17 August 2012 – The Good Funeral Guide

Wow, Betty!

17 August 2012

Charles

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Categories: Uncategorised

From the Carlisle News and Star:

A tea dance at The Shepherds Inn, in Montgomery Way, Carlisle, will replace the traditional wake, after the 83-year-old’s funeral at Carlisle Crematorium.

Elizabeth Ellen Brown, known as Betty to her many friends, colleagues and family members, had planned her funeral a week before she died.

Her death at Eden Valley Hospice on Friday came as a shock to those who knew her though, as even in her 80s she had been full of life. Betty had been diagnosed with cancer less than three weeks earlier.

Her daughter Christine Kania said: “My mum chose everything; when she went into the hospice she said ‘we need to talk about my funeral’.

“It’s the most difficult conversation I’ve ever had, but she decided where she wanted it, who she wanted and said she wanted a tea dance and no black clothes. She’s also given me all the music she wants played. My mum definitely knew her own mind.”

Full story here.

Council changes ashes policy after bereaved family complains

17 August 2012

Charles

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Categories: funeral directors, Rights of the bereaved

From today’s Oxford Mail:

A TOWN council has been forced to change its policy on interring ashes after a bereaved family took the authority to task.

Christopher Harris objected to Woodstock Town Council’s rule that said people must employ the services of a funeral director to oversee the interment of a loved one’s ashes.

Mr Harris’s father Richard, 79, who had lived in Woodstock for almost 40 years, died in May this year.

The family held a funeral service and cremation in June, and planned a small family service at Lawns Cemetery, Green Lane, Woodstock, for interment of the ashes this month.

But the family was told they would need to employ a grave digger and funeral director to oversee the interment.

When they obtained a quote they told it would cost £90 for a grave digger, £74 for the plot, a £105 town council interment fee, and between £135 and £150 for a funeral director.

Mr Harris decided to challenge the council as he did not believe a funeral director was needed. He said: “The council rule imposed people to use a professional firm, but they don’t have that right at all.”

Mr Harris raised the issue at a town council meeting. He even dressed as a funeral director at the meeting to make the point funeral directors are not regulated and anyone can be one.

Last night Woodstock’s mayor Brian Yoxall accepted the council’s policy was wrong and has agreed to change it.

He said: “The point about funeral directors being present is something which we firmly believed at the time to be correct policy.

“It has always been our policy to have an undertaker present and this was the first time case we had come across for a do it yourself funeral.

“That’s why we took the position we did.

“We have since taken advice about that subject and have now accepted it isn’t necessary for funeral directors to be present. “We are not insisting a funeral director has to be present now, but we are insisting a member of staff satisfies him or herself that arrangements are satisfactory.”

He said the council would look at including the cost of a staff member being present in the burial fee in future.

Mr Yoxall said the council has now been told by the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management that was unnecessary for a funeral director to be present.

But the council must satisfy itself of the checks it is required to legally make as a burial authority, such as checking the name on the death certificate matches that on the casket. Mr Yoxall said he understood the requirement for a funeral director had always been the council’s policy. He could not say how many people had been affected by it.

Elsewhere in the county there is a mixed policy. Oxford City Council, which look after four cemeteries, says at the very least a grave digger, who is employed by the council, must be present to confirm the name on the death certificate and casket match.

In Bicester, the town council requires families to employ a funeral director.

Thoughts of a funeral-goer

17 August 2012

Charles

7 Comments

Categories: Thoughts of a funeralgoer

Posted by Lyra Mollington

Before Daisy met Barry, they had both been unlucky in love. Daisy’s unhappy marriage ended when her husband dropped dead of a heart attack. Barry’s wife left him and he discovered that their marriage had also been an unhappy one.

With the events of recent weeks we have found out quite a lot about each other. If a near-death experience can’t teach us about ourselves and others, what else can? Another interesting thing I discovered about Barry is that any talk of funerals and his placid nature evaporates.

When Barry was a boy, his father was killed. He ‘didn’t care in the slightest’ that he hadn’t been given the chance to go to the funeral. At his mother’s funeral twenty years ago he felt like ‘Bambi caught in the headlights’.

In short, funerals are Barry’s idea of hell. When his best friend Tom died, the funeral was ‘crap’ and not enhanced by the ‘loud and relentless sobbing’ from the front row. When I suggested that a few tears might be a good thing, I was greeted with a look of incredulity. Barry can’t cope with people crying in public – or in private for that matter.

He was especially aggrieved that a ‘doddery old fart in a cassock’ was in charge of the proceedings, especially as he knew that Tom had strong feelings about religion. Barry had visited Tom in hospital and a chaplain had ‘hovered menacingly’ at the end of the bed. After the chaplain left, Tom told Barry that he had nearly told him to bugger off.

He completed his diatribe with, ‘And sitting in regimented rows in an enclosed space listening to the naff poems and bloody awful songs people choose! Fly Me To The Moon? What the hell is that about?’ Further questioning revealed that Tom had never shared his funeral wishes with his children.

Nor has Barry. ‘Whatever I tell them they’ll still manage to make a right pig’s ear out if it.’ But he agreed that it would be a kindness to his sons if he could give them some idea of what he wanted. The problem is that Barry knows exactly what he doesn’t want (unnecessary expense/naff poems/bloody awful songs) but no idea what he DOES want.

Which is how we came to be standing at the gates of a large cemetery near where we live. It has both traditional and natural burial areas. Which seems to mean that only some graves have headstones. Others don’t and the grass isn’t cut as often. According to the website, its chapel was designed in 1906 and is available for ‘people of all faiths and beliefs.’

We had barely gone through the gates when a small group of people and a coffin caught my eye. Daisy was holding me back with a stern look. I persuaded her that we could move closer if we pretended to be visiting a grave.

We couldn’t hear very much. There didn’t seem to be a vicar but I noticed there was a grave-digger nearby trying to look inconspicuous. The undertaker instructed his four ‘gentlemen’ to lower the coffin.

A young woman nodded to the little girl next to her. She looked about seven years old. She began playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the recorder. A toddler standing next to her bobbed his head in time to the music. The descant recorder is not my favourite instrument but she was note perfect and there wasn’t a single squeak.

Each person threw a flower into the grave. After a minute or two, they walked towards their cars. The recorder-playing girl and her brother were now holding hands with the young woman. She looked beautiful in her black dress. But with her high heels she was struggling not to sink into the grass.

The cars drove off. A passenger jet flew over. Daisy tried to tell me something but I couldn’t hear a word. And Barry pretended not to wipe his eyes.