Posted by Vale

We use signs and symbols in our daily lives all the time. A green cross outside a shop means a chemist; a green P on a car is a new driver abroad; a twist of pink ribbon somehow signifies breast cancer. But what are our symbols of loss and mourning?

We used to have plenty. Whitby – and it’s jewellers – grew rich on them in Victorian times, but they have almost all gone now – but wouldn’t it be nice, sometimes, to be able to let people know that you are still grieving, remembering, letting go?

There are symbols out there. You can buy a mourning cross from this website here. Not for me – but maybe you like it?

In a way though, it sharpens the question for the secular mourner – where is the non-religious symbol of mourning or remembrance?

It’s a slightly tangential thought but I came across the the West African tradition of mourning robes decorated with Adinkra symbols recently.

The name Adinkra comes from a legendary King conquered by the Ashante people, who, so the stories tell, wore luxurious patterned fabrics. Adinkra also means “goodbye,” and the special cloth, printed with Andinkra symbols, was reserved for funeral garments. The symbols themselves are rich, expressive and beautiful. The selection printed on the mourning garment were supposed to describe the particular virtues and qualities of the person mourned. Here are a few:

There are more of the symbols here.

There’s a challenge in these lovely shapes and signs – what symbols can we make to mark our loss? How do we show the world that – for a while at least – there is mourning 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!

Posted by Gloria Mundi

There’s been some very interesting stuff recently about the importance of ritual, and how we need to develop more ritual forms for secular funerals. Vide, for example, The extra-rational power of ritual

I find it difficult to draw a line between “ritual” and “ceremony,” and maybe there is no satisfyingly sharp distinction, perhaps it’s more of a continuum than a boundary. A comment on Wikipedia was helpful; it describes ritual as a set of actions “which to the outsider seems irrational, non-contiguous, or illogical.” Maybe a ceremony is a series of shared actions more explicable in every-day, rational terms, and ritual has more symbolic, imaginatively compulsive and non-rational power. Look at Trooping the Colour on the Queen’s birthday; for a Japanese tourist, maybe it’s just a colourful ceremony. For British monarchists, it might have an illogically powerful, ritualistic reference, helping them feel who they are and where they have come from, a ritual that strengthens their sense of identity.

Or like Christmas. I mean the domestic Christmas, not the obviously ritualistic elements of carol services in lovely old buildings. You may, if you are a parent of adult children, have encountered the illogical power of Christmas rituals established in your child’s early years. Of course she doesn’t “believe” in Father Christmas, but she still wants a stocking, the same familiar ornaments – and what do you mean, let’s have beef for Christmas dinner? These things are not entirely (or at all!) rational, they are not ceremonies, but they relate to an individual’s sense of who they are and where they are from.

I’m being flippant, but I think there is an element of ritualistic power about our shared family customs at this time of year. And perhaps there are plenty of other occasions at which we overlook the fact that actions and words may have ritual, rather than merely ceremonial or customary power.

It may be that the way to develop powerful ritual in secular, non-church/temple/mosque funerals is to begin by fully recognizing the ritualistic in what we already do, even at the most ordinary and unchallenging of crematorium funerals here in the UK. Here are a few elements of a crem funeral that seem to me to have ritual potential:

1. (Most) people wear special clothes. They often wear black or dark colours. Like many ritual elements, this one is entirely non-rational but powerfully emotive because of the cultural associations of black in our society. In some cultures, white is, or was, the colour of mourning (ancient China). If we wear different coloured clothes, we are probably doing so to react against the tradition, and because we want to “celebrate” a life. I think our reaction against “mournful” funeral trappings such as black clothes also has an irrational element to it, and is a decision made for ritual reasons.
2. We (usually) process in. If we don’t, and the gathering is already seated, everyone stands when the coffin comes in. Why? To show respect. There is no rational reason why you can’t be just as respectful sitting down – the roots of this practice seem ritualistic to me.
3. We have special music. It may have its roots in the dead person’s life, tastes and views, in which case it is felt to have powerful meanings for those who knew the person. So someone used to listen to Carly Simon in his youth, and one of her tracks “brings him to mind,” as we say. Even though the person had no real-life connection with Ms Simon, he didn’t write the song, didn’t play on the recording, etc. Or the music may itself have originated in religious ritual. I want “Spem in Alium.” Don’t ask me what I believe, just play the disc. It is imaginatively compelling, it can create a sense of personal transcendence, even for non-believers. It has ritualistic power.
4. We have special words. These words vary much more than traditional burial liturgies of whatever religion, but they are certainly special, for the occasion, and often full of non-rational, symbolic meaning.
5. We may have a passage of prose, or a poem, often chosen not for its recognized excellence as a poem, but because it says something we can’t state in the language of reason and fact, it may even fly in the face of reason itself. Take the end of Do Not Stand By My Grave and Weep: “I am not there; I did not die.” Er….well, you did, that’s why we’re all here, says the irritatingly rational part of me. But the people present believe that in a sense, you didn’t, you’re still with them, because their memories of you, and the meanings your life created and passed on to them, those things are still with them. So in a symbolic, imaginatively powerful, emotionally compelling sense, no, “you” did not die. That is, what you mean to other people did not cease when your life ended. And part of the job of the funeral may well be to make that so. Personally, I am far from crazy about that poem – so what? I think it often has a ritualistic power for the people who choose it.
6. Sentiments about the continuity of emotion and memory, the transfer of meaning from a live individual away from his/her lifeless body to the group identities of those present – this is irrational but powerful stuff, and that mouldy old poem is part of it. Such sentiments, I would guess, very frequently re-occur in secular ceremonies. They are part of our developing ritual.
7. We may have other symbolically powerful elements – flowers, photographs, objects associated with the dead person, all of which may imaginatively represent or summarise the person.

And so on, no doubt we can add to the list.

The officiant (I use the dry term deliberately) at a funeral of a friend of a friend was criticised by someone who observed that those present would have got more warmth and empathy from the bloke in the box than the person at the lectern.

If we want to develop better ritual for secular funerals, we must first recognize and deliver existing elements as well as possible. It is no help to carp to ourselves and our colleagues that all this is not as powerful or original as it could be. New forms of ritual can only evolve from where we are now. Let’s work with that and through it. If we were all doing it really well, that’d be something.

Some of the GFG’s favourite and most admired people were in action yesterday. Clare and Michelle, who are Volkswagen Funerals, brought Lorna Grant to Cheltenham crematorium with their customary love and care in a Glastonbury themed funeral. Look, even the conducting funeral director is wearing his wellies.

The coffin, if I’m not mistaken, is a Sunset. 

Full story here.

Posted by Richard Rawlinson, religious correspondent

The excerpt above is from a funeral sermon by a US Catholic priest in which he berates those members of the congregation who are only in church because it’s a loved one’s funeral, but whose own souls are in mortal danger after skipping Mass on a regular basis.

Some might be appalled by this opportunistic sabotage of a ceremony where the bereaved are bidding farewell to the deceased. A secular equivalent might be a British Humanist Association celebrant choosing a civil funeral to evangelise atheism by refusing to condone religious hymns, declaring that if the bereaved insist on such quasi-theist practices, he/she will declare that, ‘as a humanist I will not be taking part’.

To those celebrants flexible enough to tailor funerals to varying tastes, criticism of lapsed or half-baked faith or pick ‘n’ mix agnosticism might seem inappropriate. What’s more important for them is to do one’s best to show respect and sensitivity, accepting some will want frills of different hues, others will want the least fuss possible, allowing more time to laugh and cry over a booze-up at the main event, the post-committal party.

But where are more individualistic belief systems leading society – whether atheistic or ‘designer faiths’ cut to suit personal preferences? In some ways, both the stern shepherd priest and the bossy BHA militant are clear and decisive, but only if preaching to the converted. In the ‘consumer is king’ world, they’re arrogant prigs.

In his book, Futurecast, US religion statistics expert George Barna says the one-person-one-religion trend is a rejection of the boring services of organised religion. But he notes individualism is causing fracture. If everyone is pretty much on their own, you lose some of the capacity to make connections. It’s also triggering hostility towards institutions; government and industry, as well as organised religion and inflexible BHA God-haters.

All this makes it challenging to devise formulaic, communal rituals that are relevant to the individualism forming today’s civil funerals. Perhaps it simply isn’t possible, and we should be grateful that existing practices do indeed already unite those involved through personalised eulogies, songs and readings in the presence of the deceased. Symbolic acts such as liberating doves, ringing bells or assigning time to silent contemplation are an added ritualistic bonus but are unlikely to achieve the resonance of faith ritual.

It might be useful to study the Church’s way further. Churches are at an advantage as they’re beloved, familiar places of communal bonding that offer pastoral care before and after the funeral, as well in everyday life whether grieving or not. The rituals are not deemed extraordinary because they’re familiar by virtue of their weekly repetition.

To develop this point, allow me to briefly digress: while uncomfortable with the aforesaid priest’s modu operandi, the saying ‘Get yourself to Mass and your brain will follow’ resonates with me. The sacrament works because I’m open to the peace-giving and inspirational qualities of the Catholic faith. We eat when hungry, sleep when tired, work in order to earn money and gain spiritual nourishment from the Holy Eucharist. To those not receptive to the joyful mysteries of the Mass, its communal liturgy might seem far from an integral part of life, more pointless and dull in fact.

Living in London, I’m a member of a vibrant parish community participating in traditional Masses in a beautiful church with warm, erudite priests and an excellent master of music and choir. I’ve often wondered guiltily if I’d be so receptive if my local church was an edge-of-town bungalow with budget ceremony. I’ve been to such Masses and can honestly say – with or without lace, vestments, bells and smells; in spite of banal homilies, guitars in the sanctuary, and screaming kids in the pews – the Holy Eucharist remains a manna that brings miraculously a purer love, awe, gratitude, humility and inner peace than anything else on Earth. It’s familiar but extraordinary because of its meaning, not its ‘physical’ parts.

Crematoria as a backdrop for ritual are not ideal, strange, one-off places visited under duress in order to dispose of loved ones in a furnace. In a previous blog, I mentioned the North Texas Church of Freethought, a kind of community centre for atheists attempting to offer ‘all the educational, inspirational, and social and emotional benefits of traditional faith-based churches’. This extreme and most likely financially unviable option is perhaps more likely to be overrun by the didacts than the anything-goes liberals. Members of both camps might also find the concept too close for comfort to organised religion. So what are the alternatives for those seeking to escape the clock-watching charmlessness of the crematorium, and perhaps develop rituals that resonate?

Is there sufficient demand for two separate venues, church substitute for ceremony, crematorium for committal? And what are the options for church substitutes: hotels, homes, hilltops for alfresco funeral pyres? A ballroom in the former offers seating space and hospitality services but may be expensive and impersonal even if the manager found a way of sneaking in coffins without upsetting the guests. Homes may be too small for big turn-outs and outdoor funeral pyres are, I believe, currently illegal (good luck with your campaign, Rupert).

Wherever civil funerals are held and however much communal ritual is included, there’s conflict between individualism and commune, free-spirited ego and membership of a ‘club’ greater than its individual parts.

Posted by Richard Rawlinson, religious correspondent

Vale makes interesting points in the thread beneath my Beyond the Abyss post, which discusses the gap between secularist individuality and religious communal ritual:

We (I) believe that community and the communal celebration of key events is important – yet secularism, at least as it finds expression in the west today – tends to be individualistic. Not surprising, perhaps when the only common bond is a lack of belief.
My own feeling, though, is that we are in a transitional phase and will over time evolve new and meaningful rituals to reflect the reality of people’s sense of personal meaning and purpose.

At first these will ape the religious ceremonies we are familiar with – because they are the ones we know. But they will diverge and in time consolidate new norms, patterns and meanings.

Actually, look at any civil ceremonies, the start has already been made’.

I’m trying to be open but find it hard to imagine meaningful death rituals devoid of any spiritual belief in an afterlife. I agree that non-religious funerals help bring comfort and closure, but wouldn’t a truly atheist ritual do this while professing the faith that God and souls don’t exist? Would it not be crucial to celebrate the fact that the deceased, however fondly remembered, is now nothing, incapable of pleasure or pain?

Some political and intellectual atheists can cope with such a nihilistic philosophy, but we seem some way from popular demand for rituals reflecting such secular realities.

Some stats…

Each year, around 500,000 people in the UK die, according the annual mortality statistics published by the Office for National Statistics. Over 30,000 funerals a year are currently non-religious, according to the National Association of Funeral Directors. This is around 6 per cent of deaths, or over one in 20 households affected by death.

This figure is increasing as families turn to celebration-of-life ceremonies rather than services conducted by a priest, either in church or crematorium. There’s certainly a growing willingness to admit non-belief, encouraged by secular educationalists, politicians and media pundits.

Of the four in 10 Brits who claim membership of the Church of England, it’s clear many are secularists, who increasingly see hypocrisy in using their church simply for baptisms, weddings, funerals and the Christmas carol service.

The NAFD has confirmed that most of those choosing non-religious funerals were ‘hatch, match, dispatch’ Protestants. Lapsed Catholics remain more likely to uphold the ceremonial traditions of their forefathers, hedging their bets, so to speak. This is borne out by weekly Mass attendance figures among the genuinely faithful – for the first time in the UK, CofE and Catholic attendance is neck and neck, each attracting between 800,000 and 1m a week, even though the starting pool of Catholics is smaller than those claiming to be culturally CofE.

But just as there are people of half-baked religious faith, so there are ‘atheist-lites’ for whom the fond belief in some sort of afterlife prevents them from totally parting ways with religion-inspired ceremonial.

Funeral direction

The muddled masses are only likely to reach clarity on one side or the other by authoritative guidance. In a nutshell, they need to be evangelised by fundamentalists, not in the nutty Creationist or Islamofacist sense but in the sense of inspirational leaders persuading others of their creed, be it religious or godless.

This is where the problem lies for anyone trying to devise new rituals devoid of quasi-religious elements. In the case of civil funeral celebrants, it doesn’t matter if they settle for a client-driven compromise. Who really cares if high priest of atheism Richard Dawkins disapproves of them perpetuating religious rituals? After all, he’s a biologist, not a philosopher or social worker, and, even then, considered a sloppy intellect by most of his academic peers.

In the case of priests, their vows in the Sacrament of Holy Orders mean they must serve God and the faithful of His Church by obeying and teaching God’s laws, handed down by the Holy Bible and Apostolic Tradition – the Mass with its divine liturgy and rituals as the focal point.

It’s at this point that Catholics must briefly digress – yes, there are priests who attempt sacrilegious ministry, and, of course, a minority who have committed vile crimes in the eyes of secular law, as well as mortal sins against God. But the point I’m making is that the way forward for the Church is not the same as for secular ritualists: a priest who dons layman’s attire for a civil funeral should be defrocked; a civil celebrant’s a la carte service, complete with religious appetiser, offers choice.

As Gloriamundi makes clear in his/her recent blog, ‘What You Need to be a Celebrant’, such choice forms a compassionate collaboration between celebrant and the bereaved. By the same token, the Church is being compassionate and indeed true by being relatively inflexible, as touched on in my post, ‘Individuality in the Requiem Mass?’.

True atheists and theists are dogmatic, not pragmatic. They are not relativists as they believe in orthodoxies: that we are just physical beings, or that our mortal bodies are vessels for eternal souls, saved by the grace of God.

Some religions do indeed seem to be committing slow suicide, but there are also fresh buds, a growing hunger for reverence among many younger Christians. In a parallel world, generations are growing up not even as cultural Christians, meaning they’re less likely to behave as their grandparents would have done when confronted by death.

But this seems more social consequence than conscious movement: has the average person really embraced the belief that a world without religion would be a better place, even if they do prefer living in the moment and banishing thoughts of life after death?

Apathy has wounded religion but a creed that denies belief cannot equal it, certainly not communally. True atheist diehards (die-easies?) will never replace religion as you have to fill a void with something, not nothing.

‘Teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen’. (Matthew 28:20)

First published in the New York Times by SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE

It had rained heavily the night before. The steep stone steps of the ghat are slick and slippery, and when my father pulls me onto the boat, the water feels more stable than the ground. The boatman rows out toward the open river, and the city of Varanasi swings into full view.

On the bank, wrestlers are performing calisthenics; a vendor is selling marigolds; a man is throwing birdseed at pigeons. The river moves sluggishly at first — but then a current forces the boat around the bend, and we are floating silently by the Manikarnika ghat, where the dead are burned.

I am 8 or 9 years old. Save a distant uncle who has died of renal failure, I have had no personal experience of death. I imagine it as little more than a corporeal exit from the world.

It is an unforgettable sight: row upon row of burning bodies on wooden pyres by the river’s edge. There are dozens of pyres lighted at the ghat, like lanterns along the river. Around them, a circus of death unfolds. There are sons waiting for a professional barber to shave their heads. Men carry the bodies down to the water.

The bodies, swathed in white cloth and strewn with flowers, are bathed, washed and then taken onto a bedlike pile of wood and set alight. The fires burn sometimes for hours. When the flames begin to sputter, the priest shovels the ashes, still smoldering, into the river. The melodrama of the scene is nearly perfectly offset by the glum, mechanical matter-of-factness of its participants. Mounds of ash and marigold and wood chips are floating all around the boat.

There is a man standing by one of the fires and facing the boat, with his arms still taut, as if holding the body — except he is holding air. I bury my face in my father’s lap, but curiosity, literally morbid, forces me to look and to look again, as we drift past. The scene on the bank is mesmerizing. Then the boat rounds another bend, the haunted tableau vanishes, and we debark at another ghat.

Decades later, having trained as an oncologist in Boston, I attend the funeral service of a woman who has died after a long battle with cancer. I remember approaching the coffin, and then registering something odd: the woman has been coiffed and dressed up, and there is the faintest blush of lipstick — lipstick? — on her mouth.

The eulogies at the service are moving and emotional. But the funeral itself seems cleansed and sanitized into a clinical, nearly forensic, ethereality. There are children in dark suits sitting on the aisles looking like miniature adults. I wonder if any of them will be haunted by this funeral, or dream often about it, as I did after that disorienting vision decades ago.

At medical rounds a few days later, I ask some residents and interns about death: how many have carried the body of a parent? What does the weight feel like? And what about the ritual of bathing and cleansing?

In the United States, most terminally ill men and women die in hospitals or nursing homes. The death is typically “pronounced” by an intern on call. The body is lifted out of its bed by an attendant and wheeled to a morgue by another shift worker in scrubs. Undertakers clean and dress it.

Before a cadre of professionals took over the job, people of many faiths took part in the care of the bodies of the dead. Early Christians typically prepared their dead for burial themselves. The novelist Catherine Madsen writes about the Tahara, a Judaic rite in which bathing the body in warm water is accompanied by the reading of ecstatic love poetry to the dead man or woman. If the ritual were revived today, Madsen predicted that “there would be nervous giggling about . . . necrophilia; the plan would be . . . declared inappropriate and quietly dropped.”

Indeed, when I recount Madsen’s description to the residents, it makes them nervous. Our experience of death has become disembodied. The corpus has vanished from the most corporeal of our rituals — and we are left standing with our hands outstretched and taut but with no counterweight to bear, like the man on the riverbank holding air.

 

Siddhartha Mukherjee is an assistant professor of medicine in the division of medical oncology at Columbia University. He is the author of “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.”

Hat-tip to Beth Knox of Crossings

Posted by Vale

But, I hear you say, we do already. All the time. Interminably.

And, of course, we do.

This website springs from the Good Funeral Guide and the blog is full of discussions about new ways to dispose of bodies, about wild and wonderful flights of imagination in the services that are being created and lots of talk about the funeral industry itself. There is even room for philosophising in the many posts that consider what funerals are for (click on the category Ceremonies at the bottom of this post for a full listing).

But it struck me recently that, interesting and important as this talk is, most of our posts are about what happens in and after the service. We talk much more rarely about what happens before, even though this is where, for the people involved, all the important decisions are taken. It is also where funeral directors have an  opportunity to make a real difference to the quality of the service provided. To understand how, you first have to recognise what is happening.

Think about the traditional way that funerals were commissioned (and allow me to exaggerate and oversimplify for a moment). In a religious context it is the priest/ rabbi/ immam or whoever that acts as the guardian of the process. They may well be involved before death. After they act both as guardian and guide to what is to be done, in what timescale and with what rites. Funeral director, the family themselves, every player in the funeral process submits to this approach.

For the people involved in – and who are happy to identify themselves with – the process there is a great deal of comfort in this. It is often rooted in community. It will express contains both tradition and continuity, and it satisfies the requirements of faith. There is the added satisfaction of  knowing that all that is right and proper has been done.

Of course the direct link between family and faith – even as a cultural association) has been weakening for a long time now. In this census year a UK survey by the British Humanist Association suggested that two thirds of us do not regard ourselves as religious. While, internationally, another study claimed that data collected over a number of censuses (censi?) showed that in nine countries there was a trend that would lead in the end to the extinction of religion.

In these circumstances what should families do? The GFG is unequivocal. People should be given the information, advice, time and support they need to work out what sort of funeral service they want.

But, without access to another wise guide, funeral directors have, by default, acquired a huge new responsibility. More often than not they are the ones that families turn to as they begin to face up to the question of what sort of service it is that they need to commission. It has to be a real concern that – with some notable, brilliant and inspiring exceptions – too many still feel that the old process is the best – even where it lacks all legitimacy or meaning in the lives of the people affected.

This is why we need to talk about funerals. Meaning, spirituality, grieving, the comfort of community are all possible outside of religion, but only if the right questions are asked at the start. What needs to happen to make sure that more funeral directors are willing to ask them?

Posted by Vale

Can the obituaries published in Icelandic newspapers tell us anything about our changing attitudes to death and dying?

Obituaries are a national pastime in Iceland. Every day the leading national newspaper – the Morgungblaðið – publishes pages and pages of them. And they are read avidly. One writer has even claimed that the passion Icelanders have for their obituaries is a sign of a ‘national obsession with death’. 

Iceland’s obituaries are different. They are not about the rich or famous or worthy and they are not written by professional writers. Instead they are, simply, the personal tributes that family and friends make to the people they have lost. And, since the first decades of the last century, Iceland’s newspapers have published pages and pages of them every day, for free.

Over the years the style of obituary has changed and it was this that caught the attention of university researchers. In a paper published by Mortality (Letters to the dead: obituaries and identity memory and forgetting in Iceland) they look at these changes and ask questions about what they reveal about the changing attitudes to death.

Two examples make the point:

“Many memories surface [now that Ari is dead] as the man was an enormous personality, formed by difficult childhood…Of course Ari had to start working very early and maybe this experience shaped the way in which he made great demands on his family when it came to work. In the year 19xx Ari lost his wife who had stood as a rock by his side for almost thirty years. It was clear that this was a severe blow for Ari but he suffered his grief in silence. ‘I am Iceland’s battle,’ Ari said once on a happy occasion, and he certainly was the battle of Iceland, although the battlefield was not one where people get killed. It was the field of dreams and achievements of the man who with optimism and courage was instrumental in developing agriculture in his region from mud huts to modern buildings. Ari …was also famous for his hard work and it was like three shovels were being used when he was digging and three hammers being used when he was hammering. Ari was renowned for his helpfulness, and the bigger the favour asked the quicker he was to respond. . . . I offer Ari’s children and relatives my deepest sympathy. Iceland has now lost one of its best sons. Rest in peace.” 

“My dear dad, how can one understand this? You, so young and fit, are torn away from this earthly life just like that. We who still had so many things to do together. I know, men plan but God decides. Dear dad, I miss your kind words and your hugs terribly. As long as I can remember you have always made my wellbeing your priority. You were not just my dad but my best friend too. Nothing was too good for me. The memories accumulate, but they would fill a whole book. This summer, which now draws to an end, we were allowed to be together even more than usually. The two of us spent most of it together and every day you’d say ‘How shall I spoil you today darling?’ . . .My dear dad, I know you are with God and that we will meet again, but until then I’ll seek solace in warm memories and in the prayer you taught me [a well known Icelandic prayer is reproduced]. Your loving daughter”

What has caused this shift from the reserved and heroic account of Ari’s life to the personal heartfelt emotions in the letter from daughter to father?

At a practical level the new obituaries started to appear 1994 when the paper – in response to popular demand – relaxed the rules about what could be written. In the research a number of possibilities are explored, including the suggestion that it marks a shift in a society from one where identification with community has shifted to the personal and individual. This may well be true – but, for any of us working with the bereaved isn’t the shift familiar? The services we create here in the UK are increasingly personal, full of emotion and personal feelings directly expressed. 

If the changes can be traced to shifting social relationships in Iceland, what is driving the changes here in the UK? And when did we realise as a society that we wanted to do things differently? After Diana’s funeral perhaps? 

Posted by Charles Cowling

Extracted from an article in yesterday’s New York Times: 

I hope you had the chance to read and reread Dudley Clendinen’s splendid essay, “The Good Short Life”. Clendinen is dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S. If he uses all the available medical technology, it will leave him, in a few years’ time, “a conscious but motionless, mute, withered, incontinent mummy of my former self.” 

Clendinen’s article is worth reading for the way he defines what life is. Life is not just breathing and existing as a self-enclosed skin bag. It’s doing the activities with others you were put on earth to do. 

But it’s also valuable as a backdrop to the current budget mess. This fiscal crisis is about many things, but one of them is our inability to face death — our willingness to spend our nation into bankruptcy to extend life for a few more sickly months. 

Years ago, people hoped that science could delay the onset of morbidity. We would live longer, healthier lives and then die quickly. This is not happening. Most of us will still suffer from chronic diseases for years near the end of life, and then die slowly. 

Obviously, we are never going to cut off Alzheimer’s patients and leave them out on a hillside. We are never coercively going to give up on the old and ailing. But it is hard to see us reducing health care inflation seriously unless people and their families are willing to do what Clendinen is doing — confront death and their obligations to the living. 

My only point today is that we think the budget mess is a squabble between partisans in Washington. But in large measure it’s about our inability to face death and our willingness as a nation to spend whatever it takes to push it just slightly over the horizon. 

Lessons applicable to the UK, obviously. Read the whole article in the NYT here. If you missed Dudley Cleninden’s piece, read it; it’s brilliant and important. Here.