January 2010 – Page 3 – The Good Funeral Guide

Counting the cost

7 January 2010

Charles

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Categories: Processions

Here in the UK we are all following, intently or wearily, the furore created by the declaration of intent by Anjem Choudary and Islam4UK to hold a procession through the streets of Wootton Basset “not in memory of the occupying and merciless British military, but rather the real war dead who have been shunned by the Western media and general public as they were and continue to be horrifically murdered in the name of Democracy and Freedom – the innocent Muslim men, women and children.”

Silly stunt, you may say. Politicians of all hues have condemned him. Many would ban him. Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), says he would be “surprised” if senior officers in Wiltshire seek to block the protest because any group has a right to march even if their views are “unpleasant and offensive … Our view is we will have to deal with it, people have a right to march. People might not like it but that is the law.”

Whichever side you’re on, it’s worth looking at this in the light of the ritual which now attends the repatriation of dead service people. That’s what I want to focus on: this new ritual.

It’s a recent thing, this bringing home our dead, only made possible by skilful morticians, refrigeration and aeroplanes. It’s a novelty. It’s also a curiosity. These processions through Wootton Bassett look like funeral processions, but they’re not. They are journeys to the coroner. When dead civilians go to the coroner buy cialis reviews they go, not in a hearse, but in a low key van of some sort (call it a private ambulance if you like) in everyday traffic. It’s a non-event and none the poorer for that. The funeral to come is the thing, after all.

It’s as if these dead service people are being given a sort of pre-funeral. Why? Don’t people have the opportunity to honour them (or protest about them) after the coroner has handed them back to their families at their funeral proper? Of course they do. So why?

It’s an invention of the Ministry of Defence. PR? It’s your call. These processions are well regarded. And bringing home the dead in this way certainly gives the country a way of counting the cost of the war in Afghanistan.

But while these processions offer ordinary people the chance to pay their respects to the dead, they have also become expressions of patriotism and militarism. Wootton Bassett is no place for pacifists or dissenters. It’s Daily Mail country. It’s got political. So it’s no surprise to see the political Mr Choudary requiring the right, in his own way, to drive home the cost of the war to Afghan civilians.

If Wootton Bassett has become a political battleground, the invention of this about-to-be-hijacked ritual is something the MoD may now regret.

No death threats, please. Use a comments box to put me right.

Exhuming the past

7 January 2010

Charles

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Categories: Uncategorised

Far and away the most powerful image of 1979’s Winter of Discontent, when one and a half million public sector workers went on strike, was that of the dead lying unburied. There’s a peculiar horror in that; it blends dishonour with decomposition most potently. Bloated rubbish bags, bloated corpses. Bluebottles. Stench. The unburied dead of ’79 endure in our national mythology – and myth is what it mostly is. But hey, let’s not let the truth get in the way!

Up here, our rubbish bins should have been emptied on Tuesday, but the council can’t get their truck to slither up our street. Happily, while walking the dogs yesterday morning, I waved to Steve the undertaker as he drove his limousine gingerly past me on his way to a funeral. And I reflected that it won’t be long before some shroud-waving newshound disinters the nightmare image of the unburied dead, transmuting a little local difficulty into a national crisis.

It hasn’t happened yet, but you never know. Is this the start of it?

The sound of muesli

6 January 2010

Charles

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Categories: Cryomation

Did you ever come across promession? It is the brainchild of Susanne Wiighe-Masak, an environmentalist Swede. It offers, or promises to offer, an eco-friendly alternative to cremation. In Susanne’s words, this is how it works:

Within a week and a half after death, the corpse is frozen to minus 18 degrees Celsius and then submerged in liquid nitrogen. This makes the body very brittle, and vibration of a specific amplitude transforms it into an organic powder that is then introduced into a vacuum chamber where the water is evaporated away.

The now dry powder then passes through a metal separator where any surgical spare parts and mercury are removed. In a similar way, the powder can be disinfected if required.

The remains are now ready to be laid in a coffin made of corn starch. There is no hurry with the burial itself. The organic powder, which is hygienic and odorless, does not decompose when kept dry. The burial takes place in a shallow grave in living soil that turns the coffin and its contents into compost in about 6-12 months time. In conjunction with the burial and in accordance with the wishes of the deceased or next of kin, a bush or tree can be planted above the coffin.

The concept captured the imaginations of many people. The imminence of the introduction of the first promator has kept us on the edge of our seats for years … and years. I wrote to Susanne in June asking how it was all going. Her reply was as upbeat as always: “The production of the first promator for Jönköping is also well on its way and the plan is to deliver that to them this winter.”

It almost certainly hasn’t happened. Susanne is a gentle person and she hoped that gentle vibration was the way to reduce a frozen body to powder. It doesn’t work that way. She had reached stalemate.

Into the breach stepped an inventor in Suffolk who took Susanne’s idea, ran with it, worked with the University of Hertfordshire and came up with the breakthrough to the problems Susanne had balked at. In his forthright way he told me on the phone that, when you’re trying to reduce a corpse to freeze-dried powder, you need to be aware that “the body is a tough piece of kit.” He does it, not with gentle vibration, but by altogether more brutal cutting and grinding. He can now reduce a body to sterile freeze-dried flakes which look a little like muesli.

He calls his process cryomation. He’s got the finance to see the project through. He’s done trials with focus groups to see what they think of it, even the cutting and grinding. Interestingly, amazingly perhaps, they liked it. They had no difficulty with the aesthetic. Remember the fuss there was about cremation? Remember what they said about resomation?

In addition to finding cryomation aesthetically acceptable, focus groups also liked the environmental benefits: it produces only 25% of the carbon produced by cremation. Best of all, it releases no mercury or dioxins. Furthermore, the remains are compostable and turn to loam in 6-12 months. You could use just one small burial plot for a family for generation after generation.

We need an alternative to cremation. We want to be able to put something back when we’re gone. Cryomation is as exciting and as desirable as promession. But is it simply going to teeter tantalizingly on the brink of imminence for ever and ever and get nowhere?

It looks not. It’s just been shortlisted by Shell, one of nine finalists picked from thousands, for a Springboard Award, made to businesses who “offer compelling plans for a product or service which helps combat climate change”. That has to be somewhat of a hallmark of credibility.

There’s a website, but it’s not airworthy yet. In balancing promise and delivery, these guys seem to have got it right. Definitely one to watch. Mid-2010, they say. That’s when we should start to hear real rumbling.

You can look at her feet sticking out right here

6 January 2010

Charles

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Categories: funerals in other cultures

“America,” said Oscar Wilde, “has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.”

I don’t want to give offence to any of my many US readers. But for people in the UK who sometimes get frustrated with the way we do funerals over here, it’s worth reflecting that one of the reasons, perhaps the principal reason, why the pace of change over here in the UK is so glacial is that, compared with our US brothers and sisters, we have so little to react against. Here, scandals are few and small-scale, usually the result of the pitiful incompetence of little people, not the systematic malevolence of big bastards. Here in the UK, many of our funeral directors may be characterised as comically self-important, but they come nowhere near the Olympian paternalism of so many US funeral directors with their degrees in mortuary science (tcha!). UK prices are not half so high as US prices. So we don’t duck under the radar of our funeral directors by opting for direct cremation, a practice we still find somewhat breathtaking. It’ll be some time before we pluck our newly-dead from their deathbeds and run them straight to the incinerator. It may just be the case that, living as we do under communism over here (hat-tip to Fox News), we treat each other, on the whole, better.

I don’t cover US scandals in this blog because they are uninstructive to UK readers to whom, for the most part, this blog is offered. I don’t normally stroll into political minefields, either. But heck, you don’t come here for comfort.

Websites where you can plan your own funeral

5 January 2010

Charles

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Categories: Plan your own funeral

A cheerful email arrives from Sue Kruskopf, telling me that I ought to know about her do-it-yourself funeral planning website My Wonderful Life, of which she is the co-founder. It was “created after the death of my co-founder’s husband. It is free and you can not only plan your own funeral but leave letters to loved ones as well as music memories and photos. There are also many other features all in a very easy to use website. Members have even commented that they enjoyed filling out their book online.”

Actually, I did know of it vaguely. I last visited when it launched, maybe two years ago, and was impressed by the focus and marketing nous of the two women who run it. They’re in advertising, so they ought to know a trick or two. I hadn’t been back, nor had I given it a thought, since. You get like that with these e-start-ups: here today, phut tomorrow. I’m still mourning the loss of the online memorial website Eternal Space. It cost millions of $ to develop and went down days after going up. God, it was awful. Heaven only knows how many memorial websites have foundered, all memories drowned in the aether. Talking of which, have you seen Virtual Heaven? There’s another that won’t be around long. Don’t confuse it with Hoofbeats In Heaven, which is for dead horses.

The funeral planning website Your Death Wish sank shortly after being upstarted by some debby English journalist who, true to her trade, reckoned a little research would go all the way and make her a bob or two. That’s what it cost her.

But My Wonderful Life is very much still with us. It is unquestionably healthy. Is it any good? Yes, I think it is. There’s some wonky stuff, like their definition of a green funeral. You wish it contained more information, of course, you always wish that. But it’s clever and well thought out and, yes, useful. If you want to sit down with a bottle of good, red wine and plan your last chapter, if this is your way of doing it, it’s as agreeable a way of doing it as any. What’s more, it looks like being here to stay. Charles Darwin would be proud of it.

What else is there out there? Accompanied by my trusty sidekick Senor Google I had a gander and found just two others. First is My Finale, My Way. For $19.99 you get to fill out a worksheet, which doesn’t look like much return on $19.99, the minimum charge I would ever levy to fill out a worksheet. Dammit, MWL gives you a yummy book with your name on the cover like you’re a real author. For nothing. My Finale makes it difficult to evaluate its usefulness because, unlike My Wonderful Life, it doesn’t give you a video tour.

Another planning website I was aware of when it launched (before cocking a sceptical eyebrow and forgetting about it) is Once I’ve Gone. But it’s not gone, it’s still with us, very much so. It’s developed and beautified itself and, like MWL, offers a useful video tour before you commit. It even offers you the chance to nominate someone you’re going to haunt (it’s got a sense of humour). It, too, wins a Good Funeral Guide Charles Darwin Award. Well done, Ian!

How do they do it? Financially, I mean. Neither My Wonderful Life nor Once I’ve Gone charge a penny for what they do, neither can I see that they make anything from advertising. I’d like to know the answer to that, because sound finances underpin sustainability. So I am going to send them a link to this blog post and put it to them, and invite them to tell us anything else they think we ought to know about them. Keep a watchful eye on the comments.

Ian, Sue, tell us more, please.

Sex and death

4 January 2010

Charles

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Categories: sex and death

I’ve never been able to get the connection between sex and death. I once met an academic at a conference who was heavily into it, but in a visceral rather than a cerebral way, so it seemed. That there’s a whole psychopathology here is not in doubt. It’s passed me by, leaving me feeling emotionally gormless. Ah, well.

What about you? Test your lower nature, as time goes by, on the Jans in these two calendars, the first from Italian coffin maker Cofanifunebri (dig the groovy little sneaking skeleton), the second from Polish coffin maker Lindner (don’t miss the fab vid on the home page).

The Bill

3 January 2010

Charles

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Categories: funeral cost

As the new year comes storming out of the blocks, so does the Good Funeral Guide, cheeks flushed by a few days in its rocky, island holiday home. So too does Reaper G, of course, for this is his busy time of the year. No seasonal best wishes for you, you pale loiterer. But to all readers of this blog, may I extend my best wishes for a terrific year of unalloyed happiness and uninterrupted success. Go forth and gather it in.

To start us off, here’s a guest post from David Barrington, a funeral director in Liverpool. His beef is with the high prices charged by the big funeral chains. Thank you, David.

As an independent funeral director I take pride in the fact that I offer a caring and personal service at what I hope is a fair price. My firm is not the cheapest in my area but it is also far and away not the most expensive; that particular honour goes to the larger companies. And that is the subject of this post. Why in the funeral business does the opposite happen to other sectors of the economy?

In most areas the general rule of thumb is that if you are a very large company you can use economies of scale to ensure that your charges are lower than your competitors’.

So hypothetically if a company did let’s say 10,000 funerals a year, then you would pretty much imagine that they would have the buying power to keep their costs down.

Why then do the two large companies near to me offer a simple funeral service for over £500 more than I can? That is for a no frills service as specified by the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) Code of practice. Once you start adding in extras like limousines, better coffins, etc, the gap grows buy cialis online in new zealand astonishingly.

But what is more astonishing is that families go back to them without getting other quotes to see how much other funeral directors are or what sort of service they offer in comparison. One of the main aims of the bigger companies is to reduce the market share of the independent sector. If they succeed in this then there will be no incentive to keep prices down.

Now, bearing that in mind if you went into a funeral directors to make funeral arrangements and told the arranger you were looking for quotes from other funeral directors. If that arranger then told you to go to the other funeral directors and get a written estimate from them and they would match the new price or alternatively go £50 lower, how would you feel?

How can a company take that much off their price without compromising the quality of service provided? Would you feel you were getting a better deal or would you ask how they can manage to cut the price by that much and still provide the same quality of service? And what of the families who don’t shop around?

Is it really acceptable in a caring profession to ask a family who is in a vulnerable and emotional state to go shopping round funeral companies? Wouldn’t it be better to be able to justify the price you charge and stick to it?

We are not selling washing machines or televisions, we are offering a service that celebrates a person’s life. It is so important that the funeral director you choose empathises with you, offers you choice in the service that you want and a fair price.

A happy and healthy new year to you all.

David.