The Good Funeral Guide

Posted by Vale

A week or so ago one of my heroines died – the musician, writer and singer Dory Previn.

She hasn’t recorded much, but for those who know her work she is unmatched in her musicality, wit, dark humour and willingness to explore the darker parts of the mind and a woman’s experience of the world.

My favorite album was Reflections in Mud Puddle. If I haven’t put you off, you can find it here.

In the meantime enjoy The New Enzyme Detergent Demise of Ali McGraw. Come on folks you must remember Love Story?

Mine was a Wednesday death,
One afternoon at approximately three-fifteen,
I gave up and died and nobody cried.

Mine was a bloodless death,
Not grim, not gory,
More like Ali Macgraw’s new enzyme detergent demise,
In Love Story.
Neat and tidy,
Unlike Christ’s on Friday.

Friends were fooled by the fact,
I still breathed, and I spoke, and I smiled, and I lied,
In my handy, dandy, imitation life disguise kit.
I sent away for it.

The styrofoam face fits so neatly in place,
With the pre-recorded voice of your choice,
And it almost sounds real – it’s a guaranteed deal
And you don’t feel a thing,
And you can teach it to sing,
And all your friends are deceived,
And nobody grieves.

Mine was a Wednesday death.
One afternoon at approximately three-fifteen,
I was quietly laid to rest,
And nobody guessed.

A handy disposable heart,
Marks time in a plastic breast,
And so it goes, and nobody knows,
I am non bio-degradable.

You can read more about her life here.

Gloucester crematorium’s Arbor restaurant is now offering Sunday lunch. Observes one Gloucester resident wryly:

“It seems a bit odd – and perhaps even slightly macabre – for them to be offering roast meat to people, given that their main business is to cremate bodies. I’m not sure I’d like to eat my Sunday roast in that environment really. It could be awkward complaining that meat is too well cooked or even burnt in such a restaurant.”

Full story here. 

Chicago, Monday. Police receive a call about a suspicious person in a car outside Carter Funeral Chapels. They go, and find the back door off its hinges. There is no electricity in the building. It transpires, after investigation, that in winter corpses are left in the garage of this funeral home to keep cool; in summer they have frozen waterbottles placed underneath them. Some bodies are stacked on top of each other. Police and firefighters in protective clothing find bones on the roof and a rat problem. 

We never get howling scandals like this in the UK.

Yet we can be sure that there’s really quite a lot of deplorable, corner-cutting mortuary practice going on out there. 

More on this story here, here and here.

Posted by Vale

Every age has a genius, a spirit, a particular character. The Victorians, for example, excelled at sentimentality and three volume novels, while, in ancient Greece, philosophers lounged on street corners making public nuisances of themselves.

But what of our own age? What do we do that defines us? There are lots of candidates of course, but one of them, surely, is our gift for making money out of our great days of ritual and celebration. Christmas of course; All Hallows, or Halloween, as it has become; but, to my mind, our greatest achievement is Easter. Who would have thought, even a few years ago, that you could start selling easter eggs not just before Lent, but before Christmas as well! No one could deny there is a sort of genius at work there.

You’d think that, by now, we’d have covered all the bases, but I think there are still some untapped opportunities. Take Ash Wednesday for example: it’s a quiet time of year (if you overlook the pre-Lenten easter eggs); it’s ancient, long pre-dating Christianity’s colonisation, and the fact that it involves death hasn’t hindered Halloween at all.

In fact it’s a fascinating day: if All Hallows reminds us about the spirits around us, Ash Wednesday challenges us to think about our own mortality. In the lovely words of the King James’ Bible, we are asked to:

‘Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return’ (Genesis 3/9)

And to reinforce the words our forehead’s are daubed with ash.

It’s a wise tradition. Stoics (those pesky Greeks again) said that thinking about our own ending made us less afraid of death. And wouldn’t we feel more keenly alive through the rest of the year if, on this one day, we stand alone on the shore of the wide world ‘and think – till love and fame to nothingness do sink’.

But, as the Hindus would say, this is Kali Yuga, the darkest of dark ages, and we have its spirit of to consider. So – wisdom aside – aren’t the commercial possibilities obvious? If we are thinking about our own death, isn’t Ash Wednesday the perfect day to think about pre-need funeral planning too?

Come on people, there’s a chance being missed here…

Before leaving get to the bar
No one round here makes you pay
Never very good at goodbyes
So gentle shoulder charge
Love you mate

Love you mate

Salford skyline gloom
Always you
Could fly round any corner
But until you do
Love you mate

Hat tip to Sweetpea

“Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.”

Writer Cormac McCarthy 

Unlike most countries, cigarettes are sold in singles in India and most shops that sell them have electric lighters attached to the wall for their customers to use. An anti-smoking campaigner fitted the lighters with a device which plays the Indian death chant every time someone lights a cigarette. “Raam Naam Satya Hai” is chanted when a dead body is carried to the funeral pyre. Most smokers observed in this experiment couldn’t bring themselves to light up.

Update: here’s the YouTube clip:

Source

After washing his eyes reddened by a heavy dose of marijuana, Sadhu Premdas steps into the Bagmati river, looking for some half-burnt logs of wood to light a fire at his place.

Belonging to the Aghori sect of sages, Premdas does not accept fresh firewood distributed by the Pashupati authority: he loves a fire made from logs already used for cremating a body.

Another Baba from Benaras, India, Devananda Das, who arrived in Kathmandu four days ago, has also been collecting logs partially burnt with a body. Under the auspicious setting of the temple at this time of the year, every morning of these Aghori sages begins with the collection of charred logs thrown into the Bagmati after putting out a funeral pyre at Aryaghat.

“We only use logs burnt in the pyre,” Devananda said, basking in the warmth of burning logs on a warm Sunday. “I get divine satisfaction at the warmth emanating from logs already used to cremate bodies.” According to him, Aghoris consider it pious to apply ashes of wood already used in cremation. The Aghori Sadhus, according to Premdas, are “the master of spirits” and using such wood strengthens their control over the spirits.

“People may hate us for our behaviour, but we don’t care,” he says, arranging dreadlocks above his left ear. “This is how we are.” 

Source.

More fascinating info on the Aghori sect here. 

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

Two topics that have inspired lively debate here recently are ritual and business. Comments about the latter reveal many civil funeral celebrants feel their service is undervalued in monetary terms. The going rate, between £120 and £180 a funeral, is deemed inadequate as a business model. This fee, which is unregulated but loosely set to be competitive when compared with clergy fees, makes professional life challenging. It’s a case of market forces squeezing profit margins.

Many in other sectors will sympathise with this scenario. Farmers are often forced to sell their produce to supermarkets at a price that scarcely covers their costs just so the supermarkets can undercut their retail rivals when selling it on to us, the bargain-hungry consumer. Farmers in turn have appealed to the state for subsidies, and diversified in order to make ends meet. Some have cut out the middle man by opening farm shops, charging a premium because their produce is local, fresh, exclusive and any other added value benefits they can attribute to it.

The state of the civil funeral celebrant’s bank balance might also be usefully compared to that of self-employed people in creative fields: the young actor whose sporadic castings don’t equate to a salary and so works in a restaurant as well; the painter who reluctantly sheds his principles to take on more lucrative, commercial work. In the media, I also come across distinct types of freelance journalist: those who churn out copy conveyor belt-style in order to make a living; those who carefully craft just a couple of features a month for personal satisfaction but who are supported financially by partner or private income; those who are so in demand they can command a substantial sum for a weekly column that takes up little of their time.

If regulation or state subsidy are not on the cards, and laissez faire economic forces have perceived injustices, what can celebrants do to improve their lot? If they want to commit themselves full-time to their career vocation, they need to charge more. One commentator in a recent thread estimated it would ‘have to be at least £250, which would mean £25k a year before tax at two funerals a week’.

This might be unfeasible without ongoing marketing drives that convince both public and funeral directors, who are positioned to influence the public in their broader funeral arrangements, of the value of good celebrants: how they spend time with families collaborating on a bespoke service, the enduring, positive results of which justify the premium cost.

The caveat to such marketing is the service can be detailed or simple depending on individual taste. Personalisation is itself a luxury but it can be ether embellished or plain, just as a party planner can organise a champagne reception or barbecue; an interior designer, a bling or rustic home.

Opinion-forming marketing campaigns, like party political campaigns before general elections, either win favour on merit or by digs at the competition or establishment status quo. ‘The clergy are usually phone-only merchants,’ said one commentator. ‘Funeral directors don’t think out of the box and we don’t get a fraction of their fee, or even the cash paid to florists and memorial masons’, said another. These gripes are natural and fine in private, but are perhaps best avoided in broader debate. While civil servants such as nurses win public sympathy when they demand recognition, it’s harder for many other worthy professions to do likewise. Resting actor? On your bike. Overworked priest on subsistence pay who serves the communities of three parish churches instead just one? Little sympathy here, I suspect.

Finally, perhaps ritual, or at least a more formulaic structure, can make funeral planning less time-consuming, and without necessarily taking away valued personalisation. But is there demand for a doubling of funerals even if time on each was saved? Ritualised structure might be a step too far for some, akin to the aforementioned conveyor belt journalist, the sell-out artist, or indeed the clergy with their liturgy. As one commentator said: ‘There’s rather more to a non-religious celebrant’s job than reading a set text from a book and inserting a name here and there’.

posted by Vale

Written by Horace Silver for his father (shown on the Album cover), this was played at Humphrey Littleton’s memorial concert in 2010.