.  Nothing unusual in that – I’ve been to so many family funerals that I’ve lost count.  I’ve also acted as a celebrant at quite a few as well, so what made this one any different?  Well, this is the first funeral where I acted as the Funeral Arranger, working on behalf of a small independent company.  It wasn’t anything special, a church service followed by interment in the local cemetery – a hearse and limo, the usual flowers and mourning dress and then back to the house for the ‘do’.

So, why am I writing about it?  Well, it got me thinking.  What makes a good funeral?  Is it the gold coffin with stretch hummers and 300 mourners or, is it the small intimate gathering, the cardboard coffin pulled on a hand bier while the children sing, before being laid to rest at a woodland site?  For me, it’s both and neither of these options – personally I’d like people to take up the alternative ideas, but it’s not my decision.  I offered the family the different venue, transport, coffin etc etc but, in the end, the traditional route was the right one for them.

Like I said, today’s funeral was nothing unusual, but it was what the family wanted, and really, isn’t that what it’s all about?