January 2021 – The Good Funeral Guide

100 Days

26 January 2021

Fran Hall

3 Comments

Categories: Absolute Beginner - A Personal Story of Grief, Covid-19, Grief

26th January 2021

Today it is 100 days since Steve died. And four months exactly since our wedding day.

At the weekend, it was the tenth anniversary of my mother’s death. It was a rapid dying, from glioblastoma multiforme. In January 2011, I spent my 50^th birthday sitting by her bedside, where she drifted in and out of sleep. I knew it would be the last birthday I would have with a parent alive. She died nine days later.

January 2011 was not a good month for me. But I had unwavering support and love and strength that carried me through it. Steve was a huge part of that, despite the disconnect between my mother and him.

He was unfailingly present and prescient in his knowing what I needed, despite – or perhaps because of – having lost both his parents, less than 12 months before. Grieving when you have someone to lean on is so much easier than grieving alone. And, notwithstanding the unfailing love and concern and efforts of my wonderful children and collective of friends and acquaintances, this time, I am grieving alone.

January 2021 is not a good month for me either. A second significant birthday has come and gone; spent in a way I could never have anticipated. This one involved sitting in the pouring rain by Steve’s grave before returning to a subdued but lovely lockdown birthday afternoon at home. A birthday during lockdown is hardly a birthday. A birthday without the person you love so much is hardly a birthday. We’d had such plans to celebrate it properly, with a big family gathering making special memories. That was obviously before Covid changed everything we knew as normal in the world, snatching Steve away in the process.

January’s short, gloomy days and long dark nights are always difficult, but this time, this year, in these circumstances – they are almost unbearable. And then for me, these dates, these anniversaries have loomed, and then arrived.

This January is grindingly, relentlessly hard. It’s hard for everyone, this numbing existence of living under ‘lockdown’, all normal life in masked, socially distanced, restricted, isolated, suspended animation. Layer on top the exhaustion of hauling yourself through each lonely day trying to function like you used to, when everything you were used to has imploded, and life is bleak.

The one person I want to share my thoughts with isn’t here to listen. The one person I need to lean on has disappeared. I have no partner to help me get through these days, no harbour to shelter in, no safety net, no one to catch me and hold me. I have to do this on my own. The thought of time stretching ahead for me alone is too much to contemplate, it makes me recoil and shudder if I let myself look more than a day or two ahead. Just getting through one day at a time is enough of a task.

And it’s bloody hard. It’s hard to get out of bed each morning and pull on clothes and boots and get out into the cold early darkness to walk the dog. Often, I find myself a mile or so from home, walking on autopilot, stumbling in the darkness over the fairways and hills of the golf course as the skies lighten into dawn, not aware of how I’ve got there, not thinking, just walking.

It’s hard to go through the routine of showering and making myself look decent and half-heartedly cleaning and tidying the house. It’s hard to make myself focus on working again, sitting at the computer, writing emails and reports and sorting out endless admin. It’s hard to be a good ‘Nana’ to the children who I’m looking after regularly now to help Grace while she works. It’s hard – really hard – to go to the supermarket. I had no idea how much walking around Sainsbury’s would devastate me, the sharp pains of recollection, all of the memories and associations of seeing food and wines we used to buy when we were together.

And it’s hard to cook proper meals. I can’t smell or taste food since I had Covid, my palate now is determined by the texture of what I eat, and whether it’s sweet or salty or sour or spicy– beyond that, there’s nothing. There’s no point of going to the effort of trying new recipes, no point in spending time in the kitchen unless I’m cooking for the kids. It’s hard to force myself to eat anything, with little appetite and no enjoyment. Am not sure how much of that is Covid and how much is just the ‘can’t be bothered’ of being bereaved. I’m fortunate enough to have close eyes on me, making sure I don’t just exist on coffee and biscuits, including the children who ask me every day ‘What have you had to eat today Nana?’

Even something as simple and beautiful as the weekend fall of snow brought unexpected, jarring, painful memories, the cold crisp air and crunch under my feet immediately flashing me back to the many winter weeks we spent in Scotland over the years, lovely luxury weeks at Steve’s timeshare at The Carrick, just the two of us relaxing together. Memories of long walks in the mountains, tramping through the snow, his warm hand steadying me, his warm breath against my cheek when he kissed me, memories of building a snow bear outside the lodge, of evenings walking back from Cameron House in the icy chill and silence of the banks of Loch Lomond. Those memories are hard to bear now.

Everything about this new normal, this January, is unremittingly hard.

I’m sure that for anyone whose partner has died, this time – 100 days after a death – this period of grieving must be equally difficult, even without the complications and stresses and anxiety of living through a pandemic, in a country which has handled it so utterly appallingly.

These are horrendously difficult times. The constant dreadful news, the media drip feed of death rates and infection rates, the politicians pronouncing orders, the changing restrictions, the horrors endured by the NHS staff battling to keep people alive as their lungs stiffen and their organs fail, the prospect of this going on and on with no end in sight – all of this existential nightmare just echoes and magnifies the inner dread and distress.

Even under normal circumstances, three months on from a death, other people’s lives have moved on. The regular phone calls and messages slow down. People are busy and have their own lives and complications and families and work demanding their attention. It’s normal that the focus has shifted away from me and my experience, my existence. But that natural ebbing of constant checking-in means that I have to call on my own resources to keep going forwards. And my resources are elusive and eroded by what has happened. My usual resilience has taken a body blow with this, the latest traumatic event in my life. I’m older, and less buoyant, more battered. The two years of living in constant vigilance with the worry and knowledge of the insidious, inevitable advance of Steve’s cancer has taken its toll. I’m running on empty.

And there’s no manual, or guidance. This is a long, gruelling, weary journey of self-discovery which I didn’t choose and don’t want to be doing. I’m trying every which way to make it easier, doubling back on some of my choices when they turn out not to be the best ones. I found that the grim nights of loneliness and crying at the beginning were eased by pouring a hefty slug of whisky when I went to bed, but I’ve realised that wasn’t the smartest thing to be relying on, so I have stopped buying bottles of single malt and substituted the oblivion of alcohol with restless, relentless insomnia.

I’m doing my best to use the knowledge I have and apply it to myself, but it’s proving hard to put into practice. I have playlists on Spotify, meditation apps on my phone and a growing pile of books that I have bought, and half read before discarding. I make warm milky drinks with turmeric and manuka honey, I have a journal by my bed in case I need to write stuff down, lavender oil on my pillow in the hope that the essential properties will work even though I can’t detect them through smell – and yet still I am awake at 4am, writing this, having not slept at all. There’s no point in trying to sleep now, so this will be another sleepless night. And so, the exhaustion accumulates. Which makes everything that’s already hard a hundred times harder.

I’m trying though. I’m doing weekly group Zoom sessions with other people whose partners died from Covid. I’m practising Ho’oponopono, I’m using EFT. I’m eating sufficiently and taking vitamin supplements and drinking loads of water and trying to tire myself physically in my permitted exercise each day. I visit Steve’s grave. I talk to him all the time. I spend as much of the day outside as I can, appreciating birdsong and the quiet of nature in winter. I lean against big, old trees, pressing my face into the bark and try to feel the ancient strength of these witnesses to the changing years and the turmoil of human life.

I’m still doing my daily early morning walks before dawn. I’m writing. I’m working. I play with the children. When I need to talk, I call one of my trusted friends. When I need to call up comforting memories I look back at photos. I now have an album of wedding photos and an album of funeral photos – both equally beautiful. And I’ve just had a book created by Zapptales of our WhatsApp messages and I leaf through it to reconnect with the vibrant, alive love that we shared. That love glows from the pages in our conversations about all kinds of mundane things – telling each other how much we missed each other when we were apart, letting each other know where we were and what we were doing, what time we’d be home, hundreds of photos, hundreds of ‘miss you’, ‘love you’, ‘love you more’, ‘xxxx’ messages, stretching back to 2010, and ending with my last message sent at 06.22 on the day the hospital would call me in because he was dying.

I try to avoid obvious triggers, like programmes showing the reality of what’s happening inside our hospitals as Covid patients overwhelm the NHS – it’s too raw, too painful, too recent. But I’m keeping going, as I promised Steve I would.

And I remind myself that if he had survived, Steve would still have been slowly dying from cancer, and hard as this is for me now, to still have him here in increasing pain and suffering, while living in these dreadful restricted circumstances in these dark winter days would have been utterly unbearable.

I note with horror the huge numbers of people in hospital with Covid now and am so very glad that when Steve was admitted the numbers were so much lower – 2,705 people were in hospital in England with Covid on the day he was admitted. On Sunday, there were 32,907 Covid patients in English hospital, according to NHS Statistics – more than twelve times as many people being cared for, by the same exhausted nurses and doctors. Harrowing as it was for Steve to be in hospital in October, gradually succumbing to the virus, how much worse would it be now?

And this week, as the number of British people dead from Covid is certain to reach 100,000 – ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND!!!!!!!! – I remind myself that I am just one of many thousands and thousands and thousands of people going through this right now, grieving the loss of our lovers, all of us on our own.

I’m 100 days into this new life. I don’t like it. I’d do anything not to be here, right now, in this reality. I wish so much I could be back in our old life, pre cancer, pre Covid. Just living our life together. I don’t think I ever truly appreciated just how happy I was, how utterly secure and safe I felt. Now that’s all gone, I look back in wonder at just how lucky we were. And I look forward to what lays ahead with such sadness at being left on my own.

But this is it for me now. Now I have to make my own way. What has sustained me through these last 100 days – and will sustain me through the next however many hundreds or thousands left to me – is the certain knowledge that Steve loved me, to the absolute, utmost of his ability.

This wonderful, magnetic, hugely popular, universally loved man, this chameleon, this complex, complicated, fallible, fabulous human being fell in love with me. He chose (at huge cost) to be with me – and he chose to stay with me. He committed to me. As his life began to draw to a close, he chose to marry me, to have our long relationship legally recognised, to pledge himself to me, fully and completely and publicly. He chose to let me accompany him through all the twists and turns of his illness, all the way to his death. He held my hand in his as he took his last breath. He loved me, he loved me as much as I love him.

A few days before he died, he spoke about a conversation that he had had with his father, shortly before he, in turn had died, in 2010. It had been a difficult conversation, one where Steve had had to tell his parents that he was leaving his marriage to be with me. Labouring with his breathing, on a video call from the hospital, Steve said, ‘My Dad was right’. When I asked him what he meant, he told me the conversation that he was referring to, and said, ‘Dad just said, ‘It’s her. You’ve found her. You’ve met your soul mate’.’ He had never told me this before. For him to share this with me, when he knew his death was fast approaching was, I know, confirmation that he too believed this to be true.

And so, no matter how deeply despairing I feel, no matter the maelstrom of feelings I am having to contend with, no matter what has occurred, I know, without doubt, that Steve and I shared an extraordinary love. I will always love him. He is, and always will be, the love of my life. And I know with absolute clarity that he felt the same, and he wanted me to be certain of that.

I need to hold on to that certainty. That knowledge is what will get me through the days that lie ahead. And I’ve got work to do, we at the Good Funeral Guide have got work to do. Vital work. In these traumatised times, as never before, there is such a need for trustworthy, impartial information about the importance of a good funeral. We have to make sure that people can find it when they need it. And we have to make sure it is as good as it possibly can be.

And also, I now have unwanted – but invaluable – first-hand experience of profound grief, at a time when the country and the world are reeling in shock at the impact of the pandemic and the deaths of millions of our brothers and sisters across the world. I have to turn this around and find something positive. I want to use what I’ve learned to help other people, to articulate and shine a light on the impact of love interrupted by unexpected, traumatic death. There are so many of us. Our stories need to be heard.

This Marianne Faithfull track has just played on my playlist, and the lyrics really resonate with me as I finish this piece. I love it, I love her raw, powerful voice, and her words make sense to me where I am at the moment – apart from the ‘no one to blame’ line – for the 98,531 British people whose lives have been taken by Covid, including Steve, there is so much blame. This did not need to happen.

We have the highest death rate in the world from this virus. It is outrageous. It is devastating. And it is unforgivable. These deaths did not need to happen when they did, the way they did. Steve and the 98,530 other people who are dead because of Covid died because of the government’s negligence, arrogance, exceptionalism and refusal to take the measures that would have kept the virus to a minimum.

There has to be culpability. This carnage, this catastrophe could have been avoided if the warnings had been heeded and our government had truly wanted to protect us. I knew about the virus in January 2020 from following social media, and I alerted members of the Good Funeral Guild on January 27th – if I knew, you can be certain the government knew long beforehand and in far greater detail about the threat that the virus in Wuhan posed to us all. But nothing was done to protect us. And almost a hundred thousand of us are now dead.

This is why I am fiercely proud to support Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK in their campaign for a public inquiry into the government handling of the pandemic. Along with everything else that I have ahead of me, I will do what I can to help call for justice for all those who have been so murderously let down.

I’ll end this long post now. Here are those Marianne Faithfull lyrics. Do listen to it.

Born to Live

“Born to live and born to die
Aren’t they just the same?
We’re always breaking someone’s heart
Especially our own
Life goes on its joyful way
As usual nothing’s as it seems
But to die a good death is my dream

And I wish it for all, for all I know and love
Deep down below and high above
We’re born to die, no one to blame
We’re born to love, we’re all the same

Blues stay away, stay away from me
I hate to lose old friends
Blues are my enemy, but love gets me through
Born to live and die
Forever loving you

Don’t make me cry, know what I must do
Pray for a good death, one for me, one for you

And I wish it for all, for all I know and love
Deep down below and high above
We’re born to die, no one to blame
We’re born to love, we’re all the same”

26th September 2020

Priorities?

20 January 2021

Fran Hall

1 Comment

Categories: Covid-19, funeral directors

There is much discussion in funeral world about whether funeral directors should be prioritised for vaccination as ‘frontline workers’. Indeed, we have heard that some celebrants are also enquiring as to whether they too should be considered a priority to be vaccinated against the virus which has ravaged our lives for the last year.

For background, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has a very clear list of priorities for vaccination in phase 1, which is currently underway :

residents in a care home for older adults and their carers
all those 80 years of age and over and frontline health and social care workers
all those 75 years of age and over
all those 70 years of age and over and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals
all those 65 years of age and over
all individuals aged 16 years to 64 years with underlying health conditions which put them at higher risk of serious disease and mortality
all those 60 years of age and over
all those 55 years of age and over
all those 50 years of age and over

JCVI does not advise further prioritisation by occupation during the first phase of the programme, noting that, “This prioritisation captures almost all preventable deaths from COVID-19, including those associated with occupational exposure to infection.”

This week, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that ministers will consider whether key workers such as police, teachers and essential shop staff should be prioritised once the most vulnerable have received the coronavirus vaccine, and Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick has said she is ‘baffled by the government’s decision not to prioritise police offers and is in ongoing discussion with government to try and change their position.

Understandably, people working within the funeral sector are anxious. A petition has been created to ‘Prioritise funeral workers for COVID vaccine’. It’s not specific as to whereabouts funeral workers should come on the list, asking that ‘parliament ‘recognise that we are frontline workers and we are at risk every time we go to work and put us as a priority to have the vaccine ASAP’.

This has attracted some interest from the media, and one of our Recommended Funeral Directors was contacted this week for comment. We invited her to share her thoughts about vaccine priority on the blog in a guest post. Your comments or thoughts are very welcome.

Guest blog post from Lucy Coulbert, owner of The Individual Funeral Company

“Should funeral directors be prioritised for a Covid vaccine?”

This wasn’t even a question I was asked by a BBC researcher. What they actually asked was “What are your thoughts on the petition to government to have funeral directors vaccinated as key workers.”

I’ll be honest; I really don’t understand why the traditional funeral associations were pushing for funeral directors to be given priority for vaccinations.

Are we at risk? Only to a very small extent. When we go to a hospital mortuary, we follow the government guidance to the letter concerning PPE. The risk to us is extremely low.

This is because the hospital would have tested people for Covid-19 and if they were positive at the time of their death, they are placed in a body bag before we collect them.

We aren’t allowed to enter our local hospital without a mask at all. Before I even get out of my vehicle, my mask is on and so are my gloves.

When we go to a care home or someone’s own home, I completely disregard the government guidance on wearing a “fluid resistant face mask” in favour of an FFP3 mask which is the best grade of mask money can buy.

We wear a full white paper suit which also covers our hair, shoe covers, a long sleeve plastic apron, gloves, FFP3 mask and a face shield. This is above and beyond what the government recommend.

We do this because we treat ourselves as if we have Coronavirus and we want to protect the staff in the care homes & residents along with a person’s family if they died at home.

Guidance for care of the deceased with suspected or confirmed coronavirus (COVID-19) – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

When we go into these settings, including into care homes which have had a Covid outbreak, the exposure we have to Coronavirus is low because we are there for less than 30 minutes unlike doctors and nurses who are exposed for hours on end even with the best masks.

So why should funeral directors essentially be allowed to queue-jump when our risk is low? Honestly, I have absolutely no idea other than it being some kind of vanity or there is some kind of perceived “prestige” in being labelled a key worker.

Neither of those things should mean we get to jump the queue.

Because this is the reality. If we are jumping up the queue to be vaccinated, then other people have to move down.

This isn’t us being vaccinated along side of those who should be. It is us being vaccinated instead of someone else.

At 38 years old and in relatively good health, am I more important to vaccinate than my 90 year old grandmother? Am I more important to vaccinate than a care home staff member or a social worker? Am I more important than a hospital chaplain or my asthmatic next door neighbour? Am I more important than a supermarket worker or hospital porter?

The answer is no. I should be far down the list of people who should be vaccinated.

My GP sent me a text to say if you are a healthcare worker to please call them. I did. I explained I am a funeral director but I also told them I didn’t feel I was in any way a priority.

There have been instances whereby vaccines would go to waste because someone took them out of the freezer too early. I told them if that happened and they didn’t want it to be wasted, to call and I would go but that would be the only way I would attend an appointment without it being my turn.

In March 2020 a week before the government decided to finally introduce a national lockdown, I asked my assistant to work from home. Within 24 hours, she had a brand new laptop delivered to her door.

My other members of staff were given instruction on how to don and doff PPE safely including how to make sure their masks should fit correctly.

They were all asked again if they had any medical conditions I needed to know about and they were all given the option of not working at all.

This was a really frightening time because we really didn’t know enough about what we were being asked to face. I had to ask my staff if they wanted to continue with their duties because given we were facing the unknown, I didn’t want them to feel as though they had to face it with me.

They were all in agreement to keep working and so I set up an A Team and B Team. This was simply so that should any member of the A Team test positive for Coronavirus, I still had a full team of people who could continue on with their duties without there being even the slightest hint of disruption to our clients.

They were all instructed that if they felt ill, even if they didn’t think it could be related to Coronavirus, then they had to tell me immediately and book a test.

While I had an A Team and B Team, I also spoke with other professional work colleagues and made agreements with them that should anything happen to both of my teams of people, would they be prepared to help.

With them on board, that meant I had a core staff of 5 people and then three back-up plans.

So with all of the PPE, teams of staff and two emergency back-up plans, I felt we were ready for anything we had to face.

Nine months on, those plans are still in place and I have gone even further. Only one staff member that I work with regularly is allowed inside my office and only when required.

Our bearers aren’t allowed in my office at all and haven’t been allowed for quite some time.

Since this new lockdown came into force, I was in touch with all of the staff and reminded them that although it feels different this time (much less strict than the first lockdown if the cars and people passing my office are any indication) I need them to remember we are still in the midst of a pandemic and unless they are shopping for food or seeking medical attention, they really need to stay at home.

Now, given I am a small and bespoke company, I don’t really understand why I can put all of these measures in place, prepare my staff and have the best PPE available and other companies can’t.

The only way people contract Coronavirus is by not washing their hands, not wearing a face covering and not social distancing.

There is no other way of contracting it.

Where there are outbreaks of Covid in funeral directors, I have to ask myself how that happened.

Why are their client’s services being interrupted when it is easily avoidable?

The week before I split up my staff last year, we were attending a service at the crematorium. All of my staff, including me, were wearing FFP3 masks and black disposable gloves.

Looked terrible but I had a long conversation with my clients at the time and explained why it was important that we do.

They completely understood and actually thanked us for keeping them in mind and for doing what we could to keep them safe.

While we were waiting for a last family member to arrive, I looked across the car park and there was a funeral director sat in his van filming us. I assume it was so he could show everyone back at the company he worked for what we were doing and how stupid we all were.

Now the crematorium has said no one can enter the chapel without a mask or gloves.

So my point is, if I can have all of this in place and pre-empt what will be required of us next, enough so that it is already second nature already, why can’t everyone else?

With this vaccination queue-jump, it almost feels like companies want the government to solve a problem they created by not putting proper steps in place, possibly not the correct PPE and certainly no emergency planning if their clients are affected.

No person is any more important than the next simply because of the job we do.

I’m afraid the people who decided they would campaign to get funeral directors vaccinated early have really missed the point and I believe they have done it for reasons I can’t fathom.

Any funeral director willing to be vaccinated early rather than wait their turn should ask themselves “Who had to wait so I could have this?”

In the end, this vaccine needs to be getting to the very most vulnerable people in our society. For what it is worth, I would gladly give up my space in that queue for anyone who needs it more than I do rather than playing Funeral Director Hunger Games for a jab.

Children and grieving

9 January 2021

Fran Hall

5 Comments

Categories: Absolute Beginner - A Personal Story of Grief

We couldn’t have children at Steve’s funeral ceremony.

Covid restrictions on numbers meant that we had to be ruthless in paring down the people allowed to be present, and there were so many whose connections with Steve went back years, we made the judgement call that they had to take precedent over my grandchildren. This was a tough decision for me, as I feel strongly that children should be involved and present at funerals if they want to be, particularly of someone who has been such a strong influence and is loved as much as Steve was by my daughter’s children, but given the number of expletives involved in Steve’s funeral ceremony, it was probably the responsible one to take…

I have six grandchildren, and the three who belong to Grace, my younger daughter, have always been incredibly close to Steve. He has been in their lives since they were born, and to them he is Grandpa Steve. They live just around the corner from here and treat ‘Nana’s house’ just like their own, so they were particularly pleased when Steve and I moved back here full time just before the lockdown was announced. Once ‘bubbles’ were permitted, as a single mum, Grace and the children linked up with us, and normal relations were resumed, with Leo, Albert and Amelia spending as much time here as they could.

Late in the summer, when it was apparent that Steve’s cancer was accelerating, Grace and I took the children for a long walk and told them that Grandpa Steve was going to die because the doctors couldn’t make him better. Aged eight, six and almost three, they processed this information differently, asking a whole load of questions and trying to understand what we were telling them.

Luckily, in 2019, Grace’s beloved family dog Kizzie had died, and the boys in particular had very clear memories of saying goodbye to her on the morning that she had to be taken to the vets, and of then coming here to the house after school where we had laid her body on her bed and surrounded it with flowers from the garden. They had helped to dig the little grave for her and helped us wrap her body and then lower it into the grave, helping us fill it in and then plant a camellia on top of it.

Saying goodbye to Kizzie 2019

This experience was absolutely invaluable in helping them process what we were telling them, because they had a complete understanding of the difference between Kizzie alive and Kizzie dead. This gave them the reference they needed to understand what we were telling them would be happening to Steve – although it took a while for Albert to be persuaded that we wouldn’t be able to bury Steve in the garden with Kizzie, it was only when we talked about how much bigger a grave would be needed that he accepted it might be better if we let the gravediggers at the burial ground sort that out.

It was a really hard day, the day that we told them. It felt that we were deliberately taking something precious away from them, like telling them that there was no Father Christmas or Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy. Their trusting innocence in the safe world they inhabit was suddenly in jeopardy, one of the hugely important adults that they all love was going to be leaving them, he didn’t want to, but he had no choice, and there was nothing they could do about it. But it was the right time to tell them, and it meant that there were no secrets being hidden from them as the days went by. When we got home that day, I told Steve in front of them that we had been talking about him dying and he told them all that they could ask him anything they wanted to about it. They were more interested in what was for dinner than in having a conversation about his approaching death, but the offer was there and remained there from then on.

This new, strange knowledge was difficult for them to handle at times – when Steve and I told them that we were getting married, Albert was confused. “Why are you marrying Grandpa Steve when he’s going to die?” he asked. And seeing Steve having bad days when he was in pain and realising that he was losing his strength was hard for them. They wanted him to come on long dog walks and rough and tumble play with them like he used to and were sad that he couldn’t. But we all patiently explained over and again about how the cancer was affecting him and he really wanted to play but just couldn’t anymore the way he used to. I think that they were adapting really well to him gradually becoming less physically robust and were processing their understanding that he was going to die absolutely brilliantly. But then everything accelerated with frightening speed when he contracted Covid and we all had to isolate. They didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to him, something we would, in an ideal world, have made sure had happened. Instead, Grace encouraged them to write letters and draw pictures for him.

When Steve was taken to hospital, I knew he wouldn’t be coming home. I didn’t think any of us would ever see him again, but when I was called to the hospital the first time, I was able to take the letters and drawings with me and give them to him. He had rallied a little from the point earlier in the day when the nursing staff thought that the end was approaching, and by the evening he was feeling strong enough to look at them. That meant a lot to Leo and Albert and Amelia, that he saw their drawings and words and handprints. I think it will mean a lot to them as they grow up too, to know that Grandpa Steve knew how much they loved him.

Amelia’s portrait, a letter from Leo and a handprint from Albert

‘We love you Grandpa Steve. Get better soon’.

When Steve died just after midnight on the Sunday morning, the rest of the night was sleepless. Grace collected me from the hospital, I had been awake since 5am on Friday morning and was almost delirious with tiredness and grief. We sat with my son John until the sun came up, talking and crying and drinking tea, and then she went home to try and get a couple of hours of sleep before the children woke up. When they did, she brought them here, so we were all together. They came in with anxious faces and everyone cried, but then they needed breakfast and attention and cuddles – and the day unfolded with chattering and playing and arguing – in the midst of the exhaustion and sadness, it was exactly what we needed.

The tears came frequently that surreal day, for all of us, but kids do the ‘puddle jumping’ thing of dipping in and out of the big serious stuff, and then wanting to go out on their scooters. The consensus at the end of the day was that, now he didn’t need his body anymore, Grandpa Steve was everywhere, he was actually probably on the moon. When someone noticed that, on the side of the plastic flask with the built-in straw that Steve had at the hospital because it made drinking easier, there were the words ‘Future Astronaut’, that clinched it. Grandpa Steve was on the moon. They were all content with that understanding.

There’s no way of knowing whether preparing the children in the way we did has made a difference to how they have handled his death, but I feel we gave them as much help as we could before we all were plunged into the sadness and shock that consumed us.

We continued to include them and involve them as the days went by after he died. They were here every day, seeing me and Grace coping with the waves of sadness and tears that kept coming, we didn’t hide anything from them. Amelia taught us how her ‘invisibility cloak’ worked – if she wants to do or say something secretly, she puts her hand up over her face so she can’t see anyone, which, to a three-year-old mind, means obviously nobody can see her either. It became the custom that as my tears welled up, her darling little face would look concerned and she’d come over to me and say, ‘Do this Nana’ and put her hand in front of her face to show me how to be invisible until I had composed myself again.

Working out how to explain to children about the funeral and what it was for and why it was happening was interesting. Bearing in mind that Grandpa Steve was on the moon as far as they were all concerned, the palaver involved with the funeral seemed to them to be quite unnecessary. We now had to try and get them to understand the difference between Grandpa Steve’s body, which required something to happen to it, and Grandpa Steve who was everywhere and also on the moon.

That was a challenging car journey as we drove them to the woods where his body was going to be buried to show them the exact spot that we’d chosen. They had a lot of questions. Somehow, we navigated the explanations to a satisfactory level, although the ‘Why can’t we see his body?’ question ended up being answered by ‘Because of coronavirus’ – although true, that was probably not really enough of a reason to satisfy the curiosity of a six-year-old.

We talked them through what was going to happen, and showed them where, and reassured them again that Grandpa Steve’s body couldn’t feel anything anymore, so being buried was absolutely fine, it wouldn’t hurt him and was actually a really good thing because his body would become part of nature. And that his eyes couldn’t see anything, and he didn’t need to breathe anymore, and he wasn’t in his body now and all of those other logical things that if not talked about might just confuse and frighten little minds.

They seemed to get it and were accepting that they’d be at school while all the mechanics of the funeral happened but that they’d be picked up early and brought up to the woods to see the grave once Grandpa Steve’s body had been buried there.

And that’s exactly what happened. Grace and John left once the coffin had been lowered into the grave, and they collected the children and Juno, and brought them back to the burial ground. Everyone had gone, and the gravediggers were filling in the grave, so we had a little while to fill in before we could take them there.

We took them to the labyrinth, the one I’d help to create all those years ago, and I explained how the way the labyrinth works is that you take all your sad thoughts and pick up a stone and walk the labyrinth carrying it until you reach the centre, and then you leave the stone and all your sad thoughts right there, and walk back out the way you walked in.

They absolutely loved it, and, accompanied by Isabel and Rachel the photographer and a bottle of champagne, Leo, Albert and Amelia walked the labyrinth with me and their mum and their aunt and uncle, all of us carrying our stones and thinking our sad thoughts about the man we all loved who was no longer with us. And then we all went back through the woods to find Steve’s grave, and the children blew bubbles and sat on his bench and laughed and played.

The next day we all sat together and watched the film of the funeral so they could see what had happened while they were at school and nursery the previous day. They thought the swearing was very amusing and loved seeing the motorbikes and the coffin and the fact that ‘Big Andy’, Steve’s friend, managed to be facing the wrong way when he lifted the coffin at the end of the ceremony and had to do a scramble as the other bearers started walking out of the front of the building while he was facing the back. By watching me help lower the coffin into the grave they could relate completely to the memory of Kizzie’s body being placed in her little grave. It was just what they needed to complete their thought processes I think.

We’ve made it a weekly event, going to the woods together. They’re learning that they need to calm down and walk nicely instead of shrieking and shouting and climbing trees because there may be people visiting other graves who are feeling sad. They’re watching the turning of the seasons and understanding that all of life is a cycle of being born and living and dying. I’m so proud of them all. They’re learning that love doesn’t end with death, it just changes, and that’s such an important lesson to have learnt so young. They’re learning that you can have really, really sad feelings but that they don’t last forever, and most importantly of all they’re learning that by talking to each other when we’re feeling sad, we don’t have to cope on our own. I’m so lucky to have these little people by my side helping me get through these days.

ICYMI

5 January 2021

Fran Hall

3 Comments

Categories: CMA Market Investigation, Co-operative Funeralcare, Dignity, The future of funerals

It would be forgivable to have missed the muted announcement of the publication of the Competition and Markets Authority’s Funeral Markets Investigation Final Report. The culmination of a major review of the funeral market in the United Kingdom which began in June 2018, the Final Report is a weighty 497 page document, with 24 appendices – and a glossary for good measure.

The CMA’s findings were published on the 18^th December, the day before the Prime Minister announced new Tier 4 ‘Stay at home’ restrictions on much of the country, effectively cancelling the promised Christmas gatherings for millions.

The strange festive period that followed, together with the continuing daily onslaught of bad news, the confusion and apprehension about the capacity for the NHS to cope with the rapidly rising numbers of Covid patients and the wrangling about schools opening or closing – the fast-changing pace of the strange new world we all find ourselves in means that the CMA’s final findings on the issues in the funeral sector have receded to what seems forever ago.

Most people, even those closely involved with funerals, won’t have found the time or the mental bandwidth to read every word in the report and other accompanying documents yet.

The enormous effort that Stephanie Canet and her team at the CMA have put in over the last 30 months, their scrupulous analysis of the existing landscape in the funeral sector, is in danger of being consigned to a shelf or a file on a computer, to be read at a later date. This is a mistake, and we would urge anyone with any interest in the funeral sector to at least take the time to read the Executive Summary (it’s only 10 pages) and familiarise themselves with the headlines at least.

The findings of the CMA are significant, and the issues identified in their Provisional Report (slightly shorter, at 472 pages!) are upheld in the Final Report. These are outlined below:

Due to the inherent emotional distress people experience when arranging a funeral, they understandably tend not to spend time comparing providers. They typically choose to use a funeral director that has been recommended or is familiar to them. For crematoria, people generally select one that is closest to them geographically.
Pricing and product information is not provided consistently by funeral directors in a way that allows people to compare different offers.
The fees charged by funeral directors and crematoria increased at a rate well above inflation for at least a decade.
Most people believe that funeral directors are regulated, but that is not the case in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The investigation found that, although many funeral directors meet good standards, some are providing unacceptably low levels of care of the deceased.
Regarding crematoria, there are high barriers to entry in the form of the planning regime, as well as building and operating costs, meaning that crematoria are generally few and far between. Most people have little or no choice about which crematorium to use as there is often only one option within a reasonable distance.

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic during the latter stages of the investigation meant that the findings were necessarily impacted and affected, and the CMA team were unable to develop their proposals for remedies such as price control. This will likely have caused sighs of relief in boardrooms around the country, where the prospect of a cap on prices had been met with horror and strong pushback.

From the CMA’s Press Release about the report: ‘The Final Report sets out further detail on the CMA’s proposed remedies, which are intended to support customers when choosing a funeral director or crematorium, and to place the sector under greater public scrutiny.

They include:

an obligation for all funeral directors and crematorium operators to disclose prices in a manner that will help customers make more informed decisions
that information must be provided in advance of a customer committing to purchase a service so that people know the price they will be charged and the key terms of business – for example if a deposit is required
that customers should be made aware of any relevant business, financial and commercial interests of the funeral director, and that certain practices – such as payments which may incentivise hospitals, care homes or hospices to refer customers to a particular funeral director – will be prohibited
a recommendation to government to establish an independent inspection and registration regime to monitor the quality of funeral director services as a first step in the establishment of a broader regulatory regime for funeral services

The CMA continues to have serious concerns about the sector and one of the conclusions of the report is that it should consider whether a further market investigation reference is needed when conditions are more stable.’

Martin Coleman, CMA Panel Inquiry Chair, said:

“Organising a funeral is often very distressing and people can be especially vulnerable during this time. That’s why our remedies are designed to help people make choices that are right for them and ensure they can be confident that their loved one is in good hands.

The CMA will be keeping a close eye on this sector to make sure our remedies are properly implemented and help it to decide whether further action is necessary when circumstances return to a more steady state.”

We think that this is an eminently sensible reservation to make. The funeral sector will inevitably be changed by the impact of Covid-19, and we are already extremely concerned at a new development that has begun to take hold in recent months.

We are seeing tech companies stepping into what is perceived as a gap in the market, offering low-cost funerals organised online and by phone, and heavily promoting themselves with targeted Google Ads to appear as if they are a local funeral company to the viewer.

Most of these companies outsource the collection and care of the person who has died to funeral companies locally and often have absolutely no connection with – or interest in – the provision of quality support or care for bereaved people. The subcontracting bit frequently isn’t mentioned, or is buried under flowery language referring to ‘our partners’. If you look on the ‘About Us’ section of the website it is rare to find out anything about the people behind the business.

Today we have been informed about one company that is advertising heavily and appears to have branches all over the country. On their website, the team in each location is shown as the same three people, which sets an alarm bell ringing loudly! Coverage from Tyneside to West Sussex with personal service from a team of three is quite something!

Concerned members of the Good Funeral Guild have looked into how this particular company is operating, and, after some detective work, it appears that they are registering as a virtual office, waiting until the Google pin is provided, then cancelling the virtual office subscription and continuing to use the pin in order to appear under searches as a local funeral provider. Needless to say, the CMA have been informed about this.

Bereaved people, who are frequently, as Martin Coleman observes, especially vulnerable, could easily find themselves choosing a low cost company that appears to be local, thinking they have found a nearby funeral provider with a website, displaying prices online and that therefore they must be ok.

This is a new and worrying development that the public need to be made aware of, a variation on the long standing lack of transparency that has plagued the funeral sector for decades. The new, faceless, tech based ‘disruptors’ bring nothing to the table other than devaluing the real, vocational work done by genuinely good funeral providers throughout the country, the ones who provide continuity of care, listening ears, impeccable care for the people in the mortuary and personal connection with the clients they serve.

The GFG strongly welcomes the CMA’s continuing involvement and oversight of the funeral sector. We believe this will be invaluable in monitoring the changing market and hopefully raising public awareness about the potential pitfalls of choosing a funeral provider online.

It is a sad fact of life that where there are vulnerable people and money to be made, there will always be those who will take advantage. Ongoing scrutiny of the funeral sector must continue, as the shape and face of predatory money makers styling themselves as ‘funeral directors’ evolves.

In the meantime, and possibly completely unconnected with the CMA’s investigations, there have been some high-level changes at some of the large corporate funeral companies over recent months.

At Dignity PLC, Chief Executive Mike McCollum left his role suddenly in April, taking a hefty £600,000 payoff with him.

His departure was followed by two independent Non-Executive directors, Jane Ashcroft and David Blackwood, who left the Dignity Board in April and June 2020.

In December (on the 18^th actually, coincidentally the day the CMA published their Final Report) two further longstanding directors, Steve Whittern, Finance Director and Richard Portman, Corporate Services Director both left abruptly.

Dignity’s current, smaller Board of Directors appears to excel in strategy, finance and executive skills, but none of their bio’s make any mention of funerals. This seems odd, given that they proudly proclaim themselves as ‘The UK leader in funeral related services’ on their website.

Oh, and earlier in the year, Dignity’s Head of Insight, Simon Cox, quietly left his post in October. Regular readers of the blog may recall the bizarre juxtaposition of the Natural Death Centre Charity on Dignity’s stand at the National Funeral Exhibition in 2019, which apparently came about largely as a result of Simon’s efforts to revamp the reputation of the funeral behemoth by cosying up to a much admired and pioneering charity founded by the late, great Nicholas Albery. It caused significant consternation at the time – we wrote about it on the blog here.

Over at Co-operative Funeralcare, the longstanding Director of Funerals, David Collingwood, left abruptly (and apparently reluctantly) – again, on 18^th December, the day that the CMA published its report. It seems that the powers-that-be at the big beasts in funeralworld felt that a shake-up at the top was needed, just at the very time that the CMA went public with their findings.

Perhaps the fact that both companies’ strong disagreement with the CMA’s provisional findings was not taken into account in the CMA’s Final Report meant that heads had to roll? See Dignity’s response here and Co-operative Funeralcare’s response here. Or maybe it was simply coincidence. Who knows.

There’s clearly a huge shift and change happening as Covid-19 gouges its scars on our collective consciousness. It’s inevitable that the way our society responds to the huge numbers of premature deaths will change the landscape of funerals forever, and the companies that provide funeral services will change their offering as a consequence.

It may be that the fact that the CMA’s investigation was interrupted by the pandemic will turn out to be beneficial to us all in the long run. The ongoing oversight promised by the CMA may help ensure that the future of funerals, whatever it turns out to be, will be a better one for all of us.