2014 – Page 23 – The Good Funeral Guide

Knights Templar ghosts walk among Bristolians

10 January 2014

Charles

8 Comments

Categories: Ghosts

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

I’ve just seen a Templar knight in Bristol, walking the streets in helmet, chain mail and white tunic with red cross. This is not uncommon in a city with a rich Templar history, reflected by the station name, Temple Mead, and a Weatherspoon pub called Knights Templar.

I’m not sure if he was a ghost or a man in fancy dress, just pretending to be a member of the monastic military order founded in the 12th century to protect pilgrims to Jerusalem. Paranormal Site Investigators (PSI) have reported many apparitions, especially at the HQ of Avon Fire and Rescue, built over a Knights Templar temple. Interestingly, the sightings are invariably accompanied by the sound of Gregorian chant.

Next year is the 700th anniversary of the death of Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, who was burned at the stake on 18 March 1314 after the former darlings of Christendom had fallen from grace.

King Philip IV of France was the main catalyst for their downfall, torturing them into confessing heretical religious practices and the crime of finding sexual release with each other.

Philip’s motives were dubious. He was broke and the Order of Templars was rich. As well as being holy monks and crack soldiers, another dichotomy of the Templars was they were pioneering bankers, so talented at finance that the Order was richer than monarchs, who it then dutifully bankrolled. Philip owed the Order money but needed plenty more to fund his appetite for European wars. By persecuting the Templars, he could clear his debt, grab some booty, and, at the same time, strengthen France’s position by destroying the Vatican’s formidable army.

Some later historians have also had it in for the Templars, portraying them as a proto-Nazi ethnic extermination squad. But the Templars’ recorded mission was to protect pilgrims and the vulnerable, with no mandate in their book of 600 rules for ideological murder of people holding a different faith.

The Crusades was hardly a time of religious and cultural tolerance. Perhaps the Templars did overstep the mark by modern standards. Perhaps they did lose support in powerful places because they got too big for the boots.

But the ghosts down Bristol way are a chivalrous bunch.

Any takers for the real face of death?

9 January 2014

Charles

5 Comments

Categories: Embalming

A few weeks ago I posted a blog about embalming — a short piece, just three quotes, no comment.

One of the quotes acclaimed the art of the embalmer who, ‘by and through his professional attainments‘ in causing a corpse, by artificial means, to be made tolerably presentable to the living, glorifies ‘the divinity in man‘.

A second quote congratulated embalmers on ‘protecting the physical and emotional health of the people of the United States‘.

The third quote was taken from the Daily Mirror: ‘Nelson Mandela’s eyes were closed and he had one of his favourite colourful shirts on. He looked completely at peace and had what seemed like a small, contented smile. He lay in state in a glass-topped coffin – his face looking slightly bloated.’

I imagined the pro-embalmers reading the blog with self-congratulatory approval — then pondering the technical reason for Mandela’s bloated face. Embalmer error?

I imagined the non-embalmers – the refrigerators – harrumphing at what I supposed they would regard as the absurd self-regard of embalmers. If you want to read some hot anti-embalming views, just have a look at the latest edition of More To Death published by the Natural Death Centre.

I wasn’t surprised that the blog was greeted with silence — only one person commented — but I was very surprised to see a huge spike in the number of people actually reading the post. Heaven only knows who they were or what they thought. I wonder, I wonder.

The main reason for making a corpse presentable is to enable bereaved people to spend time with their dead person, getting their heads around the fact of their death. This is a belief shared by radicals and reactionaries alike — though not by Jews, who think it bad manners because the dead person can’t return the gaze. Here’s the great American home funeralist Beth Knox on the subject:

Our dead are offering us a great teaching, and a great healing. They teach of the cyclical, ephemeral nature of life. They teach as we sit vigil, as we witness their departure. They teach an appreciation of life and offer an experience of the deepest love as we experience their loss.

The convention is to present dead people, whether embalmed or not, looking at peace — perfectly content to be dead. Whatever the degree of cosmetic intervention involved, from trocar to hairbrush, the process in all cases involves setting the features and closing the mouth.

However well-intentioned, no matter how gently achieved, the outcome is confected and artificial. You cannot ascribe feelings to a no-longer sentient being. Mandela was not smiling, he had a smile assigned to him.

Is it right to manipulate the faces of dead people in order to achieve this illusion of chilled-out tranquility? The real face of death, after all, is more often open-jawed, exhausted, aghast.

Well, we’ve been arranging the features of our dead since time began. We do it because we can. Any call for the authentic presentation of the dead can only fall on deaf ears and you’ll not hear it here first.

But as between the embalmers and the refrigerators, the difference is only one of the means by which they achieve the illusory expression of stillness and serenity. They are brothers and sisters under the skin because their achievement in each case is the same: a white lie.

There was a fashion in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries for presenting the dead in all their starkness as effigies on their tombs.

A funeral with a steam engine theme

8 January 2014

Charles

4 Comments

Categories: Hearses

Vintage Lorry Funerals has a number of members in the company’s support team who can provide items to supplement the Floral Tributes or a Theme if their inclusion can enhance a display to exceed a Family’s expectations.

A Garden Contractor has supplied a Victorian Railway Porter’s Cart, a 1950’s Milk Churn and newly sawn Logs. Plumbers, Brick Layers and Joiners provide tools. However the main participant is a man whose Father once owned a Commercial Garage in Steeple Ashton, which closed in the 1960s and has remained untouched, just like when the Mechanics left it on the final day. When David Hall, who owns Vintage Lorry Funerals, believes that some items will be required he is invited to look around an Aladdin’s cave of equipment with the owner having a brainstorming session to select suitable items.

For a funeral in Fleet all David was advised was that the Deceased had been a Fred Dibnah type of guy and the idea of a ‘Steam Engine Theme’ was discussed with the Funeral Arranger. David phoned his Steeple Ashton friend who was able to supply giant spanners, jacks and vintage oil cans which would enhance the Theme. However, a large square object was required to fill a space on the rear of the display and following a detailed search a Shell Sign was chosen which fitted the flower tray very snugly.

The Family of the Deceased were very pleased with every element of the display, pictures from which were placed in a Memory Box along with other significant items used by the Deceased.

Whilst David Hall, was trundling home over Salisbury Plain he suddenly thought that he should have had Shell’s permission for displaying their Retail Sign. The following morning Shell were contacted and a Senior Manager confirmed that the company would normally have taken a dim view of the unauthorised use of the sign, however, given that it was used in a funeral a retrospective dispensation was granted.

http://www.vintagelorryfunerals.co.uk

Did Marc Bolan predict his own death?

6 January 2014

Charles

4 Comments

Categories: Attitudes to death, Continuing consciousness

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

T-Rex star Marc Bolan died, aged 29, in a car crash in west London in the early hours of a September morning in 1977. His girlfriend Gloria Jones was driving him home from a night in Mayfair when her purple Mini smashed into a tree by the side of the road. Even today, flowers are still placed to mark the spot.

When Elvis Presley died a month before, Bolan is reported to have made the somewhat egotistical comment, ‘I’m really glad I didn’t die today because I wouldn’t have made the main story.’ As it turns out, he died on the same day as Maria Callas, with him being the bigger story, at least in this country.

Rock fans create legends around their heroes, and T-Rex lyrics have since been analysed for meaning linked to his death. Bolan’s last single, Celebrate Summer, includes the line, ‘Summer is heaven in seventy-seven’. His song, Solid Gold East Action, includes the line, ‘Easy as picking foxes from a tree’: the numberplate of the Mini was FOX 661L.

Footnote: John Lennon was shot dead in 1980 having just got out of his limo onto the pavement outside his Manhattan apartment block. Reporters have since unearthed quotes by the former Beatle such as, ‘I’m not afraid of death because I don’t believe in it. It’s just getting out of one car, and into another’.

Meanwhile, death preoccupied some of the so-called 27 Club, rock and pop stars including Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, who all died aged 27. Cobain is quoted as saying, ‘If you die you’re completely happy and your soul somewhere lives on. I’m not afraid of dying. Total peace after death’. Winehouse once said, ‘If I died tomorrow, I would be a happy girl’.

Your kids, your legacy

3 January 2014

Charles

1 Comment

Categories: Children, funeral plans, memorialisation

From today’s Times Diary:

Given a reminder of mortality by Michael Schumacher’s recent accident, Sir Matthew Pinsent, who is a year younger than the German racing driver, decided to have a serious talk with his three children about his plans in the event of anything happening to him and his wife. The oarsman-turned-presenter discussed wills, guardians, inheritance, etc, only for one of his sons to pipe up: “Who gets your torch?”

Well, you can’t blame the child for wanting a piece of memorabilia, especially when his dad is one of our greatest Olympians, but it turns out he wasn’t referring to the gold torch that Pinsent carried in the London 2012 relay. “No, it was just a standard, battery-driven number powered by three AAAs,” Pinsent says. “And none of them had any concern for my medals.”

The makes-you-proud-to-be-British way of death

2 January 2014

Charles

4 Comments

Categories: Atheism, Attitudes to death, burial, coffins

Alice Pitman, in the Christmas edition of the Oldie magazine, describes her extremely unwell 88 year-old mother rising to the occasion in hospital:

Eventually a porter came and perfunctorily wheeled her to theatre. [We] followed down an interminably long corridor, the Aged P issuing instructions over her shoulder about what we were to do if she didn’t make it. Her will was in her knicker drawer. She wanted to be buried, not cremated. “I want the worms to eat me!” she exclaimed with reckless candour (a couple waiting for the lift looked horrified). “Don’t waste money on an expensive coffin. One of those cheap wicker ones will do. Oh, and no church service. I’m 99 per cent certain God doesn’t exist. In fact, scrap the funeral altogether. I don’t want one…” “It’s not up to you!” said [my husband], his stiff upper lip betraying a quiver of emotion.

FOOTNOTE: Though her doctors abandon all hope for her, she survives.

Caitlin Moran offers posthumous advice to her daughter

1 January 2014

Charles

11 Comments

Categories: Attitudes to death, cremation, Humour, music

Here’s one we missed earlier: journalist Caitlin Moran’s draft last letter to her daughter published in The Times in July of last year (remember 2013?). You can find the entire article (£) here.

My daughter is about to turn 13 and I’ve been smoking a lot recently, and so – in the wee small hours, when my lungs feel like there’s a small mouse inside them, scratching to get out – I’ve thought about writing her one of those “Now I’m Dead, Here’s My Letter Of Advice For You To Consult As You Continue Your Now Motherless Life” letters. Here’s the first draft. Might tweak it a bit later. When I’ve had another fag.

“Dear Lizzie. Hello, it’s Mummy. I’m dead. Sorry about that. I hope the funeral was good – did Daddy play Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen when my coffin went into the cremator? I hope everyone sang along and did air guitar, as I stipulated. And wore the stick-on Freddie Mercury moustaches, as I ordered in the ‘My Funeral Plan’ document that’s been pinned on the fridge since 2008, when I had that extremely self-pitying cold.

“Look – here are a couple of things I’ve learnt on the way that you might find useful in the coming years. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s a good start… The main thing is just to try to be nice … Just resolve to shine, constantly and steadily, like a warm lamp in the corner, and people will want to move towards you in order to feel happy, and to read things more clearly. You will be bright and constant in a world of dark and flux, and this will save you the anxiety of other, ultimately less satisfying things like ‘being cool’, ‘being more successful than everyone else’ and ‘being very thin’.

“Second, always remember that, nine times out of ten, you probably aren’t having a full-on nervous breakdown – you just need a cup of tea and a biscuit. You’d be amazed how easily and repeatedly you can confuse the two. Get a big biscuit tin.

“Three – always pick up worms off the pavement and put them on the grass. They’re having a bad day, and they’re good for… the earth or something (ask Daddy more about this; am a bit sketchy).

“Four: choose your friends because you feel most like yourself around them, because the jokes are easy and you feel like you’re in your best outfit when you’re with them, even though you’re just in a T-shirt. Never love someone whom you think you need to mend – or who makes you feel like you should be mended. There are boys out there who look for shining girls; they will stand next to you and say quiet things in your ear that only you can hear and that will slowly drain the joy out of your heart. The books about vampires are true, baby. Drive a stake through their hearts and run away.

“This segues into the next tip: life divides into AMAZING ENJOYABLE TIMES and APPALLING EXPERIENCES THAT WILL MAKE FUTURE AMAZING ANECDOTES. However awful, you can get through any experience if you imagine yourself, in the future, telling your friends about it as they scream, with increasing disbelief, ‘NO! NO!’ Even when Jesus was on the cross, I bet He was thinking, ‘When I rise in three days, the disciples aren’t going to believe this when I tell them about it.’

“Babyiest, see as many sunrises and sunsets as you can. Run across roads to smell fat roses. Always believe you can change the world – even if it’s only a tiny bit, because every tiny bit needed someone who changed it. Think of yourself as a silver rocket – use loud music as your fuel; books like maps and co-ordinates for how to get there. Host extravagantly, love constantly, dance in comfortable shoes, talk to Daddy and Nancy about me every day and never, ever start smoking. It’s like buying a fun baby dragon that will grow and eventually burn down your f***ing house.

“Love, Mummy.”