14 October 2010 – The Good Funeral Guide

Not so first as he thinks

A CANCER victim yesterday became the first person to be buried upright at Australia’s only vertical cemetery.

Allan Heywood lost his battle with cancer last Tuesday and was buried in the unusual, space-saving grave in the new vertical cemetery outside Camperdown in western Victoria.

“It’s nice to be first at something. Everybody wants their little place in history,” the Skipton man said with the hint of a laugh.

“I’ve attended a lot of funerals over the years and I’ve never attended one that I’ve enjoyed … I’m an atheist as well,” he said.

Mr Heywood paid $2750 – about half the cost of a basic conventional burial – to be buried upright in a biodegradable shroud, conveyed to his final resting place on a steel trolley which is angled vertically to lower the body into a tubular grave.

He said the lower cost and that there was no graveside service, headstone, casket or grave marker meant his children wouldn’t face any financial burden and could arrange their own memorial service at the local pub or footy club.

Mr Heywood’s body was lowered feet first into its hole by cemetery officials. When his body has been joined by 39, 999 other bodies, the space-saving cemetery will be grassed over and grazed.

Vertical burial is approved in some Asian countries and also Holland – but I don’t think any have been carried out there.

Fact: The world’s first-ever vertical burial took place in England (or, as they say in the US, England, England). It was one of two last wishes of the delightfully bonkers Major Peter Billiere who died precisely nine months to the day after predicting he would.

His funeral was held on 11 June 1800 at Box Hill in Surrey in a hole reputedly 100 feet deep. Into this, Major Billiere was lowered head first, according to his instructions, and there he will remain, according to his philosophy, until the Day of Judgement when he will be resurrected right way up in a world turned upside down. The headstone reads: “Here lies Major Peter Labilliere, with his head in the ground and his feet in the air.”

Major Peter Labilliere’s headstone

The good major was an early adopter of the celebration of life style of funeral, so his other final wish was that the youngest son and daughter of his landlady should dance on his coffin. Apparently the lass demurred; the lad larged it.

This is all true, by the way. If you don’t believe me, go google.

Generalising from the particular

I enjoyed this article from the Catholic Herald by Francis Phillips:

I was at a Requiem Mass this morning; nothing unusual in that, of course. Yet this Mass was highly unusual in this respect: there was no panegyric of the dead. The deceased man had made it clear to his widow before he died that he wanted the homily to focus on the faith – specifically the theology of death and resurrection, with accompanying prayers for the dead – and not on him.

This must be the first funeral I have attended since the death of my father more than 30 years ago when a “celebration of the life” has not been a central feature of the service. How and when did it creep in that a funeral has to concentrate on a deceased person’s achievements, foibles and lovable frailties – indeed, on his or her imminent canonisation – to the exclusion of almost everything else?

…

There you have it: no mournful pop songs, no tributes to the deceased’s love of a pint at his local pub, his efforts on behalf of mankind; just natural grief at the loss and hope in the mercy of God. I left this morning’s funeral more comforted and consoled than at many a funeral I have attended in recent years.

Splendid spiritual confidence and theological integrity!

Read the whole piece here.