May 2012 – Page 3 – The Good Funeral Guide

Thoughts of a funeral-goer

18 May 2012

Charles

5 Comments

Categories: Uncategorised

Posted by Lyra Mollington

Apart from a brief encounter with cancer when I was in my forties and a slightly dodgy back, I am in good health for a 74 year old. Neverthless I was perturbed to discover that I am only six months older than Jane Fonda. However, as my mother used to say, it’s not what’s on the outside that counts… She also used to advise me to study hard because I was unlikely to bag myself a rich husband or indeed any husband at all. How wrong she was!

This morning I awoke (always a good start to the day) to the dulcet tones of James Naughtie and a nice cup of tea made by Mr M. By the time I was in the kitchen preparing Colin’s breakfast, it was Thought for the Day. Have you noticed how they cleverly begin with something topical and then, before you know it, they’re talking about Jesus?

On Tuesday I was especially interested to hear Canon Angela Tilby telling us about death. I don’t know how I missed it, but apparently it’s Dying Matters Awareness Week. She was just getting to her point – how to talk meaningfully about something we don’t really understand – when Colin started barking at one of the cats who occasionally risk life and limb by straying into our back garden. Frustratingly, I heard only the words scepticism, brutal and metaphor which made me even more desperate to know how it ended.

Later that day, when my grandson Sebastian popped in after work, I asked him to show me how to find Angela’s podcast. I could have done it myself of course but I like him to think that I rely on his expertise. Which, come to think of it, is how I bagged the husband my mother said I would never get.

With Colin safely curled up in his bed, Mr M. preparing supper and Seb surfing the web, I listened again to Tuesday’s Thought for the Day.

As Canon Angela concluded with the words, ‘Death, though a change of state, is not the end of being,’ I noticed Seb rolling his eyes. I was perplexed – Angela had spoken so movingly about how she helps people come to terms with death through the language of faith. As a family I would say we are all at the agnostic end of the Anglican spectrum. However, I’m beginning to think that Seb might be one of those aggressive atheists one hears so much about.

He asked me if I had ever seen a ‘brilliant and funny’ website called Platitude of the Day. I told him that I might take a look if I had some spare time.

I have to confess that the moment Seb left, I clicked on the link. I am afraid that Mr Peter Hearty (the author of Platitude of the Day) had deliberately misinterpreted Angela’s wise words. Indeed, I was taken aback to discover that he does this to all the contributors of Thought for the Day. However, to my great shame, after reading his archives, I was addicted.

Where Angela speaks of how we soften the language of death by the use of metaphor, Mr Hearty writes, ‘You would think that people… would be more candid when one of your loved ones dies, and say things like, “Well that’s the end of your husband that you’ve been married to for the last 50 years. He’s gone, dead, kaputt, finito, so you just better get used to it.” Oddly, they don’t. They tend to try and soften the blow, even though they don’t believe in the invisible magic afterlife.’

He then gives her a rating of 5 out of 5 – extraordinarily platitudinous.

Angela and Peter are both sincere in their beliefs. I am grateful to both of them for giving me so much to think about in this week of Dying Matters Awareness. I am also grateful to Seb for finding me this article and video about Ms Fonda’s plastic surgery — here.

Habeas corpse

17 May 2012

Charles

6 Comments

Categories: Art and death, Dead people's rights, Embalming, funeral directors, Legal rights

An email flies in from a consumer advocacy org in the US. It’s about a British funeral consumer, let’s call him Jim, who has asked them for help. Jim has been told by his funeral director that there will be no funeral until he pays most of the bill upfront. Jim can manage much of the bill now, and can pay the balance very soon, but his funeral director won’t budge and the funeral is just days away. So Jim appoints another, more reasonable, funeral director, who rings up FD1 and says he’s coming to collect the body. FD1 refuses to release it.

What, the consumer advocacy org wanted to know, is Jim’s legal position?

I responded with the standard spiel. The executor/administrator is the legal ‘possessor’ and ‘controller’ of the body and it is an offence for anyone except the coroner to withhold the body from that person. Further, there being no property in a corpse, it is illegal to arrest one for debt. What’s more, it is almost certainly lawful to exercise reasonable force to gain (or regain) lawful possession of the corpse.

This applies, of course, whether or not the consumer has entered into a contract with the funeral home. A dead person cannot be used as a bargaining chip, and the executor can take their dead person home whenever, within reason, and as often as they want. I’m almost certain that’s right.

And then my mind wandered sideways. For a long time I have wondered what it is legal and what it is illegal to do to a dead body. What constitutes what Americans classify ‘abuse of a corpse’?

And I wondered also about something else that’s been bugging me for a while: what status does routine embalming confer upon a body?

Having more pressing, urgent and duller things to do, I went a-googling. This time, I put in my thumb and pulled out a plum. Actually, two plums.

Plum One

The law case that altered the legal maxim that ‘the only lawful possessor of a corpse is the earth’ was the Anthony-Noel Kelly case. He is an artist. In 1998 he exhibited casts of body parts which had been smuggled out to him by lab technician Niel Lyndsay from the Royal College of Surgeons. Both were arrested and charged with stealing human body parts. At the trial, the defence submitted at the close of the prosecution case that (i) parts of bodies were not in law capable of being property and therefore could not be stolen, and (ii) that the specimens were not in the lawful possession of the college at the time they were taken because they had been retained beyond the period of two years before burial stipulated in the Anatomy Act 1832, and so did not belong to it. The trial judge rejected those submissions, ruling that there was an exception to the traditional common law rule that there was no property in a corpse, namely that once a human body or body part had undergone a process of skill by a person authorised to perform it, with the object of preserving it for the purpose of medical or scientific examination, or for the benefit of medical science, it became something quite different from an interred corpse and it thereby acquired a usefulness or value and it was capable of becoming property in the usual way, and could be stolen. The same applies to body parts “if they have acquired different attributes by virtue of the application of skill of dissection and preservation techniques for exhibition and teaching purposes“.

There we have it. “Preservation techniques for exhibition … purposes.” Does this apply to bodies embalmed for viewing? After all, they have undergone a process of skill. If Jim’s detained dead person has been embalmed, can his dead person now be classed as property?

Plum Two

The second discovery comes from a case before the European Court of Human Rights in 2007. Briefly, two men were killed in a firefight with Turkish security forces. When things had died down, members of the security forces cut the ears off the corpses. The applicants complained of violations under Article 3 of the Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture, and “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. The court’s judgement was that it appeared that the deceased’s ears had been cut off after they had died. Article 3 had never been applied in the context of respect for a dead body. Human quality was extinguished on death and, therefore, the prohibition on ill-treatment was no longer applicable to corpses; notwithstanding the cruelty of the acts concerned in the instant case. It followed that there had been no violation of art 3 on that account.

I don’t want to speculate on the implications of that.

Information source here.

Kiwi death rites

16 May 2012

Charles

6 Comments

Categories: crematoria, direct cremation, funeral customs, funerals in other cultures

From an article in Stuff.co.nz:

New Zealanders may be shy and reserved, but we hold long, personalised funerals for our loved ones, and show far more emotion than Norwegians, Swedes, English and Scots.

Our funerals lean towards the American style, where everything – down to the cup of tea and biscuits afterwards – is organised by a funeral home.

Auckland researcher Sally Raudon, with the assistance of a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust grant, researched death, dying and funerals in New Zealand, and the four other countries.

The results were surprising, given the perceived similarities between the countries, particularly when it came to the time between death and a funeral.

In New Zealand funerals generally happen about three to five days after someone has died.

In England one to three weeks is the norm, and in Stockholm, Sweden, the average interval between death and the funeral is five to six weeks.

And the Swedish do not embalm, she said.

“We embalm almost automatically. That’s because a lot of our funeral directors went to the US in the middle of last century and came back with these techniques to be more professional.”

In New Zealand many people speak, and most ceremonies last about an hour. “When we have a funeral it is not uncommon for someone from the family to talk, maybe a work colleague, someone from a sports club. Sometimes it is like an open mic session. And if it is a young person who has died, it’s common for up to 12 people to talk,” Raudon said.

“Our funerals are very unusual because we focus intimately on the person. New Zealand funerals often bring together all the parts of someone’s life to present a biography.

“We think things like using a celebrant, showing photos of the person and having several people speaking, are normal. But that isn’t what happens in other countries.”

“In Norway and Sweden using photos is frowned on as too personal, and in England they say they don’t have time for that kind of personalisation.

Raudon said there was now a trend in New Zealand at the other end of the emotional scale – direct disposal – where a person could request they be put in a plain casket and taken directly to be cremated, without a funeral service or viewing.

Tamara Linnhoff of the Good Funeral Guide NZ here tells me in an email that “NZ is still way behind the UK in terms of talking openly about funeral wishes and so the vast majority of families make decisions guided by traditional funeral directors.”

Find the Stuff.co.nz article here.

Philosophy and death

15 May 2012

Charles

2 Comments

Categories: Academia and death, Attitudes to death

Posted by Vale

Yale University is starting to experiment with free open access video based learning.

One of the courses it’s offering is run by Shelley Kagan who is Clark Professor of Philosophy at the University. It’s all about death. This is the course introduction:

There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to make of that fact? This course will examine a number of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mortality. The possibility that death may not actually be the end is considered. Are we, in some sense, immortal? Would immortality be desirable? Also a clearer notion of what it is to die is examined. What does it mean to say that a person has died? What kind of fact is that? And, finally, different attitudes to death are evaluated. Is death an evil? How? Why? Is suicide morally permissible? Is it rational? How should the knowledge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life?

There are 26 lectures published as videos online. You can find them here.

If you are a reader rather than a watcher. Professor Kagan also asks the question ‘Is Death Bad for you’ in an essay published in the – online – Chronicle of Higher Education. This gives you a flavour of the discussion:

People sometimes respond that death isn’t bad for the person who is dead. Death is bad for the survivors. But I don’t think that can be central to what’s bad about death. Compare two stories.

Story 1. Your friend is about to go on the spaceship that is leaving for 100 Earth years to explore a distant solar system. By the time the spaceship comes back, you will be long dead. Worse still, 20 minutes after the ship takes off, all radio contact between the Earth and the ship will be lost until its return. You’re losing all contact with your closest friend.

Story 2. The spaceship takes off, and then 25 minutes into the flight, it explodes and everybody on board is killed instantly.

Story 2 is worse. But why? It can’t be the separation, because we had that in Story 1. What’s worse is that your friend has died. Admittedly, that is worse for you, too, since you care about your friend. But that upsets you because it is bad for her to have died. But how can it be true that death is bad for the person who dies?

You can find the essay here. Worth reading.

Thank God for secularism

14 May 2012

Charles

28 Comments

Categories: Religious funerals

Posted by our religious correspondent, Richard Rawlinson

RR writes: I had planned to discuss funerals in Islamic cultures, but concluded anyone interested could find such information elsewhere. See link to 10 Muslim Funeral Traditions here:

Instead, I want to address concerns about Islam’s conflict with faith-tolerating, secular society. This is not about funerals per se, but it’s waving the flag for freedom in a forum that celebrates choice in the field of secular and religious funerals.

A few years ago, I worked for a time as an expat in the Middle East, where I interviewed for the Catholic Herald the Bishop of Arabia about the struggle to attain the same religious freedoms for Christians in Arab nations that Muslims enjoy elsewhere in the world. A few weeks ago, an Arab friend I met in the region visited me in London, and conversation turned to grief between Islam and the West.

As he drank my wine, he described himself as a moderate-but-observant Muslim who admittedly lapsed on some observances. He said he was offended by the way, since 9/11/01, Islam has been defined by despotism, claiming the West is demonising his faith as purely radical, and thus impeding progress in battling terrorism – effectively consigning us to a state of permanent war with the world’s billion-plus Muslims.

I replied by asking him if he would support the battle against terrorism by speaking out against the uses of the Quran for radical purposes. After all, he perceived himself to be a Muslim who embraced our freedom culture, for whom sharia is a matter of private belief, not public mission. Yet he stuck to the line that the West was inflaming the ‘Arab Street’, and seemed reluctant to link ‘real’ Islam with regarding women as chattel; killing those who apostasise from Islam; institutionalising religious intolerance in society, or regarding Jews as subhuman.

The problem is that while moderate Muslims are a reality, they are often in denial that Islam itself is in conflict with secular society, because it’s not merely a religious doctrine, but is a comprehensive socio-economic and political system whose tenets are fundamentally at odds with democracy.

Almost from the beginning, the West has tempered religion by acknowledging the legitimacy of secular institutions, thus making space for individual freedom.

Like Communism, Islam doesn’t ‘render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’ but rather aims to control the state without being subject to it. By insisting on the submission of everything to the will of Allah, they end up with the Taliban, Iranian Mullahs and al Qaeda.

All religions are exclusive, but Islam almost immediately developed into a state which seemed to be all of a piece with the religion. The Koran is its spiritual and secular book of law – Allah’s personal word, with orders that need to be fulfilled regardless of place or time. Then there’s Muhammad, a warlord who is nevertheless deemed the perfect human role model.

In his book America Alone, Mark Steyn says we have three options: 1) capitulate to Islam, 2) wage all-out war against it, 3) it undergoes a reformation and enlightenment, retaining its name but eschewing its political substance. With 1) and 2) being unacceptable and horrific, is the best way to achieve 3) accommodation or resistance?

I believe resistance is the best course of action. A concrete theology of moderate Islam does not exist and will have to be created. It will have to be non-literal and reformist, and will have a tough time competing with Islamist ideology, which is anti-constitutional and anti-freedom in many of its core particulars. Instead of letting my friend pretend to be moderate, I’d rather empower him with a clear choice: defend Islamic despotism or man up as a reformer by promoting a coherent, moderate Islam that embraces the West, and in particular the separation of secular public life from privately held religious beliefs.

200 years since our PM was shot

11 May 2012

Charles

3 Comments

Categories: Uncategorised

It’s quite a year for anniversaries from the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee to the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens. It’s also a year when deaths are commemorated from Captain Scott’s failed mission to the South Pole in 1912 to the sinking of the Titanic in the same year.

Less well known is that 2012 is the bicentenary of the assassination of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, shot in the central lobby of the House of Commons on 11 May, 1812, by loan pistolman John Bellingham.

The only British PM to have been assassinated (Margaret Thatcher had a near-miss when the IRA bombed her Brighton hotel during the 1984 Conservative Party conference), Perceval’s political preoccupations bring his era to life.

He witnessed crises including the madness of King George III, economic depression and Luddite riots. He opposed Catholic emancipation and reform of Parliament and supported the abolition of the slave trade. He held hunting, gambling, adultery and drinking in disdain, preferring to spend time with his 12 children.

Perceval also supported the war against Napoleon. With wars popularly marked by anniversaries, it’s also the bicentenary of Napoleon’s failed attempt to invade Russia, his thwarted imperial ambitions notably commemorated by Tolstoy in War and Peace and Tchaikovsky in his 1812 Overture.

Talking of French failure, expect the British media to indulge in a bit of jovial French bashing in 2015 when we mark the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt and the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo.

But anticipate far greater commemoration surrounding the victories, defeats and deaths in battle in 2014 when we have the centenary of the start of WW1 and the 75^th anniversary of the start of WWII. I always find it a poignant reminder that there were just 25 years between these wars.

To Spencer Perceval. May he rest in peace (even if he didn’t like Catholics or claret).

Norfolk Funerals

11 May 2012

Charles

37 Comments

Categories: funeral directors

Norfolk Funerals, which opened recently, is the UK’s first and only not-for-profit funeral director. It is a charity, based in Norwich, and it offers funerals at cost price for all merchandise plus a fee to cover overheads, running costs and the wages of its employees.

Eyebrows have been raised. What’s going on here? Why would they want to do this? What’s the real story? Is this some kind of money laundering operation?

Here at the GFG we’ve had a great many emails and phone calls enquiring about Norfolk Funerals. Misgivings have been voiced, some of them mundane, some exotic. At the same time, we’ve been doing our own due diligence.

With the agreement of Norfolk Funerals, we are offering this page as a place where you can ask questions and have them answered by Norfolk Funerals.

We hope that this will enable everyone to see NF for what it is.

Please, ask your question in a comments box below, and Norfolk Funerals will respond directly to it.

We Believe

11 May 2012

Charles

3 Comments

Categories: Community funerals

A new website has just hit the scene: CommunityFunerals.org.uk. It seeks to develop the concept of a not-for profit community funeral service, and presents for consideration four models of what it calls a Community Funeral Society (CFS). It hopes to grow the idea organically by inviting feedback from its readers, then incorporating their ideas. It’s a collaborative project.

It’s a radical idea. Goodness knows what sort of traction it is going to achieve.

But it arrives on the scene at the same time as two interesting new enterprises.

The first is Norfolk Funerals, the first-ever not-for-profit funeral home in the UK, established by a charitable trust and now open for business. Find its website here. Note: we have received a large number of emails about Norfolk Funerals. Please see the separate blog post dated 11.05.2012, where NF will respond to your queries.

The second is Powell and Family Direct, which has established itself as a Community Interest Company (CIC). A CIC is a company structure created, according to the website of the CIC Regulator, “for the use of people who want to conduct a business or other activity for community benefit, and not purely for private advantage.”

Find Powell and Family Direct here.

Bryan and Catherine Powell, founders of Powell and Family Funeral Directors and Powell and Family Direct, are hosting an open meeting for all funeral directors interested in remodelling their business as a social enterprise. It’s called Social Enterprise For Funeral Directors, and it’s being held on Saturday 19 May, 11am til 3pm in their Droitwich office at 15 North Street, WR9 8JB. Book your place by ringing 01905 827767, or email bryan.powell@powellandfamily.co.uk.

Is there a wind of change blowing through Funeralworld?

Below is the creed of ComunityFunerals.org.uk. It is titled, appropriately:

We Believe

1. We believe that customs, practices and attitudes have grown up which isolate and marginalise the dead and the bereaved and must be challenged

2. We believe that one of the consequences of this marginalisation is that the management of death has become commercial rather than community centred, and that, at a time when people are emotionally and cognitively vulnerable, this causes unease for both the client and, often, for the provider of services

3. We believe that funeral ceremonies, for those who want one, can and must offer greater emotional and, where appropriate, spiritual value

4. We believe that everyone should have access to unbiased information and opinion which enable them to make informed, independent choices according to their values and financial circumstances

5. We believe that funerals must offer better value for money

6. We believe that many bereaved people need access to a range of practical and emotional support services which the commercial model struggles to accommodate at present.

7. We believe that these needs can be met only if the work of specialist support agencies is augmented by collaborative, compassionate community engagement in the form of volunteering

8. We believe that most of the tasks funeral directors undertake are not specialist tasks at all and can be undertaken by ordinary people

9. We believe that, as longevity progressively alters the experience of ageing and medical interventions protract the experience of dying, we must find new and better ways of addressing them

10. We believe that denialist attitudes to ageing and dying are rooted in fear, that this fear is rooted in ignorance, and that fear can be mitigated by knowledge and understanding

11. We believe that attitudes to ageing, dying and death must be restored to emotional health in such a way as to reflect their normality and naturalness

12. We believe that communities are brought together when impelled by duty, altruism and self-interest. It is in our interest to help others because, in time, we shall need them to help us. It is also very satisfying

13. We believe that many people playing small parts, according to their abilities, makes us more effective

14. We believe that communities must host conversations and encourage educational initiatives about end-of-life matters among people of all ages, and that these activities are best initiated and hosted by informed, ordinary community members

15. We believe that there are organisational and financial models that are inclusive, secure and affordable and which are flexible enough to adapt to local circumstances. We have called these Community Funeral Societies.

Find CommunityFunerals.org.uk here.

Thoughts of a funeral-goer

11 May 2012

Charles

11 Comments

Categories: Uncategorised

Posted by Lyra Mollington

Nearly twelve years ago, I was with my grandchildren in the queue for the newly opened London Eye when we saw an elderly man collapse. Paramedics arrived quickly but by the time the man was lifted onto a stretcher, a blanket had been pulled over his head. It took me a few seconds to realise the implications of this.

In the intervening years I have often thought about that balmy summer evening. I wondered whether his family, having recovered from the initial shock, had been able to accept that there are (much) worse ways to go. Perhaps they shared what had happened at his funeral. Something like, ‘He’d had a brilliant day out with everyone he loved most in the world. And we all know what he would be saying to us now: “After queuing for an hour, we were nearly at the front. Why on earth didn’t you go on the Ruddy Wheel?”’

From the funerals I’ve attended, it seems that information is hardly ever given about how the person died; apart from being solemnly told that she/he passed away peacefully in her/his sleep. Understandably we are kept in the dark when there are unpleasant details. Few would want to know that their neighbour was discovered dead on the toilet, however painless and quick her death may have been. Or, even worse, that the body wasn’t discovered for several days, but at least her beloved cats didn’t go hungry.

We were told by the vicar at one funeral, ‘On the morning Charlie passed away he was looking forward, as always, to the regular visit from his great friend Derek. He was up and about, clean shaven and smartly dressed, with a couple of tots of whisky ready for Derek’s arrival.’

Everyone agreed that this was what Charlie would have wanted. But afterwards Derek told us that the vicar had missed out the bit that Charlie would have loved the most. After nearly jumping out of his skin, Derek downed the contents of both whisky glasses, having carefully prised one of them out of Charlie’s hand.

Lilian, a dear friend of mine, insisted that the clergyman tell the story of how her 95 year old mother had died during a singing session at the care home. Lil’s mum had been joining in with gusto all afternoon. When the other residents had retired to their rooms, one of the assistants discovered the old lady slumped in her chair, slightly warm but extremely dead. Lil was shocked but she soon started saying that this was ‘the perfect way to go,’ and that her mum had died ‘with her boots on’. Or, strictly speaking, her orthopaedic Velcro slip-ons.

Another friend was proud to inform everyone that her husband had collapsed and died whilst buying a present for their granddaughter in ‘an independent book shop’. For years she had worried herself sick that he would die face down in the gutter as he staggered home from his local.

The widow of a chap who died half way round the golf course asked one of his golfing chums, Maurice, to read the eulogy. He began, ‘Jack had been playing really well that fateful day. He said he’d never felt happier and that when we got back to the clubhouse he was going to buy everyone in the bar a drink.’ At this point, Maurice lowered his voice. With a straight face and through gritted teeth he continued, ‘There and then, I KNEW he was a goner.’

The Who famously sang, ‘I hope I die before I get old.’ Well I hope I die before I get too decrepit and in such a way that my family are able to say at my funeral, ‘She died happy, with her walking boots on.’

Communityfunerals.org.uk

11 May 2012

Charles

6 Comments

Categories: Uncategorised

We apologise for pulling the post on CommunityFunerals.org.uk without explanation. The website came under sustained and relentless attack from YouKnowWho. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. At this moment, 23 men in oily overalls and bearing large spanners are working round the clock, without breaks, to restore the site.

All shall be well, and all shall be be well and all manner of thing, etc.

The team at the GFG-Batesville Tower