17 March 2014 – The Good Funeral Guide

Missing

Monday, November 27 I got up very early, and just before nine o’clock Caroline was brought back by the funeral director and she lay on a trestle in the front room, with lots of flowers. She lay there until half-past twelve: over three and a half hours. All the children arrived and the grandchildren, and the guest began arriving, and they all went in to see Caroline, who looked so beautiful. I kissed her, and dropped tears on her cold, cold face.

Thursday, April 25 Where is she? Her body, which I loved and knew so well, was taken away and burned, but she’s not there … I think she’s happy, but I’ll never, ever see her again till that day I die and after that, who knows?

Tony Benn — Diaries

Last week we looked at belief in angels. There were some good comments, and not for the first time we reflected that losing someone is something that is, for most people, decidedly not susceptible to rigorous rational analysis. As Gloria Mundi had it, “it’s a deeper need than rational thought … Who’s going to jump up in a funeral and say ‘he’s not looking down on us, he’s gone, dammit’?

Wendy Coulton believes that her deceased grandparents act as her guardian angels: “It hurts no one else to believe this and I consider myself blessed and loved from people I cherish. They do not have wings and their special power is an enduring and unconditional love for me. I believe in them and they believe in me.”

The feeling that the person who has died is out there somewhere, waiting for us, is strong, expressed for many by that Henry Scott Holland reading about the one who has died being in the next room.

It’s a mystery. It’s mystery that keeps us wondering and also keeps hope alive. The same for people disappear in this world and whose body is never found. Those who love them never give up hope that they are somewhere.

It’s happening now to the families of those who were flying on MH370. In the words of the brother on one missing man: “We are not giving up hope. Because if there are no answers, there is no finality. So, miracles have happened…”

No finality. No end to the mystery. Every one of us goes missing in action someday. For those who love us there may live on a hope or even a belief that we are out there somewhere. For the relatives of those on board MH370 there is the same hope and, as for Tony Benn, the terrible pain of not knowing.

Gloom is no mood for a chapel of rest

Undertakers put a great deal of effort into making people who have died look good for when family members come to see them. There is, they feel, great therapeutic value in the experience of visiting someone who’s died, especially if they’re looking serene. They employ a range of cosmetic treatments to achieve a good ‘memory picture’. If the family is pleased with what they see, this reflects well on the undertaker’s duty of care. They are (relatively) happy customers.

But the fruits of the cosmetic work carried out in the mortuary are so often let down by the decor and especially the lighting of the chapel of rest. Most undertakers, when asked to demonstrate their lighting, adjust a dimmer switch — in other words they achieve the desired mood-effect not with light but with gloom. That gloom, taken together with the physical coldness of most chapels of rest, can make for a sub-optimal experience for the visitors.

Old fashioned tungsten bulbs, with their low colour temperature, shed a warm light at any intensity. But they’ve been outlawed, and undertaker must nowadays fit halogen and LED lamps with a much higher colour temperature — ie, a much colder white light. Result: it now takes even more gloom to mitigate their coldness in the chapel of rest.

I’ve only seen one chapel of rest which uses additive colour to light the chapel and, above all, the person who’s died. By mixing red, green and blue light it is possible to achieve a variety of effects (see pic below). If, for example, there is still evidence of jaundice in the face of the dead person, it is possible to counter that by careful colour-mixing. It works better than dimmed white light but leaves something to be desired if the quality of the equipment is not up to the job. It’s important to have the right kit.

Better still is to do what theatre lighting designers do and use colour filters. An actor of a certain age will always ask for pinky-lavender filters in the front-of-house lanterns because pinky-lavender flatters older skin.

Theatre lighting experts know all this. They know how to light human faces of all ages and, just as important, they know how to create mood onstage with subtle use of colour. Even to them, though, lighting a dead human face is likely to pose a challenge because the light does not encounter warm blood beneath the skin. They would have to experiment with their colour filters according to the age and condition of the dead person. They’d bring in ambient light from other lanterns in the chapel of rest. They’d crack it, for sure.

Shortly, the GFG will be working with a theatre lighting expert to transform the lighting in a chapel of rest. When we’ve done it, we’ll tell you what we did and show you before and after photos. If you’re an undertaker and you’re interested in a makeover in your own chapel of rest, do get in touch.