The Good Funeral Guide

3 mins 54 secs

The Free Funeral Service Society was founded by Kyaw Thu, a Burmese film actor and film director. One of the top leading men of Burmese cinema in the 1980s and 1990s, Kyaw Thu continues to star in films and has directed several successful films. Since the early 2000s, Kyaw Thu has devoted much time to do social work for the poor. He is founder and vice president (now President) of the Free Funeral Services Society (FFSS), which provides free funeral services to the poor.

According to a Buddhist monk, “The rising popularity and influence of the FFSS, which relies on private donations among the Burmese public, has worried the junta so much so that in February 2008 it ordered several Rangoon journals not to publish information about the group’s activities, while the year before, its registration renewal was refused by the government until an appeal met with success.” [Source] 

Click the icon in the bottom right-hand corner to bring the film up to full size. 

Kyaw Thu with Aung San Suu Kyi at the 10th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Free Funeral Service Society.

The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition

A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, Maggi Hambling, Graham Harvey, Gary Lachman, Nick Reynolds, and Dignity in Dying.

It’s out in May 2012!

When the GFG went to the London Funeral Exhibition last summer at Epping Woodland Burial Park we met Angie Whitaker, who works at a sister burial ground, Chiltern.  Her husband is buried in the woods there. Angie gave a talk to visitors about her experience of natural burial. I asked her to write it up for the blog, and here it is:

There is an element in all of us that likes to be in control. We work, we plan our birthdays, our holidays, our weddings; it all has to be perfect. Very few of us think of our death, we put it to one side, hope it will go away.

That was me.

Then the worst possible thing happens. My husband is diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. Both of us become very quickly aware that this part of our story will not have a happy ending.

It doesn’t.

It is December 2009, and I have the local doctor talking to me about funerals. Through the haze of unreality I hear him mention a local funeral director, and know this is not what I want. The thought of waiting in a conveyor belt at the local crematorium fills me with dread.

Fortunately I found an advert in the local directory for a Green Funeral Director, rang them, they came to see me. Please tell me I can have a funeral with a difference? I said Keith, my husband, was an artist, a woodsman. At this, a brochure was presented to me. Chiltern Woodland Burial Park. Great, let’s go see it. But I need an unusual coffin. A brochure appears. Brilliant. Cardboard coffins with pictures on.

On a bleak, wet, icy, windy January day I go to the Burial Park. We are met by Peter Taylor, given coffee, kindness and a woodland tour. A tree is chosen, the date confirmed.

The weather worsens. It snows like it never has before. The Woodland Burial Park somehow manages the whole event. A hundred and twenty-five people have battled their way through blizzards and closed roads to stand in awe at our very own Narnia. They gather together, drink wine and talk about Keith, then walk through the trees to find the turquoise-blue coffin with images of a sparrowhawk flying a Sparrowhawk aeroplane, one of Keith’s mad ‘Animals That Travel’ pictures. Keith was a graphic artist and was working on illustrations of animals that travel. He had an idea to put together a little book for Motor Neurone Disease. The pictures included a hippo in a hot air balloon, a jaguar driving a Jaguar car, a freisian cow driving a milk float, and a sparrowhawk bird flying a Sparrowhawk plane.

So many people said to me we had a great day, it was the best funeral we have ever been to. So many people did not know that there is a choice, you can have the exactly the kind of funeral that is right for you, and right for the environment.

I knew that I had got it right.

And afterwards, when we go back to visit, we are always met with kindness.

Our woodland is exactly what the brochure says: a place to celebrate life.

Several hundred people turned up to pay their respects to the popular young man known as “Dougs”, who was carried to the outdoor ceremony in a wooden casket made by family and friends.

Two farm dogs had place of honour next to his casket, which was placed on the deck of a farm truck.

Read it all here. 

Some Masons call their funeral ceremony an Orientation, but these days the service itself can be like a secular ceremony – apart, of course, from the Masonic ‘paraphernalia’.

Masons are a great deal more open about their ceremonies than they used to be, but much of what they do still seems esoteric and mysterious. Borderzine magazine has an interesting article about 93 year old Norman Miller, resident of El Paso, who bebelieves that since he began in 1964 he has carried out well over a thousand Masonic funerals.

In the interview he explains the process:

“We get word from the families of the the funeral director that the family desires to have a gravesite [sic] service. We don our Masonic aprons, our paraphernalia…some of the lodge officers have their jewels on. We form the group and I do the Masonic orientation.

Here’s a short video of Norman describing what he does:

The full article can be found here.

If you are interested Masons in Maryland have provided a video reenactment of the Masonic funeral:

Of course this is America. Is anyone prepared to say whether it is different here in Britain?

Natural burial √

Biodegradable coffin √

Cycle to the burial ground? Well, maybe.

You’ve done all you can to tread lightly on the earth while you’re here and – like the diver who plunges cleanly into the water – you want to make as small a splash as possible when you leave.

But what can you do if you are the problem? What if your body – full of toxins, chemicals and all the detritus of 21st century living – is going to pollute whether you like it or not?

One answer might be decompiculture. We’ve blogged on this before but a recent video from TED gives a fresh insight into the way that mushrooms trained to digest your own body could help clean up the mess you don’t want to leave behind:

The artist involved suggests that this is a journey we should all consider making – not astronauts or aeronauts but decompinauts. Her website is here. What do you think?

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

For better or worse, depending on your viewpoint, you know where you stand with both civil and Catholic funerals – give or take a few 1,000 variations on a theme. However, I’m not sure what to make of this organisation, and would be interested to hear your take on it. For me, the OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation seems to be forging a niche for itself that sits firmly on the fence between civil and religious, claiming to design funeral ceremonies where everyone attending, regardless of faith or views, will feel included.

Acknowledging that a funeral today often includes people attending from different faiths or none, the foundation supplies male and female ministers who have followed a two-year training programme with the Interfaith Seminary. It claims this training allows for the recognition of ‘the inner spiritual truths of the individual [which are also] at the heart of the world’s great faith traditions’. It adds: ‘There are countless paths leading to the One God / Truth / Great Spirit / Source-of-All’.

This is clearly not just another Protestant sect as it’s aiming to be as inclusive of agnostics and non-Christians as it is those uncomfortable with the organised Church. In fact, the reference to ‘God’ above is the only one I could find on its website.

Of its ministry, it says: ‘We aim to be of service to people of all faiths or none’, citing as an example ‘those who are seeking spiritual connection and expression, yet feel uncomfortable with conventional religion’.

It continues: ‘We are not creating a new religion, but filling a growing spiritual gap in modern society. It’s not our aim to convert anyone away from their faith, but to support people who wish to enquire more deeply into their own spiritual tradition and their own soul’.

Whether agnostic or religious, might this approach be comforting to some in the context of funerals?

I have my own views, but I’d be interested to hear thoughts from the civil funeral perspective.

You may remember this post, The Chaos of Meaning, about the photographic essay which Jimmy Edmonds created in commemoration of his son Josh. If you missed it, click the link and go see it; it’s rare that we are lucky enough to post anything so extraordinary and beautiful.

Above is a trailer for a film Jimmy has made about Josh’s funeral. I went to see it earlier this week with; it really is marvellous.

And it complements what Rachel Wallace says in the previous post about the importance of making a record of a funeral.

The coffin, in case you wonder, was handmade by Jimmy with expert help. 

At the weekend we’ll post another film made by Jimmy about life, death, ageing and more. He’s a Bafta winner, is Jimmy. It shows. 

Below is some text from the BeyondGoodbye.co.uk website.

Joshua Harris-Edmonds 
23 May 1988 — 16 January 2011
Forever in our hearts and minds

On 16th January 2011 Joshua Amos Harris Edmonds was tragically killed in a road traffic accident in Vietnam. Joshua was 3 months into a trip of a lifetime travelling across South East Asia. 

He was 22 years of age.  

A life cut short, but a life lived well.

In honour of our Josh and as a memorial to his life, Beyond Goodybe, the website, will continue Josh’s inspiration on others and offer a place to remember, to pay tribute and share their love for Josh with others. 

This site also houses the book ‘Released’ and the film ‘Beyond Goodbye’, family tributes to our Josh and also perspectives on death and the grieving process. 

If you’d like to get in touch, please do: info@beyondgoodbye.co.uk

Posted by Vale

“So a few weeks before Bob died, my 15-year-old son, Harper, and I made a coffin out of plywood and deck screws from Home Depot…We routed rabbet joints for a tight construction.
“I guess we wouldn’t want him falling out the bottom,” Harper said.
“That would reflect poorly on our carpentry skills,” I agreed.

Max Alexander has written a fascinating account of two contrasting funerals. One, a home funeral, for his father in law (Bob, on the left in the photograph) the second, more conventional, for his father (Jim, on the right in the photograph). His description of what happened is warm, intimate and very moving:

“When Bob died, on a cold evening in late November, Sarah, her sister Holly and I gently washed his body with warm water and lavender oil as it lay on the portable hospital bed in the living room. (Anointing a body with aromatic oils, which moisten the skin and provide a calming atmosphere for the living, is an ancient tradition.) I had been to plenty of funerals and seen many a body in the casket, but this was the first time I was expected to handle one. I wasn’t eager to do so, but after a few minutes it seemed like second nature. His skin remained warm for a long time—maybe an hour—then gradually cooled and turned pale as the blood settled. While Holly and I washed his feet, Sarah trimmed his fingernails. (No, they don’t keep growing after death, but they were too long.) We had to tie his jaw shut with a bandanna for several hours until rigor mortis set in, so his mouth would not be frozen open; the bandanna made him look like he had a toothache.

We worked quietly and deliberately, partly because it was all new to us but mainly out of a deep sense of purpose. Our work offered the chance to reflect on the fact that he was really gone. It wasn’t Bob, just his body.

Bob’s widow, Annabelle, a stoic New Englander, stayed in the kitchen during most of these preparations, but at some point she came in and held his hands. Soon she was comfortable lifting his arms and marveling at the soft stillness of her husband’s flesh. “Forty-four years with this man,” she said quietly.”

The full account of both funerals can be found here.

Max took inspiration from an organisation called Crossings, that acts as a home funeral and green burial resource center. Crossing, they say, exists “to foster the integration of dying and after-death care back into our family and community life.” Their site can be found here.

Posted by Belinda Forbes

From the moment I had booked myself onto a course to become a secular funeral celebrant, it started happening.  Like when you get married, get pregnant or get a puppy.  Suddenly everywhere you turn, it’s about weddings, what the expectant mum shouldn’t eat or drink, and how you should never play tug of war with a puppy.  Oops!  Too late.

So, three years ago, having resigned from my job as a teacher, I was looking forward to my course on writing and conducting non-religious funerals when I read an article in the Sunday Times.  To sum it up, the non-religious journalist Minette Marrin extols the virtues of tradition and religion for funeral ceremonies.

http://www.minettemarrin.com/minettemarrin/2008/08/im-not-religiou.html

I was so annoyed, I wrote to her: 

Your article, “I’m not religious, but there’s something about funerals” makes the point that non-religious funerals do not quite hit the mark and are not a proper end.    Most funerals I have attended were Christian ceremonies, and in almost every case the deceased was not a practising Christian.  The passages from the Bible have been anything but comforting for the majority of non-religious people in the congregation.  At my grandfather’s funeral, a dreadful passage from Revelations was read out.  At my grandmother’s funeral, the vicar referred to her as ‘Kay’ throughout – her name was Kathleen!  …We cannot all have a handsome Victorian Gothic church and Harold Pinter reading a poem.  But we can choose a fitting farewell whether religious or not.

She replied:

…Each to her own, I guess, as far as funerals go.  I think it’s very hard at the last moment, in the middle of grief, to make decisions, and if no one has taken them before, then convention is good to fall back on. I think the words of the prayer book are very beautiful, and give me a sense of connection with the past and other funerals, but I entirely take your point.

With best wishes

Minette Marrin

Although I was impressed that she had taken the trouble to reply, I was still annoyed.  However, three years later, I look back at my pre-celebrant self and smile.  I am annoyed no longer.  If an atheist wants a traditional Anglican service in his village church, why not?  If a Roman Catholic wants to be cremated and asks me, an atheist celebrant, to conduct the service, why not?

And thank you Minette for replying!  In many years to come, may you have the send-off you have asked for.