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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.

Mr Mensah a retired head teacher in Kwahu-Tafo, died in 1995 in Accra, where he was receiving medical treatment. His body was deposited in a mortuary for about a month. During that period, his children organized a full facelift of the house to prepare it for a worthy funeral: the roof and other parts of the house were repaired, the large courtyard was cemented, the house was painted, electricity was brought to the house and the road leading to the house was improved. Many of the things the old man had wanted to do during his life were done for him after his life, while his body was waiting in limbo. His children, one of whom lived in the USA, took care of the (re)construction work.

This is how they do it in Ghana, a country whose funeral rituals are little known beyond those groovy coffins we all love. Let’s not overlook the fact that Ghana incorporates many peoples and religions, each of which does its own thing. The Ghanaian funeral that we all know a little about is the Akan funeral.

The structure of Akan society is matrilinear. Akans place low value on marriage, so weddings are no big deal. Throughout their lives Akans cleave, not unto their spouse, but unto  the abusua, the matrilineal family. Akans divorce freely and easily. A woman will often walk away from her marriage once she’s had children. A man is expected to favour his sister’s children over his own. This has an effect on the way old people are looked after. You look less to your children, more to your abusua, to look after you when you get shaky. [Source]

If Akans don’t do weddings, boy do they do funerals. A funeral is a time for the abusua to celebrate itself publicly and assert its status. It is a social event. Much loved family members are given wonderful send-offs. So too are undeserving family members who may have been despised. Come one, come all. And a notable peculiarity of some of these lavish funerals is that they afford the deceased a lot more care when they’re dead than when they were alive and most in need of it. Some small social stigma attaches to those who don’t look after ailing family members, but no abusua could ever live down the disgrace of failing to give them a proper funeral. This stimulates lifelong funeral-going. In order to ensure the attendance and donations of others at your funeral you must have first attended and donated to as many of theirs as you could — every Saturday for many Ghanaians. If you don’t go to theirs, they won’t come to yours. 

Eighty per cent of Ghanaians live on around $2 a day. A funeral costs an average $2,500–£3,000. 

People dress up and travel to visit a funeral in another town or village. In turn, they expect the bereaved family to entertain them with show, music, dance, drinks, and sometimes food. In the evening it can be hard to find transport back to town, when trotros (minibuses for public transport) are stuffed with funeral guests going home. And every Saturday night people dressed in black and red funeral cloth flock together in Hotel de Kingsway to end the day’s funeral by dancing to the tunes of highlife music. Funerals are at the heart of Asante culture and social life. Asante funerals are also the terrain of great creativity, where various forms of expression and art come together. Cultural groups perform traditional drumming or songs; people show their dancing skills; highlife musicians compose popular songs on the deep sorrow caused by death; pieces of poetic oratory praise the life of the deceased; portrait paintings and sculptures are put on the grave; photographs are enlarged, framed and exhibited or printed on T-shirts; video shots are taken and edited into a beautiful document; people dress up in the latest funeral fashion; and sometimes scenes from the life of the deceased are acted out in theatre. Death, more than any other life event, seems to inspire people to artistic creations.

One could expect a traditional ritual, centred around the extended family and around beliefs about death and ancestorship, to reduce in importance under the influence of individualisation, urbanisation, the market economy, and Christianity. The opposite scenario is taking place in Ghana. Funerals are, more than any other ceremony, increasingly gaining in scale and importance. [Source]

One technological innovation above all others is responsible for this. The refrigerated mortuary. The longer a corpse remains in the morgue, the more prestige is attached to the funeral. This is not only because a longer period allows the family to make more preparations for a successful funeral; the mere duration of the corpse’s stay in the mortuary commands respect. People know the high prices of mortuaries and can estimate the amount of money the family spent.

The mortuary also gives the abusua  more time to get the money together for something really spectacular. Only a few selected people are able to see the dead body during its stay in the mortuary. It is ‘nowhere’ for some time. The person has died, but not yet socially. Almost secretly his body has been transferred to a technological limbo, where it waits its ‘rise’ to death, the social recognition of having died … The quality of the corpse constitutes an important element in the success of the funeral … after its reappearance from the morgue, the corpse is dressed, decorated, perfumed and laid out to be admired by large crowds of mourners. It will be filmed, if the family’s finances permit, and the camera will zoom in, revealing the smallest details of the dead face. It is no wonder that relatives do their utmost to assure that their corpses are well maintained, and tip the attendants at the mortuary for that purpose. In the brilliant Vimeo film below you can see that freezing the corpse makes it possible to stand it up at the wake. Please watch it.  

The upshot is that a hospital mortuary can become a major generator of income. In Nkawkaw the private Agyarkwa hospital accommodates 20 patients. Its mortuary hosts 60 corpses waiting for their funeral.

Some Ghanaians would like to reverse the trend towards ever more elaborate funerals, regarding them as a social problem and a bar to economic progress: 

One of the most serious attitudinal problems to have crept into the Ghanaian society is the insatiable desire to invest in the dead rather than the living. We go to bizarre extents to try to outdo each other in the grandeur of the funerals we organise. We take to task our compatriots who for better sanity or lack of resources try to organise relatively modest funerals, describing their efforts as “burying their loved ones like fowls”! … How can a people that hope to develop their impoverished nation become so obsessed with investment in the dead rather than the living? [Source]

In Britain we don’t have this problem. Our problem is too little, not too much.

More reading here, here, here, here and here.

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!

A very big up to Saint and Forster Funeral Services, who have just gone public and transparent with their prices.

From us, a big ask to all funeral directors to follow suit.

Saint and Forster prices here.

Saint and Forster here. 

How can you give people clear simple information about the likely cost of the funeral they are organising?

It sounds easy but in practice it can be the hardest thing in the world. How do you listen, share, sympathise and support people in all sorts of distress? How do you help them start to shape the funeral they need to create and, at the same time, in all the emotion of the meeting, keep them up to date on the cost consequences of the choices they are making?

Vulnerable and bewildered, people are rarely at their best as consumers. It is a situation ripe with opportunities – for the outstanding and exceptional support the best provide and for the uneccessary additions and charges that the less scrupulous slip in.

But there is an alternative. A couple of weeks ago we featured a TV advertisement for Basic funerals of Canada. You can find it here if you’d like a refresher.

Basic Funerals, as part of it’s internet based approach, also has a page that allows you to calculate the cost of the funeral you are buying. The page is here. This is a screenshot.

We believe that this is emerging best practice. Without pressure it gives people the chance to look at costs and make choices. It is wonderfully transparent.

There are UK funeral directors who are also leading the way. Although they are not internet based service providers they are using their websites to help their customers do their research before they walk through the door.

Have a look at these sites for an idea of what can be done:

Sullivan and Sons of Dover: http://www.sullivanandson.co.uk/Costs.html

Kingfisher Funerals of St. Neots: http://kingfisherfunerals.co.uk/estimate.html

Powell and Family of Droitwich: http://www.powellandfamily.co.uk/funeral-cost-calculator

Peace Funerals of Sheffield: http://www.peacefunerals.co.uk/Lowcost.html

Richard Ward Funeral Services of Enderby: http://www.rwfs.co.uk/prices_comparisons.php

Of course, once you start this internet pricing, it allows you to draw comparisons with your competitors. Richard Ward does it. So – to devastating effect – does Powell and Family. Have a look at their page (the screenshot doesn’t do them justice, but click on it to go to the site itself):

These can’t be the only ones. In our mission to celebrate the best in the funeral industry, who else is out there using their website to provide real information and real choice? Or using other methods we’re not aware of? Let us know – we’d love to write their names large.

There’s no beating around the bush here: funeral pricing must be more transparent.

Most funeral directors are careful, honest and, often, painfully aware of the costs that people face when someone dies.

They run businesses, but know that they are also offering a service that affects people’s well being at the deepest levels. For the best FD every death is more than a transaction, it is also an event that they become a partner in, sharing, with the people involved, some of the intensity of the occasion.

Sometimes this makes them bad businesspeople (and better human beings?). We all know of Funeral Directors who reduce or waive fees for children’s funerals for example.

But there are others who are less scrupulous, willing to pass uneccessary costs on to the customer. This is bad – obviously – for customers, but it is bad for people who work with Funeral Directors too.

We’ve heard, for example, of surcharges added to celebrant’s fees or ‘adminstrative’ charges for booking unusual services or vehicles. Understandable you may say, but in one instance the surcharge raised the cost of the service from £650 to £1,000.

The worst part is that these add ons are rarely declared to the customer. Instead the itemised bill simply states the total cost. It must be great to be able to blame someone else for your own high charges.

Here at GFG we believe sunlight is the best disinfectant and that means being open and upfront about what you are charging. Watch this space.

Posted by Charles

Are there, we wonder, any lessons British undertakers can learn from this article on PRWeb:

Many funeral homes today have their own websites, but most of these seem to have forgotten to include information about the one thing that is on most people’s mind. How much does a funeral cost? There is no other industry that hides their prices in the way the funeral industry does. Research conducted by US Funerals Online revealed that over 80% of funeral home web sites do not disclose actual costs.

Nicholas Ille, owner and founder of US Funerals Online, said, “Gone are the days when families would just order the services from a funeral home, without even inquiring about the costs.”

Baby boomers are becoming increasingly interested in doing things their own way, which can also be driven financially. Why have expensive funerals when the money would be better being left to our children? As people live longer their senior years can now be one expense after the next, care homes, nursing homes and hospices all come at a hefty price, and then comes a final bill that needs to be paid.

Over the past 18 months, US Funerals Online has been working closely with local family-owned and operated funeral homes across the U.S offering a low cost funeral option. “We believe that every family in America should be able to locate a low cost funeral provider, if that is what they choose” says Nicholas. The US Funerals Online web site lists all funeral homes by city/state and clearly identifies the low cost providers, including their price. By including all funeral homes in our directory, this makes comparing costs between different funeral homes, only a phone call away.

Could something like this happen in the UK? Why not?

Here at the GFG we don’t obsess about price, we obsess about service. And transparency. British undertakers’ websites are, many of them, as dire as it gets when describing their service offer, far far worse than any other commercial sector. They are amateurish and subliterate. They rarely talk to you, the reader, they talk about us and about ancestor Albert, founder of our barnacle-encrusted undertaking dynasty — here he is conducting a funeral in 1921 (cue hazy b&w photo of bow-legged man leading a bloated Austin down a high street). Dammit, WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR ME NOW??

When these undertakers do talk about their clients they talk about them as if they had nothing in common with the punter reading the website: “We recognise that our customers are individuals and each will have their own ways of coping with bereavement.” Tcha! Where’s the human being behind that? Oh, there he is in a Gilbert and Sullivan top hat with his big black cars fanned out behind him. HOW MUCH DO YOU CHARGE?!??

All undertakers know that more and more people are shopping around.

Those undertakers who are upfront about their prices are doing very well.  

As are those who come across as human beings like us. Hint: people do business with people. 

Undertakers: go figure.

Funerals-Online here.

Funeral of DJ Gerry Ryan, May 2010

From the Irish Independent an alarming trend (if you’re an undertaker) and a familiar issue:

Undertakers say the average cost of a funeral has dropped by almost 40pc in the past five years.

They say cash-strapped families have had little choice but to compromise on funeral ceremonies by foregoing extras that they once took for granted, like flowers, music and limousines.

At the height of the boom, an average funeral would cost €6,500. But it wasn’t uncommon for upwards of €10,000 to be spent up on laying a loved one to rest in lavish ceremonies.

However, it appears bereaved families are more dissatisfied with the service they are receiving from Ireland’s 600 undertakers. According to the Irish Association of Funeral Directors, which represents 250 funeral directors, there has been a “marked increase” in the number of complaints this year.

Many of the complaints relate to the lack of transparency about invoicing, an issue that could be resolved if the industry were better regulated, Mr Nicholls [of the IAFD] believes.

He insists standards will only improve once the industry is regulated, forcing all undertakers to adopt higher standards, improve training and provide transparency in their invoicing to clients. “There are no barriers to entry and no licensing in an industry responsible for the burial or cremation of up to 30,000 people a year,” he said.

Whole article here. 

Hat-tip to Connecting Directors

It is only eight o’clock pm here at GFG HQ, yet it’s already some 15 minutes since we sounded the hooter and nudged our horny-handed workforce into the weary, black, wet November night. We like to feel that we are kindly, enlightened employers, for whom wellbeing issues come first.

At the desk of one of our interns, R Cratchit, we found a discarded Daily Mail.  Leafing through it we found this appeal in the This Is Money section:

I have been saving for five years to build up some money to pay for my funeral. I always felt that I didn’t want my family to have to pay for my send off and have built up a pot that should more than cover it.

I told a friend about this and they said I was mad. They pointed out my grown up children are not poor and thought they would have no problem with paying for my funeral.

My friend said I should spend the money now and enjoy it while I can – they even suggested going on a cruise.

I don’t know what to do, should I keep my funeral pot or blow it?

The Mail would like to know what you think. If what you think is sufficiently impressive it will use your response in a followup article. So, if you have strong feelings about what this man should do with his death stash, click the link here.