20 October 2011 – The Good Funeral Guide

Habeas corpse

Funeral arrangements for many Brits must take into account the sometimes violently conflicting wishes, needs and loyalties of the various members of blended families. Compromise can sometimes be hard to reach, the more so when one party sets out to hijack the funeral and do it their way.

It’s worse for Ghanaians. There, it’s the extended family that often hijacks the funeral. Journalist Elizabeth Ohene explains:

A friend of mine has had a traumatic experience and this has brought the subject of death forcibly to the fore for me.

When a Ghanaian dies, the body belongs to the family – that is the legal position.

The definition of family, in this case, does not include a spouse or children.

So, do not go looking in the dictionary, where a family is defined as “a group of people who are related to each other, especially a mother, a father and children”.

In matters of death in Ghana, a family refers to the extended family into which you are born – no matter how long ago and it does not include the family you have created.

So, you could be married for 50 years and the two of you might discuss what arrangements you want for your funerals when the time comes.

You might even write down these wishes but, unfortunately, when your wife dies, you will discover that 50 years of marriage counts for nothing.

Once your wife becomes a corpse, you have no say in where or even when she will be buried. If her family decides, for example, to take her body to the village she had never sat foot in, you will be able to do very little about it.
Wrath of in-laws

And if you think you are a beloved child and your parents have told you how they want their funerals conducted, you will discover that your word counts for nothing – unless, of course, you can find some people to intercede on your behalf and you can “buy” the funeral from the family.

The process of “buying” the rights to the funeral includes giving drinks and the paying of various fines for imaginary wrongdoings over your lifetime.

Custom demands that children bury their parent – in other words, they must pay the bills for the funeral but they have no authority over the body.

If your spouse dies and you happen to be not very popular with your in-laws, then better get resigned to the fact that while you mourn the loss of your partner, you will be accused of having killed him or her.

I have seen it and it is not a pleasant experience.

My friend’s husband died. Their children wanted their father buried after three weeks, but his family wanted his body kept for four months to enable relatives scattered around the four corners of the globe to attend the funeral.

We coaxed, we begged, we paid fines for all the years the children had not been to the village, but all to no avail – the body belongs to the family and they took it away.

This is an everyday occurrence in Ghana and if you think you can avoid it, let me tell you the story of a former chief justice who left strict instructions about what should happen when he dies.

He wanted to be buried within two weeks of his death and he did not want a state funeral.

Three weeks after he died, his family came to formally announce his death to the president and then added most helpfully that they had prayed and set aside the man’s wishes and the president should feel free to accord a state funeral.

The man got a state funeral some six weeks after his death.

If that can happen to a chief justice, it is obvious there is no point in me leaving any instructions, but just in case anybody cares, I want to be cremated within a week.

Not that I plan on going any time soon.

Source.

Mellified man and the wonder of Wikipedia

Posted by Vale

Wikipedia – that glorious monument to collaboration and, sometimes, hearsay – has some marvellously strange pages.

One of my favourites is the Mellified man. This is claimed to be an ancient process of preserving bodies through use of honey.Li, a Chinese pharmacologist reports that,

“some elderly men in Arabia, nearing the end of their lives, would submit themselves to a process of mummification in honey to create a healing confection. This process differed from a simple body donation because of the aspect of self-sacrifice; the mellification process would ideally start before death. The donor would stop eating any food other than honey, going as far as to bathe in the substance. Shortly, his feces (and even his sweat, according to legend) would consist of honey. When this diet finally proved fatal, the donor’s body would be placed in a stone coffin filled with honey. After a century or so, the contents would have turned into a sort of confection reputedly capable of healing broken limbs and other ailments. This confection would then be carefully sold in street markets as a hard to find item with a hefty price.”

Who knows, in this age of innovation in the disposal of dead bodies, (and a cash strapped NHS) it might catch on again.

It’s clear though, from other articles, that we have become a good deal less imaginative about death and dying. There’s another page that simply lists unusual deaths.

It’s worth a look for the sheer variety of deaths listed. There’s more roasting than you might imagine including being roasted alive in brazen bulls. A disturbing image, I would have thought, for stock marketeers in these troubled times. Then there’s the politician Draco who, in 620 BC, was smothered to death by gifts of cloaks showered upon him by appreciative citizens. There’s got to be a metaphor there for the risks all politicians face if they of accept too many gifts.

My favourite though is the Stoic philosopher, Chryssipus, who died of laughter after giving his donkey wine then seeing it attempt to eat figs.

They really knew how to live – and die – in those days.