14 October 2013 – The Good Funeral Guide

An essay in melancholy

14 October 2013

Charles

3 Comments

Categories: funeral, funeral customs, funeral trends

Last week I passed an empty hearse going the other way. It set me musing.

Freed from its solemn duties, no longer slowed by a weighty coffin and all the gravitas attendant upon such a thing, emptied of flowers and no longer the misty-eyed focus of profoundly sad people, it had about it none of the majesty and decorum, the grandeur and grace, that properly wreath a hearse. It looked inessential, superfluous, dispensable. Gawky. Going too fast.

You think I’m banging on a bit. You’re right.

I then fell to musing on the way people in cars treat hearses these days. They buzz and harry them, cut in and chop up processions. It’s like watching a kestrel mobbed by crows. People these days have no manners, no solicitude. They’re in a hurry, they’ve got places to go.

But it’s not just a manners thing, is it? Or a hurry thing? There’s more to it than that.

Once upon a time (not so long ago) the death of someone touched everyone. It evoked the mystery of existence. In everyone’s mind a funeral procession awoke questions: how long have I got? What does it feel like? What comes after? It spoke of the universal human drama of those born to die. It inspired awe and the doffing of hats.

It’s not a manners thing. No, it’s a universality thing. In place of a general drama of life and death and the mystery of existence played out in our midst, for us, disconnected from matters elemental, there are one-off sketches in which unknown unfortunates die — bad luck. Seek not to know for whom the bell tolls, it ain’t tolling for me, mate.

And so a funeral procession, instead of speaking to and for the human condition, is seen as descriptive of no more than a little local difficulty afflicting someone else.

And the funerals of these incogniti address the particular and the personal, the private hurt, the here and the now, in crematoria which divert those who cared for them briefly from life’s mainstream (where death belongs) before setting them on their way again.

Moral: it’s much easier to write prettily about mortality and funerals wearing a reactionary hat.

Cash for crash

14 October 2013

Charles

8 Comments

Categories: funeral directors

Suffolk police have come under fire for their practice of awarding cash payments to officers who have to deal with exceptionally difficult or distressing incidents — a particularly horrible road crash, for example or, in the words of the Police and Crime Commissioner, “picking up charred remains of bodies from house fires and picking up decomposed bodies out of rivers with their own hands.” Traumatic circumstances like these may qualify a policeman for a cash payment of £50-£500. “These are over-and-above, additional tasks that no amount of training can prepare officers for.”

The Taxpayers’ Alliance describes the payments as “macabre” and says: “it is vital that the right support is in place, but throwing bonuses at the problem is not the solution.”

The Ipswich Star records that ambulance staff and firefighters are not eligible for such payments.

The bonuses are, of course, a charge on the taxpayer. The process whereby trauma is mitigated by a wodge of cash is not explained.

How would it be if funeral directors were to start charging extra for ‘distressing’ removals, and adding the charges to their clients’ bills?

Story in the Ipswich Star here. Hat-tip to GMT

The beauty of the vigil

14 October 2013

Charles

4 Comments

Categories: Vigil, visiting

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

When Charles Darwin died in 1882, he was brought to Westminster Abbey the evening before his huge funeral. His coffin was borne through the cloisters, his five sons following, into a small, bare vaulted side chapel (St Faith), which had until recently been used as a storeroom.

Architect Sir George Gilbert Scott, involved in the restoration of the Abbey, described this overnight resting place as a picturesque and beautiful room. Seen by the dim light from lanterns, it seemed tomb-like in contrast with the lofty interior of the Abbey. It was an intimate, contemplative place, different in mood to the public ceremony the next day, when the building was peopled with the living, when Darwin’s friends served as pallbearers in the procession to the Abbey’s communion rails.

A friend’s husband died suddenly a couple of years ago. The night before the requiem mass, he was removed to the Lady Chapel of Westminster Cathedral, the Catholic one just down Victoria Street from the Abbey. This Lady Chapel had been the scene of the couple’s wedding several years before. My friend recalls how special (painful and soothing) it was for her to sit there with him through the evening in silent, solitary vigil before funeral the next day.

I’m told the removal to the church the night before is becoming less common, even in Ireland. How common are such removals and vigils in hospital chapels or at home?