It was the Jubilee weekend and a year since we had all gathered around Muriel’s hospital bed as she told the Doctors that she wanted no more treatment, no interventions, no resuscitation. She told us she had had a wonderful life, she was ready to go, that she wanted to be cremated and she wanted her ashes to be scattered in an open, high place. This is the place we chose.
Those of her children and grandchildren and great grandchildren who were able to be there, each took a handful of her ashes and threw them to the wind. Little children keen to ‘have a turn’, adults laughing and crying all at the same time.
I took pictures for those who couldn’t be there – and when we looked at them afterwards we were amazed to see this one – looking like a proud lion above the clouds! Reminding us of her strength and courage in her living and in her dying. A lady who, in her youth had played bridge with the Shah of Persia, raised seven children and been the proudest Nana and Little Nana to so many more.
Into the freedom of wind and sunshine
We let you go
Into the dance of the stars and the planets
We let you go
Into the wind’s breath and the hands of the star maker
We let you go
We love you, we miss you, we want you to be happy
Go safely, go dancing, go running home.
Tomorrow will see the funeral of Andy the police dog, who died on Tuesday in a tragic training accident. It will take place in the gym at the Elementary school in his home town of Vermilion, Ohio.
Andy’s handler, Scott Holmes, said: “He was our only police dog, and he was great. He made a lot of drug arrests and he was a big part of our education. He was very friendly and loved kids. He went to the schools and did demonstrations, and children loved him.”
More than 500 people are expected to attend, including police officers from across the state.
You’d never get a turnout like that in Britain and we’re supposed to be a nation of doglovers.
The morning cold and raining,
dark before the dawn could come
How long in twilight waiting
longing for the rising sun
ohoh ohoh Oh ooh
You came like crashing thunder
breaking through these walls of stone
You came with wide eyed wonder
into all this great unknown
ohoh ohoh Ohoooh Oohh
Hush now don’t you be afraid
I promise you I’ll always stay
I’ll never be that far away
I’m right here with you
[Chorus]
You’re so amazing you shine like the stars
You’re so amazing the beauty you are
You came blazing right into my heart
You’re so amazing you are…
You are
You came from heaven shining
Breath of God still flows from fresh on you
The beating heart inside me
Crumbled at this one so new
ohoh ohoh Oooh ooohhh
No matter where or how far you wander
For a thousand years or longer
I will always be there for you
Right here with you
[Chorus]
I hope your tears are few and fast
I hope your dreams come true at last
I hope you find love that goes on and on and on and on and on
I hope you wish on every star
I hope you never fall too far
I hope this world can see how wonderful you are
[Chorus]
You’re so amazing you shine like the stars
You’re so amazing the beauty you are
You came blazing right into my heart
You’re so amazing you are…
You are
Writer and director Norah Ephron died this week. Called an artist of consolation, she is remembered for comedies like Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally, but also wrote screenplays for the more serious Silkwood, fiction and a huge number of books, articles and blog posts. In I Remember Nothing she left a list of all the things she would and wouldn’t miss:
What I Won’t Miss
Dry skin Bad dinners like the one we went to last night E-mail Technology in general My closet Washing my hair Bras Funerals Illness everywhere Polls that show that 32 percent of the American people believe in creationism Polls Fox TV The collapse of the dollar Bar mitzvahs Mammograms Dead flowers The sound of the vacuum cleaner Bills E-mail. I know I already said it, but I want to emphasize it. Small print Panels on Women in Film Taking off makeup every night
What I Will Miss
My kids Nick Spring Fall Waffles The concept of waffles Bacon A walk in the park The idea of a walk in the park The park Shakespeare in the Park The bed Reading in bed Fireworks Laughs The view out the window Twinkle lights Butter Dinner at home just the two of us Dinner with friends Dinner with friends in cities where none of us lives Paris Next year in Istanbul Pride and Prejudice The Christmas tree Thanksgiving dinner One for the table The dogwood Taking a bath Coming over the bridge to Manhattan Pie
“My sister … remarked lightly one evening that as men get old we turn into either lizards or toads: one or the other, there is no escape, no third option.”
There was only one topic of conversation at our book club on Tuesday morning – apart from the book we were discussing, of course!
Yes, it was the fascinating television documentary from the evening before – although we agreed that the whole thing had to be taken with a pinch of salt. After all, TV producers need something out-of-the-ordinary (and a few shocks) to attract the viewers. However, that’s what makes great television and I’m not ashamed to admit that I was glued to my seat for the entire programme.
‘Strictly Kosher’ is an interesting insight into the traditions and customs of the Jewish community in Manchester. As an outsider, I had the luxury of being able to keep an open-mind, but there must have been many Jewish people shouting at the television as they watched members of their faith appearing foolish or eccentric. Indeed, I am sure some would rather not be associated with certain attitudes and practices. Like the vast expense incurred when celebrating Jewish festivals. For example, purchasing a single citrus fruit for anything from £30 to £500 depending on the quality. As one man commented, ‘I’d rather buy a new leather jacket!’
But the characters and their stories were compelling. In particular, Jack’s story was incredibly moving. At the age of only 16, he had experienced first-hand the horrors of the Holocaust. Now an old man, when he visited the grave of his little brother, who was a victim of the gas chambers at the age of nine, we were weeping with him. But Jack doesn’t spend his days wallowing in self-pity. He visits schools and tells his story to youngsters, using his experiences to inform and educate. Yes, it’s painful to hear about these terrible crimes but we need to know about them to learn from them.
Coincidentally, the novel we were discussing at book club was another inspiring story about ordinary people and their struggles against corruption and depravity. The Book Thief is written by Markus Zusak. The narrator of the book is Death himself – a compassionate being who despairs about war and man’s inhumanity to man. He does not cause anyone’s death; however, he must deal with the consequences. And he longs for a holiday.
As we left the library, Valerie asked if I had watched a Channel 4 programme about undertakers – it was on just before ‘Strictly Kosher’. (Regular readers of this blog may remember that, three weeks ago, I wrote about Valerie’s mother’s funeral.)
Valerie looked troubled. ‘Perhaps the Jewish people have got it right – they bury their dead straight away. No lying around for days or weeks. The worst thing is, until I watched that wretched programme, I was really happy with mum’s funeral. The Co-op people were brilliant. Chris and I even sent a thank-you card to the girl in the funeral home. She was lovely. So kind and caring.’
I told Valerie that she could feel proud that she had given her mum the best possible send-off. I continued by saying that I still couldn’t stop smiling every time I thought about us singing ‘The Happy Wanderer’.
‘But all I can think about now is that hub!’ she replied.
She went on to tell me that she had been having visions of her mother’s body travelling back and forth to the funeral home every time someone from the family wanted to spend time with her.
‘She’ll have been up and down that motorway like a Waitrose delivery lorry!’
I suppressed a smile.
Valerie suddenly laughed. ‘What am I doing to myself? Mum loved a road trip! She would be horrified to see me fretting over this.’
I kept a straight face and said, ‘Yes, and not many people can say, “We sang The Happy Wanderer at our mum’s funeral!” ’
She called after me as I left, ‘Don’t forget! Part two of Strictly Kosher is on at 9 this evening.’
Labour MPs have tabled an early day motion following True North’s Dispatches: Undercover Undertaker on Co-operative Funeralcare that aired earlier this week on Channel 4.
The motion stated MPs were “shocked and disgusted” by the Channel 4 doc which showed the funeral care provider stored coffins containing bodies in warehouses on industrial estates.
Sponsored by Labour MP Roger Godsiff and backed by fellow party members Ronnie Campbell and Virendra Sharma, it went on to call for the resignation of those staff responsible.
“This House… believes that a mutual organisation can, and should, have higher ethical standards than a purely profit-orientated company,” the motion said.
Co-operative Funeralcare managing director George Tinning said the footage aired was not “typical” of its business.
“We operate specialised facilities in each area servicing various branches in that area and in those facilities we have mortuaries, coffin storage, garaging and the like.
“Most of them are associated with funeral homes, very few of them are on high streets because it would be totally inappropriate to have mortuaries in every high street,” he said.
“You can rest assured that although this is a side of our business that the public don’t see, that they are amongst the finest in the profession and facilities that we are very proud of.”
I expect there will be a number of stories like this. This one’s from this is Gloucestershire and is about Glad Stockdale’s experience of a Midcounties Co-op funeral, which all came back to her when she watched Undercover Undertaker, of which this is Gloucestershire writes:
The programme showed bodies piled up in a warehouse, instead of being kept in a chapel of rest and bungling funeral directors sending the wrong body to a funeral.
Hmph.
The last straw came when the family went to see Mrs Stockdale the day before her funeral. A plastic bag containing the underwear and clothes she had been wearing had been dumped in the coffin. The trolley she had been wheeled in on lay nearby.
After several http://www.cheapambienpriceonline.com complaints, Mid-Counties Co-Op gave them compensation of £500 to pay for a wake and a trip to scatter her ashes.
A Midcounties Co-operative Funeralcare spokesman said: “Midcounties Co-operative Funeralcare, which is not connected to Co-operative Funeralcare as run by the Co-operative Group and referred to in the programme, operates to the highest standards of professional care. Our staff are fully trained and qualified. We are members of the National Association of Funeral Directors and adhere to its exacting standards and code of conduct as a minimum.”
Well, that’s interesting. I could have sworn Midcounties had rebranded under Co-operative Funeralcare. What do you make of this screenshot of their website?
The funeral industry commissions very few surveys. When it does, they are about what bereaved people are doing, not what bereaved people want. These surveys are almost always self-serving and, if spun well, appeal to lazy journalists. Result: free advertising. This is something the GFG has taken up with broadsheet journalists to no effect.
Why no surveys about what bereaved people want? Why so little market research? Is it because funeral directors aren’t interested in what people want?
Or because they think they know best?
I don’t think there are any easy answers here. Let me throw in just two more observations. First, a funeral director’s relationship with his/her clients is potentially corrupting of the funeral director. Very. Grief-stricken people are easily bossed about – many develop a version of Stockholm syndrome, a psychological condition where hostages develop gratitude towards, and admiration of, their captors. If a funeral director role-plays it right, their clients can easily mistake manipulation for kindness.
What’s more, the likelihood of any client asking to ‘look under the bonnet’ is negligible, and that’s potentially corrupting, too. Unexamined mortuary practice can lead to de-sensitisation and, from there, to very bad habits.
So we can see why funeral directors are prey to self-importance (the not very bright) or paternalism (the brighter ones). All intelligent, thinking funeral directors acknowledge this – as do the better celebrants, whose power relationship with their clients is similar.
Is there any other service industry in which it is reckoned okay not to tell people certain things? There is a high degree of consensus in the funeral industry that empowering clients to make informed choices has its appointed limits. You have to use your discretion. Did you ask that couple if they would like to come in and wash and dress their dead person? I thought about and decided not to. Aren’t they entitled to consider it? Look, it would only have upset them.
It’s a fair point.
Where does ‘we know best’ begin and end?
We’d know more if the industry conducted more surveys asking people what they want, what they need to know, and is it okay if…? Is it okay if we store your dad with his face uncovered on racking with loads of other dead people? No? Thanks, in that case we won’t. Anybody outside the industry, and a great many in it, wouldn’t need to ask such a dumbass question.
But what about the mouth suture? (If you don’t know what the mouth suture is, it is a way of closing the mouth of a dead person. A gaping jaw can look pretty horrifying.) The mouth suture is standard practice. The funeral directors who don’t do it can be counted on the fingers of one hand. And it’s not the sort of procedure you’d ever, ever want to ask a bereaved person to make an informed decision about in the first flush of grief. (If you need to read a description – be warned, it’s not for the fainthearted – you can one here.
If you were to conduct a survey of, say, a thousand ordinary people and asked them what they think about the mouth suture, the result would be, we can only say, interesting – because we don’t know. And of course it would depend on how you presented the information and asked the question.
But to do it as a matter of routine without permission? Is that really okay? To withhold information like that?
I know so many superb and humane funeral directors who earnestly believe that it’s just something you cannot do, ask permission about the mouth suture, that, frankly, I’m torn. It’s all too easy for a scribbler to adopt a holier-than-thou opinion about this and say If you can’t bear to ask, don’t do it. It’s different when you’re on the ground, doing things for the best.
But once you decide to withhold information, well, it’s potentially a slippery slope you’re on, isn’t it?
And in any case, isn’t there a principle here?
Ed’s note: It’s been a busy week for the blog, which has seen many new visitors and commenters. You are all welcome. If you have left a comment using a cybermoniker that’s fine, that’s the way of it, and you probably feel you want to keep your personal opinions separate from your professional practice. This blog has always been remarkably free of trolls and vandals and, even when passions were high, recent discourse has more or less respected common courtesy. It’s not often that anything happens in funeralworld, but that Dispatches programme really got bloodboiling.
Tomorrow is Friday and, as ever, the main event will be Lyra Mollington’s reflections of a funeralgoer. A feeling of business as normal will descend once more, and we hope to return to our ‘magazine’ format, a daily mix of news, opinion, curiosities, music and, if you’re really lucky (we’re not promising anything) something deliciously oblique from Vale.
An open letter to George Tinning, Managing Director, Co-operative Funeralcare
I am writing in the aftermath of Undercover Undertaker to proffer an olive branch. The Good Funeral Guide has attempted to talk to Funeralcare in the past and met with no reply. In the best interests of the bereaved, the cause we both have in common, I want you now to consider opening a channel of communication.
For Funeralcare, the transmission of Undercover Undertaker may, as you know, prove to be a ground zero event. It has shattered trust and confidence in a well-loved institution. It must have taken great courage for your staff come to work yesterday. Goodness knows what some of them endured. We felt for them.
Here at the Good Funeral Guide we subscribe to the ideals and goals of co-operation. Indeed, we recently launched an initiative to encourage communities to establish their own funeral co-operatives: www.CommunityFunerals.org.uk. We also recommend Scotmid, an excellent co-operative funeral service in Edinburgh.
We believe the co-operative model has great potential to be pre-eminent in the funeral market. It is because we believe in the co-operative model so strongly that we have been so unfriendly towards Funeralcare. We think that your organisation lost sight of its original purpose and its foundational values. On a commercial level, we have been dismayed that, though the Funeralcare operation enjoys impressive economies of scale, the fruits of these have never been passed on to consumers – which is the whole point of them. We deplore the culture of pressure selling, just one of the factors which has contributed to the ethical ill health of Funeralcare. We knew that it was only a matter of time before Funeralcare would be found out.
As to the concept of the hub, we make no objection in principle so long as it is appointed and staffed in a way which meets the needs, wishes and expectations of clients. There are other consolidated businesses that run perfectly respectable hubs.
Looking to the future, a cleaned up version of the status quo obviously won’t do. Only a return to core values can restore the good name of Funeralcare and, at the same time, bring out the best in your staff, many of whom, as you are well aware, are superb. The upside of catastrophe is that it breeds opportunity.
We don’t expect you to re-vision Funeralcare on our terms, of course, and we don’t ask you to. We ask just two things. First, we ask you to return to the spirit of the Rochdale Principles. Second, we ask you to consider what Terry Leahy has to say in his excellent new book ‘Management in 10 Words’. He talks about the importance of ‘great and noble objectives’. One of his objectives at Tesco was “to create value for customers to earn their lifetime loyalty”. If you translate this idea to the funeral industry you get: “to create funeral experiences for customers to earn their lifelong gratitude”.
I would like to finish by making you an offer. A great many people visit this website, this blog in particular. Doubtless you will, in the coming weeks and months, wish to get messages out to consumers which will restore their faith in Funeralcare. We should be very happy to publicise these for you.
With all best wishes,
Charles
Readers interested to discover what Terry Leahy’s 10 words are can find them here.
