Archive: July 2012

No stripping of the altars here

19 July 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: crematoria, Religious funerals

By Richard Rawlinson

The row at Haycombe crematorium in Bath over the replacement of the cross-etched 1960s window with a clear pane – offering a neutral blank canvas for visitors of different faiths and none – is contextualised by this example of tolerance and diversity.

The pictures here are of North London’s New Southgate Cemetery and Crematorium, which probably reflects the capital’s multicultural diversity more than any other, catering for religions and traditions including Catholic, CofE, non-religious, Bahai, Jehovah’s Witness, Jewish burials and many more besides.

With its cemetery established in 1860 and its crematorium opened in 1957, New Southgate offers dedicated burial areas for Greek Orthodox, Caribbean and Catholic communities, plus wooded areas for people who wish to have more natural surroundings. Wander round and contemplate the statue of Our Lady one minute, and peaceful green havens the next.

The traditional chapel, which offers an organ as well as a CD system, appeals to everyone from Hindus and Sikhs to secularists. Peace and common sense prevail. Crosses and other religious symbols can be changed or removed to create the right setting for each individual service, but the point is that it remains the spitting image of a handsome Victorian church. In other words, it reflects our Christian heritage, an unpopular phrase, but one that is simply accurate.

No-one is lobbying to knock down its steeple, like poor relations of Reformation icon-smashers or the cultural cleansers of the Chinese Revolution. Far from demanding it resembles an industrial incinerator devoid of any ‘offensive’ character, all faiths and none are sharing this beautiful inside and outside space for their funerals.  

Diss-ceased

18 July 2012
Charles
10 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

No sooner had we berated George Tinning, the beleaguered Nick Buckles figure who totters atop Co-op Funeralcare, for his use of the word ‘deceased’ accompanied by the indefinite article, than a commenter, commenting on this post, asked Jonathan, a human cat among pigeons of the very liveliest sort, “How many Deceaseds have you handled?”

Perhaps this is, in Nick Gandon’s immortal words, qwerty stuff for the qwerty-minded. But I don’t know. If ‘carcass’ is no substitute for ‘deceased’, then there are wrong words. The GFG team thinks ‘deceased’ is a bad word.  It doesn’t work in the plural. We think there are better words.

Once upon a time, the c-word (and not in a John Terry sense) was perfectly acceptable. It derives from the Latin. There is no surviving Old English word for corpse, which was lic — though we do see it survive in lych-gate, http://www.health-canada-pharmacy.com/symbicort.html literally, corpse gate. So corpse is the oldest word still in use, and it was perfectly acceptable in 1662, when the Book of Common Prayer prescribed:

When they come to the Grave, while the Corpse is made ready to be laid into the earth, the Priest shall say, or the Priest and Clerks shall sing:

Corpse was softened in 1928:

When they come to the Grave, while the Body is made ready to be laid into the earth, shall be sung or said:

Well, what’s wrong with body, eh?

This, perhaps. It fails to take into account that that’s not a body, that’s Granddad, still a person til we’ve got our heads around his disembodiment.

So what’s the best word for the modern age?

Open letter to George Tinning, Managing Director, Co-operative Funeralcare #3

18 July 2012
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: Co-operative Funeralcare

Dear Mr Tinning,

I found myself, this morning, entertaining one of those whimsical thoughts that pops into our heads when we’re showering. Have you noticed how people tend to say ‘He’s been dead for 30 years, now’ instead of, ‘He died 30 years ago’? It’s as if they regard death as something akin to a state of being. I wonder if there’s an insight there into subconscious existential belief in a secular age? What do you think?

Look, I mustn’t distract you when you have obviously got a lot on your plate. How do I know you have? Because this is the third letter I have written to you, and you haven’t replied to the first yet.

How’s it going with the re-think? Are we any closer to founding principles? Am I getting ahead of myself? Have you picked yourselves up yet?

I ask because your website still carries a video clip of you giving your reaction to that Dispatches programme before the programme went out. Mr Tinning, you cannot respond to something before it has happened! You urgently need to speak to those many people who are still in shock as a result of what they saw. Please, break the silence.

While you’re about it, you might like to have a word with the person who worded the answers to the FAQs on that same webpage. There is one question:

Are deceased stored naked in mortuary facilities?

to which the answer is:

No, a deceased should not be stored naked the modesty of the deceased is maintained at all times and in addition the deceased will always be covered with a clean white sheet.

Let’s agree to draw a veil over the missing full stop after ‘naked’. Let’s talk instead about the word ‘deceased’. It’s used a lot by the funeral industry but, like the term ‘hygienic treatment’, it’s not much used by anyone else except, perhaps, as a dainty euphemism by the genteel. It’s jargon, George. If you insist on using it, understand that it is most commonly used as an adjective but, when used as a noun, can only be accompanied by the definite article. You can no more talk about ‘a deceased’ than you can talk about ‘deceaseds’.

Listen to it. ‘Deceased’ is sibilant. It gives off a double hiss like escaping gas. Not euphonious, George. It sounds neuter. It’s a horrible word. Divorce it.

And remember: so far as most people are concerned, a deceased, inanimate as it may be, is still a person, whose care is a sacred task.

That’s all I’ve time for. Before I go, a quick reminder. When you’ve got positive and reassuring messages you’d like to pass on to funeral shoppers, do let us know. We really want to get behind you.

With all best wishes,

Charles

PS You’ll have picked up that there is a great deal of talk these days about funeral poverty, and you know that more and more people are finding it difficult to pay for a funeral. I’m sure you will have been inspired by the example of your sister Canadian funeral co-ops: ‘the average cost of a funeral in Canada in 2004 was CAD$6,325, while the average cost of a cooperative funeral was $3,677.’ It puts one in mind of one of the core principles of the Rochdale Pioneers: to enable working people to buy that which they would not otherwise be able to afford.

Dark ops or what?

17 July 2012
Charles
33 Comments
Categories: Coroners, funeral directors

We’ve had a lot of correspondence here at the GFG since Dispatches flung that stuff about Co-operative Funeralcare in our eye (5 mins of telly souffléd into half an hour with a dollop of unleavened ombudsman).

It’s been complaints, mostly, and of course I can’t go into detail about any of them. But almost all of them  illustrate systemic problems in the funeral industry.

One of those problem areas is the conduct of funeral directors who hold a local authority contract for coroners’ removals.

The specific problem here is the way these contracts work. They are often awarded to a funeral director who pitches below the viable commercial rate for the job. The protocol that contracted funeral directors must observe, often, is that they must not solicit for business but they may leave a business card with the family.

Which looks a bit like soliciting for business, yes?

More important, how do councils suppose that undertakers carrying out removals at a loss are going to make it pay? Isn’t there only one way they can make it pay?

How much oversight is there? Do procurement officers ever get out to check up on their contracted undertakers?

Does a failure to find out how contracted undertakers make it pay amount to tacit collusion in questionable practice? We’re not suggesting that council officers are getting backhanders.

How could an undertaker who keeps to the rules hope to win one of these contracts, and why would she want to?

We don’t know the answers to any of these questions, nor do we want to jump to conclusions before getting all the facts. We rely on you to fill us in, if you would be so kind.

What’s it all about?

The changing face of Irish funerals

17 July 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: funeral directors, funerals in other cultures, Religious funerals

By Richard Rawlinson

Dublin undertaker Massey Brothers is responding to the changing attitude to religion in Ireland by offering families non-denominational funerals, online advice and motorbike hearses.

While these initiatives may no longer be especially novel in Britain, they’re causing a bit of a stir in Ireland’s conservative, competitive and often quite unsophisticated funeral industry. There are 600 funeral directors in the country serving some 28,000 bereaved families a year, 84% of whom called themselves Catholic in the 2012 census. The industry remains unregulated, most businesses are part-time, and fewer than 200 are members of the IAFD. There are also reports of some undertakers bribing hospital and hospice staff to recommend their services.

Massey Brothers is introducing bespoke funerals after observing that even the nature of church funerals has changed, with evening removals (the deceased’s overnight stay in the church) becoming far less common.

With more undertakers now having websites, competition over price, service and transparency is hotting up. Undertakers can visit rip.ie each week and see how many funerals were organised by rival firms. Then there’s legacy.ie, a website offering non-religious funerals where packages (limo, coffin, notice in the newspaper etc) can be booked entirely online. Its Direct Funeral package (removal straight to the cemetery/crematorium) starts at €890.

Meanwhile, the healing process in the Church following the abuse scandals remains slow and painful. The mood has often changed from sycophancy to hatred, and some worried faithful express concern that the crisis is choking the life out of their parish life because the many good priests are now hiding for fear of an abuse claim.

While lamenting the vile predilections of abuser priests and the cover-ups, many faithful are offering priests encouragement by saying how inappropriate it is for the innocent to be constantly saying sorry for heinous crimes that they personally did not commit.

Ireland has experienced two extremes: fawning over priests and now the acceptable abuse of priests. The answer is in the middle: the rediscovery that the highest role of the priest is not to be a status symbol for an Irish family (‘the parish priest sat with me during morning tea, so I’m the more important person in the village’). But the priest is the person who goes into Persona Christi, standing in the place of Christ so he may offer the Eucharist.

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. 

This is how it’s supposed to be

15 July 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Co-op

From the website of the Federation of Funeral Cooperatives of Québec:

Cooperative funeral homes have proven a highly successful model in Canada, and especially Quebec. The cooperative movement is growing, with 9,600 deaths treated by funeral cooperatives in 2011 in Canada, up more than 5 percent from 2010.

The Fédération des Coopératives Funéraires du Québec (Federation of Funeral Cooperatives of Québec) is the umbrella structure for all funeral cooperatives in Quebec. Founded in 1987, it has grown to include 35 member cooperatives, 23 across the province, 10 in other provinces in Canada plus funeral cooperatives in Lima in Peru and Seattle in the United States.

Collectively owned by over 170,000 members in Quebec, the cooperatives operate within communities, for communities, following a philosophy of meeting the needs of bereaved families, whatever their budget, taking a humane approach and respecting values of solidarity, mutual assistance and integrity. The cooperatives offer many advantages to consumers, not least of which is their lower costs: the average cost of a funeral in Canada in 2004 was CAD$6,325, while the average cost of a cooperative funeral was $3,677.

Source

ED’S NOTE: There’s a big international summit of funeral co-operatives in Quebec in October this year which we’d love to attend but can’t because we’re skint.  We’ve heard good things about Canada’s funeral co-ops. We know that our friend Josh Slocum of the US Funeral Consumers Alliance will be there, so we hope he’ll tell us all about it.

 

The Good Funeral Guide
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