The Good Funeral Guide

You saw the news that Christopher Hitchens has cancer? I suppose we all wonder how we would feel and conduct ourselves were the news to be broken to us, so there is something compelling about listening to and observing someone else for whom the dread summons has come. Here are some extracts from what Hitchens wrote for Vanity Fair:

I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning last June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying cement. I could faintly hear myself breathe but could not manage to inflate my lungs. My heart was beating either much too much or much too little. Any movement, however slight, required forethought and planning. It took strenuous effort for me to cross the room of my New York hotel and summon the emergency services

…

The notorious stage theory of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, whereby one progresses from denial to rage through bargaining to depression and the eventual bliss of “acceptance,” hasn’t so far had much application in my case. In one way, I suppose, I have been “in denial” for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can’t see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it’s all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me. Rage would be beside the point for the same reason. Instead, I am badly oppressed by a gnawing sense of waste. I had real plans for my next decade and felt I’d worked hard enough to earn it.

…

Against me is the blind, emotionless alien, cheered on by some who have long wished me ill. But on the side of my continued life is a group of brilliant and selfless physicians plus an astonishing number of prayer groups.

Not that Hitch is turning to God, of course. Not all Christians are praying for him, either. And a lot of his political enemies are delighted. One of them concluded a blog post thus: “Happy dying, Hitch, you sick, seedy, disreputable fucking bastard.” No stranger to controversy, our Hitch.

Read the entire article here.

If there’s any ordinary person worse off than yourself, you’ll find them in the problem pages of newspapers and magazines. Do you seek comfort in problem pages? A prurient frisson? An incredulous giggle? Much depends probably on the demographic catered for by the publication. The further downmarket you go, the juicier, sexier and more exotically sordid the emotional quagmire. You get none of that on the problem page of the establishment Spectator magazine. The problems which most baffle our upper echelons concern, it seems, delicate matters of etiquette. Problem solver Mary shows her petitioners how to extricate themselves from invidious social situations in ways which would have drawn gasps from old man Machiavelli himself.

When I was convalescing last month, sitting around idly reading magazines and sipping iced water, I experienced a whim and wrote to the Spectator’s Mary about a problem which exercises many funeral hosts and readers of this blog: what to call the ‘do’ afterwards. This is what I (mendaciously) wrote:

Dear Mary,

My  mother  is presently succumbing to old age and an attendant cancer. She is fortified by serene courage and cheered by the arrangements she is making for the party after her funeral; every day brings fresh finishing touches. But what to call it? We observed that you recently acceded without demur to the term ‘wake’. Inasmuch as this applies to a vigil held over a body before a funeral, we have rejected it, along with everything else we can think of including, of course, the intolerable ‘reception’ and the unbearable ‘refreshments’, leaving us only with the unobjectionable if inadequate ‘do’.  With time fast running out, can you gallop to our rescue?

My letter was published (to my inordinate pride), and received this reply, which I think helpful:

Why not refer to the event as a ‘remembrance party’? This has a bittersweet poignancy and is perfectly dignified. Readers are welcome to submit rival suggestions.

To date, no Speccie reader has submitted anything better.

Can you?

Here’s an interesting story from the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard. These are some extracts:

CIRENCESTER Hospital has closed its mortuary to avoid a massive refurbishment bill and awarded the service to a local funeral directors.

The Tetbury Road hospital, decided to shut down its mortuary earlier this year after discovering it would need a major refurbishment to stay fit for use estimated at hundreds of thousands of pounds. It was given permission by the NHS Trust to outsource its mortuary service.

The NHS hospital put the contract out to tender and all three Cirencester funeral directors- Cowley and Son, A Slade and Son, and Packer and Slade – submitted bids.

The three-year contract has been awarded to Cowley and Son, on Victoria Road. Robert Orford, part-owner Cowley and Sons, said he was pleased with the new arrangement  … “It is a great thing for the hospital too because their current mortuary is unfit for use so they have saved vast sums of money from not having to refurbish it.” … Mr Orford stressed that the agreement would not force families to choose Cowley and Sons as their funeral directors. “Bereaved families have a free choice,” he said. “We don’t have a monopoly on people who die at Cirencester hospital.” He said Cowley and Sons would not receive payment from the NHS for the service. “We have competitors in the town and we have to do all we can to get a step ahead,” he added. “This could be a great opportunity for us.”

There are troubling issues here. How much would it really cost Cirencester hospital to refurbish its mortuary? All it needs is cooling equipment, a serviceable floor and tiled walls. Twenty grand, tops? Hundreds of thousands??

Then there’s the NHS assertion that it asked all three funeral directors in the town to tender. I spoke on the phone to A Slade and Son. They say they were never asked. Dunno about the other undertaker’s — they’re Co-op.

Then there’s the Cowley and Sons’ zero-sum tender. Why on earth would they do that? Philanthropy? Hardly. As with a coroner’s contract, they know that the undertaker with the body is likely to get the funeral. Habeas corpse.

Do you like this any more than me? Redeeming features, please. If none, then any features you please to point out or reinforce.

The following is taken from Ben Heald’s blog and so much speaks for itself that I don’t need to add another word:

Nothing can prepare you for losing close family suddenly; and I don’t want to dwell on the personal loss.  What I’d like to talk about is the learning I’ve taken from the experience of a family working together as a team to plan and carry through a funeral event.

The key intervention came from the funeral director (Andrew Smith in Macclesfield), who we found online in the Good Funeral Guide.  Just over 12 hours after Mum died, my sister Kate & I were in his office and he told us we mustn’t rush things, the funeral was principally for the living not the dead and the more the family got involved the better they’d feel about everything – 3 crucial differences from the approach we’d taken with my father’s funeral 17 years ago.

Mum wasn’t a church goer, and taken together with Andrew’s wise counsel, we quite quickly decided on the format.  Clearly funerals are personal, and there is absolutely no sense of being prescriptive, but this was our take on the perfect funeral:

• We tried to speak to everyone in Mum’s address book to talk to them personally; even though we knew many of them would already have heard.
• Before the funeral we spent time together for 3 days as an extended family (of 11) at Mum’s house.
• The night before the funeral we stayed at the B&B accommodation on the barn complex, so were able to rehearse the night before and morning of the funeral.

• We held it in a barn in the countryside away from main roads with a lake right outside (in fact traditionally a wedding venue).
• We dug through all her old photos and had 20 of them scanned and blown up onto A2 boards.
• We found the old cine films (that had been lost for 30 years) and had them transferred to DVD.
• Six of Mum’s teenage grandchildren carried the coffin into the barn from the hearse.  To better prepare them we’d taken them all along to see her in the Chapel of Rest two days beforehand.
• We selected a mixture of sacred and secular readings all read by the family.
• We asked Mum’s cousin aged 79 to introduce the service and the various hymns/readings.
• A friend of Mum’s played the piano accompaniment.
• My son sang Gerald Finzi’s ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun’.
• My brother Jonny sang a Native American Quechua spiritual.
• Jonny & I played a duet on the piano – En Bateau from Debussy’s Petite Suite.
• I delivered the address, which we’d all worked on together with inputs from Mum’s sister Judith.
• Before the service we played Bach’s Goldberg variations and the coffin came into Rutter’s For the Beauty of the Earth.
• Mum was actually cremated the following day, but no one attended (we described it when asked as a private cremation); which meant we could immediately start talking to everyone with tea, cake and champagne, surrounded by the gorgeous blown up photos.

As Andrew had advised, by getting involved and because we’d taken our time, the focus was on her life not her death.  The children also told us they felt they now knew her as a person, not just as a grandmother.  And because we’d worked together as an extended team, the bonds between us all have been strengthened.

So my recommendation would be not to specify what you want at your funeral, let the next generation work out together what’s right.  Just as in the business world, you shouldn’t micromanage your teams.

We’ve been busy moving house on our beloved Isle of Portland, from my old bachelor pad to something a little bigger, and someday we shall retire there. The new place is everything a Portland house ought to be: twenty-four inch thick walls which render neighbours inaudible, and a handsome garden enclosed by limestone walls. We are very pleased.

We are also unusually conscious of its former occupant, Florrie Ansell. She was 98 when she died in March. Except for the last two years of her life, which she spent in a care home, she had lived there since she was born. It was her father’s house before her. When Florrie married Alec, she moved him in. When her father died in 1955 the first thing she and Alec did was install electric light, something her father had always taken against.

We are finding out more and more about Florrie. She taught piano on a little upright in the back room. If a pupil played especially well he or she was allowed upstairs to sit at the grand and talk to the cats. Florrie was always beautifully turned out, and she looked after her house beautifully, too. It’s gone a bit downhill lately and the roof is leaking a bit, but her pride in its appearance is plain to see. Her niece has asked us to hurry up and paint the front door and the window frames: “She would be turning in her grave to see them as they are now.” In truth, they’re not bad – but we have made them a priority.

Is Florrie’s spirit palpable? Not as a disembodied presence, not to us. But the house has a perceptible serenity, and we feel a strong responsibility to be respectful of Florrie and the feelings of all her friends in what we do to it. So the art deco fireplaces will stay, and the stained glass panel of the little Dutch boy in the hall door, together with the art deco bath, the sort of bath Bertie Wooster would have splashed about in.

Usually it’s only aristocratic piles that commemorate their former occupants. We know we have a duty to commemorate Florrie. It’s a duty we accept as a privilege.

We are the left-handmost of the lighter three-storey houses at the back of the photo.

Requiem Video for David J Catts, Dead Mate from Kim Reddin on Vimeo.

David Catts, a man much given to tomfoolery, embodied all manner of beautiful imperfections. Aged 41, married for just eight months, he fell in July 2009 from a 17th storey balcony in what his father described as “skylarking gone tragically wrong.” He’d had a few drinks. His funeral addressed his beautiful imperfections with rare honesty and love. People said what needed to be said.

This blog is on holiday for the next week, after which it will be moving house. Posts will be sporadic. Happy days, all of you. And thank you for following. I really appreciate it.

Two interesting new websites for you today. Both are labours of love, and both are run by nice, intelligent people.

The first is homegrown ScatteringAshes.co.uk. It’s a resource for people who, once they’ve got the ashes back from the funeral director in one of those plastic cartons, wonder what on earth to do with them. It can take them a long time to get their heads around it. It can take a long time, as a family, to agree. And, of course, they wonder what their options are. So Richard Martin, impelled by his own experience of bereavement, has created for them a sort of Ashes Central where they can survey their options and pick up some good tips about what sort of ceremony might best suit them. In his own words: “The site was born out of experience and a desire to tell people that they can celebrate a life in their own way. Often people can hold onto ashes for a couple of years or more before they decide what to finally do. By which time the funeral director is not at hand to guide you. Hopefully we can.” It’s well informed, comprehensive and a work in progress. Do write to Richard, if you feel the urge. He’s a ready learner who wants to do the best he can. His is a good idea and I think it deserves to do well. He runs a nice little blog, too. Well worth subscribing to.

The second site is US-based. It is the creation of Felix Jung, like Richard an industry outsider, who is much influenced by the work and thinking of Thomas Lynch. It’s called DeadAdvice.com and is reminiscent of the site established by Bill Drummond, MyDeath.net, where people can plan their own funerals. Whereas MyDeath is now a mature site, and has been infiltrated to an extent by jokers and drunks, DeadAdvice is very young and as yet has few postings. It is a place where people can write letters which address the Big Questions. In Felix’s words:

“Am I a good person? Have I been living a meaningful life? Am I spending the time I’ve been given wisely and well? In trying to answer those questions, I began thinking of the advice people have given me… and of the advice I might give others.

“Every letter on Dead Advice begins with the same first sentence: “Now that I’m dead, I want to tell you a few things.”

“Imagine, for a moment, that you have just died. If you had to look back over the arc of your life as it stands today, what stories would you tell? What lessons would you share, what things might you regret or confess?”

I’m really going to enjoy watching these two unfold.

ScatteringAshes.co.uk

DeadAdvice.com

In his excellent book Curtains, Tom Jokinen quotes US undertaker BT Hathaway on the subject of home funerals. Hathaway reckons a home funeral suits “the 5 per cent who have money, time, resources, education and political and emotional will.” With preconditions like these, how come it ever got as high as 5 per cent? Hathaway concludes: “It’s poetic, but the truth is, I don’t know that many poetic families.”

Poetic? I’m not sure about this elegant disparagement. Jokinen draws his own wrong conclusion: “This is of course the same argument for why people eat at Pizza Hut instead of milling their own wheat and breeding their own pepperoni cattle.” Here we have an overstatement. You don’t have to grow a tree to make the coffin, neither do you have to plant your own jute to make the lining.

But convenience is a seductive thing. And time is of the essence. A dead body is potentially a chaotic, eruptively ugly thing; it makes a lot of sense to call the experts in and keep a safe distance. And we reflect here that, when people die, those who loved them urgently want the body back from wherever in the world it conked out. They want this with a fervour which arguably defies reason. This may be not so pronounced in the UK, where dead soldiers were buried where they fell as late as the Falklands war. But in the US the historic clamour to have the body returned led to a stream of dug-up coffins coming back, once hostilities were over, from the battlefields of the first and second world wars.

So: distance matters. The body must come home. Propinquity is good. But closing the distance and engaging with that body? NO!  At the last, we need our cordon sanitaire, cowards that we are. Here we record the loss of the lesson of the teachings of all the great religions that the dead body should be treated as an object of veneration.

At the end of his book Jokinen begins to reap the harvest of his experiences as an undertaker’s understrapper. Here’s what he says:

“Instead of deflecting a confrontation with death through commerce, you face it, fill the hole by hand, and then get on with the hard work of mourning, knowing that instead of passively choosing an object from a catalogue and subcontracting the ritual to someone else, you’ve acted, taken a stand, not against dirt, in fact, but in favour of it. An act with a meaning.”

Later the same day he meets his wife for supper. “I have seen the future,” I tell her. “And it’s Jewish.”

In other words, he finds the middle ground between doing it all (the home funeral) and doing nothing: giving in to “the impulse to fix grief through shopping.”

A lot of religious law has to do with physical and emotional health. Much law relating to diet has been rendered obsolete by simple advances in hygiene. Leviticus is for that reason looking decidedly old hat these days, and pigs unfairly deprecated. But a number of Jewish practices, however ritualised, retain their (thank you, Mr Hathaway) poetic value because they promote healthy grieving.

Sitting shiva, for example. Taking yourself out of the loop, telling your employer to get stuffed and staying at home for either seven or three days after the burial. Time exclusively spent getting your head around it but, importantly, time which is bounded. Got to be good.

And then there’s the work of the chevra kadisha, the little community team that performs the tahara – the ritual preparation of Jews for burial. This involves the right prayers, of course, and also the washing and dressing of the body with immense respect, concluding with an apology to it should anything done have offended it.

I’m not making a pitch here for the return of the splendid and formidable laying-out woman. All I would observe is that, if a dead body is held precious, then it makes good emotional sense to play a part, under the eye of experts, in getting it ready for burial.

There’s a very good little video film which talks about the work of the chevra kadisha and shows the tahara performed in a funeral director’s mortuary. I’d embed it if I had the skills. If you want to skip straight to the tahara, start 6 ½ minutes in.

Click here.

It’s time to introduce you to my friend CrabbyOldFart. He’s a silver blogger in the US whose beef is with young people (he loathes them). He posts weekly, on Mondays, and brings much merriment to a day which can so often have the feel of an ordeal about it.

This week, he brings his no-nonsense mind to bear on how to plan your own memorial service.  Here are some extracts:

Last week I attended a service comprised of 3 old people, a rented minister and 600 egg salad sandwiches. It was a damned sad turnout and a waste of good egg salad too. If you do nothing else you need to ensure that you attract a crowd – it’s the last party you’ll attend and you don’t want it to be an unmitigated flop.

I recommend providing incentives…

…

I don’t know how many times I’ve gone to a service and been subjected to some barefoot, hippie minister with a pony tail rattling on about a senior he’s never even met … I’ve pre-selected my minister and you can rest assured that he’ll be an aged, wrinkly white man with a scowl on his lips and an Old Testament in his hand. And if he doesn’t know me personally – that’s fine, I’ve already written the sermon for him.

…

There won’t be any music at my service. This is a memorial not a rock concert for Christ’s sake. I don’t need people waving lighters in the air or doing super-tokes to the strains of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” or “Only the Good Die Young.”

If there must be background noise, I want a Halloween sound effects tape full of chain rattling, howling wind and unsettled moaning – it’s dramatic and much more in keeping with the occasion.

…

I’ve selected who will speak, instructed them on what I expect them to say and have provided them with amusing but largely fictional stories from my past.  As a condition of speaking, I’ve made it clear that they need to submit their eulogies to me now for review, editing and final script approval.

Read the entire post here at The Problem With Young People Today Is…

Have you read Eulogy magazine? A number of you have asked me, and you have probably been expecting me to cough up a pov. But at more than £3 a throw it is way beyond my stayin’alive budget.

Yet we ought to know about it, need to know about it. Would you like to review it for readers of this blog? Please, please do!

Write something and send it to me: charles@goodfuneralguide.co.uk