Archive: 16 July 2012

Embalmer required

16 July 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorised

Excitement is building around the GFG Funeral Industry Awards – the first ever held for the Dismal Trade. There’s been a lot of press interest and, so far, stories in Metro and the BBC website. Sky are interested in featuring the event as part of a feelgood series about nice things happening to nice people.

Even though there’s a lot of fun built into the event, the underlying purpose is bloodymindedly serious: to celebrate the unsung heroes of Funeralworld. Given the amount of dissing the industry has endured this year, it’s time to yank out the colonoscope, hold up the mirror and reach for the garlands.

Have you nominated anyone yet? If not, why not?

Are you allowed to nominate yourself? Yes. But get back-up.

The one category – the only category – in which we’re struggling is Embalmer of the Year. If you know of a brilliant reconstructionist with a heart of gold, please speak up for them.

To remind you, those categories again:

Most Promising New Funeral Director

Embalmer of the Year

The Eternal Slumber Award for Coffin Supplier of the Year

Most Significant Contribution to the Understanding of Death in the Media
(TV, Film, Newspaper, Magazine or Online)

Crematorium Attendant of the Year

Best Internet Bereavement Resource

The Blossom d’Amour Award For Funeral Floristry

Funeral Celebrant of the Year

Cemetery of the Year Award

Gravedigger of the Year

Funeral Director of the Year

Best Alternative to a Hearse

Book of the Year
(published after 1 May 2011)

Lifetime Achievement Award

If you wish to nominate someone, send an email with a written recommendation (no more than 100 words) to say why you think the company or individual is worthy of the award.

Please include an address and telephone number. Your citation may be quoted at the award’s ceremony on Friday 7 September 2012.

Email your entry to: goodfuneralawards@joyofdeath.co.uk by Monday 6 August 2012.

Time’s up, take yourself out

16 July 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Attitudes to older people, dying, End-of-life issues, euthanasia, Good death, medical interventions in dying, self-deliverance

A theme that we like to explore on this blog is the way in which longevity has reconfigured the landscape of dying. The blessing of long life has its downside: protracted decline. We are likely to linger longer, much longer, than our forebears. There’s a physical cost in chronic illness and possibly, also, mental enfeeblement. There’s the emotional cost to the elderly and their families. And then there’s the financial cost, which the government has wrestled with and now kicked deftly into the long grass.

In the Sunday Times Minette Marrin wrestled with it, too. I’ll have to quote a lot of it because the ST website is paywalled. She suggests some interesting solutions:

Last Thursday the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) announced in a chilling report that the escalating costs of an ageing population will mean yet more national austerity. Pointing out that the proportion of people over 65, who now make up 17% of the population, will rise to 26% by 2061, it estimates many increased costs, in care of the elderly, health and pensions, amounting to an added £80 billion a year in today’s money.

In the next 20 years, the number of people over 70 is set to rise by 50%, reaching nearly 10m, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The OBR states that Britain’s public spending will be “clearly unsustainable” over the next 50 years, despite the spending cuts. So, far from care for the elderly rising above today’s inadequate standards, it is almost certain to fall further below them. There’s no money now and in future there’s going to be even less. 

Universal bus passes (which cost £1 billion a year), winter fuel allowances (£2 billion) and free television licences must go. 

Everyone must accept that their savings, including their homes, may have to be spent on paying for care in old age. There’s no universal right to leave one’s property to one’s children.

Taxes of all kinds must rise hugely, or else there will have to be a large hypothecated tax upon people reaching old age. Services to old people must be reduced … Health service care must be rationed for the very old. Palliative care of every kind should be available, but not ambitious treatments.

There should be fewer old people. I’ve often felt the best thing one can do for one’s children is to die before real infirmity sets in. The taboo against deliberately shuffling off this mortal coil, as people did in other cultures in the interests of younger people, is wrong. Most people say they never want to be a burden to others in old age; it would be good if more of us felt able to prove we mean it, by taking a timely and pleasant walk up the snowy mountain. Especially since there’s no money left. [Our bold]

Source

West Grinstead says not in our back garden

16 July 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: crematoria

 

A little over a week ago we glanced at a growing furore in Sussex over a proposed new crematorium. Here’s the latest news from the front line:

More than once West Grinstead residents were told to ‘be civil’ as they grasped with open arms an opportunity to voice their opinions.

Patrick and Matthew Gallagher, of the funeral director and crematorium applicant Peacebound Ltd, and architect and surveyor Douglas J P Edwards, were laughed at and taunted as they attempted to explain to residents what the benefits of a new crematorium would be for their village.

An hour and a half of fiery debate between the passionate army of residents and the three crematorium applicants ended on a sombre note when one resident asked to have the final word.

He said: “We have had questions thrown back at us and we have been condescended to. I do not appreciate the way we have been spoken to.”

Mr Edwards explained to residents that much of the countryside would be protected if the proposed site were to go ahead but lost the interest of the group when he said that ‘pitifully few people actually went onto the site’.

To which residents called: “We live there, we know the site!” and ”We don’t want to go following you there.”

At the end of the meeting, when it was made clear to Patrick Gallagher that most residents had not warmed to his point of view, he made one last effort to end on good terms.

“I did not mean to offend anyone. My most sincere apologies I did not mean to do that …  I have tried to be as open and accessible as possible and I really do want to continue in that vein. I believe it’s a good development for local people … I do believe it will be a wonderful legacy to be left by members of West Grinstead and Horsham.”

To this comment the crowd laughed and one resident asked: “Would you like one in your back garden?”

Source 

ED’S NOTE: Highly embarrassing for Patrick Gallagher, a pillar of the industry, who owns two nearby funeral homes. Difficult not to feel for him?

 

Learning the hard lesson

16 July 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Death education

Professor Kathy Black peppers each startled student enrolled in her University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee class with a single question on the first day: “How old will you be when you die, and what are you going to die of?”

Halfway through the course, shaking them up again, she schedules a field trip to a local funeral home, including a tour of the embalming room. After frank talk about the emotions he deals with in his work, longtime funeral director Gary Wiegand enthralls the class with a short course on preserving a dead body

“They become aware of their own mortality,” she says. “Many of them change their mind about cremation, or being organ donors. Then they start to question their religion. They start to look at death, life, meaning in a more existential way.”

When Hannelore Wass, founder of the journal Death Studies, introduced a class on dying at the University of Florida in 1970, she was greeted with nervous jokes about what would be on the final exam.

“They called me the Death Lady,” Wass recalls. “They thought I was way off-base.”

Even after death studies became an accepted academic specialty, medical and nursing schools tended to minimize end-of-life issues. Now, Wass notes, the field is back in the spotlight. Although politicized by talk about “death panels” in the recent health care reform debate, the need to contain costs and improve care has forced a fresh look at how Americans die — mostly in hospitals, mostly without advance directives or wills.

“Each generation has to deal with the issue all over again,” says Wass, who lives in a Gainesville nursing home. “I think that as the population is aging, that may be one reason: We’re having to face it more and more.”

“Even professionals are not always comfortable talking about death and dying,” Black, a teacher with the presence of a motivational speaker, tells the class during a session on health care. “They are also human beings, and a constellation of their own personal experiences.”

“Everybody wants to travel to Europe, or write a book,” she says. “But for a lot of these people, this raises the question of what’s going to go in the middle. It forces them to consider how they want to live their life.”

Then Black throws a curveball. “Bad news,” she tells them: “You only have a year to live. What comes off the list?”

Next, after they have erased all their goals that take too much time, she gives them more bad news: They only have a couple of weeks left.

“People cry,” she says. “They’re gasping in class. This is a class where you walk out and you look at the trees differently. You look at life differently.”

Whole article here. 

The Good Funeral Guide
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