No service by request

One more go at Canada’s Times Colonist. A rich seam, this.

There are 13 obits in the paper. Of those, 3 opt for no service; 3 opt for a celebration of life (I’m not sure exactly what that is, but at least one of them’s not a funeral); 4 opt for a memorial service; and just 3 opt for a funeral (all burials by the look of them). That means 8 out of 13 of these dead people will duck out of/be spared a conventional funeral. By UK standards, unthinkable.

There seem to be three reasons for the decline of the Canadian funeral.

First, older people (okay, seniors if you insist) move to retirement places and, uprooted from the place where, all their lives, they have done what was expected of them, feel disconnected from social conventions - fancy-free and free for anything.

Second, having moved to a retirement centre, these people suppose that there’ll be no one to come to their funeral.

Third, having been to awful funerals in the past, these (liberated, it has to be said) people reckon a funeral is not for them, so they specify: no service by request.

The local funeral director, McCall’s, is clearly so concerned by this that they have put a half-hour discussion of the no-funeral option on their website in the hope that people will reconsider.

In the UK we have retirement centres and more than enough experience of bleak and meaningless funerals.

So, why is it taking us so long to catch up?

Listen to the discussion on the McCalls site here: No Service By Request

The great reveller

A Christian funeral proclaims the fierce, happy truth that ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’. As Christians see it, Sin corrupts and depraves, Death annihilates and nullifies. Both are the spawn of Satan, who is Evil, the mortal (lit) enemy of God who is Good and, the theology goes, the victor in the end. It’s pure Star Wars. Nice idea, good plot, great movie, but, for so many people, no more than that. To believe, for them, requires an impossible feat of suspended disbelief resulting in that narked, defiant expression non-believers wear at religious funerals. There’s a good example of this over at Carla’s blog, where she reflects feistily and funnily on resurrection: “my caregiver Alexa wanted to know if my new perfect body would have red hair and great tits because otherwise it would be a downgrade.”

Once you’ve established the certainty of rising in glory you can look death coolly in the eyes and see it clearly for the howling, sneering, brutal, destructive hooligan it is. If you can beat this mindless yob up, you’re obviously going to whoop a bit. Thus, St John Chrysostom:

Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Saviour has set us free. He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He destroyed Hades when He descended into it. He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh. Isaiah foretold this when he said, "You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below."

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?

Resounding stuff. Intriguing tense change. And at least Christians implicitly recognise that the death of the body is potentially catastrophic, rendering living pointless.

What, then of those who cannot assure themselves of victory despite the knockdown on the deathbed? Is death, for them, defeat? Is having your body brought to a funeral like being paraded, accompanied by your shamed family and friends, as a vanquished captive at an emperor’s triumph? Can you make of this catastrophe something at least acceptable? Can you make it all right by calling death your friend? Well, we try, don’t we, with all that stuff about circles of life and leaves falling off an oak tree and death is nothing at all and I am not there I did not die and death is only an old door set in a garden wall; on quiet hinges it gives at dusk when thrushes call? Secular celebrants have gallons of this emollient balm to slap on.

For all these brave, naff words, twenty minutes at the crem looks to an observer like sullen surrender, a huddled duty-shuffle past the Old Enemy.

You can at least deny the Old Enemy this public humiliation by not having a funeral at all. I’m surprised more people don’t.

Click the pic to make it huge.

The ineptitude and ineffectiveness of words

Interesting, thought provoking piece about Irish funerals in today’s Irish Times. The writer, Marie Murray, makes this observation: The extent of funeral attendance in Ireland often bemuses our neighbours in England.

She says: Funeral attendance is a statement of connection, care, compassion and support. It encircles those who grieve and enriches those who attend because it connects each person there to the profundity of living and the inevitability of death. Funeral attendees witness the raw emotions of grief and the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to love.

And: Traditional Irish funerals have their own tone, history and vocabulary well documented in Irish literature, verse, story and song. They have their past and present rituals. They are comforting in their predictability.

And: There is consciousness in that line of sympathisers of the ineptitude and ineffectiveness of words.

I like that bit about the ineffectiveness of words. So many of our secular ceremonies are wall-to-wall words.

And: The funeral is the place where the details of the death are recounted, where memories are revived and connections made.

Lastly, There is psychological reason, social solidarity and cultural cohesion in funeral attendance

Read the entire piece here.

And what did you want?

There’s a sprightly piece about funerals in this week’s Spectator. Its content is not available free online, so I’ll transcribe the best bits and hope that I’m not infringing copyright but, rather, advertising the magazine.

It’s by James Delingpole.

If I’d written a film it would have been called Four Funerals and a Wedding, because personally I find funerals much more fun. Not all funerals, obviously. But the funeral of someone who’s not a close relative and who’s had a good innings can be a very splendid occasion.

...

God I hate weddings. The only one I’ve really enjoyed was my own, because I got to decide on the food and the music and all the speeches were about me ... It’s the trappedness I loathe and fear most ... At least with funerals you don’t go with any high expectations of fun and frivolity – whereas at weddings you do, setting yourself up for almost inevitable disappointment. And there’s an unspoken assumption at weddings that, as a guest, you’re privileged to be there and should be grateful to have made it onto the invitation list, which puts pressure on you to be on your best behaviour. At a funeral, on the other hand, you’re thought to be putting yourself out slightly. The family are touched and appreciative that you’ve made the effort. Also there’s no best man, no sit-down food ordeal, you don’t have to bring a present, and if you do behave badly no one minds or even notices because everyone’s on one of those weird, faintly hysterical, ‘it’s what he would have wanted’ post-funeral highs.

Then there’s death. I don’t think nearly enough of us think nearly often enough about this and what it means ... I think that we might all be inclined to live better, more fruitful lives. I thought of this as [the daughter of a man whose funeral he had attended] read out a homily attributed to RL Stevenson (though more likely to be a variant on something written in 1904 for a poetry competition by an American woman named Bessie Stanley). It goes: ‘That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it. Who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had...’ When spoken right next to the coffin containing the body of someone who’s course is run, those words have quite an impact.

On a similar note, this is the poem short story writer Raymond Carver had inscribed on his grave:

LATE FRAGMENT

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

More than just a matter of tone

This is an interesting blog post. Here's a taster:

What I hate most at funerals is the tone used by the officiant (almost wrote: the presiding officer). No matter what the religious faith may be, the person in front of the congregation speaks as if he knew ... I think it’s the tone of voice that does me in. As if the officiant had a direct line into whatever deity resides in that particular structure. I’d rather hang around with the person’s old buddies, whoever they may be ... We’d drink to his peace of mind and ours, then we’d start working his absence into the fabric of things.

Read all of it here.

Thomas G Long

An interview with Thomas G. Long, author of Accompany Them With Singing - The Christian Funeral. from Westminster John Knox Press on Vimeo.

Thomas G Long here, one of this blog's great heroes. Though he comes at funerals from a Christian viewpoint, most of his ideas have a universal application.

He talks about the growing practice in the US to have a funeral without a body (though with ashes, often). That's not happening to any great extent over here in the UK. But there is a conversation to be had about the role and purpose of a body at a funeral. In most UK crematoria it is set well apart from, and never in the body of, the audience. It is present, but not involved. There's a lack of conviction in this, a grudging acquiescence, you could say.

Great to hear Mr Long talk of funeral directors (and priests) who get it.

Why do atheists have dead bodies at funerals?

The question Can you have a funeral without a body? is not as useful as the question Why would you have a dead body at a funeral? Yes, yes, you can’t have a wedding or a civil partnership without the happy couple, and you can’t have a baby naming without a baby, so how can you have a funeral without a corpse? But are these events equivalent to a funeral? A corpse is a passive, insensate participant, that’s the difference. Yes, a baby is not an active participant at its naming, but it has to live with the consequences. What difference does a funeral make to a corpse?

That’s the nub of it. And the answer is that for some people a funeral does make a difference to the corpse and for others it does not.

There are, I think, three ways you can view a dead body. Think, now, of your own body when it’s dead. Which of the following will apply?

1. My body and my soul belong together (I am not dead, I am sleeping).

2. I had a body. Now I am a spirit (my body is old clothes).

3. I had a body. That was me (ditto).

Each describes a specific bodily status. Number 1 is explicitly Christian; you are sort of sleeping, awaiting resurrection in your earthly body. Number 2 is broadly spiritual. Number 3 is explicitly atheist. If you are a number 1 or 2 you are going somewhere; you are in a state of transition, the difference being that 2s leave their bodies behind. If you are a number 3 everything stopped when you took your last breath. Every minute that passes thereafter leaves you further and further in the past.

In order to mark the transition of a dead body number 1 it makes good sense to demonstrate its continuing dynamic by physically bringing it to a departure ceremony and wish it safe journey.

For a number 2 body I’d have thought a departure ceremony optional. John Lennon was a 2. Yoko One had his body burnt unattended and held a memorial ceremony instead, to take place everywhere and anywhere. “Pray for his soul from wherever you are,” she said. But inasmuch as the flight of a soul is about movement and transition and endurance, a farewell ceremony for the body is an appropriately symbolic alternative.

As for the number 3s, I’m not sure that they’ve thought this through. Ask an atheist if he or she wants to be cremated or buried. Chances are you’ll be made aware of a strong preference, arrived at in the consideration of a strong revulsion for one or the other. Wrong answer. The right answer is that it doesn’t matter a bit.

So, for number 3s, atheists, to bring a dead body, outworn carcass and so much deadweight, to a farewell ceremony would seem to be illogical and unnecessary. For atheists, surely, it’s got to be a memorial service every time?

My argument is not nearly as cut and dried as it seems.

Too good to be real

I have tried, in the Good Funeral Guide, not to cover topics already dealt with by others. Instead, I have incorporated lots of signposts to best sources of information and best archives of resources – poems, music, ceremony ideas.

There’s lots of stuff out there about eulogies, most of it guff. But TheFuneralSite has some really good advice about eulogy writing. I especially like the following (mostly, let’s be honest, because I fervently agree with it):

A eulogy composed and delivered by someone who loved the deceased is the key component of a meaningful memorial gathering.

Think about the funerals you’ve attended. What do you most remember? Wasn’t it the daughter’s speech about her mom’s life or the nephew’s series of stories about his Uncle? These speak directly to our hearts. We relate immediately to the speaker. They may make us cry, but this group experience will draw us together as a community and help us to acknowledge the life of our relative, friend or associate that has ended.

...

Often the eulogy is given by a clergy or celebrant who has never met the decedent let alone loved them. Although the clergy or celebrant may do an excellent job of interviewing family and friends and presenting an accurate and interesting eulogy, the intimacy of first hand knowledge and heart-felt attachment will be missing and can lead to disappointment.

It almost doesn’t matter what is said, the experience of someone who loved the decedent standing up and speaking on behalf of the departed is a powerful experience for both the speaker and the audience.

The personal eulogy is a gift to the departed and to those in the audience.

Don’t miss out on this extraordinary life experience.

I also like the Top Five Reasons to Give a Eulogy, especially number 5: It’s the right thing to do.

If a funeral is too good it risks being no good. Seamless scheduling + slick stage management + faultless timings + superb performances + splendid merchandise = too good to be real.

Here’s a moving example of what I mean, the conclusion of two posts written by a US blogger about his father’s funeral.

The funeral was almost over. The funeral director was clearly wrapping things up and this man came forward asking for a chance to say one last thing. He was a short man and was of East Indian descent. I recognized him only because he had introduced himself to me before the funeral. With apparent nervousness and a heavy accent, he began to speak.

"I work for Chip for six year. When I look for a job he interview me and he is very nice. When I work for him I never see anything on his face but a smile. In six year he never say a thing to hurt my feeling. He help me and my whole family. He is a good man to work for. When he leave (company) we walk out the door with him and he gave me his book to help me understand some things. There were some tears on my face. Thank you."

This was the most moving of all of the speakers, in my opinion. Despite the fact that the service was ending, he felt compelled to speak, knowing he would never get another chance to say those things in that forum. Despite his obviously difficulties with the language, he stood up and told this story and blew away those assembled with his simple story of how with nothing more than a little kindness and decency, my father had made an immense impact on his life.

Be sure to read both posts. Find them here.

Human rites

They call it a rite of passage, a funeral, but I’m not so sure that that's the right term for it. Is a funeral directly comparable with other rites of passage? We mark coming of age and matrimony with rituals which speak of transition—what scholastic folk call liminality. But, though we can push a young person across the threshold into adulthood, we cannot stop that young person from making a bolt for it and scampering back. And though we shower a connubial couple with hope as they vow to become one flesh, we know perfectly well that the rite is far from irreversible.

Unlike a funeral. What is missing from a funeral, for most people, is any sense of expectancy—of wonderful possibilities. All other rites register growth and progression. Not a funeral, not for most people. No life, no future. Dead. End.

You can look at it another way. All the other rites are social events which recognise a person’s social dynamic—an augmentation of their social role. But, interestingly, possibly regrettably, we have no rites of passage which recognise a person’s loss of social dynamic and tapering social role. The menopause, for example. Or the economic menopause, when a person retires. Or that day of dismay when a person becomes at best a tangential member of society by going to live in a carehome warehouse. If we are to set aside the Christmas spirit for a moment, we can perhaps acknowledge the bleak truth that, for most of us, social death precedes physical death, often by many years.

That there should be all sorts of confusion about exactly what sort of ceremony a funeral is, is not surprising in an age where most people disregard the ancient verities of faith and come to it more or less hope-less. So, what do we do? We dress it up somewhat like a rite of passage, a social event, and using that template we import some of the ingredients, even balloons.

But it’s an existential event, too, with much of the aspect of a black hole. Which is why we don’t take photographs of it. I don’t suppose many people think about that for a moment, don’t need to. You wouldn't take your camera to a funeral, it would never occur to you to do that, it’s simply not done, perish the thought. At any other rite of passage the cameras and the phones blink away like crazy. Never at a funeral.

Yes, a funeral is different. All other rites of passage are reckoned memorable, deserving of documentation and preservation for future delectation. Photos make memories manifest. How we love to pore over the snaps. Ooh, look at her there!! Aaaaaah!!!

But a funeral is, for most people, a forgettable event. Ask them. They say their memory is a blur. This is not only because they were dazed at the time by grief, it is also because they have subsequently done what they can to consign it to oblivion, to wipe it. In family histories, death is either omitted or passed over quickly, extrinsic, dis-integrated. And that may well not be a good thing.

Real funerals are for emotional grown-ups. Not all are photogenic: the raw, the angry, the guilty, the messy, the tragic.

But some are. Here's one, and a very sad one, too. It's a burial at sea. Lots of cameras. See it here.

Doing what needs to be done, saying what needs to be said

In his excellent book Accompany Them With Singing (read it before you die or I’ll kill you), Thomas G Long says this:

"When someone dies, Christians, like all other humans, look around at the immediate environment and ask: What do we have to do? What seems fitting to do? What do we believe we are summoned to do? In other words, Christian funeral practices emerge at the intersection of necessity, custom and conviction."

What’s good for Christians is good for everyone, note. But I think I’d be inclined to reduce Long’s three to two: to just necessity and duty. What do we need to do? Get rid of this body, it’s going off. In the manner of doing it, what do we owe this person who has died? How should the funeral ceremony be, and what part ought we to play in it?

Engaging with necessity has to do with caring for the body, then disposing of it. Evaluating duty is much harder. If doing your duty is defined as doing what needs to be done and saying what needs to be said, what might you permit yourself to outsource to others and what ought you to definitely do yourself, however reluctantly, both in caring for your dead person and in farewelling them? And the reason why this question is important is because if, as a bereaved person, you are going to get anything meaningful and therapeutic out of the experience, you need to put something in, the more the better.

This is a matter I have explored, as a secular celebrant, with many families, and I’m not sure it has ever gone down well. By the time I get to them, of course, they’ve seen the funeral director, and the full-outsourcing option has embedded itself and, as a result, the point of the funeral has largely been lost. To have lots of people do everything for you because you can’t be expected to do any of it yourself is perilously attractive. Duty is consequently subsumed in self-absorption. “Would you,” I ask, “like to say a few words about Dad?” “Oh, don’t you do that?” they reply. “Who would Dad prefer?”

Instead of seeking comfort through cosseting, bereaved people need to put themselves out and earn their comfort. Never in the history of funerals have participants been so utterly passive as those at most of today’s vastly improved secular ceremonies. Even unbelievers at a religious ceremony have a more interactive time of it.

Is this how the bereaved see it? Not most of them. They have low or no expectations of a funeral. It’s an event not to be engaged with but endured. And so it is that the opportunity to grieve best at the best time for grieving is lost.

For a celebrant, the creation of a funeral ceremony ought to be an organic process, the product of several meetings. If all goes well, the outcome will be far more participation by the mourners than they ever expected: a good funeral. Do celebrants customarily brief funeral directors about the emotional state and evolving needs of their clients during this process? No. Do funeral directors customarily monitor their clients with a view to providing a better experience for them? No. So far as funeral directors are concerned, everything is set in stone at the arrangement meeting – when their clients are in the first shock of grief. They are not interested in evolving needs. Too much hassle.

This business of doing everything for the bereaved seems like kindness but isn’t. I’d like to see more funeral directors and more celebrants exploring with their clients and with each other not what they can do for their clients but what their clients can and ought to do for themselves.

Real time and ritual time

I was interviewed the other day by Margaret Holloway of Hull University. She and her team are researching spirituality in modern funerals. Updates on their research were posted on their website, but they've mysteriously vanished.

She raised what seems to her to be the curious practice of conducting the committal or farewell in the present tense; what did I think? Well, I hadn’t really thought about it. Do I do it, too? Er, now I think of it, yes, I do. We talk to the dead person and say things – thank you, often enough; and goodbye, of course. And people call out, “See yer, mate!” “Go safe, my old son!” All sorts of things, they say.

I can see where she was coming from. Logically, it is bonkers to talk to a dead body as if it were in some way sentient. But logic has rarely troubled me. Intuitively, I have no problem at all. And no one has ever come up afterwards and disputed my tenses with me. Only Margaret.

Let’s not go into the problem of the symbolic role of the body at a funeral. Not today, anyway. Let’s just talk tenses. Time.

And I recalled what I’d read in Thomas Long’s excellent book, Accompany Them With Singing. It’s a marvellous thing. It’s a Christian text, but you don’t have to believe in God to embrace the truth of most of what he says. And he says this about time:

In rites of passage, even nonreligious ones, “real” time and ritual time are two different realities. Take, for example, the graduation ceremonies that are held every year on the campus where I teach. The soon-to-be-graduates put on funny-looking academic regalia, march to the ceremony, and when officials pronounce the magic words, everybody flips a tassel from one side of the cap to the other, and... Voila! People who were students one minute have become degree-holding graduates the next.

Now, all of us on the faculty know that this is not really the magic moment. These students actually become graduates, in a legal sense anyway, several days before when the faculty voted to grant them their degrees. The ritual simply acts out in ceremonial fashion what is already true about them, that they have made the transition from being not-graduates to being graduates. But even though the ceremony does not actually cause them to change status and become graduates, this does not mean that it amounts to nothing.

Real time and ritual time. I wish I’d had that concept objectified in my mind when Margaret called.

What are funerals for?

By gum, you’ve got to feel a little sorry for Father Ed, haven’t you? Yes? Have you been following the hullabaloo? There he is one minute, letting off a bit of personal steam in his blog, as one does—and hark what discord follows. Sow a wind, reap a whirlwind. Press, radio and television, they’ve all gone berserk, done him to death. Result: cacophony. There’s no making any sense of the kneejerk hollering and hooting because most of it has been generated by ignorance of what he actually said. The truth will almost always get in the way of a good story. Do you remember when a howling mob of paedophile hunters surrounded the house of a paediatrician? It’s all got a bit like that.

Down at the British Humanist Association, Tana Wollen, Head of Ceremonies, seems not to have allowed truth to stand in the way of a good soundbite. “What a shame,” she says, “that this particular priest seems more concerned with his own feelings than allowing bereaved people a ceremony that reflects their beliefs and wishes and those of the loved ones they have lost.” No, Tana, no. Father Ed is pro-choice. What he actually says is: “Naturally there will be those who disagree with my beliefs; I think they should have the right to exercise this choice even though I believe them to be misguided.”

We can sympathise with Tana if she was nettled by Father Ed’s assertion that “I am not, like the humanist, running a business and seeking financial gain from funerals.” You’re way off the mark there, Father Ed. The exchange of monies for post-mortem goods and services is a well established and perfectly respectable practice. For you, it comes in your stipend.

You don’t have to be a religionist to sympathise with any priest who, charged with conducting a funeral according to the rites of his or her sect, watches their words fall on empty or hostile eyes. To feel like a lemon under those circs is only human. Why do so many unbelievers ask for religious funerals? Yes, that is the question. And as Father Ed justifiably asks, “if this is your position, why invite me to the party? ... If there is no desire for this Christian dimension then why have the priest?”

For all that, it is easy to be enraged by the Church’s record in performing funerals. Father Ed and many of his ilk take pains, I’m sure, to do it properly. But too many funerals have been, and still are, perfunctory and impersonal, conducted by ministers who couldn’t give a damn. The C of E in particular has a case to answer.

Do we do funerals well in this country? It’s a good and important question, one at the heart of Father Ed’s ‘rant’. He says: “I was actually seeking to raise a question which is important for all society – what are funerals for?”

It’s a question we need to ask ourselves all the time. It’s Father Ed’s beef that “Christian prayers of ‘commendation and committal’ are not mere aesthetic choices in a market place of funeral options.” In other words, he doesn’t like being used merely as a nice funeral venue that knows how to put on a nice show. And yet his Church (if not his church) is happy enough to indulge those who wish to use its photogenic buildings and genial rites for nice weddings.

Thomas Friese’s response to Father Ed is, I think, spot on: “We may deeply lament the fact that such superficial attention is given in our society to such an important transition and sincerely believe we know better. But if that is so, then it is up to us to convince others of its importance.”

Yes. What are funerals for? Let’s keep asking ourselves that, urgently. Thank you for getting them talking, Father Ed. You’re a prop forward, so you must have broad shoulders. You’ll be needing them in the peace-shattered aftermath of your unsuspecting little blog post.

Vicar in a pickle

Our old friend Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells has been having some idle fun with the local vicar, Father Ed Tomlinson. The local paper has branded him a ranter and attacked him for attacking the modern funeral in his blog. Among his 'rants', this:

"I have then stood at the Crem like a lemon, wondering why on earth I am present at the funeral of somebody led in by the tunes of Tina Turner, summed up in pithy platitudes of sentimental and secular poets and sent into the furnace with ‘I did it my way’ blaring out across the speakers! To be brutally honest I can think of a hundred better ways of spending my time as a priest on God’s earth. What is the point of my being present if spiritually unwanted?"

Over here at the Good Funeral Guide, we are right behind you, Father Ed. Lift up your heart, lift up your voice!

Read of the travails of this blameless cleric here.

Read his insane effusions here.

Spirituality in contemporary funerals

There’s some interesting research work going on at the University of Hull. This is what they’re up to:

This project reflects the growing interest in spirituality which we are seeing in society generally and the changing shape of modern funerals. We are interested, for example, to see what the ‘spiritual' content of a so-called ‘alternative' funeral on the one hand and a traditional Christian or Buddhist ceremony might be; how people, as individuals and communities, express their spiritual feelings and beliefs and the meanings they attach to particular practices and symbols.

Why do they think it's important?

It will contribute to knowledge and theory in a changing field which is also of increasing public concern. It will also assist in refining the practical responses of professionals involved with mourners, and with dying and bereaved people in their creation of ceremonies and rituals which help people in their bereavement.

Here’s how they are doing it:

Subject to gaining the informed consent of all participants, we will first attend the meeting of the funeral director with the family when arrangements for the funeral are discussed. Then we will observe about fifty funerals of different types. At a suitable time after the funeral (perhaps one week) we will interview one or more family members about why they chose the funeral they did, the meaning it had for them and how it helped them with their loss. Finally, having analysed the funerals and family interviews, we propose to interview a sample of funeral directors and celebrants to obtain their views on emerging themes.

You can see how they’re getting on by reading the progress reports at the foot of the web page.

Interesting to note that, having attended 39 out of the fifty funerals they have set themselves, they are no longer finding anything new. For all the talk of grieving people reclaiming funerals from funeral directors and priests and creating life-centred ceremonies as unique as the life lived -- ceremonies which articulate and express the personal and possibly idiosyncratic values and spirituality of the person who has died -- the new paradigm has in most cases evolved into a new bog standard—a palatable, emotionally manageable ceremony served up by a second-rate celebrant comprising a handful of banalities tossed in a Henry Scott Hollandaise sauce, a eulogy spiced with a few nice jokes, the whole washed down with some saccharine Andrea Bocelli. Ritual comfort food.

Starkness and drama. Love and lamentation. The strong sense of a silver cord loosed, a golden bowl broken, a life ended. The emotional reality of a date with eternity. All missing.

Beautiful imperfections

Posthumous charisma

Photo by KQED QUEST on Flickr

Kathryn Flett wrote in this Sunday's Observer about a funeral she went to. Her account is testimony to the value of a funeral. She says:

"The send-off was standing room only, with moving speeches, singing, essential tears, equally essential laughter and a cardboard eco-coffin covered in stickers and scrawled personal messages from family and friends which looked like the graffitied sarcophagus of a very cool king, which James was... is... remains... "

Sounds like a good one.

She goes on to reflect on the pulling power of funerals compared with the pulling power of other rites of passage -- weddings, christenings, Bar Mitzvahs. These latter it's easy enough to invent an excuse to skive, and still keep a clear conscience. But the funeral of someone we love is an unmissable event. Why is it that we feel so drawn to a funeral? A mere sense of duty wouldn't suffice.

Ms Flett brilliantly pinpoints it. The reason we go, she says, is because of our "need to connect to those who will understand," a need, she adds, which is "not to be denied."

Yes, that's it!

She concludes:

"It is a cruel irony that we are, if we're lucky, only likely to attract all the friends we've dreamed of gathering together under one roof when we're not even there to witness it."

It is somewhat of a crazy irony, too, if we have greater pulling power dead than alive. But doesn't it just say everything about the value of a funeral?

Read the whole account here.

See George Melly's coffin (and read about his funeral) here.

A celebration of life ceremony

I've just enjoyed this blog post. It speaks for itself and it doesn't want me climbing all over it.

Read it here.

You say it best when you...

At yesterday’s funeral I invited people in the audience to have their say after they’d listened to tributes from the family. I tried to make it easy. I gave them time to think about it in advance, acknowledged that speaking in public is hard, invited them to speak from where they were sitting and reminded them that the only thing that mattered was getting it right for their dead friend.

Hardly anyone spoke. I had made an elementary error: I had supposed that their primary medium for expression is words.

Like many secular celebrants, I set great store by words. For me, they say it all. I also know that they often come over as so much blah-blah-blah – and that that may not necessarily be a bad thing. Blah can be just what people need so long as it is served soothingly warm – ask any Anglican vicar. “Death is nothing at all…” is warm blah. So is “Do not stand at my grave and weep”. To me, they’re blurry and worthless – but that’s my private problem.

For those times when words are likely to fall short, there are eloquent alternatives. There’s

· saying by doing.

· music

· dance

· saying by doing nothing

I remember planning a funeral with a family, fruitlessly trying to get them to tell me about their dead mum. Very little came until they explained that, as a family, talking was something they just didn’t do. Words, to them, were just so much blather. After some thought, I suggested lighting candles. They weren’t at all the sort of people who like lighting candles, I reckoned, but they leapt at the idea.

On the day of the funeral, I set up my stand, lit a tall candle in the centre and called people forward to light a satellite tealight. Normally, only a few come. On this occasion, everyone did – maybe thirty of them. The array of flames looked very pretty beside the coffin, where they spoke more eloquently than words.

Later in the ceremony, as I recited the solemn words of the committal, I heard a loud, alarming clunk, followed by chuckling in the audience. Afterwards, I discovered what had happened. The heat given off by the massed tealights had toppled the tall candle in their midst. Near-disaster for me but, for those there, the memorable, hilarious highlight of the funeral. It was typical, they said, of their mother to do that.

Words are unlikely ever to court disaster so long as they have been checked for precision and cleansed of ambiguity. Saying by doing, though, can be tragic-comically perilous. I’m thinking of the deplorable incident of the dove (symbolic of the soul of the dead person) which, when released, flew inside the crematorium for warmth, could not be chivvied out, and had to be shot. I’m thinking of another dove which, when released, was all at once attacked by a sparrow hawk. As the horrified mourners gazed up, bloody feathers fluttered down on them. I am thinking of the balloon which settled, miles and miles away, in the horns of a £50,000 prize bull. Enraged, the bull burst its fence, charged into a road, was hit by a car and had to be destroyed. These are all true stories.

A piece of music can be eloquent, but only when it is exclusively associated with the dead person. Music so often fails to be effective because those listening to it have their own, private relationship with it.

Dance could be eloquent, but mostly not in embarrassable Britain. Hippy-dippy. Toe-curling.

“It’s amazing / How you can speak / Right to my heart / Without saying a word” sings Ronan Keating. Silence can be defined as saying by doing nothing at all. Quakers do this very expertly, but hardly anyone else. If you invite people to sit in silence and contemplate, all they’ll do is wait. To remedy this, the custom is to fill the silence with music and invite people to do two things at once: think and listen. Doesn’t work. They still mostly wait.

Presently, funerals give the eyes little to do. Innovation is afoot. We now have Colourful Coffins, which I love. On its way, with us soon, is the multimedia review/celebration of the dead person’s life – words, music, slideshow, film clips. Louise Harris is doing pioneering work at Sentiment Productions. See her work here. I believe that the multimedia presentation is going to have a transformative effect on the way we do funerals once crems and other venues have installed screens, projectors and sound systems. I can’t wait.

Back in the here and now, I am chewing over the second lesson I learned from my mute mourners. I had wholly overlooked the fact that they had already done the most eloquent thing they could do for their dead friend. It was this: at some inconvenience to themselves they had made the effort to come to his funeral.

All the bells and all the whistles in all the world cannot speak more meaningfully than simply being there.