Dead Interesting

Death festival at the Southbank

2012-01-21T21:21:00.001Z

I'd love to go to this event at the end of the month - Death: Southbank Centre's Festival for the Living. I gather that Charles Cowling of the Good Funeral Guide will be there, so maybe he'll let us know how it goes?

I shall be content with the podcast:

Death: Southbank Centre's Festival for the Living by southbankcentre

There's cremation, and there's bio-cremation

2012-01-14T00:54:00.001Z

I haven't been to the crematorium in town recently but not many people have, apparently. They've been busy installing some new cremators and redesigning the place, to meet current regulations about emissions, among other things. I heard that when they re-open there'll only be one chapel, instead of two. The additional equipment needed more room. Meanwhile, the new crematorium outside town is being kept busy. They've already got a big new cremator.

I'm wondering how long it will be before these new cremators are out of date. The Scandinavians have introduced freeze-drying, so that bodies can be reduced to granules like instant coffee, then safely buried in shallow graves or even dug into your garden. And I've just found an American website promoting "biocremation" that involves what sounds like pressure-cooking bodies in water with an alkali, so that all the liquid can be drained away and all you're left with is bones. Calling it "bio" anything makes it sounds like an environmentally-friendly process, but what about energy used to heat the water, and where does the liquid end up? In comparison, green burials are low-tech, or no tech. All you do is dig a hole and plant a tree.

There will probably be even more innovative ways to dispose of bodies. There's no shortage of them, but there is a shortage of space for burial in many places and there's money to be made.

Postscript (14/1/12): A celebrant friend tells me that there's a biocremation company in Scotland. He wrote, "The second system you refer to (alkali water) is a Scottish system and very good and, in my view, much better than the Swedish promession. This is the web site - www.resomation.com - and they have been working for years to get the UK government to agree to its use. I think it's a winner."

Those with the most problems were those who had not sorted out their ideas...

2011-12-15T17:39:00.000Z

This is from an obituary for Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the hospice movement, who died in 2005.

Though the philosophy underlying St Christopher's was Christian, it welcomed patients of any persuasion or none. Cicely Saunders noticed that those who coped best always had a shining faith, but that atheists often died as peacefully as Christians. The people with the most problems were those who had not sorted out their ideas. Clergymen, oddly, and the affluent, often turned out to have the most difficulty.

The mushroom death suit

2011-11-21T22:30:00.001Z

Artist Jae Rhim Lee has been thinking about how to lessen our pollution of the planet after we're dead, as the body contains many toxins, and has come up with a suit impregnated with fungi spores that (theoretically) "eat" the body and speed decomposition. She says that there are already volunteers who are willing to test the suit - when they're dead, of course.

Click here to find out more.

Paper-maché coffins for pets

2011-11-16T21:27:00.001Z

This is a nice idea - biodegradable pet coffins with tree seeds inside by Arthur Trichelieu. They look nice, but will the seeds germinate if they're too deep? Cardboard boxes always worked for me, or a shroud made from an old cotton towel or woollen blanket - man-made fibres take a very long time to rot - then a tree seedling planted on top. Half the trees and shrubs in my back garden were planted over a pet's grave. I've started getting them cremated because I'm running out of space.

Some people would rather not remember

2011-11-12T00:51:00.001Z

Yesterday, the eleventh day of the eleventh month, was Armistice Day, otherwise known as Remembrance Day. I don't remember how many funerals I've done for former servicemen or women, but I do remember that they were all different. Some who served in WW2 didn't appear to have been badly traumatised by what they'd experienced, though they remembered fallen comrades with sadness, but often, when I heard a family talk about a father, uncle or grandfather who'd served during the war, they'd say that he wouldn't talk about it. To convey to younger members of the family why he might have kept things to himself, I've used statistics taken from historical records or poetry written by combatants; 'The Voice of War', published by Penguin, is a good source. Many people know poetry from WW1 by Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen and Seigfreid Sassoon, but are less familiar with WW2 poetry; Spike Milligan served in North Africa and Italy, and one of his poems is in the book; a very different sort of poem from his silly ones.

One man who'd served in WW2 wouldn't talk about the war at all to his family, but they knew enough to say that he'd been severely traumatised by what he'd witnessed and suffered mental illness for the rest of his life. Nothing that his wife or anyone else could do or say would help. He was scared of his own shadow and deeply depressed. There was very little help available to men of his generation.

There still isn't enough. A charity that specialises in the care of ex-service men and women’s mental health says that, since 2005, the number seeking help has risen by 72%. I imagine that there are likely to be at least as many again who need help, but haven’t had any, or nearly enough.

'John', who never got the right sort of help when he needed it, was a radio operator in Northern Ireland. His brother told his story at the funeral:

He was what the unit called “The Bleep” – the radio whiz kid in the communications Land Rover – when bombs were being defused. He told me it was a different type of soldiering. His job was to save life and protect property, not destroy it. His job was to maintain an electronic bubble around the operator actually defusing the bomb, so that the IRA couldn’t detonate it. The technology that the unit developed is still used today to maintain a security zone around the Prime Minister when he’s out in public.

One Christmas, when home on leave, we sat watching the news. An IRA bomber had blown himself up while planting a device. I remember the look of shock on Mother’s face when John raised both his hands and shouted, “Yes! Own goal!” How could her cuddly little boy take such a delight in the demise of another human being?

What she didn’t know was that some months before, while on active service in what the Army called “bandit country” in Crossmaglen, things had gone badly wrong and John got spattered when a colleague was caught in an explosion. It was the horror of this, I believe, that led to a serious drinking habit.

Some time later, John (not his real name) was on duty in Brighton the night the IRA bombed the hotel where Mrs Thatcher and her Cabinet were staying. He blamed himself for failing to find the device, but it turned out that it couldn't have been detected by the equipment they had at the time.

It was years later that John died, after his marriage had broken down and his health had been destroyed by alcohol. Those who cared about him did their best, but all he wanted to do was drink his demons away. At his funeral, I said,

After years of conflict in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s not surprising that some psychological injuries may be even more difficult to cope with than physical injuries, and more stubborn. A soldier has to maintain a level of detachment, however frightened he or she might be. Coming home to find that the battles have come home with them, many have tried to deal with their problems on their own, without the comradeship they knew back in the barracks. It’s not surprising that so many should find, as John did, that they weren’t equipped to do so. Some might blame themselves, but post-traumatic stress isn’t due to failure or lack of courage; it’s a natural human reaction to being placed in situations that most of us never have to contemplate, and wishing that they’d stop. Wilfred Own, who fought in the 1914-18 War, wrote a poem called “Insensibility”, in which he suggests that those who could fight without feeling were best equipped to survive. He wrote, “Happy are these who lose imagination: They have enough to carry with ammunition.”

Click here to find out about Combat Stress, the veterans' mental health charity.

A Spanish story

2011-10-28T22:24:00.001+01:00

You learn a lot as a funeral celebrant - or you should. You hear so many stories. I've conducted funerals for people of all ages, from stillborn babies to a centenarian, and from all backgrounds. Today I did a funeral for a man who'd been born on the North West coast of Spain in the 1930s. His wife and daughters told me what they remembered and what they'd been told about his childhood. I did a little research, and this is how I began . . .

Joel was born in La Coruña in Galicia, on the coast of North West Spain, seventy-seven years ago; not a good time to be Spanish. He was only a toddler when the Spanish Civil War broke out. It’s been estimated that half a million Spaniards died during the war, which left Spain impoverished and unable to support Hitler during the Second World War, in return for Hitler’s support of Franco. When Franco came to power in 1939, thousands of the country’s professional people, who’d supported the Republic, had fled into exile, leaving a severe shortage of doctors and nurses, among others. This, and the fact that an effective antibiotic treatment for TB, streptomycin, was only administered for the first time in 1944, meant that when Joel’s parents contracted the disease, the odds were against their survival. They died when he was only eleven or twelve.

Until today, I've never given much thought to the Spanish Civil War. I knew about the International Brigade who'd gone to help the Republicans fight the Nationalists, and I knew that Laurie Lee, author of one of my favourite books, Cider with Rosie, went out to join them and was almost killed for his idealism. I wonder how much Joel's grandchildren (I've changed his name, by the way) knew about his early life? Will they be sufficiently curious to find out more? Their lives, in comfortable homes in a quiet English country town, are very different to his. I wonder how many stories are lost because no one is sufficiently interested to record them?

Photo: A book-burning in La Coruña in 1936 (Quema de libros en A Coruña 1936. Los que gritaban! Muera la inteligencia!)

"Death is very likely the single best invention of Life"

2011-10-06T13:33:00.001+01:00

Until a few weeks ago, I had no idea who Steve Jobs was. I've never owned any of his products. I heard stuff about him on TV programmes like the BBC's Click, and read about him on Twitter and Facebook. Then last night people started tweeting about "Steve" dying, and I asked "Steve who?" What was all the fuss about?

I'm only just realising what a clever, charismatic man he was. I like the sound of him, especially the fact that he did things his way, not the conventional way. This morning, I read a speech he made in 2005, and liked the sound of him even more. He mentions The Whole Earth Catalogue. I have a battered copy. Somewhere in there an anonymous person is quoted saying something like, "The trouble with being ahead of your time is that when people catch up with you, they'll say it was obvious all along." My path's ended up in a bit of a cul-de-sac, for reasons beyond my control, by my son has followed an unconventional path too, and I think it's the right one.

This is from Steve's speech:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

All true.

-----------------------

Postscript:
After reading Christina Patterson's column today (17 December), I've noted that Jobs had feet of clay, like many clever and successful people. His words may have been inspiring but his actions were sometimes less so.

Make a will with Will Aid

2011-10-06T01:40:00.001+01:00

If you haven't made a will, November's a good time to do it. Local solicitors are writing wills for charity. Click here to find out what to do.

Portrait of a dead child

2011-10-05T10:55:00.001+01:00

I came across this in the Radio Times, in an article about ceramics for the Handmade in Britain series that starts next week (9pm on 10 October, BBC Four). It's a portrait of Lydia Dwight by her father John, made in 1674 in his Fulham pottery. It's in the V & A. I must look for it the next time I'm there. It's beautiful and sad.

Religion lite funerals, or pick 'n' mixes

2011-10-04T20:57:00.000+01:00

The subject's been aired here before, and it's been aired again on Gloriamundi's blog; is it OK for humanist celebrants to conduct funerals that include a bit of religion?

When I wrote previously that I won't include any religion in my funerals, though I take pains to avoid clients who expect me to, one of the comments I attracted was,

"With respect, I have to say I disagree with the rigidity of the approach. Human being are not totally rational or consistent. Hymns, music, poetry - isn't there an element of artistic license here? We might enjoy a particular hymn without for a minute believing literally what the words say. Also, isn't a funeral officiant by definition dealing with people who have been bereaved? Surely there's a case for some compassion, so that if a client says: We want a humanist funeral in general, yes, but this particular hymn would help some members of the family come to terms with their grief - this could be accommodated. I'm sorry if this puts me beyond the pale as far as the BHA is concerned (I am a member). I would want some George Herbert at my own funeral (in the unlikely event of there being anyone around with an interest in arranging a funeral for me) although I am a committed atheist and humanist."

A "pal" of Gloria's has been quoted on her blog,

"I've come to think that the beliefs of the celebrant should be of no great importance in deciding the best kind of funeral for a family.

"We have what seems to me a historically unique opportunity to develop and deliver new kinds of funeral ceremonies for people of any or no faith, who don’t want a “church/mosque/temple” funeral but who still may have elements of religious belief, spiritual need, superstitions if you like. Many or most of the families I’ve worked with are not humanists, atheists or agnostics in any collected sort of way. Shades of belief, requests for hymns and the occasional prayer seem to me all part of the job. I feel we should be expert ritualists, not belief-advancers. And of course I’m more than happy to take a ceremony which is entirely atheistical."

Isn't it interesting that when this subject is raised, by "religion", most people mean Christianity? The British are remarkably casual about Christianity. Last September, Julian Glover wrote in the Guardian that the typical Briton is a "fuzzy believer", which has always been my impression. Their fuzzy belief is fuzzy Christianity, since we live in a culturally Christian country. People pick and choose the bits of Christianity they like and ignore the rest. So they go for the Christmas and Easter myths (both hijacked from earlier Pagan ones), they like to think that being Christian means you're essentially a good person, and even if they say they're not very religious, they still imagine that there's some sort of life after death (an idea that I find deeply unattractive) where they'll be reunited with their loved ones. Most nominal Christians would have a hard time explaining what the church teaches about virgin birth, resurrection, original sin, and so on. They never go to church, except for the occasional wedding or funeral, and most never say their prayers.

You don't hear about requests for a bit of Sikhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism or Jainism to be included in a "humanist" funeral. That's because the followers of these faiths mostly take their religion seriously and expect the people who lead their rite of passage rituals to do so as well. Nor should you expect a Jain to conduct a funeral with a bit of Islam thrown in, or a Sikh to stand in for a Zoroastrian. I'm not willing to utter religious words or phrases, or to sing Christian hymns, because I think that you should only do so if you actually believe in these things.

This isn't just about being a humanist, which isn't a belief system equivalent to a religion. It's about integrity. If I say things I don't believe, it's an insult to the people who do. I have no problem with a religious minister, or anyone else, conducting a non-religious funeral. All he or she would be doing is what I do - leaving religion out of it. I don't think that I, or any other celebrant, has any claim on the non-religious market (for want of a better word), though the BHA seems to think it has. A few years ago I was approached by an Anglican hospice chaplain who wanted to know if he should train as a humanist celebrant because sometimes atheist patients' families asked him to officiate at their funerals. I told him no, because he wasn't a humanist and because he was already an experienced officiant. I didn't regard him as a threat and understood why some families would want someone they regarded as a friend to help them.

When I first started conducting funerals, over twenty years ago, I was the only non-religious celebrant in Suffolk and N E Essex. Now there's a much wider choice; not just other humanists (some genuine, some not), but Civil celebrants, who are willing to sing hymns, etc., and others whose personal beliefs we never know, who are willing to do what one funeral director I know calls "hybrid" funerals. An increasing number of people are choosing vaguely Christian funerals without any liturgy, with hymns and references to an afterlife. That's fine. Just don't expect me to do them. If you call yourself a humanist and you're willing to compromise your lack of faith to meet demand for this sort of work (I know of one who's told funeral directors that he'll do "anything the client wants"), I'm sorry, but that's not humanism.

Humanism isn't a belief system, like religion. It's a way of thinking based on our uniquely human experience, without superstition or supernaturalism. It's for independent thinkers, or freethinkers, who look for comfort to other human beings, not silly stories that don't bear close examination. As human beings, we are all capable of love, of empathy, of understanding (though that often takes effort). I pride myself on being able to demonstrate that you don't need religion for a funeral that will leave mourners feeling that they've done right by their loved ones, and that they'll leave feeling better, not worse, for the experience.

Photo: Crematorium between funerals, after the crucifix had been removed for a humanist ceremony.

The dead outnumber the living, and they take up a lot of space

2011-08-25T18:48:00.003+01:00

Despite rumours to the contrary, the dead outnumber the living. Until the Cremation Act of 1902, most people in the UK were buried. Since then, the number of cremations has crept up. In 1968, the number of cremations exceeded burials for the first time. Now, 70% of funerals are held at crematoriums.

Cremation was first introduced, against considerable opposition, as a hygienic method of disposal and a solution to the problem of over-crowded municipal cemeteries in conurbations. Some people keep ashes on their mantelpiece, but most either bury or scatter them. Scattering has led to problems, so that the government had to bring in new anti-pollution rules. Meanwhile, space for burials is still running out. However you look at it, and many would prefer not to, the problem can only get bigger. Trouble is that whenever the prospect of reusing graves is mentioned, bereaved relatives get very het up about it. Lucy Townsend has written a piece for the BBC News Magazine about the subject:

This situation is not universal. In some countries a more pragmatic approach to human remains means they have largely avoided the overcrowding issue.

In Germany, graves are reused after only 30 years, the existing remains usually being exhumed and cremated. In Australia and New Zealand, "dig and deepen" is carried out in urban areas as a matter of routine.

Tim Morris, chief executive of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management, says it is time to change tack.

"It's a no-brainer," he says. "Re-use is common in lots of other countries, and was common practice in the UK until the 1850s."

Resistance to change is usual - people will refer to "traditions" that are only decades old - but when it comes to death, resistance can be expressed very emotionally and politicians will hesitate to confront it. However unpopular it is, they're going to have to.

You can't take it with you - or can you?

2011-08-25T15:34:00.005+01:00

It's been a tradition in many cultures for gifts to be given to the dead, to be buried with them. Egyptian tombs were filled with everything a god king could want, to ensure a comfortable afterlife. The Anglo-Saxon king buried at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk had some lovely treasure buried with him. Nowadays, it's less likely that items of great value will be buried or cremated with people's remains, but I have heard of funeral directors searching coffins after someone had been to view a corpse, when they suspected that something might have been secreted under the covers. A bottle of scotch, for example, isn't something you want to end up in a cremator. In some cultures, it's expected that someone's creditors will settle their debts in coin, to be placed in the coffin. I was told that one family didn't appreciate it when a creditor tried to put a cheque in the coffin.

Due to a misunderstanding, I was once asked to officiate at a Chinese funeral. They really didn't need me at all, I realised. Communication was very difficult, as most of them spoke no English. After a brief ceremony in the crematorium chapel, the main ceremony was at the graveside, where a generous amount of paper money was burnt. I don't remember much about it, but do remember that the money wasn't real. You can buy all sorts of paper imitations of money and other goods for Chinese funerals. It seems that the New York police aren't very culturally aware, since one of them arrested a Chinese shopkeeper for selling an obviously fake $20 cardboard handbag that wouldn't fool anyone who was looking for a genuine Burberry bag. Poor Mr Wing Sun Mak was charged with two counts of copyright infringement in the third degree. Stupid policemen.

The store, Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies, on Mulberry Street along what is known in Chinatown as Funeral Row, sells traditional objects of mourning, mostly copies of luxury objects. The items are made of cardboard, paper and plastic, to be used at funerals as symbolic gifts for the deceased. The cardboard models are burned as part of traditional Chinese funeral practices.

The store sells a cardboard mansion for $400 and a cardboard flat-screen television for $40. There are stacks of money ($10,000 bills) for sale, as well as miniature sports cars, cellphones, double-breasted suits and even smiling dolls to act as servants in the hereafter.

“When people die, they feel they are going to need things in the next world,” explained one of the store’s owners, Amy Mak-Chan, who is the arrested man’s aunt. “They might want a car and a house and other nice things. People buy these things here, to give them as gifts at the funeral.”

In Northern Thailand, Chinese funeral offerings don't seem to include Gucci handbags.

The paper offerings represent objects, animals or people that the deceased liked, and burning them ensures they will reach the deceased in the after-world.

The new crematorium

2011-08-17T23:17:00.004+01:00

The new crematorium, a set on Flickr.

The new crematorium just outside Ipswich has been open for nearly a year, and is increasingly popular. Some might say that "popular" isn't a good word for a crematorium, but since you've got to have funerals, they may as well be in a pleasant venue.

One feature is the extra-large cremator, which means that very big bodies no longer have to be driven miles from here for disposal.

They had an open day recently, to "dispel myths", where they sold cream teas to raise money for the children's hospice.

Funeral Song

2011-07-10T22:17:00.000+01:00

From Richard Laviolette & The Oil Spills, via The Daily Undertaker, who says "Richard Laviolette is obviously one of many who feel that traditional funeral services are no longer relevant to their lives and values."

I'm raising money for Shelterbox

2011-03-17T12:53:00.001Z

Can you help? Shelterbox sends essential life-saving equipment to disaster areas, like Haiti, Pakistan and Japan. I'm aiming to raise four boxes at £590 each, that's £2360, with a sponsored slim. Click on the badge to find out how to donate. Thank you.

How to die

2011-02-24T09:39:00.001Z

There are some cuttings tucked into my battered copy of The Oxford Book of Death (recommended, by the way). This fell out when I was looking for something today. I especially liked the bit about leaving something that doesn't exist to a greedy relative, so s/he spends the rest of his/her life looking for it. Yes, that's a bit mean, I know. Click on the image to make it bigger.

Co-op Funeralcare report on major changes in funeral customs

2011-01-24T12:30:00.000Z

The Co-op's new report makes interesting reading. It says that, among other things, "over half of today's funerals are a celebration of a life." I don't think it would be unreasonable to say that this trend was begun by Humanist celebrants, myself included, who were the only people providing alternatives to traditional Christian funerals before other people cottoned on to the demand, about twenty years ago.

Ghost urns

2011-01-04T14:35:00.000Z

No reason why you can't raise a smile after you're dead. These prototype ghost urns by Anna Marinenko might do just that. I'd have one. Would you?

Click here for more information.

They reminded me of a poem by Lorna Wood:

To a descendant

I shall not be an importunate, nagging ghost,
Sighing for unsaid prayers: or a family spectre
Advertising that someone is due to join me…
Nor one who has to be exorcised by the Rector.

I shall not be the commercial type of ghost,
Pointing to boxes of gold under the floor
And I certainly don’t intend to jangle chains
Or carry my head… (such a gruesome type of chore!)

I shall not cause draughts, be noisy, spoil your ‘let’, ―
In fact, to be brief, I shan’t materialise.
But I shall be pleased if anyone ever sees me
In your face or your walk or the glance of your laughing eyes.

Death at Christmas

2011-01-02T01:23:00.006Z

I'm told that the suicide rate goes up over Christmas, as people who are already depressed imagine that everyone else is having a wonderful time. Then there are car accidents and drink-related deaths. There will have been more of the former this holiday, because of the bad weather. But most deaths over the holiday period will probably have been older people who died in their beds, either at home or in hospital. As Shakespeare wrote, in Hamlet,

If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.

But how many are ready? Especially at Christmas? Sometimes, people seem to feel cheated because a close relative or friend has died at, or just before, Christmas, so that he or she wasn't able to share the festivities. It's not supposed to happen, they seem to think.

My mum died on Christmas Eve, twenty years ago, a few minutes after she'd demonstrated how to do the can-can to some children at my sister's party. She was very proud of the fact that she could still kick her own height in her seventies, something that I couldn't do in my forties. I apologise if you've heard this story before, but it's a good story. It was a cerebral haemorrhage, they said, all over in minutes. I remember the egg-shaped bruise on her forehead, from where she fell, and thinking that I was glad she couldn't feel it, or it would be sore. We sat on either side of her, in A & E, my son and I, waiting for the police to turn up, as they do when there's a sudden death, and it seemed very quiet. It probably got rowdier later, when the pubs shut. One of the policemen was a special constable who fought back tears when he heard our story because, he said, his mum had died in similar circumstances just a few years earlier. I felt like comforting him.

We came home via Mum's house, to collect her dog, and went to bed. Christmas was a bit of a quiet anti-climax after that, spent with some friends. I thought about it last week after I'd spent three hours with a newly bereaved woman in her eighties, whose husband had died suddenly. She didn't know what to do with herself, and insisted on making me a cheese sandwich, in case I was hungry. Later, on the phone, she apologised for not cooking me a meal. She had to be doing something. It was too quiet. There have been several like her that I've befriended and then did their funerals, within a year. Those sort of friendships don't last long.

Hope I haven't put a dampener on your New Year. The moral of these stories is that death can come at any time, whether it's Christmas or not, so make the most of life.

Sapias, vina liques, et spatio brevi spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

Be wise, strain the wine; and since life is brief, prune back far-reaching hopes! Even while we speak, envious time has passed: pluck the day, putting as little trust as possible in tomorrow!

Horace, 65-8BC

If you haven't already done so, make a will

2010-09-05T11:55:00.001+01:00

I met someone at a party last night who was recently bereaved. Her distress was compounded by the fact that her partner hadn't made a will and as they weren't married, she has a complicated mess to sort out. Presumably they shared a home. I didn't ask the details, but it's not certain that she'll be able to continue living in it. During this conversation, it emerged that our host hadn't made a will either. He's not alone; I've read varying estimates of the proportion of British people who haven't make wills; it's a staggering number, between half and two thirds of the adult population. I've written about this sort of thing before.

One case that I remember involved a wealthy Suffolk woman who'd told her friends that she wanted her estate to go to an animal welfare charity; she was a childless cat-lover with no immediate family. Later, it emerged that because she hadn't actually got around to making a will, her entire estate went to the state and the pussy-cats got nothing.

Whenever I've interviewed parents about baby-naming ceremonies, I've always advised them to make wills - one each. Most young people probably imagine that they don't need to think about it, but if you have children, even if you have hardly any money, you can name the people who'll be your children's guardians in the event of your deaths. Suppose you were both wiped out in the same car accident? Who would be the best people to be responsible for your children until they come of age? Your closest relatives may not be the best choice. If you have a baby-naming ceremony, the mentors (the non-religious equivalent of god-parents) can be the same people you've named as the child's guardians.

I first made a will when my son was a baby and it's been updated two or three times since, most recently to bequeath my body to the anatomists at Cambridge university, so that the medical students can make use of it. My solicitor has a copy, and there's one in a fire-proof box at home. No one will have any trouble sorting out who gets what when I'm dead.

You can make a will just by buying a legal-looking form and filling it in yourself, with a couple of people acting as witnesses, but this is risky - too often, mistakes are made that renders the will invalid. There are will-writing firms who advertise online and in the press, but treat them with caution. A friend tried one once, to update her will, and after they'd hung on to her most important documents for months without producing a will, she had to threaten legal action to retrieve them. The best approach is to use a solicitor. If your will isn't complicated, the fee won't be high. If you don't know where to find a solicitor who deals with probate and wills, ask the CAB.

Read about making a will on the Law Society's website
Read what happens if you don't make a will

Leave my funeral until I'm dead, thanks

2010-08-29T14:15:00.001+01:00

Leaving parties, when everyone's signed a card and you all stand around clutching drinks while people say things that may or may not be true about you, can be horribly embarrassing. The thought of attending one that's meant to be a funeral, only before you're dead, doesn't appeal to me at all. OK, have a party - I know a couple of people who've done that because they didn't want to miss the one that would otherwise be held after the funeral - but not a funeral, please. I really don't want to be there. I don't want to hear what people might say about me, and not just because some of it may not be complimentary. I'm really not so keen on funerals that I want to attend my own.

However, it seems that some people think it's a good idea, the people at Saltcote Place in Rye among them, but they would, wouldn't they? They're offering their venue, for a fee, for such events. Among other things, they say,

Such a funeral can be arranged to fit the needs of all the family members and friends as well as the deceased-apparent. For example, his or her family members and friends will be able to attend this pre-arranged funeral if it is scheduled so no one will be caught while on an out-of-town business trip or vacation.

Oh well, we wouldn't want to inconvenience anyone by dying while they're in the middle of a holiday, would we? Sorry, but if I'm dying, it's likely that the last thing on my mind will be your holiday plans, and if people say I was a selfish old bag at my funeral (that's if they give me one), I won't be there to hear it.

The Orwell Bridge

2010-07-31T13:54:00.002+01:00

I've conducted several funerals with connections to this bridge, which was opened in 1982 to carry the A45 (now the A14) over the River Orwell at Ipswich. I've driven over it hundreds of times.

One funeral was for someone I knew; a very interesting man who'd been a member of the council responsible for commissioning its construction. He was proud of the curved arch in the middle, which was his suggestion. He thought it added something, aesthetically. Another funeral was for an engineer who was involved in its construction. He was equally proud of the bridge.

Sadly, many people around here associate the bridge with suicides. It's been a magnet for depressed people since it opened, the latest only a few weeks ago. I remember conducting the funeral for a young man who'd been plagued by mental illness for years. His family had been happy that he seemed to have responded to treatment, and was planning to spend some time with friends in Spain. They waved goodbye at the door of their home, after he'd refused the offer of a lift to the airport, oblivious to the fact that it was all an act. He went to the bridge and jumped over the low wall at the top, just as a school bus full of children was going past. They all needed counselling afterwards, including the driver.

I was reminded of this the other day, when I noticed that there was a TV programme about suicides on London Underground, and their consequences. I couldn't bring myself to watch it. When I was a relative funerals novice, I shared a car with a young man who'd gone to work for a funeral director after he left school. He was glad to have the job, he said, because several of his friends were unemployed. I asked if he enjoyed it. He replied that he did, most of the time. One thing he didn't enjoy was walking along a railway line, gathering the body parts of a suicide. Suicides are notoriously oblivious to the effect that their actions have on other people.

Postscript - 22/2/2011: The Orwell jumpers don't always succeed.

Photograph from Wikimedia, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

More on the theme of "What creative uses can you think of for your cremains?"

2010-06-24T15:57:00.002+01:00

Apparently, an artist has used a 3D printer to turn human ashes into objects. Fascinating. Only, what's a 3D printer? Mine is 3-dimensional. If I had a 2-dimensional one, it'd take up far less space in my already cluttered office. Or is it just that it makes things 3D? How? Magic? Must be.

Anyhow. If I was to be turned into a 3D object for my loved ones to keep on the mantelpiece, instead of a boring old urn, what should it be? Tray with a mug of tea and a slice of toast, plus crumbs? Jar of marmalade, plus spoon? Are you sensing a theme here?

Don't bother painting my coffin, thanks

2010-05-31T16:16:00.008+01:00

You might expect someone like me (a trained artist, and all that) to get excited about beautifully decorated coffins, but I don't. I suppose that having one standing in the corner of your living room as a memento mori and conversation piece might be interesting, if you have room, but why commission someone to spend hours creating a work of art that will be either buried or cremated with you? Seems such a waste, not to mention a sort of post-mortem showing off.

No thanks. I'd rather that my dearly beloved commissioned something that they like to hang on the wall or stand in the garden, and buy the cheapest environmentally-friendly coffin for my remains. It's only going to keep me tidy in transit.

Paying for an elegant headstone's another matter, if you really want one. At least they'll last.

Image - coffin design by Simon Wild from The Happy Journey Collective

Begrutten

2010-05-26T22:13:00.003+01:00

One of the people I follow on Twitter is Lindsey Mason, who writes a column for the STV website. Lindsey (tigerbaps on Twitter) is usually very funny, but her latest column has a more sombre tone. It's about what she told her daughters about their dad, who died when the eldest was six.

Lindsey wrote,

Hannah is the image of her dad, right enough. She even has mannerisms of his that she couldn’t possibly have known about. Sometimes I look at her and she’s chewing the side of her mouth the way he used to do when he was concentrating on something and it makes my heart leap. I said earlier that I don’t believe in life after death, but in a way I do, because I just need to look at Rachael and Hannah and there he is, looking right back at me. I’ve always felt that Hannah was searching for her dad. Searching for some forgotten memory or some vital piece of information that I’ve missed out about him that would make her unlock a memory. But the truth is, she IS the something she’s searching for. She IS her dad. She can’t escape that. It makes me feel good.

You can read the whole thing on the STV website, where you'll learn what "begrutten" means. I recommend reading Lindsey's other columns too.

Getting it right

2010-05-14T22:51:00.003+01:00

Just been reading Gloriamundi's latest blog post, about whether to choose burial or cremation. I've left instructions with the anatomists that they should bury what's left of me when they've no further use for it, assuming they accept my body bequest in the first place.

Gloriamundi asks, "What price on getting such things right?" Trouble is, things don't always go right. Sometimes it's someone's fault, sometimes it's not. As long as things haven't gone horribly wrong, whatever happened might become part of a family's story, told and retold, about the day you buried Dad, or Gran, or whoever, while you wonder what he or she would have said about it.

There's a green burial site near here where I've conducted a few funerals. One was for a man whose family had prepared a celebration around his grave, with anecdotes, tearful goodbyes, lovely poems, and gentle jokes about his idiosyncrasies. It was to end with an Irish piper, a friend of the family, playing a lament as the coffin was lowered. I said the words of committal, the piper started to play, and the bearers started to lower the coffin. It was a rectangular cardboard coffin, not tapered as most coffins are, and it soon became evident that the grave wasn't big enough. There was a lot of fiddling about and suppressed huffing and puffing, but it was no use; the coffin was stuck. As the piper continued to play, the bearers had to give up and leave it wedged in place at a wonky angle. I don't remember what I said, but everyone laughed and exclaimed that he'd have enjoyed the joke, before they drifted away. An embarrassed funeral director, who had a reputation for making mistakes, stood looking at the coffin. He'd supervised the grave-digging and supplied the coffin, so he couldn't blame anyone else. Maybe he ought to buy a new tape measure, I suggested. He didn't answer.

That was a case of human error. On other occasions, things have gone wrong for reasons beyond anyone's control. Snow, rain and wind can all play a part in funeral ceremonies. There's not much you can do about any of them. Just wear sensible shoes, and hope for the best.

Portraits of the dead

2010-04-29T11:59:00.010+01:00

I go to the BP Portrait Award Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery every year. My son agrees with me that the standard keeps getting higher. It will be interesting to see Daphne Todd's portrait of her mother this year. It was painted after death. Annie Mary Todd was a hundred years old and her dead body is as you'd expect - emaciated and worn out, an empty shell.

There will be people who'd prefer not to see it; the fear of death is common and they'd rather not be reminded of it. Some will be repelled, others fascinated. Mrs Todd agreed to be painted after she'd died, so this isn't posthumous exploitation.

Posthumous portraits were once quite common, though they were usually painted to show an idealised version of a deathbed scene. When Sir Kenelm Digby's wife Venetia died in 1633, he sent for his friend the artist Sir Anthony Van Dyck to draw her. Seven week's later, he finished this portrait, which "played an important role in Kenhelm's mourning" (from Death in England, ed. Peter C Jupp & Clare Gittings).

I've drawn a relative on her deathbed at the hospice. I've also drawn dead babies for bereaved parents. They were invited by hospital staff to hold their baby and have his or her photograph taken, but the photos of a tiny premature scrap weren't suitable to show in a frame on their mantelpiece. Pencil drawings, without the livid colour of the tiny bodies, was a gentler way to remember them. I don't charge for them.

Memento mori

2010-03-24T12:05:00.001Z

Gloriously dead, originally uploaded by Nad.

From a Flickr set by Nad (see previous post). Recommend viewing by slide show.

Playboy

2010-03-17T11:34:00.006Z

From a report of a trial in the Willesden & Brent Times, October 8th, 2009:

Leon Labastide, 21, known as 'Playboy' ... was shot in the back and found dying by his mother on May 23rd, 2004.

I've done funerals for murder victims but, so far, gang warfare hasn't spread to rural Suffolk.

Photographs by Nad.

Nike headstone

2010-02-02T18:53:00.003Z

Found on the Interweb today - a photo of a funeral director's window in Birkenhead.

White chrysanthemums

2010-01-26T00:38:00.005Z

White chrysanthemums are popular with funeral florists, who use them to spell out tributes for "MUM", "DAD", and various other names or relationships.

Some funeral flower facts for you:

White chrysanthemums are associated with funerals in Eastern Europe and in China, Japan and Korea.

Floral tributes became popular here from the 19th century, partly for their symbolism, but also because they were used, with aromatic herbs like rosemary, to try to hide the smell of putrescent bodies.

After the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, it became increasingly popular to lay floral tributes for strangers at the site of car accidents, murders and disasters. The florists did very well out of Diana Princess of Wales' funeral, when thousands of flowers were heaped in the streets of London.

Some of the nicest floral tributes I've seen were informal ones that had been picked from mourners' own gardens. White chrysanthemums don't lend themselves to informality.

It's time to re-educate the funeral directors, again

2010-01-14T13:15:00.009Z

Funeral arrangers are the people in a funeral director's office who interview clients and make the arrangements. They're the ones who contact us to ask if we'll do a funeral for a client who doesn't want a religious ceremony. At least, that's how it's supposed to work.

We send all the funeral directors in our area a newsletter every year or so, to inform them about our service and remind them what we will or won't do. With staff changes, some need re-educating periodically.

One of our biggest problems is the arrangers who book a venue (such-and-such a crematorium at 11am on Tuesday, say) before they contact us. When it's a fait accompli, there's not much we can do if all of us are already committed elsewhere. There've been times when I've had to tell an arranger, sorry - we can't help you.

Then there are the ones who don't really understand what a humanist funeral is. Their client might have said that they don't want a religious funeral, but they still choose to sing hymns, for example. I've known clients say, "But it's not really religious, is it?" about Abide with Me, Jerusalem, or Morning has Broken. Don't they ever listen to the words? If the arranger is doing his or her job properly, he or she should know better than to steer people like that in our direction. They need a civil celebrant, who's not much fussed about what we call "pick 'n mix" funerals, or one of the many freelance celebrants who'll do the same.

This morning I had an email from an arranger who'd asked me to do a funeral a few days ago. I'd queried whether the client had chosen any music. The email listed four hymns! I spoke to the client on Tuesday. I asked, "You do understand that I provide a funeral that's totally free from religion, don't you? No hymns, prayers, religious readings, or references to an afterlife?" "Yes," he said, "that's what we want. Mum wasn't religious." I haven't been able to get hold of him again today, so far, but what seems to have happened is that the arranger has handed him a list of recorded music and said, "You can choose from this." Not appreciating that they can have anything they want (and I mean anything - the new Wesley system means access to an almost unlimited number of recordings), the client opted for the hymns because he thought that was usual, or didn't have a clue what he wanted.

Meanwhile, I've been backed into a corner by another client, who insists that we sing Jerusalem because her husband loved the song. I can see that this is going to be one of those weeks.

An ironical choice of music

2009-11-28T13:50:00.003Z

A funeral client, arranging her Welsh aunt's funeral, chose 'Land of my Fathers' to play us out at the end. I don't think she saw the irony; her aunt was illegitimate.

After reading the above, a celebrant friend wrote that she'd conducted a funeral for a young man "of heroic proportions" -

He weighed well over twenty stone. He was carried in by his mates to the old '70s Hollies hit, "He ain't heavy he's my brother". Six of them carried him in, staggering, sweating and wobbling all over the place.

Mr Deity & Death

2009-11-15T20:13:00.004Z

Click here for more Mr Deity videos.

Manners maketh man (or woman)

2009-11-10T12:01:00.003Z

Supposing you were bereaved in tragic circumstances. Supposing you received condolence cards and letters (as most people do), and one was from a local person you didn't know very well. He might have felt compelled to write because he'd been bereaved himself, and wanted to express his sympathy, as people do.

The letter contained spelling mistakes, it was untidy, it misspelled your surname. Would you post in on the parish noticeboard with the errors marked in red? Would you tell everyone you knew about it, and humiliate its author?

Of course not. Only a bad-mannered, socially inept person would do something like that. No one who knew what you'd done would ever want to write to you again.

You've got to laugh

2009-10-31T00:40:00.004Z

I heard a good story yesterday, told by a woman who used to work for a London funeral director. She lived above the shop.

A neighbour was bereaved. Instead of going to the funeral director where my friend worked, she walked past and went to another firm, a few streets away. The funeral arranger there was curious, and asked her why she hadn't gone to the business nearest to her.

"Well," she said, "I've walked past there many times and heard them laughing around the back. I don't think that's very respectful."

"Mrs Brown," said the funeral arranger, "if you walk around the back of our premises and listen at the door you'll often hear the staff laughing and joking. They deal with sadness and tragedy every day. If they were constantly gloomy and miserable and didn't laugh together, it wouldn't be good for them."

Mrs Brown admitted she hadn't thought of that.

In my experience, the popular perception of people in the funeral business being straight-faced and gloomy is false. Funeral firms' staff, crematorium and cemetery staff, all have to be serious when they're on duty. When they're not on duty, they're often very funny. I just wish that some of them wouldn't make me laugh before I do a funeral, so I have to go into the vestry and compose myself, but I'll enjoy a laugh with them afterwards.

The photograph, taken in 1901 by Sir Benjamin Stone, is of two funeral mutes. Mutes were hired to lead funeral processions, looking suitably gloomy. I suppose that if you had a naturally lugubrious expression, you might have been in demand. I bet they enjoyed a laugh when the funeral was over.

______________

Sample joke from one of my friends from the Co-op:

A man walked through a cemetery late one night and heard tapping. He went to see where the noise was coming from and found a man on his knees in front of a headstone with a hammer and chisel, chipping away at the stone. "It's a bit late to be working mate, isn't it?" he asked. The man with the chisel carried on carving for a bit, then said, "They got my name wrong."

It's the way you tell them.

They're not doing it his way

2009-10-19T19:33:00.003+01:00

When Father Ed Tomlinson of St Barnabas's, Tunbridge Wells, complained in his blog that he has

"... stood at the Crem like a lemon, wondering why on earth I am present at the funeral of somebody led in by the tunes of Tina Turner, summed up in pithy platitudes of sentimental and secular poets and sent into the furnace with ‘I did it my way’ blaring out across the speakers!"

he probably didn't expect the negative publicity. His comments were reported in the local and national press, leading to criticisms that he was "insensitive" and "heartless".

Ed doesn't get it. Why would anyone want to have a personalised funeral ceremony, when he can offer "the gorgeous liturgy of the requiem mass"? That's just it, Father Ed. Ask most people who're rejecting the "gorgeous liturgy" option and they'll say that they've been to a funeral where the priest talked about God and Jesus but said hardly anything about their dear departed; certainly nothing that they recognised. "It could have been for anyone," they'll say, or, "I wondered if I'd come to the right funeral; I didn't know who he was talking about."

Father Ed despairs of hearing "My Way" blasting out of the crematorium speakers; I sympathise. It is very popular. Having heard it many, many times, I groan inwardly when anyone asks for it. However, as long as no one asks for "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam", I'll cope.

Father Ed thinks that his parishioners don't know what's good for them and he does. He says,

I know that ‘dwindling funeral syndrome’ is the shared experience of most every priest I speak to, save those served by undertakers of genuine faith or respect.

Does he mean that "undertakers of genuine faith or respect" should ignore their clients' wishes and point them in his direction anyway? I know some do, and if their client is determined to have a non-religious funeral they might give in very grudgingly.

Father Ed seems to think that Humanist funerals are inferior to his liturgical ones, but he probably hasn't been to many, if any (I've known priests turn up at Humanist funerals, exuding disapproval). There are rubbish Humanist funerals, and some great religious ones. No one has a monopoly of quality, but many families will say that the Humanist funeral they'd arranged was satisfying, honest, and moving; that it reflected the life and personality of the person who died without cloying sentiment; that it made them laugh and cry. And, Father Ed, contrary to what you might believe, we don't all do it for the money.

But he won't care. Father Ed is from the patriarchal, "we know best" Church tendency that can't understand why its authority is dwindling, fast. He'll sulk and sulk.

He wrote that when he dies, "I will still have the gorgeous liturgy of the requiem mass to look forward to." Pity he won't be there to enjoy it.

Josef

2009-10-02T00:52:00.003+01:00

One of the things that Richard Wilson discussed on last night's 'Two Feet in the Grave' TV programme was post-mortem photography. The Victorians took photographs of dead people, posed to look natural, such as a dead child propped up in a chair, surrounded by her dolls.

I bought this small photograph last week from a dealer. It shows a dead man in a coffin, which is supported by two chairs. The coffin sides don't seem very high, but maybe it was the fashion, wherever he came from, to have a deep lid. On the back is inscribed his name - Josef. I can't read his surname. The inscription's in German. It looks early 20th century. I wonder who he was, and what his story was?

Two Feet in the Grave

2009-10-01T23:39:00.002+01:00

You have 5 days left to watch this programme on i-Player - recommended.

Click here for the OU/BBC Death & Dying page.

What to do with big people?

2009-10-01T13:13:00.009+01:00

In case you were wondering, "big" is a euphemism for "fat" - very fat. There are more very fat people than ever these days, and when they die, that can cause problems.

Years ago, I knew someone who'd worked as a post-war hospital porter. He worked nights, when there weren't enough staff, and was asked to move a corpse from one of the floors above ground level when the lift wasn't working. There was no one to help him, it was a large body, so he stood at the top of a flight of stairs (concrete, with dark tiles on the walls on one side) and pondered. Reasoning that the guy was dead, so he wouldn't know anything about it, he rolled the body to the ground floor. I don't remember how he got him off the floor at the bottom. If it had been a lightweight corpse, he'd have been able to sling it over his shoulder in a fireman's lift, but it weighed at least 20 stone.

Nowadays, mortuaries, funeral directors, crematorium staff and others have to deal with corpses weighing much more than that - in some cases, over twice as heavy. In our area, none of the cremators are big enough to take very big bodies, so they have to be taken to a crematorium miles away. There are plans to build a new, privately-owned crematorium in our area, that will have an extra-large cremator. I don't suppose many people have thought about the extra cost involved with having to do this.

You read about the fire brigade being called to move hugely obese patients to hospital, but you don't hear much about what happens when they're dead.

You can't have a lovely environmentally-friendly cardboard or wicker coffin if you're hugely fat; you'd just spill out of it, like a badly wrapped parcel.

You can't be carried by pall-bearers if you're more than 20 stone; you have to be pushed on a trolley.

It's difficult to bury a fat person; you need a very big hole, and a way to lower the coffin so it doesn't just thump to the bottom.

They've had this problem in the US for longer than us, so they've been manufacturing 44" wide cremators for a while, and now we're having to import them.

Fat people cost everyone money - not just because of their healthcare problems, the difficulty of moving them from A to B when they're ill and can't walk, but because it's very expensive to dispose of their corpses when they die.

The moral? Do everyone a favour, and don't die fat.

Illustration: 18th watercolour of a fat man by G H Beaumont

Wrapped in banana leaves

2009-10-01T00:21:00.008+01:00

Keith Floyd had a Humanist funeral in Bristol. I'm told that it was reported in a local paper that there were "insufficient funds" to pay for his funeral, so I hope the celebrant got paid.

Floyd's partner Celia Martin chose a banana leaf coffin, because he sometimes cooked things wrapped in leaves - cabbage or vine, I assume. Sounds like a nice, environmentally-friendly thing to do, but I'm not sure that the crematorium staff will have appreciated it.

There's an increasing choice of materials for coffins, including cardboard, willow (which tends to creak when it's being lowered into a grave), and bamboo, which is less likely to sag in the middle than willow. None of them are suitable for large people, and there are more of them too.

The trouble with cremating coffins made from these materials is that they catch fire very quickly, I've been told. If you've got a nice hot furnace and you slide in a cardboard coffin, it tends to go whoosh, so the crematorium staff have to work fast before the body is completely exposed. They'd rather not have to poke about and push it in.

So, be considerate, please. Choose cardboard, creaky willow, bamboo or banana leaves if you're planning an interment, but if you're going to have someone cremated, choose a rigid coffin that will take a bit longer to warm up.

----------

My source in the West Country informs me:

It was reported there were insufficient funds for his funeral. Apparently he still owed £50,000 to one of his four wives. So if he died penniless, how come he spent £145 on his last meal in Lyme Regis?

Maybe he ran up a tab?

Memorials

2009-08-10T18:31:00.003+01:00

My Twitter friend DD has posted something on her blog about the Arundel tomb, which made me wonder how many modern memorials will evoke the same sort of emotion in seven hundred years time? Maybe some of the ones commissioned through Memorials by Artists?

Harriet Frazer started Memorials by Artists in the late 1990s after she and her family had had great difficulty finding a headstone they liked for the grave of her step-daughter Sophie Behrens, who died in 1985. They wanted something beautiful and unique, like Sophie. It wasn't just a matter of finding craftspeople who could produce what they wanted, rather than something out of a catalogue. They also learned by trial and error about all the rules and regulations that cemeteries impose. Harriet and her family thought that other families might benefit from their experience, and that led to Memorials by Artists. They don't just put families in touch with sculptors and letter cutters; they can help with stained glass artists and other craftspeople too.

The photo from the Memorials by Artists booklet shows a headstone made from Kilkenny limestone by Jamie Sargeant. A theatre set design by Anton Furst is incised on the back.

A Flower Falls

2009-08-01T20:45:00.006+01:00

One of my Twitter contacts, Meg, has just written an account of the death of her mother in an earthquake in her native Philippines, nineteen years ago. It ends -

After the funeral was over, the heavens opened and torrential rain came down thick as stair rods. My grandmother finally collapsed, wailing that her daughter would be soaked. The fact that my mother was dead and buried in a coffin six feet in the ground meant nothing to Lola. She could not be consoled. I held my grandmother's prostrate body in my arms, neither of us able to fully comprehend the loss of the woman who bound us together with a chain of kinship, history and love.

Only then did I remember it was my birthday. The day the earth claimed my mother a second time, I turned thirty.

The photo is of Meg (standing) and her mother Daisy, taken in 1983.

Posthumous conversions

2009-07-31T23:48:00.007+01:00

Henry Allingham, the WW1 veteran who died on July 18th, aged 113, wasn't a religious man. He told the Guardian:

I can see why people fall out with religion. I last took communion in 1918. The Salvation Army were waiting for the boys to come out of the trenches. 'Cup of tea, soldier?' Yes please. 'There you go, son.' The Church Army had set up a quarter of a mile away: 'Cup of tea, soldier?' Yes please. 'Penny!' I didn't like that. They had all the money.

Many of the men who fought in WW1 left their faith on the battlefield. Whose side was God on? many of them asked. So why did the church get to muscle in on Henry's funeral? They didn't have him in life, so they took over when he died? Makes me cross when this sort of thing happens. A funeral should reflect a person's philosophy of life. If religion played no part in it, then it should play no part in his or her funeral. Damn cheek.

A few years ago, I was asked to conduct a private family funeral for the gardening correspondent of the East Anglian Daily Times and BBC Radio Suffolk, Roy Lacey. Roy had told his family that he wanted me to conduct his funeral, as he'd listened to my broadcasts and agreed with what I'd said. Subsequently, the editors of the EADT and BBC Suffolk agreed with the family that they'd like to broadcast a memorial event for Roy, and Mrs Lacey said she wanted me to lead it, as that's what Roy would have wanted. It was recorded at a school in Felixstowe, where Roy lived.

Various people were to provide tributes to Roy, there was a recording he'd made of his personal reminiscences, and we were to play Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending, which he liked. Then I was told that the event would include The Lords' Prayer. 'Why?' I asked. I can't remember the EADT editor's exact words, but it was something along the lines of, people would expect it, or it would include religious people. But Roy had specifically said that he didn't want any religion at his funeral, I said, and he wouldn't have wanted it now. I seem to remember that Mrs Lacey agreed with me, and the subject was dropped. I still have the recording somewhere. It was a moving occasion, and I don't think that anyone mentioned that anything was missing.

Not just boxes

2009-07-29T23:27:00.013+01:00

I think it's a waste of money, spending a lot on a coffin. It'll soon be buried or burnt, though some people order theirs in advance, or make one in advance, and use it as a blanket box or cupboard - memento mori furniture.

I'd heard about the elaborate coffins made in Ghana, where coffin-makers aim to make coffins that look like anything their clients choose - cars, guns, fish (see above), animals, vegetables, mobile phones . . . Some of them are so elaborate, they must have to dig very large holes to bury them in. I think the African coffins were originally DIY projects, but have become so popular that they're exporting them.

I was watching the BBC's 'Flog It' TV programme this afternoon, when presenter Paul Martin visited a coffin maker, Vic Fearn & Company, who've responded to requests for more elaborate coffins by taking on a designer who'll create anything you want. This part of the business is called Crazy Coffins. Some of them cost £thousands. If you have one of those, people will remember your funeral, even if they forget who it was for.

Colourful Coffins have a 'pre-design' service; you can design your own coffin, maybe with "Goodbyee!" in big letters along the sides? It might be tempting to send some sort of farewell message to everyone.

There's evidently a market for this sort of thing, which can be very lucrative. The death business always was a money-spinner. When local builders first started making coffins, they were just plain boxes. Then some enterprising characters realised that their more affluent clients would be pleased to pay for better coffins, mourning accessories, professional mourners, fancy hearses, etc., to demonstrate their social superiority. Richard Chandler's trade card, c. 1750, lists what he could provide for a "decent" funeral ("at reasonable rates"), as opposed to a common or garden funeral. If Mr Chandler was alive today, he'd be making crazy coffins.

Illustrations:
Fish coffin from Accra, Ghana.
Richard Chandler's trade card, c.1750, from 'The English Way of Death' by Julian Litton.

Kisses at the crematorium

2009-07-15T17:32:00.010+01:00

After a funeral today, I had an interesting conversation with one of the staff - one of my fans, especially since I did a funeral for a family member.

He'd been listening, as he was chapel attendant today. He said he always enjoyed my funerals, and the ones that are conducted by my colleague, D. They're how funerals should be, said he. He was never keen on religion, but working at the crematorium and having to listen to so many religious funerals, he's even more atheist than before. I've heard the same complaint from other crematorium staff and funeral conductors (the people from the funeral directors who manage the event) ; religious funerals are all the same; they're irrelevant; they're more about God than about the person who's died; they're boring. Yes, I know they're not all bad, but I hear a lot of negative comments.

My friend said that, soon after he started working at the crematorium, there was a funeral that was to be led by a family member, an American preacher. He used the opportunity to preach hellfire and damnation, shouting at the mourners (several times) that they were all sinners. After about five minutes, the family had had enough. They told him to shut up and sit down. My friend said that made him wonder if his new job was going to be more interesting than he anticipated.

On the whole, however, it hasn't been that interesting. Day after day, week after week, he hears the same hymns, the same prayers, the same stuff about so-and-so going to be with Jesus. No wonder the staff tend to get quite excited when my colleague or I turn up. We aim to provide a ceremony that's relevant and unique, and we often include humorous anecdotes - so there are laughs too. Oh, and the music is better, I'm told. He was delighted when D turned up the other week and announced that the music included Ian Dury and the Blockheads - "There aren't half some clever bastards!"

My colleague, being male, probably doesn't get kissed very often away from home. I get kisses from clients and funeral directors, like the one I got today from the conductor waiting to do the funeral after mine. Few people can claim to enjoy job satisfaction and kisses.

I've been kissed by clergy too. A couple of retired clergy are old friends, including the one who did my parents' funerals. He once kissed me in the vestry, in front of a member of staff, who said in mock horror, "You kissed an atheist!" "That's all right," was the response, "it's not catching." I beg to differ.

Ashes, rockets and paperweights

2009-07-12T23:52:00.009+01:00

When you pop your clogs, you can have your ashes sent heavenwards in a fireworks display. The company says it will be "Celebrating life through the spectacular and tasteful dispersal of cremation ashes by firework." They wisely don't guarantee where the ashes will land, so they possibly take the precaution of not firing any rockets near a motorway or sewage farm, particularly if there's a strong wind. They say "Each firework is labeled [sic] with your loved-ones [sic] name and a named Certificate of Authenticity is provided." Judging from the website, they might not spell the name right, but what does it matter if it's labelled anyway? It'll burn. You can have a "Manned Professionally Fired Tribute Firework Show" from £1,750.00 inc. VAT.

If you don't fancy a firework display, what about being turned into a paperweight? Might as well make yourself useful when you're dead.

Tom Sutcliffe wrote about this sort of thing in The Independent, and how his dog almost peed on a pile of ashes - not quite the dignified ending the family might have wanted. At least a paperweight might not get peed on, unless you carelessly leave it in the loo.

A few years ago, a retired RAF officer told me how a former colleague had requested that his ashes should be scattered from a light aircraft. It proved to be difficult to fulfil his request, as the ashes blew back into the cockpit as fast as they were thrown out. Some were swept up with a dustpan and brush after landing; he didn't say what they did with them.

A lot of people choose to have their ashes scattered in places that had special significance for them - on the top of hills, on football pitches, and so on. So many people are doing it these days that it's become a pollution problem and the government had to bring in new anti-pollution rules. Surely the ashes firework displays might be in breach of these rules, as they can't control where the ashes will land?

Carelessly throwing ashes around is as anti-social as littering, it seems to me, and not nearly as "tasteful" and romantic as many people might imagine.

Mass mourning

2009-04-11T00:56:00.002+01:00

Would you want to share the funeral of someone you loved with lots of other families, while a bunch of priests went on about God and said nothing about the person you'd lost? Rows of coffins, plenty of priestly platitudes, a papal message about feeling "spiritually present", but no memories, no affectionate tributes. No. Me neither.

No memorabilia

2009-04-02T11:30:00.002+01:00

No memorabilia, originally uploaded by Sparrows' Friend.

I was talking about soggy teddy bears, wind chimes, plastic flowers, windmills, toys, and football shirts with one of the Ipswich cemetery staff, and he said he thought it began after the Hillsborough disaster, when fans left scarves and flowers at the football club gates.

I've previously written about the waste of money when Diana died, and London's streets were full of dead flowers and stuffed toys.

This photo's on Flickr, where a contact wrote, "Having seen the hideous stuff in Bury St Edmunds Crematorium I'm not surprised. I used to think vicars were being snobbish in their limitations over graves; Bury's gardens of remembrance have put me clear on that."

It's all so tacky. Leaving flowers on a grave has been enough, until recently, to signify that someone is missed, and that his or her nearest and dearest are keeping his or her memory alive. What does a pile of tat say about someone? Nothing, but it does say a lot about how people who struggle to express their loss will imitate one another without really thinking about it. It's what Richard Dawkins calls a "meme", like the fashion for wearing baseball caps back to front. I don't know how long this fashion will last, but I hope it's not long.

Last word (for now) on Jade

2009-03-25T12:55:00.003Z

I've already written about Jade Goody. Now Johann Hari's written about her too. I felt inclined to cheer when I read it.

Be prepared

2009-03-07T23:59:00.006Z

I shouldn't really criticise, as I'm not the most organised person you could meet, but it's so inconsiderate to pop your clogs and leave your nearest and dearest to hunt the will, bank statements, insurance policies, etc. The period immediately after a death is difficult enough, without all the hassle of trying to find things that have been carefully hidden away and no one has a clue where to look for them.

Even if you do nothing else in anticipation of your demise (and most people would rather not think about it, I know), let whoever will have to deal with the practicalities know where you keep your important papers.

The most recent funeral I conducted was for a bachelor who died suddenly, alone at home. His family had no idea where he kept everything. I expect they're still sorting through his stuff. When there are drawers full of old letters, you can't just chuck them out, in case there's something important in there.

When my mother died, it took me days to find her jewellery. She'd wrapped individual pieces in tissue paper and put it all in a supermarket carrier bag hanging from a hook on the back of her bedroom door. I suppose her reasoning was that it would be the last place a burglar would look. I almost threw it out, thinking it was rubbish, after days of sorting through over seventy years' worth of stuff.

Make a will. Don't wait until you're past retirement age. It's especially important when you're married or just living together, and essential when you have children. You may not have any money, but there may be insurance money as a result of your death as a result of accident or illness. You can appoint a guardian or guardians for your children, so that people you trust will be responsible for caring for them if you die. Will you want a brother with a rather casual approach to health and safety to look after them, or a close female friend who won't let them run amok? It's up to you.

However, there's not much point making a will if no one knows about it, or where it is. So tell someone! Then you can get on with the business of living, and need say no more about it.

Jade

2009-02-17T23:52:00.003Z

An interweb friend has been ranting on Facebook about Jade Goody's public death bed scene, or scenes:

X is wondering if he is alone in really not giving a monkey's chuff about Jade Goody and is sick of every bit of exposure it's getting?

I'm not sick of it because I haven't seen any of it. I don't watch Big Brother; life's short enough as it is without wasting any on freak shows. I don't usually read newspapers and never read the tabloids, apart from when I'm reviewing them on local radio. I never watch Sky TV. I get my news from the BBC, CNN, and the Guardian and Independent websites. I did get sick of the coverage of Diana's death, when the BBC went on and on about it, and the Queen Mum's death attracted far too much publicity - boring, boring boring! But if you watch rolling news, you'll soon reach saturation point when there's a big story at the top of the list. Switch off. It's easy.

So I can't really comment about the Jade Goody and her cancer stories, as I haven't seen any of them, but as she's hired Max Clifford, the media pimp, to manage her deathbed publicity, it's not surprising that she's in the news. The idea, apparently, is to raise as much money as possible from fees to benefit her children, who'll soon be motherless. What they'll make of it, heaven knows, but since Jade's from a dysfunctional family, and these things tend to repeat themselves, I hope they have some sensible people around as they grow up.

My ranty friend opined,

Take Kylie. Quiet dignity, utter poise, grace and complete humility. Compare that to the Jade Goody Media Express. Kylie inspired more women than Jade EVER could.

Maybe, but Kylie's been in show business since childhood. She's used to publicity. She's a wealthy woman without kids who isn't desperate to leave money to her family. Jade may not have inspired anyone, but the fact that she's got terminal cancer in her twenties has already prompted more young women to get checked for cervical cancer, probably saving lives. Many more young women are at risk nowadays, due to their sexual activitity from an early age. Dignity, poise and grace? Drunkeness, lust and risk-taking; the sort of thing that poor silly Jade's well-known for.

If she'd lived into old age, what would have happened to Jade Goody? She'd probably have been driven out of the limelight by the next gaggle of notorious female celebrities and retired into obscurity. As it is, she'll be remembered as a train wreck of a woman with a reputation for saying the first thing that came into her head and upsetting Shilpa Shetty. There are thousands like her, but she just happened to go on Big Brother and gain a publicist. It's all very sad. She needed a minder, but not Max Clifford. She needed someone to look after her from an early age. Now all she's got is the mawkish attention of the worst sort of media and the people who bother to read or watch what they produce. You get the feeling that they've already been totting up the profits from the sale of her toenail clippings. Whoever's at her bedside when she dies, I hope they're people who genuinely care about her.

Cremains

2009-01-22T22:42:00.013Z

In 1874, Sir Henry Thompson, Bart., FRCS, Surgeon to Queen Victoria, founded the Cremation Society of Great Britain, having written, "it was becoming a necessary sanitary precaution against the propagation of disease among a population daily growing larger in relation to the area it occupied". Municipal cemeteries were filling fast, and cremation was introduced to deal with the problem of disposal. It wasn't popular with the church to begin with, maybe because it associated the fire of the furnace with the fires of hell, but as the practice gained popularity with the general public, the clergy changed its tune.

I believe that we British cremated more of our dead than any other nation apart from the Japanese, who don't have a lot of space for internments. This is probably still true. I think most people prefer cremation to burial because it's all done behind closed doors and they don't have to deal with the messy aspects of disposal, like mud and earth. But as the population's increased, funerals have become more elaborate, and a majority of families choose to remove cremains (which are bone fragments, ground up) from crematoria, instead of leaving them to be buried or scattered in the "gardens of rest", the country's being liberally dusted with bone meal. It might do some plants good (though blood and bone meal used to attract our dogs' attention), but it's not the sort of stuff you want to scatter everywhere, willy-nilly.

When a close relative died the other year, her ashes were divided up between several people and places. I'm not sure how many portions there were, but one lot was scattered in Cornwall, another in Norfolk, and there's a little pot sitting on a shelf at home because I haven't done anything with it. It was suggested that because she enjoyed sitting in my garden, I could scatter my portion there. I don't know how the ashes were divided; whether they were weighed in equal portions or if it was a guestimate. It's irrational, I know, but I don't like the idea of dividing people up like this. It doesn't matter to her, of course, but why spread her about like that? I didn't ask for a share but hadn't the heart to refuse. Once upon a time, people dreaded being cut up or otherwise divided, for fear of being denied access to heaven without all their parts. That's not how I feel, but it still seems unnecessarily fussy to mess about with people's ashes.

Like most people, I never used to give the matter much thought. It's become popular to scatter ashes, whether all at once or in portions, in places associated with the dead person. I suppose it's quite romantic, to imagine that he or she will become a part of a place that he or she liked, or where something special happened. But it's irrational, as most of our reactions to death are, and so many people are doing it that it's causing a pollution problem, and is being restricted. I can imagine some bereaved people, determined to ignore restrictions, shuffling around beauty spots with ashes dribbling from the bottom of their trousers, like the men in The Great Escape who had to get rid of the earth from their tunnels without the guards seeing them.

A retired RAF officer I know told me about an airman who requested that his ashes be scattered from the cockpit of a plane. Apparently they blew straight in again and had to swept up with a dustpan and brush when the plane landed.

The lover of a woman who died years ago had to keep his loss a secret, as he was a married Catholic and his family knew nothing about the affair. For almost a year after the woman died, he used to write to me about her, as he had no one else he could talk to. He showed me photos of a secluded place in the Suffolk countryside where they used to meet, and where he scattered her ashes, so he could "feel close to her". After a year, he wrote that he thought he could manage, and I never heard from him again. I wonder how often he visited the spot where he'd left her, and whether it stayed as he remembered it, or if it had been sold to a developer and was covered with semi-detached houses - or, worse still, industrial units.

As an increasing proportion of the population becomes obese, cremators that can cope with big bodies are in demand. Fat people from our area have had to be taken miles away for cremation because none of the local cremators are big enough. Then there's the problem of mercury pollution, from tooth fillings. A new building to house equipment that will deal with such pollutants is being planned for our local crematorium where it will take up a hefty proportion of the car park, which is already too small.

One way or another, the disposal of cremated remains is becoming a problem as serious as the one that cremation was designed to solve. It'll be a long time before it's sorted, mainly because there's a general aversion to discussing anything to do with death. Try applying for planning permission for a green burial site, and you'll see what I mean.

If they'll have it, my body's going to the anatomists, who'll bury what's left when they've finished with me. As for my relative's ashes; I'm going to fork her into the flower border in the spring, safe in the knowledge that, since the dog died last summer, she's less likely to be dug up again. As for the dog; her ashes are in a little box, next to her photo and her collar. You see, I said we're irrational about death.

Foggy funeral

2009-01-12T17:23:00.003Z

Foggy funeral, originally uploaded by Sparrows' Friend.

The thing about burials is, you never know what to expect weatherwise. Sturdy footwear, thermal underwear and waterproofs are essential in winter.

It's my life, not God's

2008-10-05T18:55:00.008+01:00

In today's Observer, Catherine Bennett wrote about Debbie Purdy, an MS sufferer who'd like to be able to die at a time she chooses but will need help to do so. She doesn't want her husband to be prosecuted for helping her, which could happen, as the law stands.

Mrs Purdy isn't the first to have fought this battle. Diane Pretty is just one high profile case. She died in May 2002, having lost a legal challenge that would have allowed her husband Brian to help her commit suicide when she deteriorated. She had Motor Neurone Disease, which can result in asphyxia. Her husband is quoted as saying,

"They had trouble getting her comfortable and pain-free until Thursday evening, after which she started to slip into a coma-like state and eventually died.

"Diane had to go through the one thing she had foreseen and was afraid of - and there was nothing I could do to help."

Dignity in Dying (formerly known as the Vountary Euthanasia Society) reports,

The 1996 British Social Attitudes Survey found that 82% of the public believe people suffering from painful, incurable diseases should have the right to ask their doctors for help to die. Every opinion poll since then has produced similar results.
Support for medically assisted dying is just as high amongst religious people and disabled and elderly people. This is despite the fact that some organisations representing these groups have campaigned against the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill.

As Bennett wrote, every time the issue is raised, men and women of faith proclaim the sanctity of life, tell us that God wouldn't like it, and raise the spectre of unscrupulous relatives and nasty nursing home staff killing off the elderly and disabled as they please. People can't be trusted to stick to the "voluntary" part of voluntary euthanasia, they say; it'll just be a convenient way to get rid of troublesome invalids. If they banned God from the debating chamber, they might make more sense.

Painless palliative care isn't all it's claimed to be, mainly by those in the hospice movement, which is dominated by the religious - all the hospices around here are named after saints. And even if it was, shouldn't we be able to say goodbye when we'd like to, rather than waste away without the control of our bodily functions? We nursed my dad at home when he was dying. He was riddled with cancer that had started in his stomach. No one mentioned death in our house, let alone euthanasia. He and my mum were not inclined to talk about it. He had a syringe driver attached to his arm, full of Morphine, so he could self-medicate when the pain got bad. When he was too ill to use it, he had to have frequent injections. The toxins flowing around his body from the drugs and his enlarged, diseased liver, made him delusional. He was twitchy and agitated. While he could still find the strength to get out of bed, he somehow managed to find his way downstairs and into the street, looking for someone to "take me home", while mum slept in the next room. After that, she was never left alone with him. When he no longer had the strength to get up, he lay in bed with his fingers clawing at the bedclothes, mumbling about the nightmares he was having. One day, I called the doctor to ask him to come and sedate Dad. While Mum and my sister were downstairs, the doctor stood with a syringe full of Valium and said, "You know what might happen if I give him all of this on top of the Morphine, don't you?" "Yes," I said, "go ahead." Dad's breathing grew more shallow and we thought that was it, but the stubborn old bugger didn't die for another fortnight. No, I didn't ask the doctor to kill him, but we both knew that he might die. If it has been me in that bed, in that state, I'd have wanted to die. Dad was locked in a nightmare, and couldn't wake up.

I've lost count of the number of times that I've had to take a sick animal to the vet for euthanasia. The most recent time was when Wizzy collapsed one Sunday at the end of July, and was clearly in distress. She was seventeen and probably had an undiagnosed tumour that caused a sudden bleed. By the time a syringe had been emptied into a vein, she was already on the way out. The body goes limp; the breathing stops; the heart slows and stops. That's what I want, if I'm in pain or severe distress and there's no hope of recovery. How dare anyone tell me that his or her God says it's wrong!

A serious case of denial

2008-09-25T01:04:00.004+01:00

The remains of a baby boy that have been kept in a mortuary for 21 years will be buried on Friday without any relatives present after his family withdrew their consent for the funeral to go ahead.
Christopher Blum's parents have refused to bury their son, who died when he was four months old, because they dispute the cause of his death.
A pathologist named sudden infant death syndrome (Sids) as the cause, but Christopher's parents believe it was linked to a triple vaccination he received hours before his death.
Enfield council will bury the boy's remains in a north London cemetery whether his family are there or not.

21 years! That little bundle has been stuck at the back of a freezer all that time, because his father wouldn't accept the results of the post mortem examinations. After so long, the father's refusal to go ahead with the funeral seems more to do with his resentment towards Enfield council than with a realistic expectation of new forensic evidence. It's very sad, but that man needs to see a shrink.

Behind the scenes

2008-09-12T00:47:00.002+01:00

Behind the mirror, originally uploaded by Sparrows' Friend.

I took this photo at a nearby crematorium. There's a one-way mirror at the back of the chapel. On the other side is the vestry, where the chapel attendant can hear and see what's going on, play the music system when required, and get ready to tidy up at the end of a ceremony. The mourners can't hear anything from the vestry. The platform is because the mirror is high up for the best view. You can see more of my death-related photos on Flickr.

On the Guardian website, there's a collection of photographs taken by Laura Peters behind the scenes at mortuaries, funeral parlours and crematoria for her exhibition, Behind the Last Closed Door.

You can see some of the sort of things she photographed at one of Ipswich Crematoria's open days. There's a 360° panorama of the business side of its chapels on the BBC Suffolk website.

Sticky carpet situations, and other messes

2008-09-10T00:53:00.006+01:00

"Sticky carpet situations" was how a housing officer I used to know described some of the homes that she was required to visit. I knew exactly what she meant.

Sticky carpet situations are where your shoes make a sort of sucking noise as you walk in, as the soles peel off the carpet with each footstep. When invited to take a seat, you look around for an un-upholstered chair without any wet patches or obvious stains. I have recklessly sat on a settee, the only available place to sit (apart from a sticky carpet), and found that when I arose, my rear was damp, and it wasn't me.

In such homes, I usually decline a drink. "Tea?" "No thanks," I'll say, imagining the mug might have been cleaned, if at all, with a cloth and some spit. They remind me of a landlady I had, years ago, as an art student. I lived in a flat above their filthy kitchen, where her emaciated husband, who'd been a prisoner of the Japanese and suffered chronic digestive problems ever since, toyed with the food she served for his dinner, anticipating the frequent trips to the bathroom that would inevitably result. I suspected that her unhygienic cooking methods contributed more to his poor state of health than the Japanese ever had. But I digress.

I've found myself in situations where there's been livestock in the room, and I don't mean dogs and cats and a liberal itch of fleas. One house had a colony of guinea-pigs in a corner of the kitchen, whose squeals interrupted us. Another had a very smelly rabbit hutch, with a very sad-looking rabbit, in the corner.

In sticky carpet situations, the people have lived chaotically, so it's not surprising that the man or woman whose funeral they've been arranging have also lived that way. Some would be funny, if it wasn't so tragic. Imagine the lack of imagination of a family who accepted a top flat in a tower block from the council, knowing that one of them was a chronic depressive who'd attempted suicide several times. Guess how she died. Imagine the sheer stupidity of a man with a girlfriend and two small children who got very drunk, stole a car, crashed it on a busy slip road, and then wandered onto the road to be run over by two large lorries, one after the other. His girlfriend couldn't understand why the funeral director didn't want her to see the body. Imagine visiting a drug dealer whose front door was made of reinforced steel, and being invited to sit on the bed, the only place in the room that wasn't covered with junk. His girlfriend had committed suicide. I could see why she'd have wanted to. Imagine the family of a murder victim who lived in a tiny seaside chalet, where the victim's mother chain-smoked and the victim's small son played on a sticky carpet. The room was dominated by a huge TV and an enormous chip pan, balanced on the edge of a Baby Belling stove. How would that child grow up? Would he be a murderer, like his father? Imagine preparing the funeral for a teenage boy who'd deliberately string a wire between two posts so he could show off on his motorbike by ducking underneath it at speed, only to almost decapitate himself. He was always a laugh, they said. There are people who live dangerously from choice, such as mountaineers, and there are people who just self-destruct. Sometimes they wreck other people's lives too.

When chaotic lives end, I've sometimes got the impression that a fair proportion of the mourners (if there were many mourners) have turned up just to make sure that he or she really is dead and they don't have to deal with the spillage of chaos any more. Sticky carpets are the least of their worries.

"End of Life" care

2008-07-07T12:40:00.005+01:00

It means dying with dignity. Today's Woman's Hour had a feature about this, a new Government initiative. Woman's Hour reports that "Over half a million adults die each year in England but the service available can often be patchy, and many people do not die where they would choose to." One contributor referred to people wishing to die at home, with familiar smells (like burnt toast), being slobbered on by the dog. Whatever the quality of your toaster, everyone should have a good death. If they're going to provide the training and resources to make this possible, the initiative's welcome.

To be late

2008-05-28T14:37:00.008+01:00

Over the past few weeks I've been reading Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of books about the "traditionally-built" Precious Ramotswe in Botswana. Mma Ramotswe refers to her daddy, whose bequest of a herd of cattle allowed her to set up in business, as being "late", meaning dead. Throughout the books, various people are referred to as "late". Not as "the late Mr So-and-So", as British people say, but simply as "late". No one is ever dead or deceased.

There are many euphemisms for death. A favourite of the British is "s/he passed away". Where to? Over the River Styx? To heaven? Descriptions of the latter vary according to your religion, or lack of it. The origin of the saying is biblical, so it's not a phrase I use.

On one online forum, during a discussion of death euphemisms, someone wrote that the reason there are so many of them is that it's the thing that frightens most people, so they prefer not to refer to it directly; to call it by its proper name. Is it healthier to acknowledge death by avoiding euphemisms? Does it soften the trauma of loss to use one that suggests that death isn't the end, something that most people wish were true? When people only have to deal with a few deaths, as they lose members of their family and circle of friends, this convention of kiddology may work, up to a point. Those who deal with death more frequently, especially the nastiness of disease and injury, are more likely to develop a type of humour that others may regard as inappropriate, but they need to preserve their sanity with jokes - just as long as they know when and where it's OK to tell them.

O Death, where is the sting-a-ling-a-ling,
O Grave, thy victoree?
The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling
For you but not for me.

Anonymous - song from WW1.

Illustration from Wikimedia Commons - Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heaven; from Gustave Doré's illustrations to the Divine Comedy.

Cultural attitudes

2008-05-11T12:05:00.003+01:00

Attitudes to death, dying and bereavement vary from community to community, country to country. Grief is the same wherever you are, though how it's displayed or perceived varies according to social or cultural conventions, or the lack of them. In Britain, some people make "grieving" a full-time occupation (Queen Victoria did this). It's all part of the victim culture that prevails in affluent Britain. Like "counselling" and post-traumatic stress disorder, this is an alien concept to the majority who live in countries where death and dying through disease, conflict and corruption are everyday occurrences.

Nathan's just written a blog entry about attitudes to death in Cambodia.

For those who don't know me, Nathan's my son.

Ash cash cowboys

2008-01-24T00:10:00.000Z

The Times reports,

The Church of England is taking steps to ban “ash cash” payments to clergy for taking funerals at churches and crematoria.
Instead, the money will go direct to dioceses. The move will stamp out the “crematoria cowboys”, clergy who supplement meagre or non-existent incomes by conducting dozens of crematorium funerals at £96 a time.
At its meeting next month in Westminster, the General Synod will debate switching the “incumbent’s fee” for pastoral services to a fee payable direct to the diocesan board of finance.

Later in the same report, it says,

Every person in England is legally entitled to a wedding and funeral in the parish in which they live.

I didn't know that. Did you? Not that I'd want to exercise that right.

Anyhow, to get back to these "crematoria cowboys": I did wonder how many of these freelance clergy declare all their income, either to the church or the Inland Revenue. A significant proportion don't, it appears. What the clients might ask is; do they get value for money, wherever it ends up?

Heat exchangers at the crematorium

2008-01-08T23:44:00.000Z

Considering the environmental cost of cremation - despite the Clean Air Act, it still causes pollution and uses fossil fuels - don't you think it's a good idea to reduce the impact by using some of the heat it generates to warm the living? Crematoria can be chilly.

The Daily Mail reported today,

Tameside Council in Greater Manchester is planning to link heat exchangers at Dukinfield Crematorium with its boiler system and hopes to use it to generate electricity through turbines.

Comments about the story are as interesting as the proposal. Most seem to be in favour, with only a minority using words like "sick". Eileen from Herts wrote,

Ughh. Sounds awful to me. I would hate to know the heating was being generated by loved ones [sic] bodies. Deceased or not.

Deceased or not? What does she mean?

The Daily Mail's sub-editor seems ignorant of the purpose of a crematorium. The story's headed,

Crematorium to keep mourners warm by burning bodies of loved ones

which suggests a funeral pyre with relatives standing around, warming their hands. Crematoria don't burn bodies to keep mourners warm, but because it's cheaper than burial and most people prefer it. There was a time when the idea was repellent to most people. It was a practical solution to the problem of overcrowded municipal cemeteries. Lots of people used to think "Ugh!" Some associated cremation with the fires of hell. It only takes a few decades for attitudes to change. Why waste heat?

Graham Chapman's eulogy

2007-12-05T01:00:00.000Z

John Cleese remembers a fellow Python. I remembered this today when we were discussing funerals at a meeting, and I said that laughter isn't that unusual at a funeral (though maybe not this much).

The end is nigh

2007-11-30T00:25:00.001Z

Why write about the death of a pet? Because some of us mourn for them just as we mourn for people.

Poppy is eighteen years old. She was given to me as a pathetic little scrap that had been born in a coal bunker. The mother's owner wouldn't have her cats neutered and when they had kittens she just took them to the vets and asked them to kill them. My cleaner, who was a neighbour of this stupid person, phoned me and said would I take a couple of kittens she'd rescued, until she could rehome them? Someone took the other kitten before she got to me, or I could have ended up with both of them.

Poppy was filthy. She survived having a tape worm, fleas, lice and ear mites. By the time we'd nursed her back to health, Nathan said he didn't want to part with her. She's been run over (her tail was paralysed for about six weeks), had skin cancer (part of an ear had to be amputated), came home one day with a puncture wound in her face, and went missing for a couple of months about two years ago. The photo above, taken not long ago, has been viewed 248 times (to date) and favourited 44 times by cat-lovers on Flickr.com.

Poppy has a sunny disposition, she loves company, and liked to sit beside any visitors and pat them on the arm until they stroked her. Now she's dying. Within the next few weeks, I'll have to make the decision to take her to the vet one last time. Her kidneys are failing and her breath has that tell-tale smell of urine. She sleeps a lot.

Trouble is, there are two other geriatrics in this house - Wizzy (our Jack Russell), who was sixteen in May, and Barney, who's almost twenty. Before long, I'll lose them all.

Pets are sometimes referred to as "companion animals", which is an accurate description. For many people, particularly disabled and elderly people, they provide companionship that makes all the difference between crippling loneliness and tolerable solitude. Losing a pet can be as devastating for them as losing a close relative - in some cases, more so. I've provided a befriending service for bereaved pet owners through our local vet. They've said they found it hard to talk about their feelings to their friends, whose attitude might be, "It was only a dog!" Their uncomprehending "friends" muddle sentimentalism with grieving. Because pet owners can form bonds with their animals that can be as close as they might form with people, they grieve at the end of an animal's short life; those who don't recognise this betray their own deficiencies. When I was in my teens, my best friend's mum, Stella, gave me some good advice about relationships: "If he doesn't like animals or children, he's a waste of time." I've always regarded people who don't understand animals, or our relationship with them, as being seriously lacking in the empathy department.

For several years now, social workers have recognised that there's often a connection between animal abuse and child abuse; if someone tortures or neglects an animal, he or she is likely to treat his or her children (and partner) badly. Animal cruelty cases can alert social workers to children at risk. It's because of an inability to empathise.

I've always stayed with my pets when they've been "put to sleep", the euphemism for euthanasia, so they'd be reassured by my presence. After the injection, which literally does send them to sleep, they just stop breathing and that's it, over in seconds. It's always been very peaceful. If only we could do the same for people, like my dad, who had to suffer weeks of morphine-induced anxiety at the end of his life as his body rotted away. I've taken other people's pets to the vet because they couldn't face it. Within the next few weeks, I'll have to take Poppy. I'm not looking forward to it.

I like this poem by Gavin Ewart, called "A 14-year-old convalescent cat in the winter" -

I want him to have another living summer,
to lie in the sun and enjoy the douceur de vivre -
because the sun, like the golden rum in a rummer,
is what makes an idle cat un tout petit peu ivre -
I want him to lie stretched out, contented,
revelling in the heat, his fur all dry and warm,
an Old Age Pensioner, retired, resented
by no one, and happinesses in a bee-like swarm
to settle on him - postponed for another season
that last fated hateful journey to the vet
from which there is no return (and age the reason),
which must come soon - as I cannot forget.

Postscript:

Nathan's reminded me about how different attitudes towards dogs and cats are in countries like Cambodia. He mentioned that someone in Siem Reap had a row with his neighbour, who'd killed and eaten his dog "because he was hungry", while other people in the neighbourhood had pulled out or cut out their dogs' teeth to stop them biting each other during frequent fights - the screams could be heard some distance away. The WSPA reports that there are roughly 480 million stray dogs around the world, many suffering from horrible diseases and painful deaths. My pets live in comparative luxury, costing £1000s for food and vet's bills. Is it ethical to spend so much money on our animals, when so many people go hungry? Perhaps it's not so much the cost, as the fact that too many animals are allowed to breed. Mine weren't.

21st century funerals

2007-11-05T12:43:00.000Z

It seems that those most "traditional" tradesmen (and a few women), the funeral directors, and the people who work in cemeteries and crematoria, are gradually catching up with modern business practices.

When I began conducting funerals sixteen years ago, emails were unheard of. To confirm a booking, the funeral directors sent you a pre-printed form addressed to "Reverend Sir", and since I was neither, this had to be crossed out and my name substituted. The forms are all different now, but an increasing number of funeral directors confirm the details by email.

It was usual to be paid in cash, with the money (sometimes in a little brown envelope) discreetly pushed into my hand or pocket after the ceremony. One funeral director, a short man who always wore a top hat and tails at funerals, used to put the little envelope into his upturned hat and point it in my direction as he went "Pssst!" and swivelled his eyes from me to the hat, while the mourners were saying their goodbyes at the graveside. Nowadays, a few funeral directors are catching on to the convenience of paying by BACS (bankers' automated clearing services), so the money goes straight from their account to mine. One even wrote to say they won't pay by cash any more and would I prefer cheque or BACS? I wonder how many clergy used to declare all their cash payments?

Then there's the music. The organists have less organ-playing to do these days. An increasing number of people ask for recorded music. Frank Sinatra's "My Way" and Robbie Williams' "Angel" are two of the most popular choices. My heart sinks whenever I hear Celine Dion mentioned, or Bette Midler's "Wind beneath my wings" - neither can hit a note without warbling up to it in an unsteady manner that makes me want to yell "Please! Stop!" Recorded music was all on tapes at one time, and they could be unreliable. One machine in a local crematorium regularly chewed them up. CDs aren't much better, particularly the ones that people have copied on a PC; some crematoria have banned them. Sometimes people will turn up at the funeral with an empty case; they'd been checking the music, and left it in the machine. One local crematorium now uses the Wesley Music System. Music is ordered online and downloaded onto the crematorium's computer, so all I have to do is make sure it's available and it's been ordered. If anything goes wrong with the equipment, it's not my problem.

In the old days, coffins were made by local builders, hence the connection between building firms and funeral services; there are still a few like that around here. Nowadays, they're mass produced. All the funeral directors have to do is assemble them. I believe there's a funeral supermarket in London where you can go and buy your own flat pack coffin. The first time one of my clients asked for a cardboard coffin, and I relayed the request to the funeral director, I heard guffaws of laughter at the other end of the phone. When they realised I wasn't joking, it went quiet. An increasing number of people are choosing cardboard, wicker or bamboo coffins now, especially for green burials. Bamboo is quieter than wicker - it doesn't creak as much.

Maybe one day they'll catch on to the system of freeze-drying bodies, which can then be used as compost. At least one council's already considering it.

There's still one area where the funeral trade isn't up to date; many funeral directors tend to assume that most people will want a Christian funeral, or a pick 'n mix ceremony with a bit of religion thrown in, and they don't fully explain the religion-free, Humanist option. Considering that there are so few of us to provide such ceremonies, maybe that's just as well.

Even fewer people realise that they don't have to have a priest, clergyperson, rabbi, or any sort of professional celebrant to conduct a funeral ceremony. They could do it themselves.

Death by lava lamp

2007-10-12T13:13:00.001+01:00

Surely a nominee for a Darwin Award?

24-year-old Philip Quinn was tinkering with a lava lamp at his home in Kent [US]. His girlfriend and his parents became worried when they couldn't find him and couldn't get him to answer his phone.
Claudia and Bill Quinn drove from their home in Auburn to check on their youngest son. They thought maybe he'd just overslept. They were devastated by what they found.
"I looked around the corner and saw his body slumped there in the corner and just couldn't believe what I saw," said Quinn's father.
"There was glass from the kitchen clear to the living room," his mom told us. "They said it appeared that a piece of glass punctured his heart."
Philip, in a fatal act of experimentation, had placed a lava lamp on the kitchen stove. When used properly and heated only by a small lightbulb, 40 watts in most cases, a lava lamp is essentially harmless: a mix of wax or oil and water sealed in a glass bottle with a small air space at the top of the bottle to allow for the liquid to expand under heat.

Cringing at the "Christian" eulogies

2007-09-28T14:39:00.001+01:00

A letter in this week's NSS Newsline from Sue Cauty:

Re the question "are [Richard] Dawkins and [Christopher] Hitchens 'good' for the secular cause?" I last saw Hitchens interviewed on CNN. And there was this virulently anti-religious chap, quietly and graciously saying that, when invited, he attends the religious rites of others.
Shortly after I "came out" as a secularist I found myself attending a funeral service. I felt embarrassed, out of place, bored stiff, offended by the prayers and sermonising, cringed at the "Christian" eulogies of those I knew to be unbelievers, my ears offended by dirges wretchedly sung to live guitars; and above all I felt untrue to everybody there, especially myself, and the deceased, whom I knew to be an atheist. I vowed never again to be a part of such rites: so I applaud and am humbled by, Hitchens' understanding and tolerance.
Why should Hitchens and Dawkins be expected to toe a "party line" before they can be judged beneficial to the cause? What about free speech? The question is potentially divisive; especially at a time when we urgently need to pull together. These men make us all think, question, and analyse; no way can that be bad.

The literature of death and bereavement

2007-09-02T20:02:00.001+01:00

A talk I gave at Ipswich Crematorium's Open Day in 2003 - I came across it on the Suffolk Humanists' site while I was looking for something else.

My mother died suddenly at a party at my sister’s on Christmas Eve, just after she’d demonstrated how to do the can-can to some children. I don’t what they thought about a woman in her mid-70s doing high kicks, but she was very proud of being able to kick her own height. I told her it was time to go because I still had things to do for dinner the next day. She fell with an almighty crash as she lifted her arm to take her coat off the hook by the door. She was dead within the next ten minutes or so, having had a massive cerebral haemorrhage. It was a great way to go, especially after we’d nursed my dad through cancer that same year – he’d died six months earlier – and she’d said she didn’t want to die like that, but wanted to go like her mum, quickly, without fuss.

A little while later I found a poem in an anthology called ‘The Long Pale Corridor’, published by Bloodaxe Books, and although the circumstances were different, the dramatic exit it described reminded me of mum. I told a client about it a while ago – her mum had made a similarly dramatic exit in a dentist’s waiting room, and since she’d been an attention-seeker all her life, my client thought she could almost have planned it. Anyway, this is ‘The Going’ by Bruce Dawe, which he wrote for his mother-in-law, Gladys.

Mum, you would have loved the way you went!
One moment, at a barbecue in the garden
― the next, falling out of your chair,
hamburger in one hand,
and a grandson yelling.
Zipp! The heart’s roller blind
rattling up, and you, in an old dress,
quite still, flown already from your dearly-loved
Lyndon, leaving only a bruise like a blue kiss
on the side of your face, the seed-beds incredibly tidy,
grass daunted by drought.
You’d have loved it, Mum, you big spender! The relatives,
eyes narrowed with grief, swelling the rooms
with their clumsiness, the reverberations of tears, the endless
cuppas and groups revolving blinded as moths.
The joy of your going! The laughing reminiscences
snagged on the pruned roses
in the bright blowing day!

I like the bit about ‘laughing reminiscences’. We often have laughter at Humanist funerals, as people are told stories about the person who’s died. That’s as it should be; laughter and tears are close at times like these.

We use poetry in our funerals because it often expresses human experiences so well, in ways that people will recognise and identify with. Sometimes people might say they’re not ‘poetry people’, until we point out a poem that they like, to their surprise. Poetry isn’t boring, not if it’s good. For non-religious funerals, it’s far better than bible readings that have little relevance to the situation. However the Bible isn’t all religion. There are some parts, like the wonderfully erotic Song of Solomon, which don’t seem to belong. Though some Christians might disagree, the Bible isn’t a book, it’s an anthology, and the parts don’t all seem to fit the whole. Ecclesiastes is another book in the Bible which has relevance to the religious and non-religious. These lines may be familiar; they’ve been adapted from Ecclesiastes III, 1-8. They express a fatalistic, realistic view of life and death, which has been adopted by many writers and poets throughout history.

For everything there is a season,
And for every activity under heaven its time:
a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to uproot;
a time to pull down and a time to build;
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time for mourning and a time for dancing;
a time to seek and a time to lose;
a time to keep and a time to throw away;
a time to tear and a time to mend;
a time for silence and a time for speech;
a time to embrace and a time to refrain;
a time to hurt and a time to heal;
a time to love and
a time for peace.

Personally, I like those poets who adopt a matter of fact approach to death. We all die, and accepting this fact might help us to make the most of life while we can. The great Latin poet Horace was born in the year 65 BC and died 57 years later. His maxim – Carpe Diem, or ‘seize the day’ – was brought to the attention of many through Robin Williams’ film, ‘Dead Poets Society’. This a translation of what Horace wrote:

… Life’s short. Even while
We talk Time, hateful, runs a mile.
Don’t trust tomorrow’s bough
For fruit. Pluck this, here, now.

The 16th century French philosopher and essayist Michel de Montaigne, who loved his cats and lived well, had a similar attitude. He wrote,

Wherever your life ends, there it is complete. The value of life lies not in its length, but in the use we make of it. This or that man may have lived many years, yet lived little. Pay good heed to that in your own life. Whether you have lived long enough depends upon yourself, not on the number of your years…

The English poet and composer Ivor Gurney died in 1937 in a mental hospital. I don’t know when he wrote this, but he must have been reasonably sane at the time.

The songs I had are withered
Or vanished clean,
Yet there are bright tracks
Where I have been,
And there grow flowers
For others’ delight.
Think well, O singer,
Soon comes night.

So there’s a warning – soon comes night – that we’re all mortal. I know that some people don’t like this. They imagine that there’s some other life, an ‘afterlife’, so that we’re not really mortal at all. Of course, this idea may comfort some, but it doesn’t comfort me. I once had a discussion on Radio Suffolk about this with an evangelical Christian who told me that he believed God had responsibilities for him after he died. I think I said that we’d have had enough of responsibility when we’re dead. There are many people who’ve had far too many responsibilities in life, so how unfair it would be to find there were more waiting for them. If anyone asks me if I think there’s a life after death, I say ‘I hope not’. I can’t imagine anything worse than being condemned to spend eternity in some place where I probably won’t be able to choose my companions. My mother believed she’d be reunited with her mother when she died, but I never asked her who else she thought might be there? She wasn’t especially keen on her father, for example.

The Hispanic-American philosopher George Santayana speculated about such things in ‘The Life of Reason’, where he wrote:

It would be truly agreeable for any man to sit in well-watered gardens with Mohammed, clad in green silks, drinking delicious sherbets, and transfixed by the gazelle-like glance of some young girl, all innocence and fire. Amid such scenes a man might remain himself and might fulfil hopes that he had actually cherished on earth. He might also find his friends again, which in somewhat generous minds is perhaps the thought that chiefly sustains interest in a posthumous existence. But to recognise his friends a man must find them in their bodies, with their familiar habits, voices, and interests; for it is surely an insult to affection to say that he could find them in an eternal formula expressing their idiosyncrasy. When, however, it is clearly seen that another life, to supplement this one, must closely resemble it, does not the magic of immortality altogether vanish? Is such a reduplication of earthly society at all credible? And the prospect of awakening again among houses and trees, among children and dotards, among wars and rumours of wars, still fettered to one personality and one accidental past, still uncertain of the future, is not this prospect wearisome and deeply repulsive? Having passed through these things once and bequeathed them to posterity, is it not time for each soul to rest?

Even if you don’t agree with me about such things, you might agree with me that, whatever we believe happens when we die, we should make the most of life. This is a fundamental principle of Humanism, as we don’t think we can assume that we’ll get another chance to finish any unfinished business if we don’t do it now. Not that I imagine I’ll ever be any better organised than I am now. As John Lennon said, ‘Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.’ Still, I’d like to be remembered as someone who did her best at whatever she'd been doing. Some people have done more than that. They’ve given much more than anyone had a right to expect of them, and sometimes I have to conduct funerals for people who’ve witnessed the most unimaginable horrors in wartime. Mostly they haven’t talked about it – men who were born at the beginning of the last century were taught that boys don’t cry, nor wear their emotions on their sleeves. There are poems I’ve read at such funerals that might help younger members of their family to understand what happened to them. This is from an anthology of 2nd World War poetry called ‘The Voice of War’. Many of the poets were killed in action, such as Sgt. Pilot E. Linmar, who wrote this poem on the 12th August 1940, the day before he was posted missing in action.

If I never live again,
This day will always be,
A rapture of my soul,
A treasured memory.
If I go down ere night,
At least this day I knew,
With all its combat wild,
In skies of azure hue.
Old Time, with cruel scythe,
Sends all memories to decay:
Yet, neither Death, nor Time,
Can ever steal this day.
If I never live again…

When you hear stories like that, it humbles you. I try to be kind and patient with people who complain a lot about very little. I tried never to ask someone I used to know how he was, because if I did, he’d tell me a tale of woe about all his ailments for at least half an hour. Secretly, I called him Marvin, which wasn’t his real name, because he reminded me of the paranoid android in Douglas Adams’ brilliant radio series, ‘The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy’. It’s OK to moan and groan a little, but not to make it habit. The danger there is, of course, that if you get really ill, no one will believe you. Not long ago, I conducted a funeral for a woman who’d been such a hypochondriac that when she was dying, no one noticed until it was too late.

In Letters from a Father to his Son, John Aiken wrote about differing attitudes to life:

It may, I think, in general be observed, that the greatest lovers of life are persons of sanguine temperament, engaged in active pursuits, full of projects for futurity, readily attaching themselves to new objects and new acquaintances, and able to convert every occurrence of life into a matter of importance. On the other hand the phlegmatic, inactive, dubious, desponding, and indifferent, as soon as the warmth and curiosity of youth are over, frequently become careless about the remainder of life, and rather consent to live on through habit, than feel themselves much interested in the continuance of their existence.

I had to go into hospital the other day and when they were filling in the forms I was asked what I did. I said I was a Humanist Celebrant, and they said, ‘What’s that?’ It’s a common reaction. Religious ministers do funerals, but they’re expected to – it’s part of their job. When we do it, sometimes people think it’s a little odd to choose to do something like this. One of my friends used to peer intently at me as she asked, ‘But are you all right?’ She was convinced that I could crack up any minute, because of the nature of my work. Well, of course I’m all right, or I wouldn’t do what I do. It’s fascinating, and I feel privileged to meet so many people from all walks of life and hear so many life stories.

When the writer Somerset Maugham was dying, he told his nephew, ‘Dying is a very dull, dreary affair,’ then he smiled and said, ‘and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.’ It’s interesting how attitudes to death have changed. An increasing number of people are choosing to die in their own homes and avoid going into hospital, but not long ago many people would have as little to do with the whole business as possible. In the 18th and 19th centuries things were very different. The mortality rates were higher. Most women had large families and many babies died. People were laid out at home. The headstones in parish churchyards were often inscribed with descriptive or witty epitaphs, very different from the ones we see today, which are often heartfelt but unimaginative. For example, the grave of Lydia Eason at St Michael’s in Stoke bears the inscription:

All those who come my grave to see,
avoid damp beds and think of me.

Another, in Staffordshire, has a sad but confusing rhyme:

Here lies father and mother and sister and I,
We all died within the space of one short year;
They all be buried at Whimble, except I,
And I be buried here.

I like the epitaph for a working man in St Britius’ churchyard at Brize Norton:

My sledge and hammer lies
declin’d
My bellows too have lost
their wind:
My fire’s extinct my coals
decay’d
And in the dust my vice
is laid;
My days are spent my glass
is run,
My nails are drove my work
is done

There are lots of sad stories, and sad poems to suit the occasion, but funerals needn’t be all gloom and doom. They were during Victoria’s reign, but she made a career out of mourning and everyone joined in. She wore black, but few people wear black for funerals these days. Only a few weeks ago I did a funeral where many of the mourners wore brightly coloured Hawaiian shirts in honour of the deceased, who’d been a keen camper. So I shall end on a lighter note, with a popular poem by Joyce Grenfell:

If I should go before the rest of you
Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone,
Nor when I’m gone speak in a Sunday voice
But be the usual selves that I have known.
Weep if you must,
Parting is hell,
But life goes on,
So sing as well.

People hear what they want to

2007-09-01T18:10:00.000+01:00

I was glued to the TV on Friday night, watching NCIS (one of my favourite programmes), when the phone rang.

"Yes?" (I was in the middle of an interesting autopsy with forensic pathologist Ducky Mallard, and didn't care to be interrupted).

"Is it too late to ring you?"

It was a woman's voice I didn't recognise. The good thing about the new Freeview boxes is that you can pause a programme, so I did.

"It depends," I said, "why do you ask?"

She went on to explain that she'd been to one of my funerals earlier in the day. She was the one who told me she'd like me to do her funeral. I'd said she might outlive me.

"What was that reading you did at the end?" she asked, "Was it 'Do not stand at my grave and weep'?"

I said no, it wasn't. I didn't say that I avoid using that reading because I don't like it. It's horribly sentimental and ends with a death denying "I did not die" (see below).

Several people had told her it was "Do not stand at my grave and weep". I wondered if they'd been to the same funeral.

I told her the lines I used at the end were by William Wordsworth. "Are you sure?" she asked. "Yes, I'm sure."

I said I'd send her a copy of the poem. Maybe then she'll believe me.

----------------

I Am Not There
Author unknown - ought to be ashamed of him or herself.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumnal rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there; I did not die.

Skip the dying part

2007-08-23T14:24:00.000+01:00

My friend D, who had his eighty-second birthday recently, is apprehensive about a visit to see a hospital consultant next month. He thinks he has cancer. A suspicious spot was found on his tongue during a routine dental checkup, and he says it's where he used to have a pipe clenched between his teeth for years and years.

D isn't afraid of death, he says. He's not bothered about oblivion. It's the transition that worries him. He's afraid of suffering and indignity. If it turns out that he does have cancer, he's already imagining the worst case scenario - a horrible, drawn-out, painful illness. He'd like to die in his sleep, he says.

Woody Allen said that he wasn't afraid of death; he just didn't want to be there when it happens. I suppose most people think like that, if they think about it at all.

Another friend, Mary, who died a few years ago, had oral cancer. She contacted me when she'd had the diagnosis to arrange her own funeral and I befriended her. For the next five or six years, I visited her for lunch every couple of months. She was a retired teacher in her eighties, a passionate socialist, very interested in the world inhabited by her grandsons, who'd been travelling and gone to university. She bought herself a computer and taught herself to use it so she could keep in touch with them by email.

After her diagnosis, Mary remained fairly well for about five years. When things started to deteriorate, she travelled to hospital for palliative radiotherapy every weekday for several weeks. This involved a long bus journey, so it was very tiring. They didn't have a bed for her at the time. When she was admitted, Mary remained polite and cheerful, making friends with the staff and the other patients, as though she was a morale-boosting visitor, rather than another very sick patient.

It wasn't the cancer that killed Mary. She had to have a tube inserted in her stomach, to be fed, and the wound became infected. It was the infection that killed her. Never, throughout the whole ordeal, did she complain or express fear. She was dignified and determined to the last. When I conducted her funeral, it was the only time I wept as a celebrant.

D has lived a conventional, unadventurous life. For the last twenty-odd years, since I've known him, he has mostly kept himself to himself. He has no other friends. His family rarely visit him, and he hasn't see his grandchildren since they were babies. He worries so much about things going wrong that he avoids doing anything in the first place.

Mary lived life to the full. She went swimming regularly until a year or two before she died. She played bridge. She went to the local community centre. She had a live-in gentleman-friend (which shocked the Frinton blue-rinse brigade) for several years - she was widowed a long time. She was intensely curious about other people and their lives without being judgemental or intrusive.

As I have said many times, those who are afraid of life are generally more likely to be afraid to die. I hope that D hasn't got cancer, but if he has, that it won't be nearly as bad as he imagines it will be. He is terrified, which is very sad.

Death is nothing at all?

2007-08-10T18:33:00.000+01:00

Religionists can sneak up on unwary humanist celebrants like me. The client/s might say that he or she or they don't want any religion at the funeral, but there could be some relative or friend who's determined that Uncle Bob or Aunt Brenda shouldn't be given a send-off that's totally free of superstition. "Stella wants to do a reading," I'll be told. "I'm sure it'll be OK. She knows we're not having a religious funeral." That's precisely why Stella waits until the last minute to tell you what she wants to read, and it'll probably be something about a happy ever after, when we all meet again, in the by and by, or something along those lines.

Canon Henry Scott Holland's a popular one. It's supposed to be "comforting". This is a version I've been sent:

Death is nothing at all
I have only slipped away into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other
That we are still
Call me by my old familiar name
Speak to me in the easy way you always used
Put no difference into your tone
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed
At the little jokes we always enjoyed together
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was
Let it be spoken without effort
Without the ghost of a shadow in it
Life means all that it ever meant
It is the same as it ever was
There is absolute unbroken continuity
What is death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind
Because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you for an interval
Somewhere very near
Just around the corner
All is well.
Nothing is past; nothing is lost
One brief moment and all will be as it was before
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting
when we meet again!

Canon Henry Scott-Holland, 1847-1918, Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral

How we shall laugh? Where did Henry get this idea? Did he have any evidence that one's dear departed would be lurking "just around the corner" (spooky) until you catch up with him or her? And would he or she be as we remembered him or her when fit and healthy, or when he or she was old and sick, for example? What about all the other dead people? Which ones would be waiting, and who would diplomatically stay out of your way because you didn't get on in life, so the thought of spending eternity in their company gives you the heeby-jeebies?

Few people have really thought about an afterlife, except in the vaguest terms. If they did, they might find, as I do, that it's a very unattractive prospect. For a start, eternity's a very long time. After the first few hundred years I think you'd be anxious to leave. What will you do? Eating chocolate, reading good books, gardening, all the things you enjoyed in life, are OK for short periods, but could grow tiresome. And then there's the business of who else is there. It's either very crowded, or you have a system that permits you to choose your companions, assuming they want to share with you. How old will you be? Twenty-one forever? You see, it's not straightforward, is it?

Give me oblivion, forever.

Three cheers for Hilary Potts

2007-07-01T00:02:00.000+01:00

Ms Potts won a DAB radio for her letter in this week's Radio Times, as follows:

"So 'the nation went into shock', did it (Editor's letter, 23 June)? Give us a break. Actually, the media went into overdrive after the death of Diana and some people, in lan Hislop's priceless phrase, were 'grief-surfing on a wave of emotion' (RT, 23 June).

My mother (and probably quite a few other people's mothers) died a few days later, and one was vividly aware of how the frothy unreality of the public reaction to Diana contrasted with the ugly reality of dying at the hands of a drunk driver while snogging with one's boyfriend on the back seat. If Saint Diana had been a typist from Twickenham, we'd have found her post-divorce behaviour ever so slightly tacky.

I may be a republican, but I'm with the Queen (at least Helen Mirren's film version) on this one. I got fed up with being told at the time what 'everybody' was feeling, and surely it's time a lot more people came out of the closet and admitted they were so baffled by the whole business that they were tempted to turn their radios and TVs of for the next fortnight - I suspect they are the majority. My theory is that few really surprising common experiences happen in most people's lives; the 'grief-surfers' would be the descendants of those people for whom the Second World War had provided the only real excitement in their lives - except in that instance the grief was only too likely to be real rather than 90 per cent vicarious."

The sub-editor used the same heading for this letter as I used for the blog entry I wrote in September 2005.

We were subjected to the same sort of mass hysteria, orchestrated by the media, when the Queen Mother died and we were told 'the nation is in mourning'. No it wasn't. The Queen was in mourning, and so were the rest of her family and her mother's friends. What can we expect when the Queen dies? They'll have to crank up the emotion to outdo the Diana effect, or maybe they'll be more restrained? I heard that when the Queen Mother died the BBC got lots of complaints about the blanket coverage on BBC1 and BBC2, so they were forced to go back to scheduled programmes on BBC2, to appease irate listeners.

Postscript, 16 July

Now the BHA's joined in. On its website, someone's written, "BHA mourns George Melly". No it doesn't. The BHA is an association. An association doesn't mourn. I'm a member of the BHA and I'm not mourning George, however much I liked him. I met him once. Most BHA members have never met him. The people who mourn George are the ones who knew him best.

Green burial

2007-05-30T19:18:00.001+01:00

I did a funeral at the Greenwood Burial Ground at Farnham, near Saxmundham in Suffolk, today. It's unlike the other green burial grounds near here.

Most of the trees are already established and the graves are dug between them. In other green burial sites, the trees are planted on the graves in the autumn, so a new-ish site can look rather bare for a few years.

I used to think that doing it this way, with the graves so close to the trees, might damage them, but the gravedigger said it doesn't harm them. It's like pruning the trees, only underground, and they grow new roots. I'm not convinced but haven't noticed any dying off.

An inventory of body parts

2007-04-18T15:55:00.001+01:00

Before the Anatomy Act of 1832, superstitious people who lived anywhere near a medical school dreaded the Resurrection Men, who stole corpses for the anatomists. The supply of corpses from executions was insufficient for the surgeons to learn their trade, so they asked few questions of the men who supplied them with cadavers that were often dug up from fresh graves.

What people feared the most was that the dismembered bodies, after the anatomists had finished with them, would be unfit for entry into Heaven - to be resurrected into that happy (if tediously boring) state, you had to have all the parts. It didn't help that paintings and cartoons of the time showed a casual disregard for the integrity of the cadavers, with dogs eating discarded pieces of the bodies.

I was reminded of this a few years ago, when the Alder Hey Children's Hospital story broke. Some bereaved parents demanded the "body parts" (often no more than slivers of tissue) of the children and had second funerals for them.

Now it's all being resurrected again. It wasn't usual for relatives to be asked or informed when pathologists retained tissue for research purposes from dead Sellafield workers in the 1970s, and later. This may have been due to medical arrogance, but it never occurred to them that there'd be a problem. Now it appears they kept "body parts" too. I can't help feeling that this is a lot of fuss about nothing, but it will give a bunch of lawyers plenty to do. The compensation culture hadn't developed in the '70s.

What next? What about all those toenail clippings, casually abandoned on a bathroom floor? Or the various bits that have been trimmed away on the operating table? We shed body parts throughout our lives. I suppose that those who're upset about "the unauthorised use of body tissue from Sellafield nuclear workers" are most hung up about the lack of permission. Do they believe all that old tosh about being refused entry to Heaven without all their bits? If not, let it go. If they do, I feel sorry for them.

The anatomists are welcome to my body parts. All of them will be donated to Cambridge University's Anatomy Department. I'm not expecting a resurrection.

Carpe Diem

2007-02-26T13:33:00.001Z

Some people spend a lot of time trying to make sense of life and death. I say, don’t bother. None of it can be tidied up with neat explanations. Life is untidy. It should be untidy. If we’re living it to the full, we’re bound to get hurt. If we’re living it to the full, we’re bound to feel joy. It’s no good trying to avoid pain and grief because they’re part of the deal. If we never loved, we’d never grieve. As for all the rest; this world is full of beauty and wonderful experiences, if you dare to look for them, and as the poet Horace wrote, Carpe Diem – seize the day!

At the beginning of the Staying Alive anthology is a poem called Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. It ends:

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

It's later than you think

2007-02-26T01:05:00.001Z

Role-playing

2007-02-25T19:31:00.000Z

When funerals were all (or almost all) conducted by clergy, at least you knew what you'd be getting: a load of old cobblers about being with Jesus and anyone who'd predeceased the deceased; the Lord's Prayer; two or three dreary hymns; and so on. Many clergy did the same funeral for everyone. Some even forgot whose funeral they were doing and got the name wrong. It was all very predictable and irrelevant. An Anglican vicar, quoted in Dr Tony Walters' book 'Funerals and how to improve them', said, "It's striking how little you have to do for people to thank you profusely - standards are so low they expect the funeral to be done badly."

Then some of us started providing a service for atheists and agnostics who didn't want God at the funeral. There weren't many of us to begin with but the numbers have grown. However, more doesn't necessarily mean better.

There are some 'humanist' officiants (mentioning no names) who seem to have an inflated opinion of their abilities and some peculiar ideas about their role. More or less anyone can set him or herself up as an officiant or celebrant, whether he or she is 'accredited' or not. It's not surprising that the prospect of filling this very important role in other people's lives, however briefly, should attract people who quite like the idea of being very important. Such people, however well-intentioned, ought to have a Government Health Warning stamped across their foreheads. One give-away is their use of a "Sunday voice" and an accompanying "caring" expression.

The client, why may never have had to arrange a funeral before, assumes that the officiant knows what he or she is doing. Some do, some don't, and some have a very clear idea of what he or she wants to do, which may not be what he or she ought to do. Dig a little deeper, and you'll probably find that he or she gets a perverse pleasure out of being with bereaved people. They enjoy being close to "real" emotions. Consequently, when the clients stubbornly refuse to share such emotions, they're rather disappointed. They're grief junkies. I knew someone who took this to such extremes that she only did a funeral every few weeks because it took her that long to "recover" from the last one. What's even more ridiculous is that she was appointed to train other officiants!

What an officiant ought not to do is to try and "help people to grieve". I've heard more than one officiant say that this is what they're aiming for, and groaned inwardly. Think about it; a crematorium funeral lasts about 20 to 25 minutes. Are you seriously expected to believe that the officiant should or could fulfil some wonderfully therapeutic healing role, so that everyone goes home having passed a significant stage in "the grieving process"? Give me strength! My advice to would-be officiants? Don't even try.

Walters quotes Roger Grainger, "The main purpose of a funeral is to signify the event of a death," and goes on to write, "It marks that something valuable, a human life, has passed. Whatever else a funeral does or does not so, it must do this."

To mark the end of someone's life, anyone's life, the occasion should be relevant and dignified. To have integrity, it should reflect the life and personality of the deceased, though there's no need to go into details about his or her less attractive qualities. It's important to get things right because there won't be another opportunity. This is why I always offer to check the details with the next of kin or someone he or she has delegated to check them with me. I've heard officiants say they never offer to do this. This is a form of arrogance. It's not their funeral; it's the family's funeral.

So what's the officiant's role? It's not "to help the grieving process". It's to get things right. The grieving will take care of itself.

Funeral etiquette

2007-02-21T11:23:00.002Z

This is an article I posted on the Suffolk Humanists' site 2 years and 42 weeks ago. If you Google 'funeral etiquette' it comes top of the list. It continually comes top of the list of most popular content on our site. It's been visited over 3000 times. I wonder if those who find it consider it useful? It won't tell them what to wear or do. It won't tell them who enters the chapel, church or cemetery first. There are no rules about such things. Still, it might make a few people consider that 'etiquette' at funerals is a bit of a waste of time.

------ o ------

Occasionally I’m asked about appropriate dress for funerals. People who’ve never been to a funeral before, let alone had to arrange one, might worry about ‘doing the right thing’ – the etiquette of mourning. They may be reassured to know that few wear black to funerals any more. Formal clothing, usually in subdued colours, is the usual choice, but you can wear more or less anything, apart from obviously inappropriate beachwear. The point is to show respect by not drawing attention to yourself – this especially applies to the celebrant.

Why black?
Black mourning dress became popular during Queen Victoria’s reign. After Prince Albert died she never wore anything else, and the fashion persisted until the late 20th century. Most people don’t know why they wear black, if they do, or why they should. It began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when death rituals demonstrated worth and social status. The poor could not afford to spend a lot of money on funerals, but the middle and upper classes could and did, by spending money on clothing, coaches, coffins and all the accessories that an increasing number of commercial funeral directors were only too keen to sell them. This display was designed to show they were respectable people. The poor did their best to imitate them, and show that they too were respectable, even if the best they could do was borrow or improvise mourning dress. When I was a child, many people still covered mirrors, closed curtains and observed other strange customs on the death of a relative. It all contributed to a gloomy, morbid feeling, which was frightening for children – who were, in any case, not generally encouraged to attend a funeral.

Modern funerals
A retired funeral director I know feels that things have gone downhill since those days. He says that no one shows respect any more. If a hearse passed you in the street, men used to take off their hats and bow their heads, he says, and male mourners wore black armbands. He doesn’t think the more relaxed approach is an improvement.
Things are changing, but some still use a funeral as an opportunity to display their affluence and respectability. I’ve conducted funerals where the widow and her daughters wore the largest, most ostentatious hats, more suitable for a day at Ascot races. Another not only wore a large black hat, but seemed to be wearing most of her jewellery too. The people in the row behind her were hidden from me.
I don’t know what it is about Essex, but I’ve done funerals there for people who originated in London and had settled in areas like Clacton, where almost everyone wore black, many of the men wore shades, and most of the women wore flashy gold jewellery, with Dallas-style hairdos. When they shook hands, the men had horny manual labourer’s hands and the women had long painted nails. It was like meeting the Mafia.
One of the most striking funeral outfits I’ve seen was at the funeral for a man in his thirties who died of a drugs overdose. Many of the mourners were crusty new age hippies. One was a woman who was about six foot six tall, with a veiled bowler hat over thick dark hair cut pudding basin style in a short bob. She wore an old hacking jacket that had been patched and embroidered over several brightly coloured layers, and a long full purple tulle skirt over black leggings, striped socks, and black DMs. Her make-up was like something out of a circus. As she left she extended a hand, which was clad in fingerless lace gloves, and smiled graciously. I resisted the temptation to curtsey.
When a young Goth woman died, almost everyone at the funeral, including me, wore black and purple – her favourite colours. When a keen camper died, his friends all wore bright Hawaiian short-sleeved shirts in his honour. Sometimes terminally ill people have instructed their family and friends not to wear black but bright colours, and they have.

The rules
I don’t think it matters what you wear for a funeral, as long as you behave in a dignified and respectful manner. Strangely, the most rude and disrespectful people I’ve come across have been elderly women who’ve clearly disapproved of the secular ceremony, and talked in carrying whispers throughout, even during the pause for reflection, or very deaf people who’ve ignored the available loop system and sat at the back, then demanded to know what I’ve said from their neighbour every few minutes. I have, so far, resisted the urge to tell them to shut up.

Click here for Asher Kade's 'Strange History of Funeral Fashion Conventions'

Hitching a ride in a hearse

2007-02-07T00:19:00.000Z

As the old pins don't work so well these days, I asked for a ride in the front of the hearse during a funeral yesterday. The grave was several hundred yards from the chapel; further than I could stagger without appearing inebriated. No problem, said the funeral director.

After the interment, he asked if I'd like another ride in the hearse, back to my car. Yes please, I said. Horizontally or vertically? he asked.

It's nice to feel appreciated

2007-01-20T12:28:00.001Z

Sampler, originally uploaded by Sparrows' Friend.

If a client takes the trouble to write and thank me after I've done a funeral, that's nice. I'm happy with just a letter or a card, or even an email. But some clients have sent gifts too. This is the latest, from the widow and daughter of a man who did a lot of embroidery. They found the little sampler and made it into a card for me.

Among other gifts, I've been given: a needlepoint picture of a dead woman's dogs (based on a photo), a crate of wine, one of Richard Dawkins' books (signed by the whole family), and flowers (lots of times).

The sampler will be framed.

Widow

2006-11-27T17:27:00.000Z

I collect old photographs. This postcard was in a batch I've just bought from a dealer over the Internet. It appears to be a woman wearing mourning dress, though I've never seen this type of bonnet and veil before.

On the back of the card the dealer's written "early Edwardian", and there's a photographer's stamp; "Copyright - Lizzie Caswell Smith, 90 Gt. Russell Street, WC1".

Lizzie Caswell Smith is listed in the National Portrait Gallery's collections, but none of her photographs are shown online. Will have to check the next time I go there.

Grieving by the book

2006-11-26T01:03:00.000Z

Jennifer Saunders' new TV sitcom, Jam & Jerusalem, is about a "Women's Guild" (code for WI) in a West Country village populated by eccentrics.

Sue Johnston plays Sal, the practice nurse in the local health centre, whose husband is the GP. He dies, and her doctor son takes over the practice and makes her redundant. Sounds very gloomy, but it's comedy with pathos.

Anyway, the scene that interested me was when Sal is visited by a "bereavement counsellor". She's taken to sleeping in the dog's basket since her husband died, but apart from that she's being stoical. When a young woman turns up uninvited on her doorstep and tells her she's from "the grieving group", and she's come to help, Sal politely invites her in for a coffee. The counsellor burbles on about how she must be feeling, and the stages of grieving. Sal denies that she's grieving in the order the counsellor suggests she ought to be; she says she thinks she's skipped a few stages, and gone straight to melancholy. Oh no, protests the counsellor, you have to do it in the right order! Sal suddenly realises that the young women is a widow herself. When she asks if she is, the young woman bursts into tears. It seems she's been a widow for five years and is stuck in one of the "stages". Sal comforts her weeping guest, and gives her some advice. Not to worry about "stages", but to set aside an hour a day for grieving, if she must. Otherwise, she must get a new hairdo and buy a new top, and enjoy herself.

There was a strong element of truth in the scene. I've heard people talk about "stages of grieving" and thought it's all nonsense. Everyone grieves in their own way; some quietly, some not so quietly. I've had people ask, "How long will I feel like this?", as though there's a set limit. People can be taken by surprise by a sudden rush of emotion, when they'd thought they had it "under control". The philosopher Prof A C Grayling wrote, "We do not get over losses; we merely learn to live with them." Sal was right - get a new hairdo, buy a new top, and avoid wallowing in stages.

Let's be clear about this...

2006-11-22T22:36:00.000Z

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe.

Thomas Paine, (1737-1809) The Age of Reason

Since I started conducting Humanist funerals in 1991, many more people have become aware that they have a choice about the form a funeral might take.

You can have your traditionally liturgical C of E service, which is often more about God and Jesus and less about the person who’s died.

You can have a non-conformist Christian service of various sorts, which may or may not include a relevant tribute to the deceased.

You can have a ceremony in accord with one of the minority faiths – I’ve never been to any of those, but have heard they vary in the amount of ritual they include.

You can have a pick ‘n mix ceremony that’s not traditionally religious but includes religious elements, like couple of hymns and readings (usually sloppily sentimental) refering to an afterlife. People choose these for a variety of reasons. They might genuinely feel that a hybrid ceremony (as an atheist funeral director I know calls them) is appropriate, as they’re religious but not the organised sort. They might be confused but err on the side of caution – if there is a God, he, she or it might disapprove if he, she or it isn’t given a look in and send you to hell or wherever it is we non-believers are supposed to end up, according to some nasty believers. They might be worried about “what people might think” if they opt for a non-religious ceremony, because some still imagine that atheism is bad, religion is good. They might be too lazy or unimaginative to consider their options. They might be worried about upsetting conservative older relatives who are used to doing things the old-fashioned way, so they add familiar elements to appease them. They might not have any reason worth considering.

You can have a non-religious ceremony that’s conducted by a Humanist celebrant or one of those Civil Ceremonies people, or anyone who provides such a service – it’s a free market.

What bothers me is the number of self-styled “humanist” celebrants (inside and outside the BHA network) who are conducting pick ‘n mix ceremonies. They’re providing “what the families want” they’ll say. If that’s what the families want, fine – we know that such ceremonies are in increasing demand – but any self-respecting atheist won’t provide it. Humanists can be agnostics, they say, though I’m with the late Douglas Adams and the still with us Richard Dawkins in thinking that agnostic equals fence-sitting. However, there’s fence-sitting, and there's climbing over to mouth meaningless stuff rather than lose a client. Where’s their integrity?

Douglas Adams loved Bach's B minor mass, and so do I. There's lots of beautiful music that was written by religious people or for religious people and as long as we don't have to sing words that are either meaningless to me as an atheist, or that express things I profoundly disagree with (such as "All things bright and beautiful, the Lord God made them all") I don't have a problem with including it in a Humanist funeral. I'm OK with the bit in Ecclesiastes about "a time to be born and a time to die" - the bible's an anthology, not the word of God, and some of it's not religious - or with anything written by a religious author that's not actually religious.

There've been requests for inappropriate elements in Humanist funerals, such as a hymn. I've asked people whether they've listened to the words and the answer's often no, not really, or they've said, "But it's not really religious, is it?" about songs like Amazing Grace. When I've read them the words, they've agreed that they're not appropriate for the funeral of a confirmed atheist. That's the trouble with religion; so few people have really thought about it, and how little sense it makes.

Ask yourself; would you rather have a celebrant who actually believed what he or she is saying and who stood for something (even if you don’t agree with him or her), or would you rather have someone who’d say anything, however insincere? Suit yourself. I know what I’d prefer.

Humanists, the genuine variety, reject religion and are keen to demonstrate that it isn’t necessary for a satisfying rite of passage ceremony that reflects the personality and beliefs of someone who lived, and died, without it. Compromising our Humanist principles to provide a service for people who have plenty of alternatives is a betrayal of all the sacrifices that have been made by those who've fought for the right to be free of religion. Not only that - the people who do it, don't get it - Humanism, that is.

No afterlife, thanks.

2006-10-24T21:34:00.001+01:00

If you read my last post, you’ll know how I feel about an afterlife, life after death, or whatever you call it – there isn’t one. At least, I hope there isn’t one. I’m 99.99% sure there isn’t one. I’d be bloody surprised, and disappointed, if there is one. I don’t want one.

Many of those who’ll say they’re not religious still say they think there’s “something” after death. They’ll still talk about seeing Mum, Dad, or whoever has died recently, again. Ask them how and where, and they’ll be stumped for an answer. Not that I do. Ask them. That would be insensitive, I suppose, when they’re grieving. Still, I’d like to.

At a recent local Forum of Faiths, all the other speakers had different versions of an afterlife to explain. Actually, I’m not sure they did explain, now I come to think about it. But they all expected an afterlife, where their God would be waiting for them. Would they spend eternity with people they liked, or would they have to share it with people they didn’t especially like? Would they be as they were when they died, even if they were old and wobbly? Or would they be restored to youth and vigour? Would they be recognisable at all, or survive as a patch of bright light, a spirit? None of them could tell me. They were all vague about the details.

A few years ago, I took part in a local radio discussion about whether or not there’s an afterlife. The presenter wanted to talk about something that was more challenging than the usual local radio blandness, so she could refer to it in some sort of a presenter’s seminar she’d be going to. There were three of us; me, a Christian evangelist, and a woman who wrote books about psychic phenomena. The latter wasn’t in the studio with us. No, she didn’t just send psychic messages; she took part by phone. The evangelist was in the area because he was due to have a rally of some sort that evening, where he hoped to save a few sinners. The presenter revealed that the evangelist had lost his son in a road accident, fairly recently. It didn’t seem quite right to challenge him about whether or not he’d see his son again, under the circumstances, but he was keen to tell us that his son had felt there’s an afterlife too. The woman on the phone told everyone she’d got evidence of an afterlife, because so many people had told her about their experiences. As the discussion progressed, the evangelist got into his stride. I clearly annoyed him, especially when I said that I hoped there isn’t an afterlife, and asked what I’d be expected to do for eternity. God would have “responsibilities” for me, I was told. Surely, I said, there are many who’ll have had enough of responsibility at the end of their lives. Wouldn’t it be cruel to foist more on them? That made him crosser. How dare I question God’s wisdom and work plan? He didn’t actually say that, but it’s what he implied. At the end of the discussion, I think I won on points.

Some might imagine that when you die, your “soul” flies off, like Tinkerbell, and finds another host to inhabit. Wasn’t there a character like that in one of the TV sci-fi series a while ago? Was it one of the Star Trek offshoots? Deep Space Nine? No, hang on – it was a sort of parasite that outlived its hosts and then moved on, with all their collective memories intact. That was it. But I digress…

Some seem to imagine that people hang about, watching over their loved ones. My mum did. When I was young she used to tell me her mother, and God, were watching over me. I resisted the urge to say that there was no bloody privacy in our house anyway, without them spying on me too. That would have upset her.
In The Life of Reason, the Spanish philosopher George Santayana wrote:

It would be truly agreeable for any man to sit in well-watered gardens with Mohammed, clad in green silks, drinking delicious sherbets, and transfixed by the gazelle-like glance of some young girl, all innocence and fire. Amid such scenes a man might remain himself and might fulfil hopes that he had actually cherished on earth. He might also find his friends again, which in somewhat generous minds is perhaps the thought that chiefly sustains interest in a posthumous existence. But to recognize his friends a man must find them in their bodies, with their familiar habits, voices, and interests; for it is surely an insult to affection to say that he could find them in an eternal formula expressing their idiosyncrasy. When, however, it is clearly seen that another life, to supplement this one, must closely resemble it, does not the magic of immortality altogether vanish? Is such a reduplication of earthly society at all credible? And the prospect of awakening again among houses and trees, among children and dotards, among wars and rumours of wars, still fettered to one personality and one accidental past, still uncertain of the future, is not this prospect wearisome and deeply repulsive? Having passed through these things once and bequeathed them to posterity, is it not time for each soul to rest?

An afterlife – it’s all wishful thinking; a denial of death. Some hate the idea of not being here any more. Others hate the finality of separation from their loved one. I can understand that, but it doesn’t make immortality true. Let them imagine it, but don’t try to impose that view on me.
Immortality’s a horrible idea. In Constructions, Michael Frayn wrote:

Those who wish to abolish death (whether by physical or metaphysical means) – at what stage of life do they want the process to be halted? At the age of twenty? At thirty-five, in our prime? To be thirty-five for two years sounds attractive, certainly. But for three years? A little dull, surely. For five years – ridiculous. For ten – tragic.
The film is so absorbing that we want this bit to go on, and on…
You mean, you want the projector stopped, to watch a single motionless frame? No, no, no, but … Perhaps you’d like the whole sequence made up as an endless band, and projected indefinitely? Not that, either.
The sea and the stars and the wastes of the desert go on forever, and will not die. But the sea and the stars and the wastes of the desert are dead already.

Over the Rainbow Bridge

2006-09-02T01:00:00.000+01:00

It’s bad enough when people get yuckily sentimental over dead friends and relatives, often the same friends and relatives they used to ignore or whinge about while they were alive, but when they start going into yuck overdrive over a dead pet, I give up.

No, I’m not a heartless bitch who can’t understand it when people grieve over a dog or cat – I’ve done it, and will again – but there are limits.

Since friend Jan announced the death of a much-loved cat on Flickr, I’ve discovered the ‘Rainbow Bridge’ group. What’s a Rainbow Bridge? You may well ask. It’s what dead pet owners will cross with their dead pets on their way to Heaven, apparently.

The Rainbow Bridge Flickr group quotes an anonymous author (doubtless he or she was too ashamed of the rubbish he or she had written to actually put a name to it), who describes how old, sick and injured pets are made whole again…

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent. His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together...

Then what? You spend Eternity stuck there, playing the same games over and over until you’re fed up with throwing balls and stroking heads? The trouble with most people’s idea of an afterlife is that they haven’t thought of the consequences. Boredom, for one thing...

When love flourished in M for medical textbooks, and a story of yearning

2006-08-23T12:53:00.000+01:00

The Observer | Review | When love flourished in M for medical textbooks

This story reminded me of a client. She was a Jew who came to England as a refugee, like the subject of the story. She was also a doctor who had to retrain before she could practice medicine here. For a while, she worked as a nurse. By the time she retired she was a senior doctor in the public health service. She married an English engineer in the 1950s and they lived in a mews house in Chelsea, where they entertained lots of cultured, artistic and lively people at frequent dinner parties. Then they commissioned a well-known architect to design a bungalow for them, in Suffolk. It was an open-plan, modern design with huge picture windows - the sort that caused a stir in the sixties. She took me to see it once. It had been empty for some time, but you could still see what had appealed to them.

They never had children. Her husband developed dementia and ended up in a nursing home, so they were separated for several years at the end of his life. I did his funeral, which was how I came to befriend her. She was crippled with arthritis and chronic asthma and living in council-owned sheltered accommodation, a tiny flat in the middle of town. Her neighbours were elderly Suffolk people, nothing like the friends they'd had in Chelsea, so they had little in common. She was desperate for stimulation and conversation so I took her out when I could, which wasn't often. A few months before she died she said, "Never grow old," with anger and frustration in her voice. She also spoke about the "yearning" some people have for something above and beyond the limitations of life. At her funeral we played "Upon Going to Sleep", the first of Richard Strauss's "Four Last Songs", which she'd chosen for her husband's funeral. It's a musical version of a Hermann Hesse poem, and one of the most beautiful pieces of music I know. If it hadn't been for my friend, I might never have discovered it. If I was a fundamentalist atheist, I'd reject it because of the reference to a soul, but I haven't, because it describes perfectly the yearning that my friend experienced in her old age and decrepitude.

Upon Going to Sleep
Hermann Hesse

Made tired by the day now,
my passionate longing
shall welcome the starry night
like a tired child.

Hands, leave all your activity,
brow, forget all thought,
for all my senses
are about to go to sleep.

And my soul, unguarded,
will float freely,
in order to live in the magic circle
of the night
deep and a thousand-fold.

Resist the temptation

2006-02-07T14:59:00.001Z

A programme on BBC4 last night called ‘The British Way of Death’ included part of an interview with Agony Aunt Virginia Ironside, who made it clear that she thinks it’s a bad idea to plan your own funeral. I agree. Apart from paying in advance through a ‘funeral plan’ (though it probably makes more sense to save in some other way), and maybe suggesting some music and a reading or two, planning your own funeral can cause huge problems.

I’ve written elsewhere about the funeral of a close relative last year, and about Claire Rayner's funeral plans. Forgive the repetition, but (as you may have noticed) I feel strongly about this. If you're tempted to make a wish list for you own funeral, DON'T DO IT!

My relative and a friend spent an afternoon drinking wine and planning her funeral – she had terminal cancer – and the result was a shopping list of expensive and problematical wishes and instructions about the form her funeral should take. It was one of the least satisfactory funerals I’ve ever attended, with stressed relatives endeavouring to tick everything off her list, no matter how unnecessary or complicated. For example, she wanted karaoke, a barbecue and fireworks at a party afterwards. Why? Because it’s what she’d have liked if she’d still been here? Some people joined in the karaoke, while the more sober looked on uncomfortably. Weeks afterwards, people told me they thought it was a very strange occasion. The barbecue had to be done on a cold and windy patio, definitely not like a spontaneous summer party. As for the fireworks; it was not permitted to use them at the community centre where we held the party, because the insurance premiums would have been far higher than any rockets, so they had a few sparklers instead (there was a fireworks party, a couple of months later, but I didn’t go). The friend who'd help to make the plans that drunken afternoon seemed to think she ought to have been put in charge of the party, and got maudlin drunk while the family did their best to ignore her.

The ceremony itself was strange. X said she didn’t want anyone talking about her. Instead, a clergyman said a few words and someone read a poem. Otherwise, it was all music, a sort of desert island disks, one after another. It was all show and no substance.

A couple of years ago, I did a funeral that included a tribute the deceased had written herself, in the third person. Her family seemed to regard her efforts with amusement. They were going to remember her as someone who didn't trust anyone else to do the job properly. The tribute was a brief chronological account of her life, but gave little away about how she felt about any of the people who'd shared it with her.

I’ve heard of serious family disagreements over funerals like this, with people getting very het up over what they can or can’t do, and all because the dear departed hadn’t understood what a funeral is for. It’s not an opportunity to try to influence other people’s reactions to your death from beyond the grave (or crematorium furnace, as the case may be). It’s not for you to tell other people how to remember you. It’s something you have no control over – let those who survive you do it their way. Hopefully, it will be relevant. They won’t, for example, give you a religious funeral if you were a committed atheist, unless it’s to spite you for being a pain in the arse. If you have any consideration for the living, you won’t expect them to jump through hoops to satisfy your expectations – why should you care? You’ll be dead, for goodness’ sake! That’s partly the problem though, isn’t it? People who make elaborate plans for their own funeral find it very hard to imagine not being here any more. Well, the thing is, when you’re dead that’s it. You don’t get to attend your own funeral, except in posthumous form. You won’t hear the tributes from inside your coffin. Believe me – you won’t. Just as well really, if you're the controlling sort. You might be tempted to hammer on the lid from the inside, screaming 'No! Not like that!'

A funeral might celebrate your life, if you're lucky, or it might not. Some people just want to get it over with. As for what they'll do there: some may weep and wail (though the noisiest may be weeping crocodile tears) while others remain calm and dignified. It’s not up to you what they do. Only the vain and the controlling would want to encourage any particular response. If you imagine that you’re making it ‘easier’ for your family to plan things, think again. It could have the opposite effect from the one you're aiming for anyway. People might remember your self-indulgently weird funeral, and wonder if they had you all wrong and you weren't a nice sensible person after all.

A few years ago, a funeral celebrant I know spoke of helping several people plan their own funerals. I advised her not to, but she went ahead anyway. Later, I heard that one family had told her thank you, but they were going to do the funeral their way and wouldn’t need any of the stuff she’d prepared. I resisted the temptation to say ‘I told you so’.

Cadavers wanted

2005-12-31T02:16:00.002Z

One of the people who responded to Claire Rayner's dilemma (see last post) suggested that since Claire had been a nurse she was surprised she hadn't considered donating her body to science, avoiding the need for a conventional funeral.

Now, why didn't I think of that? I've got the forms to donate my body to a teaching hospital near here - must get around to filling them in.

There's a shortage of cadavers, so medical students are not being given the opportunity to dissect real bodies, which isn't good.

After dissection, the bodies aren't simply discarded - they're cremated, with a committal ceremony attended by medical staff. A friend who died last year donated her body to science. Her family received a lovely thank you letter from the medical school, and a copy of the committal service address.

To donate your body, write to the nearest medical school - your local hospital will be able to tell you which one it is.

Claire Rayner's dilemma

2005-12-11T22:41:00.001Z

Past-President of the BHA Claire Rayner wrote an article for today's Observer about her funeral plans. She'd left instructions 'that my family cremate me to the sound of New Orleans funeral jazz and follow that with a party with lots of champagne, much laughter and cheerful reminiscence, climaxing with the most splendid of firework displays and my ashes whooshing up in the last big rocket.'

Mmm. I remember hearing about an ex-RAF type who left instructions that his ashes should be scattered from a plane. They were, and then they all blew back into the plane, which had to be thoroughly gone over with a dust pan and brush when it landed.

I've written to the Observer as follows:

Claire Rayner's rocket may not get very far ('Should I go out with a bang or be a bit greener?') as many party venues won't allow fireworks unless you pay a stonking insurance premium. It sounds like a good idea, to leave instructions about parties and laughter after you're dead, but it can all fall horribly flat. I've done lots of funerals as a humanist celebrant and I'm sometimes asked for advice about funeral and post-funeral arrangements by the terminally ill or the tidy, like Claire. I tell people to resist the temptation to leave instructions about parties and the like - if they want a party, they'll have one, but some families find that striving to follow their dear departed's instructions makes a stressful situation even more stressful, especially if the practicalities haven't been thought through. When a relative died earlier this year she left a list that included a party with fireworks (we ended up with sparklers because of the insurance problem) and karaoke. Quite a few guests left early, feeling uncomfortable about the enforced jollity.

As for environmental considerations - Cardboard coffins are OK for burials, but some crematoria don't like them because they burn too fast, igniting before the cremator doors are closed, which upsets the staff. It's true there aren't many green burial sites yet, but there'll be more if there's a demand; some plans have been abandoned because of nimby planning objections. Maybe the Swedes have the right idea; the town of Jonkoping will offer freeze-dried burials by 2007. Bodies will be frozen in liquid nitrogen then broken into dust (like coffee granules) that can be dug into your garden or given a shallow burial, pushing up daisies within weeks. If Claire can hang on for a few more years, maybe there'll be something similar in the London area?

Only the Best

2005-12-03T15:27:00.000Z

George Best’s funeral was yet another OTT display of sentimentalised mass ‘mourning’. I switched on the TV while it was on, and could have sworn I heard the commentator say that the crowds lining the funeral route were applauding ‘at the family’s request’. Applause is supposed to be spontaneous, isn’t it? What next? ‘The family wishes you to weep and wail'? Give me strength!

I emailed the BBC to complain about the frequency of reports on George’s dying, along the lines of ‘He’s not quite dead yet,’ ‘He’s still dying,’ ‘His family has gathered by his bedside, but he’s still not dead.’ It was as bad as the last Pope’s demise. I asked if this would be the pattern whenever a celebrity was dying in future. Please, I wrote, tell us he’s ill, then tell us he’s dead – leave the rest out.

At the funeral in Stormont Castle, Northern Irish TV presenter and football fan Eamonn Holmes said, ‘No mere mortal could do what he did on the pitch…’ OK, so if he wasn’t a ‘mere mortal’, how’d he manage to wreck two livers?

Funerals for bad people

2005-11-08T01:36:00.000Z

The Underworld

Nobody has to have a funeral. It’s up to your next of kin, or whoever’s responsible for tidying up after you’ve left, whether or not there is any sort of ceremony, and if there is, what form it takes.

Criminals, those blown to bits by guns on the battlefield, or the anonymous victims of massacres hidden in shallow graves, have all been denied any sort of dignified send-off, but otherwise most people are given a funeral of some sort, if only because it’s expected.

In an article due to be published in this month’s Tablet, writer and broadcaster Libby Purves describes the experience of attending a Humanist funeral conducted by one of my colleagues. Admitting she felt apprehensive at the prospect of a non-religious send-off, she’s complimentary about the funeral. She wrote, “… a good humanist can, I thought, do a rite of passage and celebrate a good life better than quite a few clergy I have heard, bumbling on coldly and impersonally at far less kindly funerals.” But then she goes on to ask, “… what it would have been like if we had been seeing off someone far less amiable, and not at all virtuous.”

She asks, “What then for the humanist funeral address? There are not, of course, many such people - most of us have redeeming features somewhere - but there are a few about whom it would be difficult to work up much of an encomium without stretching truth to the point of ludicrous embarrassment. So perhaps that’s when you really need a Christian funeral, with its assertion of the ultimate irreducible value of every immortal soul, the possibility of redemption, the mystery of forgiveness and the human spirit whose depths can be seen and judged only by God.

“Perhaps it is the worst of us who most need religion to give dignity to our passing. The humanist perspective is fine and admirable, as long as your life is visibly decent. It is when we become atrocious, temporarily or permanently, that the Christian message becomes indispensable. You have to be quite exceptionally nice if you’re going to try and do without it. I do not think I had ever quite realized this before.”

Of course, it all depends what you think a funeral is for. Presumably, Libby, like many religious people, sees it as fulfilling several functions, including sending the deceased off to meet God and explain him or herself, before spending eternity somewhere they call an afterlife, whatever or wherever that is. The ferryman Charon used to row the dead across the river Styx to the Underworld; nowadays most people’s idea of the afterlife is altogether more comforting, with only nice people to keep them company. Gives me the heebie-jeebies, just thinking about it. If there was an afterlife, which I’m sure there isn’t, I’d rather not go there, thank you – but that’s another story.

A few years ago, I visited a man whose father had recently died. After I’d established who was who in the family, I said, “Tell me about your dad.” This big tough-looking middle-aged man’s face crumpled. For a moment I thought he was distressed by grief, but I soon realised it was more complicated than that. They were tears of anger, frustration and great sadness for his mother and the rest of the family, who’d had to suffer living with a man who was a bully. His mother had died several years before. This was so unfair, he said; she’d never had an opportunity to escape the brute of a man she’d married; never known any happiness since the day she’d married him. It would be a travesty if I were to describe this man in favourable terms. There was nothing good to say about him, and the son didn’t want me to. It would have been an insult to his mother, and to everyone else who’d been made miserable by his father. So I didn’t say anything good about him. I did, however, give a brief account of his life, and I did talk about the effect he’d had on other people’s lives, without embellishment. In situations like this, I try to reassure the family that their feelings are quite understandable. Despite being the victims of other people’s cruelty, many of those who’ve been abused feel guilty, mistakenly thinking that if they’d done things differently, their abuser might have been kinder to them; that it was partly their fault. Then they feel that it must be wrong to feel glad that someone’s dead. Why ever should they? I find ways of congratulating the victims of bullies and abusers for the fact that they’d come through it all with their humanity intact, and offer them hope that their future might be happier than their past. We can’t stay in the past, nor spend all our time blaming what’s happened to us for preventing us from finding fulfilment in the future. Was this man’s father happy in his brutality? No, judging from his foul temper and general negativity. Bad people are generally unhappy people. Even those who take pleasure in cruelty are not happy. Afterwards, my client thanked me for what I’d said. He said he felt better for having had the funeral, and for the way it was done. Some people who’d known his father might not have appreciated how he behaved towards his family, and might have been surprised to learn that he was not kind and considerate towards them, when he was so good at turning on the charm for other people – as is often the case with bullies. Redemption? Well, if anyone’s God were to forgive him, I’d question his, her or its judgement.

I’ve done quite a few funerals for people whose behaviour was far from perfect. There are a few lovable rogues whose families still love them despite their carryings-on, rolling their eyes as they tell yet another story about what he or she got up to. There are people who were clearly bonkers, who couldn’t control themselves, and who wore everyone out. There are liars and cheats and drug-addicts and drunks and thieves. One young man got himself killed late one night a few miles from his home by staggering into the middle of a dual carriageway off a slip road after he’d crashed a stolen car into a tree. He was hit by two lorries, one after the other, so his partner was advised not to view the body – he’d been flattened. He’d fathered several children who lived with their mother in a hovel of a cottage on benefits. He’d never had a job but stole for a living, then spent the money on drink and drugs. His family had disowned him. What happened to him wasn’t really a surprise to anyone, except perhaps his girlfriend, who naively thought he’d keep his promises to sort himself out. I got the impression that most of the people who came to his funeral were just reassuring themselves that he was really dead, and that they wouldn’t have to worry about a knock on the door from the police again. There have been a few funerals like that, often as the result of sheer stupidity on the part of the deceased. The families were given permission, in coded form, to feel relieved and to get on with the rest of their lives. What else did I say? A brief history, perhaps. References to some of their earlier escapades. An acknowledgement of the difficulties he or she had caused other people, and the efforts that had been made to help him or her. Stories that reflect the way that those affected had given support to one another. A suggestion, maybe, that this person was deficient in some way; lacking an instinct for self-preservation; lacking an appreciation of the effect of his or her behaviour. Then, at the end, a suggestion that no one need worry about him or her any more. Not so much goodbye and good riddance, as simply goodbye.

Now what would a priest have said about any of them? Pious sentiment about forgiveness would not have gone down well, and might only have added to the feeling of confused guilt that people need to leave behind. Goodbye, and get on with it.

Libby Purves wrote, “Perhaps it is the worst of us who most need religion to give dignity to our passing.” The behaviour of the living is what gives the occasion “dignity”, not the reputation of the deceased.

Freeze-drying bodies

2005-10-25T13:33:00.000+01:00

British local authorities are struggling to keep pace with demand for burial space and to conform to new rules about emissions from crematoria. 'Green' burial sites, where trees are planted on graves instead of headstones, are few and far between.

The Swedes have found a new way to solve the problem - freeze-drying. Bodies are frozen in liquid nitrogen, and then, in their brittle state, broken into dust that can be buried in a shallow grave. I've heard old gardeners say that when they die they'd like to be buried in their compost heap. Well, now maybe they can.

One of my colleagues emailed recently:

'With British Crematoria ... facing millions of pounds of upgrading to come into line on new emissions limits it might be a good time for them to do a bit of lateral thinking. X at Y Crem told me recently that things are so bad in Z Borough Council they seldom plan anything more than a month ahead and most business is conducted on a "firefighting" basis. I don't think Z Crem will be a pioneer. Might leave the door open for the private sector to have a go.'

Up in smoke

2005-10-13T20:55:00.000+01:00

Up in smoke
Originally uploaded by Sparrows' Friend.

British crematoria are required by law to keep emissions to a minimum. Before we were so fussy about pollution (because the dangers weren’t recognised), bodies were cremated in all sorts of unsuitable outfits, and with all sorts of strange items in the coffins. It’s been known for relatives or friends to try to smuggle alcohol into a coffin - "he liked a little drink" – or to put coins in to pay debts. Nowadays, the coffin, lining and robes must all be made of approved materials, and checks are made that no one’s tried to place anything unsafe or unusual inside.

Cardboard coffins are becoming popular, but staff say they sometimes burn too fast. If the coffin catches fire before the door is closed, the body is exposed.

One of the latest concerns is about pollution from mercury in tooth fillings. They won’t take out your teeth, so they have to try to find other ways to stop it from escaping into the atmosphere.

Mourning sickness

2005-09-02T01:46:00.001+01:00

Rosie Boycott, former editor of The Independent, made a TV programme about false grief for Channel Five, shown last week. I was practically cheering when I saw it. In 2002 a Welsh academic, Dr James Thomas, claimed that 'the majority did not mourn for Diana', as the conclusion to his research. Think-tank Civitas published a report in February 2004, claiming that a vocal minority indulge in 'recreational mourning'. It's all very unhealthy. It's also very annoying, because the media, including the BBC, will insist on referring to 'a nation in mourning', or 'a city in mourning', such as when Iraq hostage Ken Bigley was murdered, whenever there's been a tragedy like this. Excuse me - but who asked the 'nation' or the 'city' whether we really were in mourning for someone we never knew? One particularly shocking result of the hysteria over Diana's death was the huge amount of money spent on flowers by members of the public, left to rot in the streets, together with soggy teddy bears and pathetic love notes. More than a million bouquets were left at Kensington Palace, her home. Multiply that by the cost of an average bouquet, and you can see that London florists made a lot of money around the time of the funeral. Imagine how that money could have been used by some cash-strapped charitable organisations, including the ones that Diana supported, such for landmine victims, or AIDS patients.

On the day of Princess Diana's funeral I conducted a wedding ceremony in a small hotel in Suffolk. The couple had been expected to cancel their wedding by some of their silliest friends, although the arrangements had been made for months. They asked me if I thought they should, as they didn't want to appear heartless and uncaring, which they emphatically were not. I said no, they should go ahead. It was strange, driving to the venue, because the roads were so quiet. Hotel guests were glued to the telly in the lounge next door to the wedding room, watching the funeral. They cast disapproving glances in our direction as we trooped through to the reception in the garden. Bloomin' cheek! Only weeks before, the tabloid press had been depicting Diana as a floozy, out gallivanting with her 'boyfriend', the Fayed playboy. Now they were making out she was some sort of saint.

A year after the death, I did a Thought for the Day on local radio, as follows:

I didn't mourn the death of Diana, nor did many other people. How could we? It was all such a waste, and very sad for her family, but we didn't know her. Grief is personal.

Throughout history, humankind has mourned its dead in a variety of ways in accord with the customs of the community. It's different now. Things are less clear. The media, especially television, is a huge influence. There is a lot of confusion. People seem to want to be told what to do, as though there's an etiquette of mourning. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why so many people behaved the way they did a year ago, when crowds lined the streets of London around the palaces and along the route of the funeral procession. Maybe for a few hours those people felt a sense of community, otherwise missing from their lives.

A year ago I was on Radio Suffolk talking about the news of Diana's death with Rachel (the presenter). I said that many people seemed to have lost a sense of proportion. I saw Rachel wince, anticipating a backlash from enraged listeners, but the only calls we had were from people who said they agreed with me but hadn't liked to say so. I resented the way that those of us who didn't identify with the 'we' the commentators kept talking about were discouraged from saying anything at all, even from saying that we felt it was all a bit excessive. Too many people made a virtue out of weeping for Diana. Weeping for her was something you did or didn't do, but no one should have been made to feel that if they had no tears they should apologise for it.

Grief, the genuine article, affects everyone differently. Some go quiet. Some weep. Some get angry. Some want to be alone. Some want to be with others. Some do all these things. The situation changes daily. Grief affects us emotionally and physically. Some people, bereaved for the first time, are shocked by how little control they have over it. If you loved someone, even if you didn't always like him or her, grief is the very natural consequence of losing them. And it's personal - —very, very personal.

So if you feel there must be something wrong with you because you haven'’t been swept away on a tide of popular emotion, I can assure you there isn't. Many other people feel like you, but just don't like to say so. As Shakespeare wrote:

... to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

25 October - update

A Story from the Telegraph:

A passer-by saw what he or she thought was a dead human foetus in a Liverpool alleyway, and after a few days the area was cluttered with the usual soggy teddy bears, dead flowers and mawkish messages. It turned out to be a dead chicken, the police said yesterday, not a human being.

Be honest

2005-07-31T15:10:00.000+01:00

The staff at a crematorium see and hear hundreds of funerals. "How's the new music system working?" I asked an attendant the other week. Instead of supplying CDs to play at funerals, we have to tell them what the family wants and they get it downloaded and play it through their system, which means that my friend must sit through more funerals than he used to. He responded gloomily, “Oh, they’re all wonderful!” He didn’t mean that the funerals were wonderful. He meant that the deceased were all supposed to be wonderful, according to their eulogies, which cannot possibly be true. Everyone lived an exemplary life, they were all loved, no one had anything negative to say about any of them, and – he went on – they keep singing the same hymns, over and over again! No wonder he’s bored!

I’d gone to conduct a funeral for a very old woman who wasn’t wonderful. Her daughter read a tribute that was painfully honest about the hurt she’d caused by being emotionally cold and detached. She had never, ever told her children she loved them, or shown any physical affection – no hugs or kisses, praise or encouragement. I wondered why she’d been like that. Maybe she’d been deprived of affection during her own childhood. Maybe she had a personality disorder. It’s good that her daughter hadn’t followed the same pattern. Some people never escape their early conditioning, others transcend it. In old age, the mother had had dementia. She forgot everyone and everything. She was oblivious to the hurt she’d caused. Perhaps she always had been.

I didn’t see the attendant after the funeral, so I didn’t get his reaction. We hadn’t sung any boring hymns. The deceased was described honestly, though it was clear that her family still loved her, and grieved for her. They also grieved for what they’d never had - love and affection.

Funerals don’t have to be all the same. People are different, but mostly flawed to some extent – some more than others. If we’re described solely in glowing terms after we’re dead, however imperfect we might have been, we won’t be remembered as we really were. Voltaire wrote, “We owe respect to the living: to the dead we owe only truth.”

Horses, not a hearse

2005-05-05T19:31:00.000+01:00

Kate's funeral 6
Originally uploaded by Feed The Birds.

Two Suffolk Punches, an ancient rare breed of heavy horses, pull a wagon carrying a coffin to the crematorium. This was at the request of the deceased, a relative of mine, who loved horses, especially this sort of horse (for more pictures, click on this picture).

Many people don't know that they can do more or less what they like at a British funeral. You don't have to use a funeral director; you needn't have a conventional hearse; you needn't have a conventional religious funeral; you can be buried in your own garden (subject to a few sensible rules); you needn't have a headstone; you can have a tree planted on your grave. There are many possibilities.

Would suggest, however, that if you make very elaborate plans for your own funeral, you may make if more difficult for your family and friends to grieve as they suffer the additional stress of trying to realise your wishes. If you think you're going to make things easier for them by arranging everything, think again.

Choose some music, maybe. Choose where you want it to happen. Write a few lines of farewell (resisting the urge to settle any scores posthumously), or choose a poem or two. Suggest a charity that might benefit from your death. Funerals are like weddings, in some respects. Spending a lot of money on them doesn't guarantee a satisfactory result. It's the content that matters, not the show.

On the fear of death

2005-04-30T14:20:00.000+01:00

"Men fear Death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other."

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Of Death

"All say, 'How hard it is that we have to die'- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live."

Mark Twain (1835-1910), Pudd'nhead Wilson

"I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens."

Woody Allen (1935-), Getting Even

Quotes from The Oxford Book of Death, Ed. D J Enright.