October 2011 – Page 3 – The Good Funeral Guide

The consolations of a Catholic funeral

16 October 2011

Charles

No comments

Categories: Religious funerals

Here’s an extract from good and powerful piece in the Catholic Herald by Siri Abrahamson

In the midst of a grey, damp winter, at the end of a healthy and normal pregnancy, our second child, a daughter, dies at birth. Despite 20 minutes of attempted resuscitation in the delivery room, she never draws breath outside my body. The neo-natal consultant has tears in his eyes when he comes up to the bedside where my husband and I are clutching each other’s hands in disbelief. “I am so sorry. We couldn’t save her.”

Our shock is complete. There was no indication this would happen. When we are asked if we would like our baby blessed, we say yes, in a haze. We are willing to grasp at any straws to try to numb this pain. The hospital’s Catholic priest turns up shortly thereafter. I can’t remember asking for a Catholic priest, but perhaps we had. Neither my husband nor I are Catholic, though my mother is.

The priest gets our names wrong, yet his prayer offers unexpected solace. He leaves us with a rosary. That night, and for many more nights to come, I sleep with it around my neck.

When it comes to arranging the funeral there are three available options – a Church of England service, a Catholic service or a non-religious ceremony. I ask my husband, an agnostic, if we can have a Catholic service and he says yes.

… … …

A month after Elspeth’s death the funeral takes place in a crematorium in north London.

It is another cold and grey winter’s day. In accordance with our wishes, only a handful of friends and family are attending the service, and the heartache of everyone present is palpable. My husband and I have dreaded the service, being so close to our baby’s cold body again, the finality of what we are about to experience. When Elspeth’s coffin turns up, in a hearse delayed by morning rush-hour traffic, it is so small. My husband is encouraged to carry it inside. Standing in the front row of the crematorium’s chapel with our older daughter, I watch him walk inside, his face and body contorted with sobs. We know few words of the prayers said by the priest, but the service is beautiful and more meaningful than we had dared hope. Just as we walk outside, the sun breaks through the clouds for the first time in weeks.

Read the whole article here.

A cortège of daughters

15 October 2011

Charles

1 Comment

Categories: Poetry

A cortege of daughters

A quite ordinary funeral: the corpse
Unknown to the priest. The twenty-third psalm.
The readings by serious businessmen
One who nearly tripped on the unaccustomed pew.
The kneelers and the sitters like sheep and goats.

But by some prior determination a row
Of daughters and daughters-in-law rose
To act as pall-bearers instead of men.
All of even height and beautiful.
One wore in her hair a black and white striped bow.

And in the midst of their queenliness
One in dark flowered silk, the corpse
Had become a man before they reached the porch
So loved he had his own dark barge
Which their slow moving steps rowed
As a dark lake is sometimes surrounded by irises.

(Elizabeth Smither)

Thank you, Sweetpea, for recommending this wonderful poem.

Quote of the week

14 October 2011

Charles

No comments

Categories: Attitudes to death, memorialisation

James Horwill, the Australia rugby captain, puts the World Cup semi-finals into perspective.

Before every match, he winds white tape around his left forearm and writes two names on it with a black marker pen, Macca and Ponto.

They were his close friends of his from childhood who, a week before he was due to join up with the Wallabies for his first tour, to Europe in 2006, died in a boating accident.

He went on the tour at the urging of his friends’ families and ever since then he has written the two nicknames on tape before every match, whether for the Reds or Australia.

“Footy is not life and death,” he said. “It’s still a game.”

Who are the real rotters here?

14 October 2011

Charles

11 Comments

Categories: funeral cost, funeral directors, Social Fund Funeral Payment

Is this a Welsh thing, or is it beginning to happen all over the UK? In Wales, according to a BBC news article, the number of public health funerals is alleged to have doubled in a decade.

This is contradicted by the view of the Local Government Association. In a survey dated 2010 it reports:

The number of public health funerals held by local authorities has remained broadly consistent across the last three financial years (2007/8 to 2009/10) … Two fifths (40 per cent) thought there had been some increase, the top three reasons being “higher numbers of people dying with family and friends unwilling to contribute to the costs of the funeral” (59 per cent of respondents); “higher numbers of people dying with family or friends unable to contribute to the costs of a funeral” (56 per cent); and “higher numbers of people dying with no friends or family” (49 per cent) … A calculated cost per public health funeral revealed that, on average, funerals cost £959

Whatever the truth of the BBC’s assertion, there may be evidence that, in Wales, there is growing reluctance of undertakers to arrange funerals for families who are skint.

It is difficult not to sympathise with the undertakers. They carry plenty of bad debt as it is. When they agree to arrange a funeral for a client who is making an application to the Social Fund for a Funeral Payment, they have no guarantee that the application will be successful. So slow is the Department of Work and Pensions in processing these claims that the dead person will have been dust-to-dusted long before verdict + cheque come through. For an undertaker, taking on such a funeral is a gamble. You can see why they might not like the look of the odds, the more so in an age where money owed to an undertaker is no longer necessarily seen as a debt of honour.

At the same time, to turn a family away is to risk considerable damage to a reputation for caring community-mindedness, the cornerstones of an undertaker’s good name. The BBC news article highlights this:

Joanne Sunter, from Portmead in Swansea, said she was turned away by four funeral directors because she was unable to pay a deposit of hundreds of pounds up front.

“I was heartbroken. My mother was in a mortuary rotting and none of these people would help me,” she said.

Note that Ms Sunter does not direct her anger at the DWP. But then it’s not clear that she is eligible for a Funeral Payment. If she isn’t, then where does responsibility for her plight lie?

A little while ago Nick Gandon, in this blog, sparked discussion about the way the Funeral Payment is administered – here. If funeral directors were to come together and refuse to take on applicants to the Social Fund, then, as Norfolk Boi had it, “The DWP would have to solve the situation they have created” – by making up its mind a lot faster.

The Minister for Work and Pensions, Steve Webb, has another idea, according to Teresa Evans. He’d like to substitute the Funeral Payment with a crisis loan, relieving pressure on the Exchequer and loading debt onto the poorest in society.

Teresa thinks the best way for the Welsh to bring their undertakers to heel is by taking matters into their own hands and doing everything themselves. There may be two schools of thought about the feasibility of that.

I can’t find any recent figures on successful applications for a Funeral Payment, so it’s hard to know if there’s been a sharp increase in recent years. I have only been able to discover that between 1988-89 and 1993-94 awards increased from 37,000 to 72,000 with a corresponding rise in expenditure from £18.4m to £62.9m. I guess the number continues to rise.

Which is why I have found my mind wandering towards what I can only shamefacedly describe as a conspiracy theory.

We live in an age where fecklessness is under attack by all political parties. Tories talk of a ‘culture of irresponsibility’ and Labour talks of a ‘something-for-nothing culture’. Lib Dems presumably say something halfway between the two. They all agree on the need for instilling some social discipline in what’s come to be known as the underclass.

Note that Steve Thomas, chief executive of the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA), reckons the trend towards public health funerals is going to grow. He adds: “Now, it’s not a trend any of us would welcome, but it does reflect the nature of society and probably the problems we have in the economy at the moment.” Note the order in which he lists those two trendsetters. We can take it, I think, that when Mr Thomas talks of “the nature of society” he is referring here to 1) an increasing number of feckless people wilfully neglecting to make financial provision for a funeral and 2) a “higher numbers of people dying with family and friends unwilling to contribute to the costs of the funeral” . If that is so, ask yourself what is the likely effect of publishing Ms Sunter’s photo. If this is the look of applicants to the Social Fund it is not necessarily a good look and may even be a stigmatising look.

So here’s my conspiracy theory. Is the DWP, by making the applications process such a gut-wrenching nightmare, hoping to shock and shame the poor into setting money aside like they used in the good old days when the man from the Pru would pop round on a Friday evening and collect their two bob?

If so, it would seem to be discriminating against the deserving and the undeserving poor alike.

Over at WhatDoTheyKnow.com they’ve been making masses of FOI requests for information about public health funerals. Find them here.

Meet St Pancras

13 October 2011

Charles

7 Comments

Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies

St Pancras was beheaded in 304 during Diocletian’s persecution when he was only 14 years old. His skeleton was clothed in armour in 1777. He now resides at the Church of St Nikolaus in Wil, Switzerland.

Are you in or out?

13 October 2011

Charles

14 Comments

Categories: funeral cost, funeral directors, funeral plans

It’s not often that you see a funeral entrepreneur on Dragon’s Den, but last night’s show shone a brief spotlight on an enterprise which, in an industry unaccustomed to innovation, is likely to elicit responses ranging from ‘It’ll never work’ to ‘Tcha.’ Theo Paphitis ruled himself straight out, no messing. But it turns out that death spooks him.

It’s one of those online planning sites (you know, the ones that never make it) with a twist. It’s more than a just passive repository of funeral wishes. It’s also a service comparison website which enables consumers to find the funeral director who’ll give them what they want.

The idea is that you plan a funeral online (with plenty of help), and your plan is then sent anonymously to all funeral directors in a geographical radius set by you. The funeral directors respond with a quote and a pitch. They name a price and they also say why they think they are best for the job. They can link to their website and anything else that makes them look good – third-party endorsement, a video clip on YouTube, whatever. You then choose the funeral director who seems both nicest and best value, and from there on it’s face-to-face and personal. If it doesn’t work out, you go back to the website and choose someone else.

How does it pay for itself? This is the bit that funeral directors are going to hate. You buy a coffin from the website at a cheaper price than you are likely to be able to buy it from a funeral director. The website pockets the margin.

Want to know more? Go to the website and try it out for yourself. It’s called CompareTheCoffin.com. Yeah, yeah, what’s in a name?

Is it likely to catch on? Don’t ask me; I don’t have a business brain. But I’d hazard a guess it stands a good chance of establishing a niche. More and more people are shopping around for a funeral. CompareTheCoffin does all the legwork for them and still almost certainly enables them to make a saving. It seems to have something of the win-win about it, for best funeral directors, too – but, as I say, don’t ask me.

I must declare an interest, though. When the originator of CompareTheCoffin, Steven Mitchell, approached me at the conception stage and asked me to write some text for his website, I did some drilling down, not in a Paphitis way, but into the ethics of it. I satisfied myself that, yes, this is an ethical business idea, Steven is a good guy, as is his web developer Akmal (this is a rare partnership between a Jew and a Moslem), and I set about earning a few meagre pence as a day labourer.

Whether or not CompareTheCoffin is a runner is something you are in a far better position to judge.

After last night’s show the CompareTheCoffin website came under what looked like sustained cyber-attack, which may perhaps be rated flattery. If it’s back up after its drubbing you can find it here. Catch the Dragon’s Den show here.

Britain’s second favourite undertaker

12 October 2011

Charles

2 Comments

Categories: Dignity

Here are some up-to-date headline stats on Dignity plc, the brand that dares not speak its name.

Valued at £460m

Average earnings growth of around 15% over the past five years. Growth is forecast to be at a similar level in the current year and 11% in 2012.

Debt stands at £319 million, up from £238.5 million in June 2010.

In the first half of 2011, revenues rose by 7% to £108 million and profits rose slightly to £24.5 million.

During the first half of 2011, the company spent £11 million on seven acquisitions, in addition to opening 11 new satellite locations at a cost of £500,000.

Handles 12% of total deaths in UK.

UK’s largest single operator of crematoria. Underlying profits grew by 12.6% during the period to £11.6 million.

Affinity partners include Legal & General, Asda and Age UK.

You may now applaud.

Source: Motley Fool

The Good Funeral Guide congratulates Dignity on the great value it offers shareholders, and welcomes all good news it may wish to communicate via us to consumers. Get in touch, chaps!

What Makes Funeral Celebrants Do It?

12 October 2011

Charles

10 Comments

Categories: celebrants

From a practising funeral celebrant, more opinionated stuff that possibly needs a health warning: it’s only what I think.

I’m not really sure why we do it – I’m sure we have many very different conscious reasons and less self-aware motivations. As Freud, Jung, Adler and Frankl all said, or if they didn’t, they should have: our motives are opaque unto ourselves. If you think you’ve understood your own motives in something as complex as this, then your motives have probably just skipped a step or two further back into the mists. Anyway, here’s a few pointers through the murk:

We do it because for some strange reason we can do it, this odd thing. It’s difficult, demanding, fascinating, and – dare we say it – addictive.

No, we don’t do it just for the money. We’re not that stupid.
It needs doing, if people are to have more freedom and choice about an important event. That’s the ideological motivation. Not everyone’s spiritual needs (or atheistical requirements) can be well served by ordained ministers of religion.
It’s intensely interesting, the patterns of all these lives and their endings. Many “ordinary” lives are not in the least ordinary. It is a privilege to help mark their ending.
The job flatters or completes our egos; it feels good to be wanted, at a time of crisis in people’s lives. People are mostly very appreciative; the bond between us and a family is brief but it can suddenly feel very warm, very strong. If we’re doing the job well, we have to share a little of their grief, and feel some love for them. So it’s a bit deeper than flattery, but the mists are swirling, so I’ll move on…
No, hang on, let’s look into that: maybe we get a charge out of being close to some strangers for a short and intense period, and then we can – have to – move on; we’re compassion tarts, sentiment junkies, it makes our own lives more intense. And that sense of heightened meaning, contact with an absolute, is very addictive.

It helps us to explore our own mortality and to come to terms can you buy cialis online in canada better with the prospect of our own deaths. So we’re trying to work through fears of our own about death, by a kind of familiarisation therapy.

Following on from that: we are close to death at funerals, but afterwards we are still here; after a successful funeral, we feel a sense of achievement, even a small victory. We’ve helped some people find meaning when death has taken away someone who meant a lot to them. Not a victory over death itself, of course, but over the desolation and emptiness it creates.

We like the attention – it’s a small-scale public event, and they sure as hell pay attention to you, even if many of them won’t remember a word.

We are chronic melancholics and we like hanging around graves and crematoria, wearing black and looking profound – sort of doing a Hamlet: “Alas, poor Yorick! I never knew him Horatio, but he sounds to me like a fellow of infinite jest, why, his family were telling me just the other day they well remember the time he…”

We’re disgusted by what we see as the emotionally stifling conventions of the funeral business and our culture’s mortality aversion. We want to open it right out, because we can see a way it can be done better, a way that can enrich people’s lives, honour their deaths, and be use to their grieving.
Oh, and (let’s be fair to ourselves): It’s good to feel you’ve helped some people, and done a good job for them for a fee that is not extortionate. If, of course, you have done a good job…

It’s interesting how many celebrants I know moved into the role after some profound and distressing experience – a near-death illness, the death of someone or some people close to them. I very much respect that. Which raises the question: can you be a successful celebrant if you haven’t been bereaved? Don’t know – guess so, but I do think our own losses can make a bridge for our empathy and compassion.

Cash for corpses 2

11 October 2011

Charles

4 Comments

Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, funeral cost

You heard it on the news? You read it in your newspaper? The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has published a report calling on the government to find out of people like the idea of getting a free funeral in exchange for donating their organs.

Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern, of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, says: “The possibility of sparing relatives the financial burden of a funeral might encourage more people to register as donors.”

The report rules out offering people an up-front cash inducement in exchange for agreeing to donate an organ or two sometime down the line.

The whole scheme is so fraught with contradictions you wonder how it ever saw the light of day. The point being that those who agree to donate organs cannot be sure where or how they are going to die; unless a person dies in hospital in pretty good health, their organs are no use. No use = no funeral payment.

So no potential donor is going to be able to bank on a free funeral.

Which means that donors would be mad not to make provision for their funeral anyway. They may even do the dumb and trusting thing and buy a funeral plan or other financial product.

So when the cheque for three grand arrives, what does it go towards? Furnishings? White goods? A plasma TV?

It’s a turkey, Professor Dame Marilyn. And don’t give us this talk about rewards for altruism. Altruism is by definition its own reward.

An interesting thing about this report is that no one has picked up that it is not the first time the Nuffield Council has flown this kite. It first flew it in April 2010.

Guardian report here. Telegraph report here. Daily Mail report here.

Bereavement Counselling in the NHS (Taking the sting out of death)

10 October 2011

Charles

2 Comments

Categories: Attitudes to death, bereavement, Death; Good death, End-of-life issues

Posted by Vale

Pat is a Bereavement Counsellor working in an NHS Trust hospital. Her job is to help people affected by a death in a hospital, supporting them through their grieving. Pat is the subject of a long article inSaturday’s Guardian. It can be found here.

It’s a heartening read. Death in a hospital can be a very fraught business. Treatment, perhaps in intensive care, is hard to comprehend, and the workings of the institution are often alienating and frustrating to people who want to support someone they love at the end of their lives. And death comes in so many forms that it’s sometimes difficult simply to come to terms with what has happened.
Pat’s role – carried out, it is clear, with great love and understanding – is to help people come to terms with what has happened. Sometimes it is a matter of looking at notes, talking to doctors and taking time to explain why someone died. Sometimes it is just about making space for grief. Pat:

“has a mantra that “nothing is wrong in grief”. She almost always honours requests from bereaved relatives, however unusual. A common wish is to touch the body of a loved one: hold their hands, or kiss their foreheads or even wash their face. One woman asked Pat if she could help her retrace the journey her 15-year-old daughter’s body made from the hospital to the mortuary, after she died from a very protracted illness. She then wanted to see where she had been blessed in the mortuary. “And there’s nothing wrong with that,” she says.”

It’s good to know that hospitals are recognising that the death of a patient is both an ending and, for bereaved family and friends, the beginning of another vital process – the need to grieve, mourn and say farewell. Important too that they recognise that their role in this next stage is crucial. Reading about the work that Pat does, however, did make me want to ask more questions about the way that the NHS treats people at the point of death.

If there is recognition of these human issues after death, is there the same concern for people as they die? How well are patients supported at those last moments? How easy is it for people to sit with the person they love; hold them and comfort them; share in the business of dying?
I’ve tried to find the relevant NHS guidance, but with little success. I did, however, turn up a Scottish NHS report called Shaping Bereavement Care – a framework for action. It has 14 recommendations, some of them recognisably relating to the good work that Pat does. The recommendation relating to the process of dying though is this one. It is a commitment to:

“undertake a review of all current policies and procedures relating to care of the dying patient, and care of the deceased, to ensure that they reflect good quality care and to assess and reduce any real or potential negative impact of these processes on those who have been bereaved.”(Recommendation 3)

It suggests that there are important connections yet to be made in this area – in the Scottish NHS at least. Although, surely, it’s not hard to join the dots between the way that people feel when they are not involved in a death and the need to involve them more in the process of dying itself? It seems clear enough to me that if the humanity, care and understanding that Pat so clearly brings to her work after a death could be brought into the hospital itself and allowed to take their place at the bedside of the dying patent, then acceptance, understanding and the grieving process itself would be immeasurably improved.

But maybe the NHS in England is already there?