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!

There’s an interesting review in the London Review of Books (14 April) of After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver by Norman Cantor. Here are just a few snapshots from the review by Steven Shapin. It’s not available online unless you hand over a wad at the subscription roadblock.

In the modern secular idiom the dead human body is just rapidly decaying meat, gristle, bone, fat and fluid. It has no consciousness of its circumstances … and can have no interest in its fate … The only value to be assigned to the corpse is its break-up value.

But those who affect this hard-headedness are rarely consistent in maintaining it. In one version of soft-headedness we seem to set a zero or even negative value on the corpse, since few of us try to realise its cash potential and most of us set aside significant sums just to dispose of it.

Secular modernists many of us may be, but we inhabit a culture whose institutionalised practices of death and the disposal of dead bodies have been shaped by beliefs that are neither modern nor secular.

[Rights of the corpse] proceed from the incoherence of our cultural attitudes to the corpse. We don’t think of it as a living agent, and we don’t think of it simply as a sack of chemicals, but as something which still has a measure of agency associated with it … Culturally we recognise the recently dead body of a friend or relative as some version of them: death does not immediately detach their personhood from their remains.

Cantor invites secularists who affect indifference as to what is done with their corpse to imagine how they’d feel if told their dead bodies would be dragged naked through the streets with a sign bearing their name and then fed to the pigs.

It’s a good point. But I find it very easy to get my head around the idea of direct cremation – sans violation, flames not pigs – followed by a corpse-free commemorative event, and so do an increasing number of other people, especially in the US. I’m very surprised that a modern secular country like Britain hasn’t taken to it far more readily.

I know a number of you drop in around this time (10.30 am) hoping there may be a new post because you need a little light displacement activity. Well, I’ve got you something that’s anything but little and light. Two short films here by Angeline Gragasin starring/narrated by Caitlin Doughty “documenting the life of a mortuary professional as she sets out to revolutionize the death industry one corpse at a time.”

The Ecstasy of Decay is a series of original videos produced by The Universal Order of the Good Death. The title comes from the concept that there is beauty in the human corpse doing what it is meant to: decompose, rot, decay, etc. Caitlin and Angeline will continue to create these videos throughout 2011 with the help of members of the funeral industry and other dedicated members of the Order.

Wonderful work here. I hope you will enjoy and admire them as much as I did. Find more of Angeline Gragasin’s work here.

ECSTASY OF DECAY №1: Your Mortician from Angeline Gragasin on Vimeo.

ECSTASY OF DECAY №2: The American Corpse from Angeline Gragasin on Vimeo.

KEYZER, Jacques (Jack) C.L.

October 15, 1926 – January 27, 2011.

It is with the deepest regret and extreme sadness that we announce the passing of Jack Keyzer, beloved husband to Kay, grand-father, father and dear friend. Born and raised in Brussels, Belgium, Jack and his family emmigrated to South Africa when he was 13 years old. Jack was a Rotarian for 50 years, and after emmigrating to Canada in 1985, he joined the Victorian Rotary Club, and subsequently became the Commodore of the International Yachting Fellowship of Rotarians.

At Jack’s request there will be no funeral or formal service, and flowers are greatfully declined. A get-together in Jack’s memory will be arranged in due course.

Every time I read the often excellent obits in the Times Colonist of Victoria, British Columbia, I wonder if this is going to take off in the UK. See how many unfuneral-ed deaths there are this week, and what people intend to do to commemorate their dead person.

A survey of this blog’s favourite obits’ page in the Times Colonist in Victoria, on the west coast of Canada, yields features of interest.

12 deaths are recorded this week. So far as I can see, there’s not a single funeral among them. The breakdown reveals: 3 celebrations of life; 2 memorial services; 3 no service of any kind; 3 private gatherings; 1 not specified.

I wonder if the spirit in which these obits are written is informed by the fact that there will be no funeral?

I am struck by one, in particular, which addresses not the readers but the dead person. It concludes: “At your request, we will have a family gathering in your honour late summer in Cumberland.”

Read them all here.

Nick Gandon operates the UK’s first and, so far as I know, only dedicated direct cremation service. Here is the comment he left on this post from a few days ago, and which you might have missed. I first wrote about Nick here.

When I started out in the world of funerals, they were just that little bit less complicated, and the “big groups” just didn’t exist, (with maybe the exception of the Great Southern Group).   Even the Co-Ops were still in “bite-size” individual chunks of local business.

In terms of evolution, 1970 was not that long ago, but in terms of business, thats another story.

Things were simple, costs were realistic – a “regular” cremation cost between £170 – £190 depending on the catering.  Few firms thought of offering pipers, doves, fireworks, novelty hearses etc., and most funeral services had humble premises – with a chapel of rest at a chosen few.  The Austin princess motor hearse was King.

Then along came big business and public expectation, driven by “what America does today”, and health and safety costs, profit margins, national advertising, working time directives etc etc.

Now, I’ve always supported the “is there anything else I can do for you?” approach of a conscientious Funeral Director, but, by segmenting the choice of Basic, Traditional and wherever else grades/costs of funerals, there obviously has to be a point where the FD draws the line.

It could be argued that in their haste to outdo Smith Bros down the road, Miggins Bros Undertakers have created a financial rod for their own back, and so on across the UK.  The new premises may be palatial, but the cost inevitably goes on the funeral bill.

Local authorities set the cremation and burial costs, private enterprise follows – and therein lies the largest chunk of profit in the funeral account.  A “sacred cow” which is arguably a bit of a scandal.  The profit created by a council-run crematorium is substantial.

By getting caught-up in the business rat race, most FDs have adopted the “grow or disappear” ethos.  They probably have little other choice.  Their accounts will reflect that situation.

Ironic, therefore, that a growing number of “funeral buyers” actually seek the opposite of the “monster” that modern trend has created.

Something “dignified and very simple” is a request that I hear more often these days.

When comparing and justifing the costs of providing the elements of a funeral, few people outside the funeral profession can have the slightest idea of just how many factors come into play.

Some FDs have built a business aimed at the more humble of us, with day-to-day costs that match.  There are firms that aim their business to extract as much wonga from the public as they can possibly get away with.

The one thing these firms have in common is the fact that their true costs for any individual portion of their service will not be the same.  Thus, it’s virtually impossible to compare true like-for-like figures between Undertakers.

The writer that compares the costs of a £30 taxi ride with the cost of providing a hearse for the same journey is, alas, not thinking through the implications of his/her comparison.

Yes, things can be provided for a heck of a lot less than at present, but reality has to be part of the deal.  It costs serious money to provide the elements of a funeral – whether a firms provides for 100 funerals a month, or just 2.

I personally think that the funeral businesses in the UK have, to a degree, lost their way.     By trying to be “all things to all people” they have created an impossible rod for their own backs – though for arguably all the right and proper reasons.

My ethos is “keep it simple”.

Nick adds, in a further comment, these words in response to Jonathan’s assertion that “Funeral directors aren’t set up to cater for direct cremation because the demand is almost nil.”

It is true that as individual firms, few traditional FDs will receive enquiries for direct cemations on a regular basis.

You may agree, or not, that because there is little profit in direct cremation, as opposed to the traditional funeral, there is little incentive for FDs to actively promote this method of disposition.

Because we specialize in providing the service, our costs are appropriately less than would otherwise be the case, and we pass those savings on to our clients.

You also wrote “I’d guess a reasonable fee for direct cremation from an established funeral director would be around £1800-£2000″.

Would it be a surprise to learn that one of London’s premier and most respected FD’s (established circa 170 years) offers such a service for £1182 (inc your disbursement figures) albeit on a local basis.   Our charges for the same service would be £1147.

Direct cremation will never be the first and obvious choice for all families, but the growing interest by “thinking people” in this choice of funeral outlines a trend away from tradition.

We are more than happy to provide a cost effective choice for families, whilst acknowledging that traditional funerals are, on the whole, reasonably priced and good value in the UK.

Nick talks about ‘thinking people’. He’s talking, I guess, about the same sort of intellectuals who, years ago, championed cremation when it was reckoned barbaric. To opt for no funeral, or for a celebration of life, without the costly and distracting presence of a dead body is entirely consistent with atheist beliefs, and with the beliefs of any who subscribe to the duality of body and spirit. When the playwright Arthur Miller was asked if he’d be attending the funeral of his ex-wife, Marilyn Monroe, he replied: “Why would I? She won’t be there.”

Thank you very much, Nick, for going to all this trouble! We are indebted to you (metaphorically, I stress!)

It is with a heavy-hearted sense of duty that I record this beastly and deplorable allegation against Co-operative Funeralcare. You can find the full version at MoneySavingExpert.com.

Don’t use co-operative funeralcare directors they are disgusting …They failed to complete the legal documents correctly they put the wrong funeral date on the documents … We were refused entry into the crematorium chapel and were left outside in the cold distressed and in total shock, the funeral directors were an absolute disgrace they were too busy blaming the crematoria staff and they in turn were blaming the funeral directors. They threw the flowers into my mums hearse and put her photo in on its side! they showed us no respect or help at all just told us to go back to our cars because the service would not go ahead today. It was only after myself and my family refused to move and told them to get the police that they started to accept that they would have to do something so the service could go ahead. DO NOT USE THE CO-OPERATIVE FUNERAL GROUP!!!!!

Here is an all-too-familiar complaint from the Guardian:

I had problems with the accounts section of Co-operative Funeralcare. When I booked the funeral I said that I would not be able to pay for it until probate had been granted. I was told that would be fine provided I kept the accounts section informed. On the day, and before, the staff involved with the funeral were brilliant. Afterwards I began getting threatening letters from the accounts department. I explained what was happening, but the threatening letters continued, including threats of Court Action and referral to debt collectors … Obviously no company would survive if it was not paid for it’s services, but I had expected a more human approach from Co-operative Funeralcare accounts department, not just communication with a computer.

Also from the Guardian, a case of an unaccountably expensive funeral, even after taking into account the fact that the only charge the writer saved himself was the cost of a celebrant:

In the last 12 months, I have sadly lost my Mum and my wife. Mum’s funeral in South London cost £1480 (inc VAT). My wife’s funeral in Fenland cost £2950 (inc Vat). In both cases we did not make use of a vicar, but conducted the service at the crematorium myself. The only ‘extra’ was another doctor’s certificate needed in the case of my wife. We had no headstones or plaques and no announcements in the newspapers. Included in the Fenland charge was £357 for a vehicle to travel 22 miles from the undertaker’s to the crematorium. I felt , and still do feel, very ripped off … The company we used in Fenland had been taken over by the Co-Op, but hadn’t told anybody.

The following, from the Independent, are not Co-op stories. But there is a moral in them for all funeral directors, because they are going to encounter more and more demand, especially from atheists, for direct cremation:

It was my aunt’s misfortune to die on Maundy Thursday, less than 24 hours before the longest bank holiday of the year. She had donated her body to medical science … But when the day came, her donation was, maddeningly, refused … My uncle and I discussed what to do. We agreed to go for the simplest option, in accordance with what we believed would have been her wishes. I began making enquiries. I phoned six funeral directors and asked them to quote for a cremation. In London, a 45-minute slot at a crematorium costs around £500, but if you are prepared to accept an early morning appointment – 9am or 9.30am – the charge drops to less than £200. In addition, you must pay the fees of two doctors to confirm the death, amounting together to £147 … The quotes I received from the funeral directors ranged from £1,500 to £2,000. I did some arithmetic. Allowing £200 for the cremation, £150 for the doctors’ signatures and £150 for a cardboard coffin (at cost) came to £500 in all. The task for the funeral director was to collect the body from the hospital – St Mary’s, Paddington – and take it to the crematorium (Golders Green, Marylebone, Islington or – the cheapest – Mortlake). For the living, the cost of this journey by taxi would be about £30. For the dead, it turns out, it is £1,000. Dead unlucky, you could say. Next time, I plan to hire an estate car, buy a coffin and do the job myself.

And this:

My father died in 2008. He was a staunch atheist who asked for his body to be ‘offered as convenient for medical use or research and otherwise to be cremated wholly without ceremony’. The hospital didn’t manage to take up this offer so we were faced with the same problem. We were unimpressed with what seemed absurdly expensive offers from undertakers. Eventually my brother took Dad’s body from the hospital mortuary to the crematorium by van, at a fraction of the price. This was entirely successful, and it was what Dad wanted. It’s time the death industry started providing for those of us who do not want any ritual around our remains.

Do leave a comment — especially if you are a funeral director.

Hangman’s Cottage in Dorchester. Once a place set apart and viewed with dread, now a decidedly des res

A few weeks back I lazily asked whether a private entrepreneur could open a crematorium in this country. I say lazily because I hoped someone would know the answer and spare me research time.

I supposed that only local authorities can get permission from the Secretary of State to build a crem. I was wrong, and I am very grateful to Tim Morris, Chief Executive of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management, for putting me right. There is, he tells me, nothing to stop a private operator from doing this – subject, he warns, to the usual planning procedures which would, of course, be influenced by the responses of people close to the proposed site.

We discussed the uneconomic model of our crems. In order to be more or less fuel efficient a crem must burn as many bodies as it can in a day. But because its incinerator is attached to a ceremony space (sometimes more than one), it must hurry the living through with indecent haste. It’s a thinly disguised production line. When winter comes it can’t keep up; when summer comes it hasn’t enough to do. You pay for the ceremony space whether you want to use it or not. Your fee is further inflated by a sum used to subsidise the maintenance of the cemetery. This is economically and environmentally a bad deal. It may also be bad value emotionally.

I have a feeling that any ceremony space (chapel if you like) devoted exclusively to farewelling the dead is always going to be bad value emotionally.  Churches, set in the midst of living communities, do a much more rounded job, incorporating as they do all rites of passage. Crems are set apart – in much the same way the public hangman used to be in English towns. In spite of the best and most careful efforts of those unsung people who work in them them, they have the wrong aura. We need to bring funerals back into the land of the living.

Our crems have, it turns out, addressed the environmental and economic issues. A few years back Wandsworth borough council proposed the model of a central crematorium serving several satellite ceremony spaces. The idea was that neighbouring local authorities could decommission their underused cremators and send their bodies over to a really efficient plant for incineration. The proposal foundered. Local authorities, it seems, take too much local pride in their crems to give them up. How would the idea have been greeted by users? Perceptions were never tested.

To get back to the main question. Could a private entrepreneur build a crematorium to serve the direct cremation market? It seems there would be no legal hurdle. Mr Morris reckons that securing the Secretary of State’s approval would be no problem. What would be harder, much harder, would be getting planning permission. In the US and Canada a great many crematories are built in industrial parks. That might not go down so well over here. In any case, there isn’t enough of a market for it yet.

But will people grow weary of schlepping joylessly to the crem for their funerals? Will a significant number begin to question the value of having the body at the funeral? Will they begin to opt, as so many do in North America, for a celebratory memorial service held at a more congenial venue with (optional) just the ashes present?

I see no reason why not. In the meantime, the model of a central crematorium serving several satellite ceremony spaces is an idea well worth revisiting. Public opinion should be tested.

Read past posts for more on this discussion and on the merits or otherwise of direct cremation.

I am extremely grateful to Gordon Thurston for this thorough and thoughtful analysis of the growing rejection in parts of both the US and Canada of the traditional practice of holding a funeral with the body of the person who has died present, and the preference, instead, either for a memorial service or for no farewell ceremony of any kind. It’s a phenomenon I have previously examined here, here, here and here.

This phenomenon is something that has been a part of the funeral scene here for all of my twenty-two years of service to the funeral industry. As a former United Church clergyman in private practice (because I withdrew my name from the role of Presbytery long ago) I have attempted to meet people “where they come from,” in the North American vernacular. These are people who have no religious affiliation (or want none) and yet feel the need for some official presence to oversee the funeral of a loved one. In fact we call these events memorial services because most often the body is not present. Indeed cremation is most often the chosen method of disposition and frequently has taken place even before the service itself. So it seems we have found a way of distancing ourselves from the immediate reality of death. Actually years ago when the Memorial Society was just making inroads into the funeral industry their main focus was to reduce the often excessive costs of a funeral. However an interesting note in some of the earliest Memorial Society advocates was that a service of any kind was deemed barbaric or too primitive for an enlightened people anyway. It seemed to me that what they were trying to infer is that life is everything and death is and should be nothing. That attitude by the way did not catch on, at least in all its bluntness – but it did have some modified versions, beginning with a memorial service where the body is missing and culminating in the phenomenon known as “No Service By Request.” And yet through this continuum, while cost has been an aspect – and barbarism notwithstanding – they are not the underlying factors. However there is no other simple or straightforward reason for the phenomena either.

In my experience a memorial service does not seem to imply an obvious avoidance of cost – nor does No Service By Request either for that matter. In fact I believe the problem (if one can call it a problem) is much more of an enigma than that we are somehow more enlightened and therefore do not need to honour our dead. No Service By Request is in no way an intellectual decision but rather a much deeper and little understood phenomenon. While people may talk about the practicality of a funeral, citing the exorbitant expense, that really is a bit of a cover up, I believe, from something much more emotional. Phrases like, “I want to save my family the stress,” or “I’m not religious anyway,” I feel are used to rationalize one’s decision not to have a service. But even behind this is something I believe to be even more cryptic. It keeps coming down to the belief that he or she does not matter that much anyway and so why put family and friends through the ordeal. So while it is never actually said, the implication is that one’s sense of worth as a human being is somehow being called into question. Who am I to request a service with all the fuss and the emotional upheaval it promotes!?

And “I’m not worth it” is not just a statement about lack of self-esteem either. It seems to go much deeper and is more all-pervading. Robert Wright in his book, Nonzero – The Logic of Human Destiny, purports that as the world has become smaller because of travel and communication and yet our worldview has expanded, and quite exponentially so with the internet and the overwhelming nature of the information age, what has followed is that while individuals are made to feel empowered by it all there is a loss of personal significance as well. The result has been for people to abandon communal settings like churches and other social centres for their homes where a computer can open up the world to them on the one hand and yet insulate and isolate them on the other. E-mail and Face Book, as do chat rooms and game playing and the like, provide the illusion of keeping in touch and being a part of a community (a global one at that), but the process is often done in relative solitude. We are more voyeuristic than involved in things. What is more, the steady diet of news coming into our living rooms and bombarding us with negativity exacerbates the problem. So ironically, as the world opens up, a more pervading sense of personal insignificance is the result.

Perhaps that helps to explain some of the context for a phenomenon like No Service By Request – at least in North America. However there is another aspect, which is perhaps more the case here on the West Coast than elsewhere. For instance in Canada when folks retire those that can afford it and/or who are simply tired of winter simply relocate to British Columbia and to Greater Victoria in particular. In so doing they not only leave behind the extreme weather but also their roots. In so doing many take that opportunity to abandon some of the traditions that were a part of their lives “back home” – some of which were almost taken for granted in their former contexts anyway. In the case of my own parents, as it was with one of my best but much older friends, Eric (a Brit by the way) they had been people very much involved in their local churches before moving. Once here however they not only did not find a church to join but never even attended another one again. In neither situation was there any indication that they had lost their faith. What they believed and the context for those beliefs had simply changed focus. Granted retirees tend to reduce their commitments and along with doing so their sense of obligation once felt being a part of organizations BUT I believe abandoning one’s church is quite another issue. Like the people of Israel in captivity in Babylon who discovered that they did not really need either their country or their temple in order to worship their God, with their move to the West Coast my parents and friend found their spiritual needs being met elsewhere – and in more intimate ways. Family and those friends that had endured the tests of time tended to matter more and the traditions and trappings of organized religion less.

Now that did not mean that my parents and friend chose not to have a service when they died – because they all have passed away. My mom and dad wanted a service and pre-paid for that and all their funeral arrangements well before their demise. My three sisters and I conducted both services by the way. My friend, Eric, on the other hand was very specific and told his two sons that whatever they did for him was to be informal, as had been done for his late wife. A barbershop singer of great passion (that is how I came to be a part of Eric’s life – I was the tenor in several quartets with him) we had an event at the home of one of his sons. I spoke (an emotional experience I must say) and of course there was barbershop singing.

I tell you of these instances because they underscore a trend – away from traditions and toward some other way of celebrating life posthumously. It is not at all a regretful thing – as you I am sure can well appreciate given your Good Funeral Guide. However there are a significant percentage of people who have no alternatives for celebrating life, other than what is provided by churches and/or funeral homes and so have nothing. Indeed they may well have been turned off by right wing American Christian fundamentalism on the one hand or the impersonal rituals of much more ecclesiastical denominations, Roman Catholic and the Anglican churches in particular on the other but even that is a bit of a smoke screen. The underlying reasons for no service is neither that straightforward nor that simple in my estimation. In fact like another friend of mine who is in the process of making funeral plans (his demise is in no way imminent by the way) and who asked me for some advice, his first inclination was to request that no service be held. The man is even a member of the church my wife and I attend! Obviously then the phenomenon in some instances is not even conditional on church experience good or bad. When I asked him about his thinking around that choice he could not give me a reason other than to say that it was no big deal anyway because who would attend!? The guy is a wonderful wit and in no way a fading violet (indeed often a moderator leading a service). There is no doubt that there will be great numbers attending his service when the time comes. However a sense of insignificance is all I could conclude was his rationale.

That is why the short answer to why No Service By Request is for me a variation on the theme of “I’m not worth it.” A sense of personal significance (or insignificance if you will) is as close as I can come to making sense out of the phenomenon. And while people rationalize and justify their decisions by citing cost and emotional burdens placed on loved ones left behind underneath it all is somehow this pervading feeling of unworthiness – once again a variation on the theme, the world is so big and I am so small. Even “I’m spiritual and not religious,” is but a diversionary tactic for diminishing oneself I believe. This kind of spirituality is seldom defined and thus never quite understood. And it’s a bluff.

So Charles all I can say is that if No Service By Request is “pretty much unheard of” over there it might be for several reasons. Tradition and traditions are deeper and have a thousand years of history to sustain them, not less than a hundred like here; and people cannot pick up and move away from such depth and dimension as readily there, unlike North America and the flaky West Coast people here! So you may not have to contend with this problem there.

It seems unthinkable that the practice of direct cremation, direct burial – the rapid and unceremonious disposal of the dead – could land on our shores. It’s been preying on my mind. Now I’m not so sure.

Here’s a view from Rabbi Mark S Glickman writing in the Seattle Times about what he calls the “desire to de-emphasize or avoid focusing on death”:

My Aunt Margie died a few weeks ago. And now that she’s gone, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.

I hadn’t seen Aunt Margie very often for the past several years, but we were very close when I was a boy. She had a kind smile, she took genuine interest in our lives, and it was rumored that nations had gone to war just to get a piece of her famous chocolate roll. My brothers and I did, too.

Aunt Margie lived near San Francisco, and as her death approached, I began making plans to go to her funeral. I was attending a conference in Southern California. Maybe I could reroute my return trip through the Bay Area.

The call finally came when I was in Santa Monica, just before lunch. I was enjoying the warmth and the sunshine, but then my mother’s name flashed onto my cellphone screen. Yes, Aunt Margie had died. The end was peaceful. In accordance with her wishes, there would be no burial rites. Her body would be cremated without ceremony.

No funeral? Not even a memorial service? But … but … she had just died! What was I supposed to do? I felt like I needed to do something about her death — to honor her, to memorialize her somehow. Was I supposed to just go on as if nothing had happened?

He concludes:

Judaism teaches that a spark of God burns within every human soul, and that, therefore, when a person dies, a part of God dies, too. The divine presence shrinks with the death of every human being.

In response, after a person dies, Jews recite the Kaddish, our prayer of mourning, in an attempt to restore God’s presence to the world. “Yitgadal v’yitkadash shmei rabbah,” it begins, “May God’s great name be magnified and sanctified.”

I won’t presume to tell you how you should mourn your loved ones’ deaths, or what preparations you should make for your own. I will, however, encourage you to remember that human life is awesome and mysterious; that a person’s death is often sad and always significant; and that we mourn best when our actions reflect these great truths.

My dear Aunt Margie has died. The sun no longer shines quite as brightly as it used to. May God’s great name be magnified and sanctified.

Read the entire piece here.