July 2012 – Page 2 – The Good Funeral Guide

Ash astray

25 July 2012

Charles

3 Comments

Categories: ashes

A man suffered humiliation and distress at the hands of an airport security agent when she insisted on opening a jar containing his grandfather’s remains and then dropped them on the floor.

John Gross, of Indianapolis, was trying to bring Mario Mark Marcaletti’s ashes home from Florida and had them in his bag in a tightly sealed jar clearly marked ‘Human Remains’.

The 91-year-old’s remains had been divided up among family members after he died in 2002 and Gross had been given a share by his uncle during his trip.

He was confronted by the TSA [Transport Security Authority] officer and explained what was in the container.

‘They opened up my bag, and I told them, “Please, be careful. These are my grandpa’s ashes.”

‘She picked up the jar. She opened it up.

‘She used her finger and was sifting through it. And then she accidentally spilled it.’

As a third of the jar’s contents fell out onto the floor Gross frantically tried to gather it back up, a line of passengers waiting behind him.

‘She didn’t apologize. She started laughing.”

Full story here.

Hat tip to Evelyn Temple

New life for dead house

25 July 2012

Charles

2 Comments

Categories: Uncategorised

For sale, a beach hut fit for an undertaker, Goth or melancholic. It’s the old mortuary at Saltburn-by-the-sea, it comes with its original slab, it’s Grade 2 listed and it’s on the market, guide price unknown. For further details, contact Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council.

Hat tip Tony Piper

Deathbed marijuana

25 July 2012

Charles

No comments

Categories: Psychoactive drugs

From NorthJersey.com:

As a funeral director, Joseph Stevens regularly heard mourners talk about how they had purchased marijuana on the street to ease their dying loved ones’ suffering. They would mention how the drug improved their ailing relatives’ quality of life during the last weeks of their lives.

Marijuana provides relief to people on their deathbeds while allowing them to remain conscious, capable of functioning and interacting with their loved ones.

“It was unbelievable, the stories I heard,” said Stevens, 50. Grieving relatives would say “the last conversations they probably would’ve never had if it wasn’t for marijuana.”

Read the rest of the story here.

ED’S NOTE: In our opinion, it’s high time medics engaged with the benefits of psychoactive drugs in end-stage care of the dying.

Mourning glory

24 July 2012

Charles

3 Comments

Categories: ashes, Dress codes, Etiquette, funeral customs, funeral trends, memorialisation

By our funeral historian, Richard Rawlinson

Ashes into Glass is a jewellery company that inserts cremation ashes into crystal glass rings, pendants, earring and cufflinks. See the results here

“It has helped me feel a little calmer about losing my dear Mum by knowing that a little part of her is always with me,” says Teresa Evans Mortimer in one of the customer testimonials.

There’s something rather Victorian about companies marketing their products specifically at the bereaved (bereaved people). Queen Victoria made jet beads soar in popularity along with lockets holding curls of hair from deceased loved ones.

Stationers such as Henry Rodrigues of Piccadilly offered black bordered note paper and envelopes, and the London General Mourning Warehouse advertised in The Times (1 November 1845) that “millinery, dresses, cloaks, shawls, mantles, &c., of the best quality can be purchased at the most reasonable prices.” Such an emporium would be a Goth’s paradise today.

Then again, when Victoria died, the Secretary to the Drapers’ Chamber of Trade, wrote to The Times (26 January 1901) to suggest that the 12 months of Court Mourning would profoundly impact on the retail drapery trade which ordered colourful cloth three or four months in advance.

Ironically, although expected to mourn, women were generally advised against attending funerals. Cassell’s Household Guide for 1878 discourages the practice pointing out that it is something done by female relatives in the poorer classes.

Ready, steady, gone.

23 July 2012

Charles

3 Comments

Categories: ADRT, End-of-life issues, Longevity

“Most of us do not want to die in the ICU tethered to tubes — not the quality of life we expect. Yet only 30 percent of us have made arrangements to prevent this from happening. Death and dying is a tough subject for us to broach. Be aware that very few of us will die in our sleep — most have a slow sometimes excruciating decline to death.

“I bet you didn’t know that less than one in seven CPR recipients live to leave the hospital (don’t feel bad, many doctors don’t know this). Other studies show that few elderly patients or patients with cancer live to leave the hospital after CPR. Despite the fact that CPR was developed to resuscitate patients in cardiac arrest, CPR is mandatory to rescue the terminally and critically ill, unless there is an advanced DNR directive. One in five people die in intensive care with the last few months of life being expensive, painful, and futile exercises in medical care.”

Source

There but for the grace…

23 July 2012

Charles

2 Comments

Categories: Co-operative Funeralcare

From the Sun, 18 July:

An undertaker with Britain’s biggest funeral firm has been arrested on suspicion of snatching a dead gran’s savings.

Former Co-operative Funeralcare worker Grahame Lawler, 37, is suspected of rifling through the pensioner’s household belongings less than an hour after she died.

Could happen to any funeral director?

The Sun understands the woman, in her 70s, was “still warm” when her possessions were taken from the home.

What’s that got to do with it?!

Sun story here.

Daily Mail version here

Thoughts of a funeral-goer

20 July 2012

Charles

7 Comments

Categories: Thoughts of a funeralgoer

Posted by Lyra Mollington

It turns out that I am a terrible patient. My sister Myra used to be a nurse so this wasn’t a winning combination. Mr M collected me on Saturday and I’m recuperating at home.

Thankfully I’m no longer confined to my bed although walks on the common are out of the question for at least another week. Barry has kindly offered to type for me again. I wasn’t well enough to proof-read the last one and it was only on Tuesday that I discovered he had been a little mischievous with those brackets.

(Yes Barry – they were quite funny.)

Having almost died, I expected never to take anything for granted again. Sadly, life isn’t as straightforward as that. I was home for barely five minutes when I noticed dust on a side table. I could see that Mr M was disappointed – perhaps he was hoping for a new devil-may-care wife. If anything I’m even more irritated by the little things because I have nothing to do. Mr M can’t understand why I’m still getting upset if Colin doesn’t have fresh water in his bowl each day.

(Yes Barry, I know that dogs drink out of puddles.)

By Wednesday, I was feeling much stronger which was perfect timing – Daisy and Lilian had arranged for all our friends to come round for afternoon tea to celebrate my 75th birthday. I’ve never received so many interesting presents. They included: a CD from Rosie with the warning that, although the music is beautiful, it may take a ‘bit of effort’; the complete DVD box set of Inspector Morse from Lilian; a teapot with a union jack design to commemorate the 2012 Games (I had completely forgotten about the Olympics – Mr M and I have tickets for the Greco-Roman wrestling and I very much hope I will be well enough to go); exotic hand-cream from Daisy; and (to Sue’s slight embarrassment because she had clearly chosen this gift well before my illness) the latest Peter James crime thriller. They all have ‘Dead’ in the title.

We had a lovely time. But we all ignored the elephant in the room: my near-death experience. Was it only a year ago that Rosie had nearly choked on her cup-cake when Lilian brightly announced, ‘Let’s make a list of what we want to do before we die!’? There was no stopping us then, happily deciding on our bucket lists. I think it was Lilian and Kathleen who began shouting out as many adventurous and dangerous activities as they could think of: jump out of an aeroplane (one of them added, ‘With a parachute!’); fly in a helicopter; ski down a glacier; scuba dive; ride a camel… I never did tell them that I had done everything on their list – except for the camel. However, I had learned to ride on the most enormous horse I’d ever seen.

(Yes Barry, I can see that you’re impressed.)

Needless to say, on this my birthday afternoon, no mention was made of bucket lists. As Daisy poured another cup of tea (not too strong; a DROP of milk and no sugar) I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself. As one of my favourite funeral poems says, ‘Matters it now if time began, if time will ever cease? I was here, I used it all, and now I am at peace.’

So I started planning a few activities suitable for my recuperation.

I am going to read the latest Peter James book (with the gloriously apt title – Not Dead Yet). I am going to listen to the ‘difficult’ CD Rosie gave me, even though I have never even heard of Pergolesi or his sacred Stabat Mater. And I am going to listen to it properly – not have it as background music whilst doing the housework. Also, I’m going to start sorting out all those photographs that are in envelopes in a drawer – maybe even scan them. At the weekend, I’m going to watch Bruce Willis in all his Die Hard films.

(Yes Barry, you and Daisy can come round and watch them with me.)

And I’m going to draw up plans for my next funeral – as a spectator I hasten to add. Incredibly, I have never been to a woodland burial.

Sharp rise in Pauper’s funerals

19 July 2012

Charles

13 Comments

Categories: funeral plans, Social Fund Funeral Payment

Posted by Vale

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Oliver Twist is in a workhouse somewhere asking for more. It seems extraordinary in 2012 that there are headlines like this in the Daily Telegraph this week, followed by the stark (and slightly ludicrous) quote from Kate Woodthorpe of the University of Bath that it is:

“becoming too expensive for poor people to die”.

The article is based on a joint report between the university and Sun Life Direct and notes that the number of applications rejected for a funeral payment increased by 6.9% and is likely to jump again in the future. Put bluntly funerals are becoming unaffordable for more and more people.

There are issues with the report of course. Sun Life’s interest in shepherding people towards its end of life plans is one. It also includes a great deal of information that deserves more detailed consideration. For the moment though our concern here at GFG has a narrower focus. Let’s go back to the news that, in an age where benefits claimants are routinely stigmatised and welfare support is harder to access, state support for the costs of funerals is shrinking; that the funeral as it is designed, sold and delivered is becoming too expensive for too many; that we are pauperisng people.

As a service (that likes to puff its chest out and call itself an industry) does this news make you feel good about the drive to upsell? Are you comfortable with a lack of transparency about pricing? Do the packages you offer, the lack of flexibility, the way that basic or simple is designed to look mean and cheap fill you with pride?

Are you filled with a drive to change, to build new and more responsive businesses where trustworthy services and products are offered in a culture of respect and openness?

Or do you dust off the top hat and smile to yourselves at the prospect of this new Victorian age?

The Deciphering

19 July 2012

Charles

1 Comment

Categories: Poetry

Posted by Vale

The Deciphering

How busy we are with the dead in their infancy,
who are still damp with the sweat of their passing,
whose hair falls back to reveal a scar.

We think of wiping their skin, attending them
in the old way, but are timid, ignorant.
We walk from the high table where they are laid

leaving their flesh royally mounded
just as they have left it
for the undertakers to cherish.

We consider the last kiss,
the taste and grain of it.
The lift door squeezes open, then shut.

All days we think we have lost our car keys.
There is a feeling in the back of the mind
as we eat a meal out on the balcony

but the door refuses to open
and although my sisters have prepared food elaborately
you do not advance to us, smiling.

The children have put sauce on the side of their plates
thinking you will come and swipe a chip,
thinking this meal is one you cooked

as always, humming to yourself in the kitchen,
breaking off to tap the barometer
and watch starlings roost on the pier.

How long it takes to stop being busy with that day,
each second of it like the shard
of a pot which someone laboured to dig up

and piece together without knowledge
of language or context.
Slow, slow the deciphering.

This marvelous poem is taken from Helen Dunmore’s new collection The Malarkey.

Library of dust

19 July 2012

Charles

5 Comments

Categories: ashes, cremation

Posted by Vale

Oregon State Insane Asylum closed in the 1970s after operating for nearly a hundred years. Over that time inmates died, were cremated and their remains, stored in copper canisters, were stored uncollected.

The photographer David Maisel has made a photographic record of them. He writes:

The approximately 3,500 copper canisters have a handmade quality; they are at turns burnished or dull; corrosion blooms wildly from the leaden seams and across the surfaces of many of the cans. Numbers are stamped into each lid; the lowest number is 01, and the highest is 5,118. The vestiges of paper labels with the names of the dead, the etching of the copper, and the intensely hued colors of the blooming minerals combine to individuate the canisters. These deformations sometimes evoke the celestial – the northern lights, the moons of some alien planet, or constellations in the night sky. Sublimely beautiful, yet disquieting, the enigmatic photographs in Library of Dust are meditations on issues of matter and spirit.

A book of the project can be found here.