The Good Funeral Guide

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!

Ozzy Osborne is an agony uncle at the Sunday Times. Here’s a recent interaction: 

Dear Dr Ozzy, is it bad form to shop for your own coffin? (I ask this as a cancer patient with very particular tastes.)
Anonymous 

Ozzy replies:

It ain’t bad form, but there’s gotta be something better to do with your time if you’re expecting the worse. I mean, it’s not like you’ll get much of an opportunity to admire your brass handles and velvet padding after the funeral. You’ll be a gonner! If you wanna go shopping, Dr Ozzy’s advice is to buy something you can enjoy while you’re still breathing.

Sunday Times 8 Jan 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.

Martin and Julie Chatfield run one of Britain’s loveliest natural burial grounds. 

Yesterday’s funeral featured this hand-painted cardboard coffin. 

It was sourced by David Albery, of Exeter and District Funeral Services (a GFG recommended funeral director), who was looking after Catherine. The family took it home and painted it, then handed it back to David, who did the needful. On  the day of the funeral he brought Catherine to Martin and Julie’s log cabin at the burial ground, and left. 

The family arrived and decorated the cabin. Martin showed them how to carry and lower the coffin, and pointed out the grave, which was bedded with lovely bright wheat straw. He then left them to it.

A little later,  humanist celebrant Alison Orchard arrived. There was a ceremony, then the coffin was borne by members of the family to the grave. A few last words were spoken and the coffin lowered. 

Alison left. The family had a cuppa and a bite to eat back at the log cabin before departing.

So ended a funeral owned by a self-empowered family, facilitated by sensitive, hands-off professionals.

The person who painted the coffin wants it to be an inspiration to others.

So do, please, leave a comment. He’ll be reading this and deserves to know how lovely it is. 

Click the pictures to bring them up to full size. 

Find Martin and Julie’s burial ground, Crossways, here. 

Find David Albery here. 

Most people end up at the GFG through a web search using some variant of  ’coffin prices’ or ‘where can i buy a coffin’. Ranking a lot higher than you might think is the search term ‘viking funeral’. It only goes to show what a grip the idea of a Viking funeral has on the imaginations of so many. There is a big difference between what Vikings did and what people think they did, of course, but no matter. The longship is at the centre of it. Water, often. And flames, of course. 

Vic Fearn is the company that makes Crazy Coffins to order. From 20-29 January they will be displaying some of their finest and craziest at the South Bank Centre, London, alongside coffins made by the legendary Pa Joe in Ghana, where crazy coffins are much more mainstream. Full details here. Crazy Coffins say “What helps to sell a crazy coffin in the UK is the English sense of humour”. 

We thought you’d like to see one of Crazy Coffins’ Viking coffins being made, followed by some of the coffins they displayed earlier this year in Besancon, France.  Find the Crazy Coffins website here. 

“REMEMBERING JOSH” is a film that records the life of our son Josh, as it was remembered at his funeral early in 2011. Josh Edmonds died in a road accident in while traveling South East Asia in January 2011. He was 22 years old. Our film is both a tribute to him, with many wonderful musical contributions and anecdotes, as well as a reflection on what it has meant to us to organize a fairly ambitious event in such a short space of time. Over 300 people attended, many of who were meeting for the first time having come from different parts of Josh’s life. We found that organising the funeral ourselves without recourse to a traditional funeral director, was of immense value as we struggled to come to terms with our loss. We’d like to thank all those who helped and supported us, and without whom this event would not have been possible.

Here’s the full film of Josh’s funeral made by his parents, Jimmy and Jane. James Showers characterises a good funeral as “a collision of grief and beauty”.  No one has ever expressed it better. James is the ‘non traditional’ funeral director in this film. 

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