The Church of England’s General Synod has just announced a rise in the fee payable to a priest for officiating at a funeral to £160.
The fee takes into account both admin and also the heating and lighting of the church.
There’s no information available yet on whether this fee will apply also to crematorium funerals.
But any increase in the C of E fee is, of course, good news for secular celebrants.
Story in the Guardian here.
“Never leave one of the deceased in a room without a light on – it’s undignified.”
Rachel Edwards, funeral arranger, here.
hi could anyone help me I have made my second memorial and all the themes are gone there is only 3 with butterflies when I made my sisters there was loads to choose from help please Xx
Appeal on a chat forum at online memorial site GoneTooSoon.
In the Kokomo Perspective, Don Hamilton writes:
Back in the early 1940s, they had funerals in the homes. A relative would die, and their casket would be placed in the corner of some room in the house, so that visitors could come and pay their respects. Most of the visiting family members would spend the night with the dearly departed laid out in the next room.
To a boy of 10, this was not pleasant, especially at night when going to the bathroom required a trip past the deceased in the darkened room.
Shadows danced across the casket, cast by the moonlight and the blowing leaves from the trees outside the window. The dim lighting could play tricks on your eyes and make it appear as though the person in the casket was starting to move. You talk about hot footing it across a floor. I ran to and from that bathroom as fast as my 10-year-old feet could carry me.
I remember when the widow lady next door died. Guess what? My brother and I slept upstairs, and our younger sister slept downstairs. Her window was directly across from the window where the neighbor’s casket could be clearly seen. Well, it wasn’t long before our sister (Becky Beane), was yelling for dad. My dad, in turn, yelled for me and made me go downstairs and sleep with my sister. I, of course, had to sleep closest to the window.
I got the courage to look over toward the neighbor lady, all dressed in black and somberly laying with her arms neatly crossed. Just as my imagination began to soar, my sister touched my leg with her toe. I know she did it to scare me, and it worked. It seems funny now, but it wasn’t then.
I am not sure when they stopped the practice of having the body of a loved one displayed in the home, but I am glad that they did.
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Posted by Charles
We’ve talked quite a lot on this blog recently about ritual. There have been times when a better and more accessible word might have been theatre.
For what is a funeral if it is not theatre?
The playscript for the drama we call a funeral, together with its delivery, is, for the most part, the responsibility of the ceremony leader. But funeral directors get to play a major part in act one, scene one, the procession, and, though they love dressing up for it, I think many of them have lost sight of the story they’re supposed to be telling and, therefore, the role they are supposed to be playing.
The story of a funeral procession is that of the last journey ever taken by a dead person here on Earth. The dead person is accompanied, as Thomas Long expresses it, with love and lamentation to the Edge of Eternity. The element of accompaniment is central.
It’s a ritual journey, obviously. The dead person’s last actual journey was probably to the hospital by ambulance. There, on their deathbed, family and friends hopefully got a chance to say goodbye. A funeral re-enacts this ritually, theatrically: a ritualised final journey followed by a ritualised goodbye.
In the olden time a funeral procession could make its way to the place of farewell at a dramatically slow pace (there’s no practical reason for going slowly). Those whom the procession passed amongst would stop and doff their hats and bow and pay their ritual last respects. It was a good show.
That’s all been consigned to the past, borne away by traffic and indifference. Keeping a procession together now through traffic lights and roundabouts is wing-and-a-prayer stuff. The first 100 meters works well enough, the undertaker leading the hearse at a stately walking pace down the street. Like all good actors, s/he is in character. So are the understrappers. Splendid. Then we get to the main road and s/he dives in. The actors come out of character, most of them – all the while keeping up appearances. Heaven knows what talk they talk, what jokes they swap, let’s not speculate. This part of the journey is not about stately procession, it’s about getting to the crem on time. It’s a hiatus, an ellipsis. And there’s nothing we can do about it.
Which is why, in a film, unless it’s a satirical comedy, you’d jump cut to when the church or crematorium hoves into view and the occupants of the hearse get back in character. The funeral director hops out and carries on where s/he left off earlier for all of 200 metres max. And stops just short of the coffin’s destination.
If a playwright wrote it like that you’d shoot him. For this is the point at which the principal actors are joined by The Crowd. When you’ve got that many people on stage there must be ensemble action, a single focus of attention. We don’t get any of that. As the limousine doors are opened and the occupants unfurl under the indulgent but prurient gaze of The Crowd, the Men In Black Macs are, severally, easing the coffin out of the hearse and doing things with flowers.
The procession has entirely lost its momentum, not in itself fatal, but it can never regain a sense of purpose because, by the time it is ready to move on once more, it’s far too close to journey’s end. It falls over the finishing line. The Crowd was never part of a procession. The minister declaimed “I am the resurrection and the life” to empty air and an organist. The Men in Black Macs probably put the coffin on the catafalque before everyone was in and sitting. It can work out a bit better in a church, where everyone is in first, but this denies The Crowd any processional role.
Could it be staged better? In theory, yes. A procession — for those who want one — needs at least 80 metres, a decent run-up. Everyone out of cars, on foot, standing tall. Coffin out, too. People formed up in some sort of order of precedence, leader/s (optional) in front of the coffin, stepping out as one, everyone playing their part, understanding the part they are playing, and quite possibly singing, too.
In practice, no. To do all that you need a gathering-place. Most funeral venues don’t have one of those.
So we’re down to one person walking in front of a car. This does retain an element of theatre. But you can’t help feeling that the grandeur and much of the point of the narrative has been lost, and that’s a shame.
Too much me, funeral directors, not enough us.