Archive: October 2011
Pull yourselves together, you wailing wimps!
Guest post by Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD) , our Stoic correspondent
Is it solace that you look for? Let me give you a scolding instead! You are like a woman in the way you take your son’s death; what would you do if you had lost an intimate friend?
A son, a little child of unknown promise, is dead; a fragment of time has been lost. We hunt out excuses for grief; we would even utter unfair complaints about Fortune, as if Fortune would never give us just reason for complaining! But I had really thought that you possessed spirit enough to deal with concrete troubles, to say nothing of the shadowy troubles over which men make moan through force of habit. Had you lost a friend (which is the greatest blow of all), you would have had to endeavour, rather, to rejoice because you had possessed him than to mourn because you had lost him.
But many men fail to count up how manifold their gains have been, how great their rejoicings. Grief like yours has this among other evils: it is not only useless, but thankless.
Has it then all been for nothing that you have had such a friend? During so many years, amid such close associations, after such intimate communion of personal interests, has nothing been accomplished? Do you bury friendship along with a friend?
And why lament having lost him, if it be of no avail to have possessed him? Believe me, a great part of those we have loved, though chance has removed their persons, still abides with us. The past is ours, and there is nothing more secure for us than that which has been.
We are ungrateful for past gains, because we hope for the future, as if the future – if so be that any future is ours – will not be quickly blended with the past. People set a narrow limit to their enjoyments if they take pleasure only in the present; both the future and the past serve for our delight – the one with anticipation, and the other with memories, but the one is contingent and may not come to pass, while the other must have been.
What madness it is, therefore, to lose our grip on that which is the surest thing of all? Let us rest content with the pleasures we have quaffed in past days, if only, while we quaffed them, the soul was not pierced like a sieve, only to lose again whatever it had received.
There are countless cases of men who have without tears buried sons in the prime of manhood – men who have returned from the funeral pyre to the Senate chamber, or to any other official duties, and have straightway busied themselves with something else.
And rightly; for in the first place it is idle to grieve if you get no help from grief. In the second place, it is unfair to complain about what has happened to one man when death is in store for all of us.
Again: it is foolish to lament one’s loss when there is such a slight interval between the lost and the loser. Hence we should be more resigned in spirit, because we follow closely those whom we have lost.
Meet Trudy
Some things have Wow Factor and they may or may not wow you. Here at the Good Funeral Guide we are far more susceptible to things that have Oh Wow Factor (big difference), and the latest thing to Oh Wow us is the brand new, not yet launched, 1965 Morris Minor hearse.
She’s called Trudy. Trudy the Traveller. Here’s what her owners, Andrew and Judith Bywater, have to say about her:
Trudy was built and registered in 1965. She was supplied by Colmore Depot, based at West Bromwich in the West Midlands. She led a normal life, becoming gradually run-down through daily use, until Andrew bought her as a complete wreck in April 2009. It has taken two and a half years of painstaking work to restore her to show condition, and she is due to be displayed at our launch at the NEC classic car show in November 2011.
She looks like a lovely piece of work, and here at GFG HQ we request and require all funeral directors who read this blog (we know there are lots of you; we suppose you to be the best) to get in touch with Andrew and Judith and offer this to your clients. Baby Boomers throughout the land will have their heartstrings tugged by this little beauty. Their first car was probably a Morris Minor.
Photos from the Morris Minor Hearse Company, which you can find here.
If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
Steve Jobs
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Whole speech here.
Gail Rubin’s 30 funerals in 30 days challenge 2011
Over in the United States the indefatigable and brilliant blogger Gail Rubin has already embarked on her 30 funerals in 30 day challenge. Yes, she is going to cover one day for a month, and today is actually Day Six, so you’ve got some catching up to do. Don’t miss Day Five, when she visited a pet cemetery on, most appropriately, St Francis’ Day.
Gail attends the ordinary funerals of ordinary people, and that’s what makes this project so gripping and also, I think, important. All ordinary people are extraordinary; their funerals speak to everyone.
For us here in the UK it’s very interesting to gain this insight into the way they do things over there. Best of all, there are things we can learn.
If you missed last year’s 30 in 30 you can find it in Gail’s blog archive.
Find The Family Plot blog here.
Order a copy of Gail’s book here. It’s good.
And here is some music from Gene R Spence’s funeral (Day 5)
I am not gonna lay around and whine and mourn for somebody that done me wrong
Don’t think for a minute that I am gonna sit around and sing some old sad song
I believe it’s half full not a half empty glass
Every day I wake up knowing it could be my last
[Chorus:]
I ain’t here for a long time
I’m here for a good time
So bring on the sunshine, to hell with the red wine
Pour me some moon shine
When I’m gone put it in stone “He left nothing behind”
I ain’t here for a long time
I’m here for a good time
Folks are always dreaming about what they like to do but I like to do just what I like
I take the chance, dance the dance, it might be wrong but then again it might be right
There’s no way of knowing what tomorrow brings
Life’s too short to waste it I say bring on anything
[Chorus:]
I ain’t here for a long time
I’m here for a good time
So bring on the sunshine, to hell with the red wine
Pour me some moon shine
When I’m gone put it in stone “He left nothing behind”
I ain’t here for a long time
I’m here for a good time
I ain’t here for a long time
I’m here for a good time
Dying Large
Very nice piece here by Wendy Dennis in the Huffington Post.
I must have crossed some kind of age threshold, because when I go to funerals lately, I start thinking about my own. It’s not the dying part that scares me. It’s the numbers I’ll draw for the service. I’m in the sanctuary and the place is packed and some relative is at the podium going on about how wonderful the dead person was and how much they gave to the UJA, and I start taking a head count and doing the math and the minute the funeral is over, I call up my daughter and tell her that when my time comes, she has to hire extras.
She hates when I talk like that, but I don’t think you can be too careful about the optics of your own demise. For instance, if I die in a horrible accident, I want my handlers to know that they are not, under any circumstances, to let anyone mark the spot with teddy bears or carnations, tell my loved ones that I’m “in a better place”, hold a “life-affirming” remembrance for me, or deliver one of those treacly eulogies that make people wonder if they’ve walked into the wrong chapel.
There ought to be a law against delivering a crappy eulogy. I can’t tell you how many funerals I’ve sat through wishing that the Law and Order crew would burst into the sanctuary, handcuff the offenders, and read them their rights — especially the one about their right to remain silent. When someone is charged with the responsibility of delivering the last words that will ever be spoken about another human being, I think they have a moral obligation not to mention their meatball recipe.
More here. Well worth it.
Archbishop Hannan’s funeral
Nearly 200 priests of the Archdiocese of New Orleans squeezed into a seminary chapel Monday and chanted ancient Christian prayers of penance and confidence in the afterlife around the body of Archbishop Philip Hannan.
The prayer service at Notre Dame Seminary marked the formal beginning of four days of funeral rites for Hannan, 98, who died last week, 46 years after coming to New Orleans.
Hannan will lie in repose at the seminary until Wednesday when, according to plans the Archdiocese of New Orleans released Monday, the St. Augustine High School Marching Band will lead a horse-drawn carriage bearing his body down Canal Street toward St. Louis Cathedral.
The rites will end with a final funeral Mass there Thursday at 2 p.m., the archdiocese said.
At the close of the 34-minute prayer service, church officials opened the seminary to allow members of the public to file past Hannan’s casket. That will continue Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
More here.
Square Pegs in Round Holes
Posted by Charles
Love him or hate him, Barry Albin-Dyer is Britain’s only celebrity undertaker. Love it or hate it, he’s written another book.
It’s called Square Pegs in Round Holes. It’ll appeal to fellow undertakers up and down the country because it promises to reveal the secrets of his enviable business success. But its lessons are not exclusive to Dismal Traders. Barry’s Way may (or may not) be appealing to all manner of entrepreneurial people.
He’s nothing if not ambitious: “From the outset, my goal was to make Albin’s the best funeral business in the world. I’d like to think I’ve done that.” Undertakers hoping to pick up a trick or two are likely to be disappointed. Albin-Dyer does not go into operational detail. But two essential characteristics of a successful undertaker which are abundantly personified by Albin-Dyer were accurately detected when he was at school. His headmaster observed: “He undoubtedly possesses considerable aplomb and a great capacity for organisation.” Spot on. He’s a high-functioning showman. All the best undertakers are.
Much of Albin-Dyer’s recipe for success is orthodox enough – homespun, even. He’s a down-to-earth man, rooted in his beloved Bermondsey. He loves to make a difference and he loves to put something back. I don’t doubt for a moment that he is one of life’s nice guys. For him, there is a high moral value in honest, hard work. He believes that a business must have an ethos; he calls this ‘the goodness’.
As a boss he comes across as a hands-on benevolent despot. Each day begins with a staff breakfast for information sharing and team building. There’s even a 5-a-side football team. Everyone’s bonded and very disciplined. And you never know where Barry’s going to pop up next. There’s nothing radical about the way he does things, but there’s plenty of thoroughness. And buzz, too. His would seem to be a small business of the very best and most vibrant sort.
He is aware of the importance of embracing change – and of putting the business into the hands of his two sons before he gets too old to change. Well, nothing changes all that fast in the funeral industry, so there’s little challenge here; the changes he identifies in the course of his working life hardly made the earth move. He can’t see a future for an online planning service. He may be wrong about that. I’m not sure that his use of a call centre serves the cause of personal service.
Albin-Dyer has lived through interesting times which must have exposed him to temptations to go really big. The conclusion he has drawn from the activities of the consolidators, from Howard Hodgson and SCI through to present day operations like Dignity, Co-op, Laurel Management, Funeral Services partnership et al, is that they don’t work: “Large funeral companies spread themselves too thinly and aren’t able to provide the kind of personal service that small companies like us can.” He doesn’t want to lose ‘the goodness’. I wonder if he’s right about this. Sure, the present crop of consolidators gets things serially wrong. Dignity is the brand that dare not speak its name, and the others are little better. Funeralcare’s trying a little harder. But our shopping malls are full of admired brands. There’s no reason why funeral directing should be any different. There remains much opportunity for a successful operator, in my view. I mean, if John Lewis did funerals…
Albin-Dyer steers clear of philosophy. He doesn’t talk about how funerals can be experiences which are transformative of grief. No Thomas Lynch, he; if he broods on these things, he doesn’t brood on them in this book. Not only does he exemplify the near-universal separation between undertaker and ceremony maker, he asserts that the two have nothing to say to each other: “I know that there are clearly defined boundaries between my role and the role of the priest or vicar. And I make sure that neither I nor any of my staff ever step across it.”
No mention of secular celebrants and the changes they are bringing to the way we do funerals. No thoughts about the opportunities for creative collaboration with ceremony makers of all stripes, and joining up this great disconnect between the cortege and the ceremony. That’s an eyebrow-raising oversight. Don’t get left behind, Barry.
Buy Square Pegs in Round Holes here.
The Surprising Satisfactions of a Home Funeral
Posted by Vale
“So a few weeks before Bob died, my 15-year-old son, Harper, and I made a coffin out of plywood and deck screws from Home Depot…We routed rabbet joints for a tight construction.
“I guess we wouldn’t want him falling out the bottom,” Harper said.
“That would reflect poorly on our carpentry skills,” I agreed.
Max Alexander has written a fascinating account of two contrasting funerals. One, a home funeral, for his father in law (Bob, on the left in the photograph) the second, more conventional, for his father (Jim, on the right in the photograph). His description of what happened is warm, intimate and very moving:
“When Bob died, on a cold evening in late November, Sarah, her sister Holly and I gently washed his body with warm water and lavender oil as it lay on the portable hospital bed in the living room. (Anointing a body with aromatic oils, which moisten the skin and provide a calming atmosphere for the living, is an ancient tradition.) I had been to plenty of funerals and seen many a body in the casket, but this was the first time I was expected to handle one. I wasn’t eager to do so, but after a few minutes it seemed like second nature. His skin remained warm for a long time—maybe an hour—then gradually cooled and turned pale as the blood settled. While Holly and I washed his feet, Sarah trimmed his fingernails. (No, they don’t keep growing after death, but they were too long.) We had to tie his jaw shut with a bandanna for several hours until rigor mortis set in, so his mouth would not be frozen open; the bandanna made him look like he had a toothache.
We worked quietly and deliberately, partly because it was all new to us but mainly out of a deep sense of purpose. Our work offered the chance to reflect on the fact that he was really gone. It wasn’t Bob, just his body.
Bob’s widow, Annabelle, a stoic New Englander, stayed in the kitchen during most of these preparations, but at some point she came in and held his hands. Soon she was comfortable lifting his arms and marveling at the soft stillness of her husband’s flesh. “Forty-four years with this man,” she said quietly.”
The full account of both funerals can be found here.
Max took inspiration from an organisation called Crossings, that acts as a home funeral and green burial resource center. Crossing, they say, exists “to foster the integration of dying and after-death care back into our family and community life.” Their site can be found here.
Funeral potatoes
Posted by Charles
A great recipe here for all bereaved people wondering what to serve at the do afterwards.
Undertakers, celebrants and other funeral industry professionals might like to serve this (with a dark chuckle) at supper parties.
Funeral potatoes
Serves 8 to 10
You’ll need one 30-ounce bag of frozen shredded (not cubed) hash brown potatoes.
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 onions, chopped fine
¼ cup all-purpose flour
1½ cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup half-and-half
1¾ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon dried thyme
¼ teaspoon pepper
2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
8 cups frozen shredded hash brown potatoes
½ cup sour cream
4 cups sour-cream-and-onion potato chips, crushed
1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter in Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Cook onion until softened, about 5 minutes. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, until golden, about 1 minute. Slowly whisk in broth, half-and-half, salt, thyme, and pepper and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened, 3 to 5 minutes. Off heat, whisk in cheddar until smooth.
2. Stir potatoes into sauce, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, over low heat until thawed, about 10 minutes. Off heat, stir in sour cream until combined.
3. Scrape mixture into 13 by 9-inch baking dish and top with potato chips. Bake until golden brown, 45 to 50 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes. Serve.
To make ahead: Potato mixture can be refrigerated in baking dish, covered with aluminum foil, for 2 days. To finish, bake potatoes 20 minutes. Remove dish from oven and uncover. Top with potato chips and bake until golden brown, 45 to 50 minutes.
Found at this great website: http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/recipes/funeral-potatoes/