18 June 2010 – The Good Funeral Guide

The Sunset coffin

“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” There’s a funeral industry variant on this saying. Substitute ‘coffin’ for ‘mousetrap’.

Last week I went to see Sunset Coffins. Its development is the outcome of a partnership between an environmentally conscious funeral director and ironmonger, Jeremy Clutterbuck, and an engineer, Steve Ancrum. It meets the aspirations and standards of both. No ‘Yes, buts’ apply. It passes the fussiest funeral director’s leak-and-creak test.

It is made from board resourced locally, created from 100% recycled newsprint. It is robust, agreeably constructed with dovetail joints, it has a suedey-velvety feel, it comes in 8 pastel shades and every part of it is biodegradable. It’s as green as it gets. Those many funeral directors who can’t conquer their aversion to cardboard will find this one easy to love.

It is very soft and easy on the eye. It reflects no light – indeed, it almost seems to absorb it.

It is also very easily decorated. You can pin what you want on it. If it should pick up a scuff you can lightly sandpaper it off. It’s the same all the way through.

I liked what I saw very much. I also liked the ethical way the factory operates. And I am grateful for the welcome I received.

Will it catch on? Who knows. The last coffin I raved about was the Hainsworth woollen coffin. Very few have sold. It’s a very difficult market to call.

But I certainly wish it well.

Fooneytunes

There are limitations to blogging. If a post looks overlong people won’t read it. So you need to stick to a single line of argument; you haven’t space to expand or balance. Once you’ve written it you must strip it down, starting with the best bits. As you contemplate clicking Publish, vanity warns you that carefully crafted incompleteness looks idiotically simplistic — sometimes offensively so.

There’s an upside. That which limits the blogger liberates the audience. Finely judged incompleteness excites responses which correct, balance and enrich the original post in ways far beyond the intellectual capability of the blogger. It’s the resulting collaborative debate which really amounts to something. As with yesterday’s post. I’m writing this on the back of that.

Funeral ceremonies which address death as a universal event are in bad odour. We all know the diss-words. Cookie-cutter. One-size-fits-all. Same-old-same-old. Ceremonies like this don’t sufficiently address the individuality of the person who has died.

But funeral ceremonies which focus on the uniqueness of the dead person mostly overlook the universality of death and present it as an isolated individual misfortune. I’m not sure that celebration-of-lifers see a funeral as an opportunity to get their heads around their own and everyone else’s mortality, nor do they ever express a wish to spend time doing so. ‘The bell tolls for him, not me.’

The present day obsession with funeral tunes is interesting. Often, it’s the only thing secular folk know they want. The tunes they choose were not created to be played at funerals. They’re anything but unique to the individual. The emotions they arouse are arguably a distraction from the business in hand.

All people know is that they must dutifully fill a 20-minute void with noise. Not glum noise, nice noise. Words don’t come easy. Thank heaven, then, for the secular celebrant with her cabinet of emotional emollients and her smiley, kind delivery.

Tunes come off the peg, easily lifted. Ready-made blather.