Is your funeral really necessary?

All of a sudden the media has started to take an interest in direct cremation. It’s the death of Anita Brookner wot done it. Here at the GFG we got calls after Bowie was whisked into the flames but little was written. I guess Bowie wasn’t reckoned sufficiently representative of mainstream people to be regarded as a sign of the times.

Will the upcoming Government consultation – here – take account of the needs of direct cremationists, we wonder, and consider abolishing the charge for the ceremony hall (chapel), and institute a dropoff service (also useful for home funeralists)?

What’s interesting about direct cremation is that it has come about without the benefit of advocacy by funeral reformers, who have been mostly (ironically) chattering about the desirability of more corpse-centric sendoffs. No one in the death biz saw direct cremation coming. How brilliant is that? The GFG has been, as in everything, way off the pace. In 2008 we wrote: “In the UK we are culturally conditioned to believe that a funeral for a body is indispensable. Could that change?” In 2009 we wrote “We never thought [direct cremation] would jump the Atlantic, but it has. In 2010 we had second thoughts:  “It seems unthinkable that the practice of direct cremation … could land on our shores.”

Land on our shores? From where? Why, America, of course. But is direct cremation a transplanted practice – or did it arise here spontaneously? I’ve come to favour the latter theory. Increasingly, death announcements tell us, people are separating the disposal of the corpse from the memorial event, as in “Private cremation followed by a celebration of life to be held at…” The corpseless funeral and direct cremation are brother and sister.  

What bothers the media is what may also bother you. Isn’t it emotionally injurious to deny people the opportunity to pay their respects and say a ritual farewell to the person who’s died? No point in debating that question, it has already been answered. For certain people, certain deaths are best marked by a direct cremation or a corpseless funeral. End of.

Which doesn’t mean to say that the consideration of the needs and feelings of others has evaporated. David Holmes reminded us of this a couple of weeks ago when he was involved in a death not as an undertaker but as a family friend. He wrote:

The driver for them all is DOING THE RIGHT THING. This is to be a cremation, with traditional coffin and hearse, we will wear less formal clothes …They want to do it this way because they all think this IS the way it should be done. There has been time for me to gently suggest alternatives, and frankly, their emotional state made me hesitant to suggest much at all as an alternative. When I have, they have usually closed me down.

This chimes with a recent correspondence we had with a person of extremely limited means. She was inclined to do it all from home affordably and decorate a cardboard coffin bought on the internet. Then, all of a sudden, she wanted a formal funeral with a horse-drawn hearse. She was wrenched one way and the other by what she felt to be a need to show the world she cared.

This was in contrast to the man, a few days later, who wanted to be put in touch with a direct cremationist. At 94 he was a bright as you like and wanted to talk about the issues. He is affluent, educated and freethinking, so he is socially fearless. More than that, he feels that even in death he has a duty to set an example to less confident people. He wants to give them ‘permission’ to make the same choice as him and do what they are inclined to do, not as they feel expected to do.

Here’s the point. Increasingly, people go to a funeral these days with no idea what to expect now that liturgy, even in religious ceremonies, has been replaced by a mash-up. When you don’t know what to expect, you’re open to… anything.