Good Funeral Guide

Gift or garbage?

2009-07-16T16:01:00.005+01:00

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust?

You have an intense relationship with your body. Clad and looking its best it is the embodiment of all that you are, an essential element of your public personality and your personal identity. By it others know you. It is you made manifest. You can drive around in a different car and you wouldn’t kid anyone that that's not you inside. Drive around in a different body, even your best friend wouldn’t know you. For all that you deplore the less comely or successful bits, it is precious to you.

The same goes for the bodies of those you love. They are more than vehicles. And they are precious.

These feelings alter as bodies age and become deplorable.

But it’s death that makes all the difference.

How precious is a body then, when it’s dead? What honour is due to it? What celebration? “It’s only a shell,” people say, for all that they don’t really believe that, for all that a shell is hard and a body is not, it’s nothing like a shell.

Old habits die hard. Most of us reckon it a duty to cherish dead bodies, though we know well enough that dissolution awaits. We blather about shells and empty vessels even as we sentimentally hand over the carrier bag of clothes to the undertaker. We still want our dead to look their best.

A person’s personality is very evidently absent from their corpse. So their corpse is clearly not them any more. Which causes us to wonder, some of us, about the soul, the spirit, where that's gone, if anywhere, and what is the relationship between body and spirit, are they one or are they separate? Do we get to be resurrected in our earthly body? Does our spirit live on in some undefined way? Or is that all wishful tosh?

Does a corpse merit a funeral? Does a funeral need a corpse? If you want to commemorate the life and celebrate the spirit and all the stuff that lives on, what the heck’s that dead body doing there? When Arthur Miller was asked if he was going to the funeral of his ex-wife, Marilyn Monroe, he answered, “Why should I go? She won’t be there.” When John Lennon died, Yoko Ono made sure there’d be no focus on his bullet-ridden dead body by having it cremated unceremoniously, unwitnessed. She held a memorial ceremony instead, to take place everywhere and anywhere. “Pray for his soul from wherever you are,” she said. And we did.

It takes some intellectual rigour to see the corpse in this way, see it for what it is if that’s how you see things, and then get rid of it of as you would a dead car. What’ll the neighbours say?

And it is for this reason, and out of cultural habit, that we have never, in the UK, gone in for having the bodies of our dead towed away and scrapped. They do in the US. It’s quite big over there (and it gives the undertakers sleepless nights). Direct cremation*, they call it. Cheap as chips. Bake and shake. Ruthless, in its way.

I never thought it would jump the Atlantic, but it has. We now have our first direct cremation service over here and it’s busy. Simplicity Cremations, it’s called. Done and dusty for just over a grand. Its creator, Nick Gandon, is a fan of this blog, so he’s clearly a good thing.

I think this marks a significant cultural shift.

There are three sides to direct cremation, just as there are to everything.

It fosters denial in those who will not face and engage with the terrifying reality.

It’s the quickest, cheapest way to get a body scrapped.

It’s a great way to prepare a body for disposal. It makes it portable, durable, divisible. For people who think this way, expense may not be an issue. They can spend their money after disposal, not before, on a memorial event of their own devising.

It’s not for me. But I bet Nick has some interesting clients.

* The body is taken directly from the place of death and cremated in a simple container. There is no funeral service.

How to watch your brother die

2009-07-13T17:14:00.001+01:00

How To Watch Your Brother Die

For Carl Morse

When the call comes, be calm.
Say to your wife, "My brother is dying. I have to fly
to California."
try not to be shocked that he already looks like
a cadaver.
Say to the young man sitting by your brother's side,
"I'm his brother."
Try not to be shocked when the young man says,
"I'm his lover. Thanks for coming."

Listen to the doctor with a steel face on.
Sign the necessary forms.
Tell the doctor you will take care of everything.
Wonder why doctors are so remote.

Watch the lover's eyes as they stare into
your brother's eyes as they stare into
space.
Wonder what they see there.
Remember the time he was jealous and
opened your eyebrow with a sharp stick.
Forgive him out loud
even if he can't
understand you.
Realize the scar will be
all that's left of him.

Over coffee in the hospital cafeteria
say to the lover, "You're an extremely good-looking
young man."
Hear him say,
"I never thought I was good enough looking to
deserve your brother."

Watch the tears well up in his eyes. Say,
"I'm sorry. I don't know what it means to be
the lover of another man."
Hear him say,
"Its just like a wife, only the commitment is
deeper because the odds against you are so much
greater."
Say nothing, but
take his hand like a brother's.

Drive to Mexico for unproven drugs that might
help him live longer.
Explain what they are to the border guard.
Fill with rage when he informs you,
"You can't bring those across."
Begin to grow loud.
Feel the lover's hand on your arm
restraining you. See in the guard's eye
how much a man can hate another man.
Say to the lover, "How can you stand it?"
Hear him say, "You get used to it."
Think of one of your children getting used to
another man's hatred.

Call your wife on the telephone. Tell her,
"He hasn't much time.
I'll be home soon." Before you hang up say,
"How could anyone's commitment be deeper than
a husband and a wife?" Hear her say,
"Please. I don't want to know all the details."

When he slips into an irrevocable coma,
hold his lover in your arms while he sobs,
no longer strong. Wonder how much longer
you will be able to be strong.
Feel how it feels to hold a man in your arms
whose arms are used to holding men.
Offer God anything to bring your brother back.
Know you have nothing God could possibly want.
Curse God, but do not
abandon Him.

Stare at the face of the funeral director
when he tells you he will not
embalm the body for fear of
contamination. Let him see in your eyes
how much a man can hate another man.

Stand beside a casket covered in flowers,
white flowers. Say,
"thank you for coming," to each of seven hundred men
who file past in tears, some of them
holding hands. Know that your brother's life
was not what you imagined. Overhear two
mourners say, "I wonder who'll be next?" and
"I don't care anymore,
as long as it isn't you."

Arrange to take an early flight home.
His lover will drive you to the airport.
When your flight is announced say,
awkwardly, "If I can do anything, please
let me know." Do not flinch when he says,
"Forgive yourself for not wanting to know him
after he told you. He did."
Stop and let it soak in. Say,
"He forgave me, or he knew himself?"
"Both," the lover will say, not knowing what else
to do. Hold him like a brother while he
kisses you on the cheek. Think that
you haven't been kissed by a man since
your father died. Think,
"This is no moment to be strong."

Fly first class and drink Scotch. Stroke
your split eyebrow with a finger and
think of your brother alive. Smile
at the memory and think
how your children will feel in your arms
warm and friendly and without challenge.

By Michael Lassell

Light, like the sun

2009-07-11T18:01:00.002+01:00

Here's an interesting photograph taken by Maeve Berry of a body burning in a cremator (for US readers, a retort).

It is one of a series which tracks the process from start to finish.

What do you think? Hellish? Or clean, purifying and beautiful?

See the rest of the series here.

Rhyme and reason

2009-07-08T18:04:00.002+01:00

There's a new collection of poems out from Roger McGough.

I like him. I've always thought him admirable for his craftsmanship (there's a lot that doesn't meet the eye) and his humanity. And his accessibility, of course. He's a great poet.

Many of the new poems are imbued with his characteristic whimsy, but they're also darker. Roger stands quite close to death these days (on account of his age). 'Let me die a youngman's death' has yielded to stuff like this:

I don't want any of that
'We're gathered here today
to celebrate his life, not mourn his passing.'
Oh yes you are. Get one thing straight,
you're not here to celebrate but to mourn until it hurts.

... ... ... ...

Don't dwell on my past but your future.
For what you see is what you'll be
and sooner than you think.
So get weeping. Fill yourselves with dread.
For I am not sleeping. I am dead.

'That Awkward Age'. Out now. Recommended.

Dead right

2009-07-06T12:55:00.007+01:00

Jeremy Bentham

“I regard this body of mine as being mine in life and it is for me to say in what way it should be disposed of after my death. I regard that as an absolute ... For example, I would have the gravest reservations about any organs from my body after my death being used to save the lives of Mr Adams or Mr McGuinness, or any of the gangsters with whom they have long been associated.”

Also sprach Lord Tebbit in the House of Lords in a debate on preferential organ donation in March this year. We know why he would say that, we sympathise, even, but he’s wrong. No one owns their body in life or in death. That’s why we’re not allowed to pay for that new garden room we crave by selling a kidney. It’s a mighty thorny area, this, fraught with muddy water. Let’s focus on dead bodies, the proper study of this blog.

Who does a dead body belong to? No one. In law, "the only lawful possessor of the dead body is the earth". The executor or administrator of the dead person’s estate is entitled to custody of the body, but only but only on condition that he or she does not display it in a way which would outrage public decency, and disposes of it before it becomes a public health hazard..

It’s not as straightforward as that, though. If a dead body has been the recipient of ‘work and skill’ it becomes property. That’s why museums legally own their mummies, London University owns Jeremy Bentham and anyone can own a skeleton. It is why the estate of the painter Robert Lenkiewicz was allowed in 2004 to retain possession of the body of the tramp Diogenes, which Lenkiewicz embalmed and then refused to hand over to officials of Plymouth City Council when they came to take it away and dispose of it.

What status does a dead body have when it has been subjected to conventional embalming?

What duty of care does the possessor or custodian owe to a dead body?

What level of care is a bereaved family entitled to require of an undertaker?

I’ve been trying to find out and, let me tell you, there have been some who have found my enquiry offensive, but it is only by positing hypothetical circumstances that you can get to the bottom of the matter and find out how unprotected a dead body is in this country. You see, although the Sexual Offences Act (2003) outlaws the sexual penetration of a dead body, what is not outlawed? Cannibalism? Dismemberment? I cannot say with certainty, I don’t know that a lawyer can, either, nor yet can Stephen White of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, who recommends I read his “The Law relating to Dealing with Dead Bodies" in (2000) 4 Medical Law International 145, particularly pages 153-155. I’ll need to get to a university library to read this, so please feel free to beat me to it and tell me what he says. The outcome of my researches so far seems to be that there is very little you can’t do to a dead body.

In the US they have their Abuse of a Corpse law, which says: “A person is guilty of abuse of a corpse when except as authorized by law he intentionally treats a corpse in a way that would outrage ordinary family sensibilities.” That’s a pretty good umbrella. We need something like that here.

In the meantime, what level of care can we expect from a UK undertaker? The answer is: highly variable. Why do they not present us with a detailed document, when we make arrangements, declaring their commitment to safeguard the dead person’s privacy, to conduct themselves respectfully and tell us precisely how they will do that? Because we don’t ask. Because we turn a blind eye. Because we just trust them to behave with decency. Even the Dead Citizen’s Charter did not see fit to address this, goodness knows why not.

Is this an area of concern? Oh, yes. In Tom Lynch’s words (nobody does it better) “The dead don’t mind, but the dead do matter.” Undertakers do not customarily perpetrate grossest outrages, but many are guilty of a host of grievous ones. How, for example, would you feel if your dead person had been used as the model for a training session in laying-out for visiting staff from a care home? How would you feel if you knew that your dead person had been laid out and dressed by some bloke while he laughed and joked with a colleague sitting in a corner of the mortuary eating his lunchtime sandwiches? How would you feel if he had been helped by a lad on work experience who went home and told his hushed mates all about it? The scope for disrespect, even abuse, does not end here, not by any means, let me tell you.

Attitude translates into conduct, but where conduct cannot be examined attitude can easily be falsified. So long as a bad undertaker can keep up a convincing smarm offensive in the front office, he or she can get away with all kinds of negligence and disrespect back in the mortuary. Commitment to best practice must be readily verifiable or it is worthless.

And so it is that the full extent of the reverence which my brilliant local undertaker Judi brings to her work will never be known, for all that she wins over families with her warmth and humanity. I feel for those families who go to some other local undertakers. If only they knew what they are letting their dead person in for.

Thus does best practice go unchecked and worst practice unpunished.

Is it time we had our own abuse of a corpse legislation in the UK which not only forbids conduct towards a dead body which would outrage ordinary family sensibilities, but which also lays down detailed minimum standards? I think it is. For all the difficulty the law might have in getting its head around the concept, the dead have rights, too.

I’d be glad to know what you think.

Bloggus interruptus

2009-07-03T10:12:00.004+01:00

Everyone's got a book in them. Best place for it. Throw away the key, I say, you'll embalm the illusion that way.

Illusion? Almost certainly. You think you've got something precious and important to impart? You think there's a lot of tosh coming off the presses, surely someone'll print mine?

Try getting it published.

First you've got to let it out by writing it down. My favourite poet, archy, describes writing as 'frightfully difficult literary labour' and his diction sums it up perfectly if understatedly.

Then you've got to find an agent. Agents live on authors, but the way they tell it you'd think they're trying to wean themselves off them. You send them your stuff. You wait. And wait. Then: "We like it - but not quite enough."

Sisyphus knew something of what this feels like. But he had the better deal, rolling that boulder.

I've got to hand it here to Graham Maw Christie. They took me in and they've looked after me wonderfully.

There's a rule of thumb which has it that finding an agent is harder than getting published. Don't put faith in that, especially in the middle of a recession. Especially if you're writing about death. At no stage should you ever get your hopes up.

In the case of the Good Funeral Guide it took a while to find a berth. Eventually Continuum recognised a gift horse when they saw it. I whoooped, then reflexively unwhooped. I won't whoop, I said, till I've signed the contract.

Last weekend I did that (see pic above). Still I didn't whoop. I've got to send them the completed text by 1 September. It's got to be the best I can make it. Bye-bye summer.

And, of course, if that best isn't good enough, they'll send it back turned down.

When do I get my whoop-opp? I can't see it.

Will this make me rich?

I can give you the figures if you ask. The long answer is no, very not rich. The short answer is skint.

The loneliness. The self-doubt. The terror of falling short. I don't want congratulations, I need pity and I know I'm not going to get it.

Got a book in you?

How stubborn are you?

Friends, this blog will, for the next two months, go on the blink somewhat. In the meantime, if you're the sort who takes lessons from those who don't do as they say, learn to love the day job.

Transitus, gloria mundi

2009-06-29T10:11:00.003+01:00

The Transitus festival held just over a week ago was a success. Lots of people came to find out about death on a sunny day when they could have been off picnicking. Considering the financial risk the organisers seem to have exposed themselves to, success must feel especially sweet.

Because Transitus explores ideas and experiences around the continuation of consciousness after death, it also exposes itself to being wryly written off as a congregation of new-age tree-hugging moon-bayers. This is the reductionist tendency of educated people schooled in the exercise of the critical faculty. The clever person is the person who can point out why something’s no good. We have education system which teaches children to backseat drive Shakespeare, that’s why.

There were workshops exploring ideas of the afterlife; analogies between birth and death; psychic painting; soul midwifery; woodland burial; funeral rituals; sacred music. There was a performance of Laura Wade’s play Colder Than Here. There were displays of coffins and sounding bowls. There was more going on than you could possibly get to, which is why we are all going to come back next year.

There was a brilliant talk by Peter Fenwick on end of life experiences. It was a coup to get him to deliver the keynote speech because he is a man of science who has made a scientific study of what dying feels like emotionally and spiritually. The only way to poo-poo him is to adduce data. If you haven’t read The Art of Dying yet, buy a copy now.

Transitus is a big tent. It was Peter Fenwick who, in the minds of the sceptical, was possibly most influential in tethering it to reality and relevance.

You don’t have to feel comfortable with everything Transitus explores to feel at home in its big tent. Here’s its manifesto:

The Transitus Network comprises a growing group of people working in a way that honours all aspects of life - mind, body, spirit and emotions - that are involved with the sacred process of dying. Our aims are: to release fears and taboos; support those dying and bereaved; raise awareness of 'green' and family-based approaches to death; and to encourage the acceptance of the concept of continuity of consciousness. The Network also supports its members so that none of us feels alone. Members include those working with: midwifing the soul; music thanatology; alternative funerals and celebrations; natural burials; grief counselling; life after death; related workshops; and more.

There are lots of what you could broadly call funeral reformers out there, most of whose aims overlap. There are organisations like the Natural Death Centre and green fuse. There are individuals like Tony Piper. There is the celebrancy movement. There are ecologists. Why on earth don’t they all get together on the same platform?

It all depends on what you reckon to be the value of a consensus, and the price of compromise necessary to achieve that. I like the ferment that’s presently going on because it is so squabble-free. Collaboration is all, governed by mutual respect.

Cacophony, that’s what Cynthia Beal calls it. Collegial cacophony. There’s a creative dynamic in that.

To join Transitus write to Judith Pidgeon, Ivy Cottage, Bath Road, Sturminster Newton, Dorset DT10 1DU. Her email address is transitus@btinternet.com. They’ll be very pleased to have you on board.

Here's some feedback on the festival, transcribed by the indefatigable Susan Morris of the Natural Death Centre:

“Absolutely marvellous workshops – they really connected with what I am doing and trying to achieve. I have met a lot of people."

“Fascinating. People talked about something not normally talked about. I feel less afraid to discuss death now."

“It covered so much. I shall now join Transitus. It’s all complex and all encompassing. “

“ I have met people today that I didn’t think it would be possible to so . I have made connections today that will last. I feel inspired. Thank you for a great day.“

Old sage pensioners

2009-06-26T16:42:00.003+01:00

Depictions of old age are rarely un-depressing in our late capitalist society. Once you've reached your economic menopause you pass into the hinterland of the pre-dead.

Or do you?

These guys stand that neat little theory triumphantly on its head. Here we have Fauja Singh, 98, Armuc SIngh, 79, Karnail Singh, 80 and Ajit Singh, 79, just about to compete in this year's Edinburgh marathon. Says Fajua: "Elderly people are a little like children. They like attention."

This delicious pic is from a series in the Guardian celebrating old age.

Best in show 3

2009-06-25T13:47:00.004+01:00

I wonder what people who visit graves think their loved one looks like now—or whether they think about it at all. I was talking last week to Ken West, the man who gave us natural burial, and he opined that they think of them as uncorrupted.

People shut their eyes to decomposition, whether violent and accelerated in a cremator or slow and buggy underground. My big bone of contention with many green burialists is that they babble happily about bluebells and bluebirds but bury at six feet. They know perfectly well that people who opt for natural burial fondly suppose they will nourish the earth and push up daisies (or bluebells). They also know perfectly well that at six feet they will turn into methane and sludge. So they keep schtumm about it.

Thus is death prettified and an elemental event made into a sentimental event.

Perhaps the ultimate reality of death is not the extinction of life but the return of the
body to the earth. And perhaps the death cannot fully be comprehended until folk get their heads around the body's dissolution, both the stink of it and the buggy merriment.

It makes best sense to return a body to the earth naked. Yet we like to dress up beautifully for big occasions. Well, so long as a corpse is clad in beautiful biodegradables, can we not both nod at the vanity and justifiably refuse to apologise for it?

Which brings me to my third and last greatest hit of the National Funeral Exhibition, a product which is both beautiful and elemental: the leaf shroud created by Yuli Somme and Anne Belgrave at Bellacouche.

It’s not a winding sheet, it’s an alternative to a coffin. While a conventional shroud can seem stark because its wrappings reveal (starkly) the outline of the body, the leaf shroud, with its five layers of felted wool, softens and rounds it. The top layer, decorated with felted leaves, can be detached at the point of burial and kept.

It’s a marvellous piece of making. The body, wrapped in a wool cocoon, is fastened to a frame with gorsewood toggles.

The leaf shroud is archetypal in a Jungian sense. There’s a connection with pre-history and a timeless way of burying our dead. It strikes the same chord and exerts the same hold on the imagination as open-air cremation or a Viking funeral. Isn’t this what Beowulf might have been buried in?

Even if, to you, the leaf shroud is none of these things, I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s undeniably lovely.

It happens

2009-06-23T16:15:00.001+01:00

Beautifully written account of the death of an unloved one.

Read it here.

Best in show 2

2009-06-23T14:46:00.005+01:00

No Corps of any Person or Persons shall be buried in any Shirt, Shift; Sheet or Shroud, or any thing whatsoever made or mingled with Flax, Hemp, Silk, Hair, Gold or Silver, or in any Stuff or Thing, other than what is made of Sheeps Wool only.

Thus spoke the Burial in Woollen Act of 1667, a protectionist measure “intended for the lessening the Importation of Linen from beyond the Seas, and the Encouragement of the Woollen and Paper Manufactures of this Kingdom.”

And it brings me to my second nomination for Best in Show at the National Funeral Exhibition. Like all the best developments in funerals it is a triumphant reinvention of the past. Step forward, Hainsworth’s woollen coffin.

Like it?

I love it. Tactile. Snug. Eye-friendly.The blanket stitch is an inspired touch. For me, it was the sensation of the show.

When funeral directors eye up a new coffin they ask Does it leak? Does it creak? Does it sag? They’re a baleful lot, hard to please. They’ll ask the same questions of this coffin and add an extra one: Will it mark? Answer: not if you’re careful.

Most of our eco-coffins travel here from the other side of the world. And, for all that their carbon footprint is actually tiny (Ecoffins calculate that shipping theirs from China costs but 4.63 car miles per coffin), it is good to have something indigenous and local.

These coffins are made from the wool of Dorset Horn sheep. They are biodegradable, organic and 100% natural. They are made in Leeds, a city built on wool, in one of the last woollen mills in the country.

There’s an undeniable romance about that.

An angel whispers “Come in, mate.”

2009-06-19T10:42:00.004+01:00

For me, the music died the day Led Zeppelin released their first album. Pop got intellectual, up itself, the mope and dope bunch sagely mulling finer points of riffs and runs. It set friends against each other. Simon bought a bass guitar, I bought a ukulele and got heavily into music hall. It was love, not protest. Humour. Pathos and wistfulness. Making the best. I love that blend.

If I were a Duchess and had a lot of money,
I'd give it to the boy that's going to marry me.
But I haven't got a penny, so we'll live on love and kisses,
And be just as happy as the birds on the tree.

The boy I love is up in the gallery,
The boy I love is looking now at me,
There he is, can't you see, waving his handkerchief
As merry as a robin that sings on a tree.

I am writing with fellow-blogger Patrick McNally especially in mind because I think he will especially enjoy the following monologue by Stanley Holloway. I’m sure you will, too. If you read Patrick's blog you will see that I mistakenly call him Tom. My embarrassment is fresh and howling somewhat. But I had this lined up for him before I put my foot in it. Life must go on.

Our Aunt Hanna's passed away,
We 'ad her funeral today,
And it was a posh affair,
Had to have two p'licemen there!

The 'earse was luv'ly, all plate glass,
And wot a corfin!... oak and brass!
We'd fah-sands weepin', flahers galore,
But Jim, our cousin... what d'yer fink 'e wore?

Why, brahn boots!
I ask yer... brahn boots!
Fancy coming to a funeral
In brahn boots!

I will admit 'e 'ad a nice black tie,
Black fingernails and a nice black eye;
But yer can't see people orf when they die,
In brahn boots!

And Aunt 'ad been so very good to 'im,
Done all that any muvver could for 'im,
And Jim, her son, to show his clars...
Rolls up to make it all a farce,

In brahn boots...
I ask yer... brahn boots!
While all the rest,
Wore decent black and mourning suits.

I'll own he didn't seem so gay,
In fact he cried most part the way,
But straight, he reg'lar spoilt our day,
Wiv 'is brahn boots.

In the graveyard we left Jim,
None of us said much to him,
Yus, we all gave 'im the bird,
Then by accident we 'eard ...

'E'd given 'is black boots to Jim Small,
A bloke wot 'ad no boots at all,
So p'raps Aunt Hanna doesn't mind,
She did like people who was good and kind.

But brahn boots!
I ask yer... brahn boots!
Fancy coming to a funeral,
In brahn boots!

And we could 'ear the neighbours all remark
"What, 'im chief mourner? Wot a blooming lark!
"Why 'e looks more like a Bookmaker's clerk...
In brahn boots!"

That's why we 'ad to be so rude to 'im,
That's why we never said "Ow do!" to 'im,
We didn't know... he didn't say,
He'd give 'is other boots away.

But brahn boots!
I ask yer... brahn boots!
While all the rest,
Wore decent black and mourning suits!

But some day up at Heavens gate,
Poor Jim, all nerves, will stand and wait,
'til an angel whispers... "Come in, Mate,
"Where's yer brahn boots?"

Ethical? Ha-ha!

2009-06-17T17:19:00.003+01:00

The story so far...

Raggedexile

15 Jun 09, 7:05pm

Here's one about Funeralcare.

Funeralcare has derecognised the GMB union, in the process securing its expulsion from the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival and, I think, the Glastonbury Festival. It has been condemned by the TUC. This is a betrayal of the foundational principles and values of the Rochdale Pioneers and would seem to render the Co-op ethically redundant.

Funeralcare may be seen by many to be the People's Undertaker. How do you justify the high price of your funerals given the economies of scale you enjoy? You are in a position to undercut every other undertaker in the land.

In terms of competence, Funeralcare is scandal-ridden. In the funeral industry, Co-op is synonymous with Cock-op.

I have cancelled my smile account in protest at this. No one at smile felt inclined to debate this with me.

paulmonaghan

16 Jun 09, 11:14am

OK, quite a backlog to get through: here goes... btw, I'm Co-operative's Head of Social Goals

To Raggedexile... re funeralcare and GMB, we recognise a number of trades unions for the purposes of collective bargaining, however, we need to do this on a national basis as we are a national provider, and GMB were looking to represent a relatively small number of workers

Raggedexile

16 Jun 09, 12:26pm

Paul, with ref to Funeralcare, you recognise UCATT, which has a tiny number of members. I really can't follow your logic.

And you overlook the big point: How can the Co-op, of all organisations, derecognise a trade union and stay true to its founding principles and values?

And how do you answer this: the TUC has condemned Funeralcare for its victimisation and harassment of shop stewards.

And what of the cost of your funerals? You can answer this by telling us how profitable Funeralcare is.

What would the Rochdale Pioneers make of all this?

paulmonaghan

17 Jun 09, 11:46am

Whoah, no-one is ducking anything.

Think can see from responses to date we have addressed virtually everything raised.

Just didn't expect so many detailed questions (and am fitting in answering between meetings and such).

Raggedexile

17 Jun 09, 2:04pm

Paul, you run the risk of being discourteous at the very least. You have given an undertaking to address questions posed by readers and now you dash in and out breathlessly pleading meetings and such. Is that how important this exercise is to you?

Are you fobbing me (and everybody else) off when you say 'Think can see from responses to date we have addressed virtually everything raised'? I think it is for us to declare our satisfaction with your responses, not you.

You have not answered my central question: does Funeralcare's derecognition of the GMB union not amount to a betrayal of the Co-op's founding principles and disqualify it as an ethical enterprise?

Please would give this greater than cursory attention?

Raggedexile

17 Jun 09, 5:11pm

Hello? Hel-lo? Anyone there?

Ethical? Ha!

2009-06-16T17:35:00.004+01:00

Over at the Guardian's ethical living blog they've put the Co-op under the spotlight.You ask, they answer from now til Friday.

Well, of course, oh yes, I have been asking (under my moniker of raggedexile, adopted when I was living in joyous penury on the guano-spattered Isle of Portland).

Have at them! Good sport! Make em wriggle!

Deserts of eternity

2009-06-16T11:35:00.005+01:00

It’s all up with EternalSpace. Even as we slept it went gentle into that good night, taking with it millions of $ of venture capital. After life’s fitful fever it sleeps well.

Investors, it seems, screamed STOP when, just 30 days after its launch, they already saw it going nowhere. They blame feet-dragging undertakers and the glacial pace of change in the death trade.

I am sad about this in a by no means worthy way. I got off on its towering awfulness. Million-dollar awfulness is the best it gets. If you missed it, I’m sorry. I did try to tell you.

And yet online memorial sites have a future. They are places to go and talk and share. The sad news for grieving people is that it is difficult at this stage in their evolution to determine which sites will thrive and which will founder with the loss of all memories on board -- as so many already have.

Where’s your quality assurance?

Three factors will ensure the survival of the fittest: ethics, functionality and a stable financial foundation.

Over at MuchLoved, Jonathan Davies is doing his best. He has developed an ethical code of conduct which has respect for privacy at its heart. But one of its signatories, The Last Respect, seems already to have bellied. He has set up a not-for-profit, the Data Trust, to ensure the maintenance of digitally stored information. Not many takers so far, and GaGaGa.com, a site for baby snaps, has failed to launch.

Assessing functionality is partly a subjective thing—do you like the look of the site? But there are objective criteria. How does it drive? How fast does it go? Is it well-equipped? On all these counts, MuchLoved objectively excels.

Financial foundations clearly matter most. And the message to anyone out there hoping to make money from an online memorial site is: forget it—unless you’ve a different and a better vision from that of market leader MuchLoved, which is free. How does MuchLoved do that? Here I declare an interest: partly from people like me who admire it and donate. Partly, too, I guess, from charities which stand to benefit from donations made in memory. And partly ( a big partly) from Jonathan himself, who has poured heaps of his own time and money into the site in memory of his brother Philip. It’s a labour, you see, of love.

What, then, do we make of GoneTooSoon, MuchLoved’s biggest competitor? It lacks the functionality of MuchLoved. It’s free, but only because it has already been scandal-hit. It now makes money from Interflora and virtual gifts (ugh!).

Ethically, it has question marks buzzing round it like bluebottles. It says it’s a not-for-profit but it’s not a registered charity so far as I can see. When it comes to respecting the privacy of the family of the dead person what do you make of this:

Don't think it's not your place to set up a site. You would not be encroaching on other family members territory.

Or this?

Maybe you lost your loved one in a sudden or violent way? ... Or perhaps your story is one of true love against the odds? Whatever your story, we'd love to hear from you. Womens magazines are looking for stories of your love and, sadly, loss. If your story is printed, you could receive a payment of around £500 from the magazine.

A glance at the tributes at GoneTooSoon reveals a voyeuristic audience. The same sad people visit every tribute and mark the territory with a mawkish poem or message.

I’d like to contact GoneTooSoon and tell them I’ve posted this blog. I can’t do that by email, only by ringing an 0845 number. No probs with MuchLoved.

And, as ever, I hope someone out there will subvert my analysis.

In the meantime, anyone fancy setting up a memorial site for memorial sites which have gone too soon?

Best in show 1

2009-06-15T18:22:00.002+01:00

I spent a joyous day on Friday at the National Funeral Exhibition, an expo dedicated wholly to the merchandise and service providers of death. How much fun can that be? A lot, let me tell you. A great occasion for dismal traders (any colour so long as it’s black or green). Surreal—and sublime.

But you don’t want to know about new generation hearses or the man holding masterclasses in reconstructing smashed up heads. Me neither. We are much more interested in lovely people doing life-enhancing things, aren’t we?

People like Paul Sinclair, the motorcycle funeral man. He's a national treasure. At the end of the day he gave me a ride in his sidecar and then, knowing I'd once had one, let me drive it. Woo-hoo stuff. I'm still thrilling.

For me, two stand outs. The first was Sarah Walton’s memorial ware.

The urge to commemorate our dead with a vertical physical marker (flat won’t do) is as old as humankind. It’s an urge that’s not going to be educated out of us, for all that we can see that conventional cemeteries decay, their older graves testaments to amnesia. The natural burial movement has yet to address this to the emotional and spiritual satisfaction of their clients, most of whom find it hard to curb the urge to mark the spot.

As Thomas Friese has it, “As presently conceived, green burial forbids or strictly limits enduring grave markers to favor ecological factors. This is a short-sighted aspect of its conception, which forgets that a cemetery is not merely a place to dispose of dead bodies but to memorialize and honor human lives. A majority of society will not accept no memorialization; widespread acceptance will thus be impaired.”

I don’t have the answer. But I have a belief that a physical marker does not, for many, need to be over the spot where the body lies—or the ashes. And that’s why I am a believer in the garden memorial. It’s close. It beautifies where you live. You can take it with you when you move.

Sarah’s bird baths and doves are sculptural rather than utilitarian. They are as beautiful as anything I have ever seen. Technically, they are astonishing. They are hollow, you can keep ashes in them, but you don’t have to. No photo does justice to them.

I’m going to talk her up wherever and whenever I can. Get used to it. Check out her website. Not only is she an artist, she is also, you will want to know, one of the very warmest, nicest people in the world.

Cremation urn for a cat by Sarah Walton

Everything is only for a day

2009-06-11T14:00:00.003+01:00

Immortality and eternity have meaning as concepts but they don’t translate into reality, not here on transient Earth. If you don’t believe that, go and visit a mature cemetery – or ask Ozymandias, poor, baffled chap. Time teaches us this lesson every fleeting minute, but we set our faces against it—heroically or idiotically, it’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference. In the words of Marcus Aurelius:

Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.

Yesterday, I went to look around Brookwood cemetery in the elite company of two pioneers: Ken West, who sparked the natural burial movement here and, subsequently, worldwide; and Cynthia Beale, a natural burialist from the US. Ken is gentle and principled. He’s all for stripped-down simplicity. Cynthia is questing, questioning. She’s an environmentalist who makes things happen. Both are highly intelligent, so there were times when I fell off the back of their conversation bigtime. But if you look at a cemetery through the eyes of people with their combined knowledge of ecology, soil science, the law, lobbying and actually running cemeteries, you pick up a lot, even me. It was a privilege, let me tell you.

It’s a dreadful place of untended graves and collapsing monuments. It is the antithesis of all that it aspires to be, utterly incoherent. Especially consonant was the spectacle of an obelisk perhaps twenty-five feet high which, weary of pointing to Eternity, had just flung itself down.

Ken and Cynthia debated memorialisation. People want, need, to mark the spot. They must have somewhere to go and something to do. Problem is, most people stop doing that after around ten years, that’s when the rack and ruin set in. Cynthia is all for enabling people to mark the spot in ways which are not ecologically hostile. Ken is for anonymity and subsumation (a new word. I like it.)

It’s a complex matter, this business of memorialisation. Very complex. People tend graves to show they care. “Vanity!” said Ken. “Can they not show they care by allowing nature to receive them back, by permitting them to create habitats?”

My feelings exactly. But we don’t feel for all.

For all that, Brookwood is an object lesson in the vanity of human wishes. Its 500 acres are an ecological and memorial near-waste of space. Dire to think that it’s got around 250 years to go before it’ll be full.

On the journey back I overtook a catering caravan travelling to Glorious Goodwood. I passed signs to Royal Ascot. I reflected that I had spent the day at Buggered Brookwood.

Gentilesse

2009-06-08T15:15:00.003+01:00

The BBC has got a poetry season running. They’ve been dusting off dead rhymers from ages past and pushing them out in front of the cameras. But they’ve left the memory of Geoffrey Chaucer undisturbed and unsung, for all that he was the first poet to be buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner. When I was a nipper he used to be aka the Father of English Poetry. In those far-off days grown-ups used to say that British policemen were the best in the world. Sic transit, etc.

To me, Chaucer will always be The Daddy. I love his down-to-earth humanity and the wonderful effects he was able to conjure from the small vocabulary of the then still-new English language. He was a most acute and uncritical observer of other people.

He was preoccupied with what makes a person gentil. In this debased age we don’t have a synonym for gentil. It encompasses virtuousness, honesty, courtesy, decency, modesty, courage and hard work—all the virtues summed up in what we used to call gentlemanliness. Chaucer, a true democrat, reckoned gentilesse to be attainable by both sexes and by the members of any social class. He says:

Looke who that is moost vertuous alway,
Privee and apert, and moost entendeth ay
To do the gentil dedes that he kan ;
Taak him for the grettest gentil man.

In modern English: the most gentil person is the person who strives to be virtuous always, privee and apert: when nobody's looking as well as publicly.

Chaucer develops this idea:

Taak fyr, and ber it in the derkeste hous Bitwix this and the mount of Kaukasous, And lat men shette the doores and go thenne ; Yet wole the fyr as faire lie and brenne As twenty thousand men mighte it biholde.

In mod-speak: Take a firebrand and carry it to the darkest house between here and the Caucuses. Shut the doors on it and go away. The firebrand will continue to blaze as if 20,000 people were looking at it.

It’s a great image. What’s it got to do with funerals? I’ll tell you.

Most funeral directors can put on a good show They can big up the empathy, switch on the sincerity, convince you they care. But what are they like when you’re not looking? Quite the reverse, many of them. Put them in that derkeste hous (their messy mortuary) and they exhibit undreamed of coarseness and carelessness (vileynie and vice, in Chaucer’s words).

Some, not all. There is a breed brought up in a code of funerary gentilesse and etiquette. I was reminded of this the other day when chatting to Sam Wilding of the Rose Funeral Service in Weymouth. In a way Sam and his kind are reminiscent of those butlers who used to run aristocratic country houses. Behind the scenes they treat their dead bodies with courtesy. They talk to them as they wash and dress them. They knock before going in to the chapel of rest. They carry coffins gently. They hold ashes’ urns in both hands, never under an arm. They are ever gentil, privee and apert.

Shame on you, BBC, for neglecting one of our greatest poets. Shame on me were I to neglect to celebrate this unsung, unseen and perhaps unexpected side of our best funeral directors.

There's no place like it

2009-06-04T17:12:00.003+01:00

There’s an excellent series of photos on the Undertaken With Love Flickr site telling the story of a home funeral. Click slideshow at the top right for the best view.

It’s thought provoking in any number of ways. See how engaged the children are. And you can see from everyone’s faces how emotionally healthy the whole business is.

Now, I know I bang on a lot about home funerals. But I do recognise that, though this is how people cared for their dead in centuries past, the (real) traditional funeral is unlikely to make a comeback, not in any widespread way.

At the same time, I wonder about the emotional impact of outsourcing the care of our dead and the creation of their farewell ceremonies to various un-joined-up specialists—undertakers, celebrants, etc.

Put it another way. What would be the impact on the bereavement counselling industry if people were to participate more than they do now in caring for their dead, going the distance with them? Would counsellors find their caseloads slashed?

I rang Cruse to ask them. Had they ever thought about it? Had they ever considered campaigning for more participative funerals in order to enable people to grieve better at the best time for grieving? No, they hadn’t.

I think there’s something in it.

The public's right to be right

2009-06-03T15:08:00.002+01:00

Ask them and they’ll tell you. What do clients want?

Choice.

Funeral directors have got the message. They’re doing the lip-service. How do they stand on delivery?

Not terribly well, most of them, and for sound business reasons. As soon as you start to unbundle funerals and let clients source their own merchandise and service providers, it’s not just your margins that wilt, it’s your whole raison d’être. Undertakers assert their indispensability by creating dependency in clients and providers. Thrall is all. I’ve blogged about this before. I don’t want to bore you.

But I am happy to bore you about celebrants again. They’re important. And the recent arrival of the brilliant funeralcelebrants.org.uk website ought to, both, enable them to achieve the emancipation they deserve and also require them to compete. How’s it doing?

The good news is that it’s filling up fast. The British Humanist Association has bought into it bigtime. So has the InterFaith Ministry. The Association of Independent Celebrants’ members clearly know a good thing when they see it: a number of them have bought premium listings. But I can see no member of the Institute of Civil Celebrants. Why on earth not?

Most entries are too terse to be descriptive. I could find no photos or YouTube videos. So: little evidence of competition yet—but it’s early days.

The funeralcelebrants website empowers consumers. It enables them to choose the celebrant best suited to them. It will, therefore, prevail.

But it takes three to tango. The public needs to know about this resource. Funeral directors must start telling them about it (because good celebrants make funeral directors look good).

And celebrants, you’ve simply got to stop sucking up to funeral directors and behaving like supplicants. If you really are serious about consumer choice you will, when any funeral director rings and asks you to do a funeral, respond with this question: “Did the family choose me or have you assigned me?” You will refuse to be assigned. To make this work you’ll need to establish solidarity with other celebrants in your area.

If you really think you’re any good you will relish competition because it brings out the best in you. What’s more, you will enjoy a warmer welcome and a far more fruitful working relationship with a family which has actively chosen you.

You think you’ve got a choice between, in Milton’s words, “bondage with ease” and “strenuous liberty”? You haven’t. The market will decide, and it always plumps for strenuous liberty.

What does dying feel like? (4)

2009-06-02T09:29:00.003+01:00

In late December 2007 blogger Carl Zilbersmith, actor, singer, director, was diagnosed with ALS, a fatal motor neurone disease. Here's how she greeted the diagnosis:

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s bullshit that I have to go this way. I don’t like it one bit. But that’s the hand I’ve been dealt and all I can do is feverishly, fervently and with great intention live the rest of my life to the best of my ability. I will not become a tireless crusader for a cure for ALS, I will not fight until the bitter end or be anyone’s poster-middle-aged-woman – rather I will do what we were all meant to do – be with people I love doing things that make me happy, trying to make the world a little brighter when I can and giving myself a break when I can’t.

The disease has progressed. Here's what she said a few days ago:

Dear Friends,

I can’t sing. My speech isn’t clear enough to do any kind of reliable performing. I can’t walk across the room or do a Rockette dance kick and my “jazz hands” are a disgrace to performers everywhere. I used to be a performer and now it taxes me to sit in the audience for a whole show. It’s hard as hell to write even this much.

Here is how you can help: Open your arms wide and breathe in the beautiful fucking miracle of your brief existence here alongside the hummingbirds, the butterflies and Johnny Depp. Let your life be the raucous party it wants to be and don’t worry about god calling the cops. I still refuse to believe any god worth a damn is a buzz kill. Stand on your fabulous legs and give your ass a sassy wiggle. Dance, sing, laugh and make-out frequently.

Last Sunday she posted a song she has written "to address the need for an ALS song that was neither uplifting nor encouraging". I've copied the words as best I could:

So this is what it’s like

Just me at the piano

In the middle of the night

So this is what it’s like

Trying to write a happy ending

While I’m waiting for the light

It’s 4am, so quiet

I can hear the blood pulse through my veins

And the sound of distant trains

Calling soft and low

So this is what it’s like

Thought you should know

So this is my goodbye

(???) my big red nose

But I don’t cry

So this is my goodbye

Watching everything I have

Just slip away before my eyes

And you know, life can be so beautiful

Sometimes I have to turn my head

Think of something else instead

Cos I don’t wanna go

So this is my goodbye

Thought you should know

So this is my goodbye

Thought you should know

Tonight I don’t wanna sing a stirring song

With a gospel chorus

And a melody that makes you sing along

And I won’t shine a light

Or offer inspiration

Or spread my arms in jubilation

Once my soul is bare

Tonight I’m all alone and I’m just scared

The things that I can’t do

Like watch my son grow up

Or just spend more time with you

The things that I can’t do

Take the pieces of my broken heart

And mend them with some glue

And I’m scared to sing this

Cos it sounds like such self pity

But let’s face it, this is shitty

So it goes

The things that I can’t do

Thought you should know

The things that I can’t do

Thought you should know

And I don’t wanna sing a stirring song

With a gospel chorus

And a melody that makes you sing along

And I won’t shine a light

And I won’t offer inspiration

Or spread my arms in jubilation

Once my soul is bare

Tonight I’m all alone

And I’m just scared

And I don’t wanna sing a stirring song

With a gospel chorus

And a melody that makes you sing along

And I will shine a light

And I will offer inspiration

Or spread my arms in jubilation

Once my soul is bare

Tonight I’m all alone

And I’m just scared

Here's the song:

You can find Carla's wonderful blog here. Thank you, Pam Vetter, for pointing me to it. I hope I have not breached blogger etiquette with all this copying and pasting, all done from the best of motives.

Family matters

2009-06-01T11:23:00.002+01:00

Sorry, should have said. Yup, been away. Sardinia, since you ask. Oh gosh yes, perfect in every way. And then to get back to this wonderful weather. A case of azure were.

There’s a drift of letters at the front door, the inbox is full, the cats are pleased to see us. Where to start? A cup of tea, of course – oh, and here’s the local paper.

The usual pettifogging mix—ah, but this is interesting: our two undertakers are slugging it out with big, expensive colour ads. In the blue corner, Huntleys, 130 years in Redditch, once a family affair now subsumed by Funeral Partners Limited (FPL), a new, acquisitive outfit funded, I think, with a tranche of venture capital. You don’t know where you are with FPL; they don’t talk about themselves. And in the red corner here’s Thomas Brothers. They’ve only been at it fifteen years or so but they’ve already bagged the lion’s share, beneficiaries of their own charm and the torpor which paralysed Huntleys in its dying days as a family concern. They are clearly nettled by Huntleys’ resurgence.

In its ad, Thomas’s goes large on familiness. There’s a pic of the four brothers smiling smartly. The filesize must have been too big because they’ve been squeezed and stretched, making them slimmer but they’ve got slightly Herman Munster heads. ‘Why’, they ask, ‘choose an Independent Family Funeral Director’? Yes, why? Oh it must be a rhetorical question because they don’t answer it.

But we like family funeral directors, don’t we? The very phrase pushes all our hotbuttons. If they stretch back generations we like them all the more, steeped in heritage and timeless values, lovely, lovely people.

There’s no genetic logic to this. The skills and virtues of parents are not necessarily passed down to their children. A time-honoured way of doing things is almost certainly not the best way of doing things now. And a family business of any age can get encumbered with family members who pay themselves more than they ought, preventing reinvestment.

Knowing what I know, I’d go with Huntleys every time, despite the shadowy, profit-centric ownership. I’d go with Huntleys because its salaried funeral director, Judi, is warm and wonderful. She cares like mad. She’s the best.

I hear good things about the Co-op Funeralcare in Crewe. Funeralcare is an organisation about which one of its own employees recently said, "I wouldn't trust these f***ing bastards with a dog's funeral".

There are lots of superb people working for organisations that don’t deserve them. Just one reason why buying a funeral is so much harder than it ought to be.

Smiling damned villains

2009-05-22T11:29:00.006+01:00

Did you read about that undertaker in Middlesbrough? The one who stole the keys from a rival undertaker’s hearse as it sat obedient and empty outside the Salvation Army citadel? It had to be hotwired to get it to the cemetery. It had to be seen to be believed.

The story has been reported around the world. Read it here.

Disgraceful, you mutter. But since when did you believe what you read in newspapers? They exist to sensationalise or sentimentalise. They are never less than superficial. Come on!

In rural areas most funeral directors coexist in peace and harmony. They help each other out, lend each other a hearse or a bearer, greet each other as friends. They’re not in competition, that’s why.

But in urban areas it’s different. There are too many undertakers. Kindly, ethical undertakers have to compete with smarmy predators. In almost every town in Britain there’s a very nasty turf war going on. It’s not a war that manifests itself in drive-by shootings, broken legs, blazing mortuaries. Oh no, it’s much more a thing of insidiousness, backhanders and backstabbery. The public face is smarm, oodles of smarm. It rarely breaks the surface as it did in Middlesbrough.

Can you always tell the difference between the nice guy and the smarmy bastard? Have you never been had? As Shakespeare’s King Duncan so aptly had it, and I’m sure you agree, “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.” Or as his Hamlet had it, “one may smile and smile and be a villain.”

This is just one reason why I want to list best funeral directors in the Good Funeral Guide. To save people from sharks. To save the kindly, ethical undertakers from the smarmy bastards.

I bet there’s a lot more to this story in Middlesbrough than meets the eye. And I’m prepared to take a punt on this. Instinct sides me with the undertaker who pinched the keys (though not with what he did, obviously). What goaded him?

If I can get to the bottom of it I’ll let you know. Of course, I could be wrong. But, dammit, I doubt it.

The fluffy myth of the good death

2009-05-18T19:44:00.004+01:00

Farrah Fawcett, Charlie’s Angel star in the 70s, she of the much copied hairstyle, wants to die on camera.

She was diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006. The camera has been rolling since then. It has captured highs, like when the tumour is briefly found to have disappeared, and lows, such as when doctors push long needles through her rib cartilage and inject chemicals directly into her liver tumours. When they do that she winces and cringes in pain. One sequence follows her in a wheelchair, wrapped in a blanket, injecting herself with painkillers with a bowl on her lap to vomit into.

Why is she doing it? To highlight the need for early detection and more research. Shades of Jade.

Last Wednesday I went to the inaugural get together of a coalition of interested parties to promote public awareness of death, dying and bereavement. The idea is to get people talking about the D-Word. Only a third of us do. People die and no one has any idea even if they wanted to be buried or cremated. It’s quite common. If we are more open about death, so the theory goes, the less frightened we shall be, the more accepting of its naturalness. The purpose of the coalition is “to make a good death the norm”.

Talking about things always beats not talking about them. We are presently lost for words when talking to dying people, their partners and families, and we are almost as clueless when talking to the bereaved. We are all helpless bystanders of one another’s catastrophes. Pathetic, really. Yes, something ought to be done. We all nodded. We’ve thought this many times.

And yet, and yet... There was something about the bright-eyedness of this assembly of some pretty high-powered people that made me begin to reconsider. That process was accelerated when the marketing man got up to speak. Someone spoke of circles of life and I could only think of downhill trajectory, crash and burn.

Who’d want to talk about death any more than they have to? Making a good death the norm can’t be made to happen by happy straplines, only by superior analgesia. The good death is an invention of the generation that used to wear flowers in it its hair.

We have a duty to talk about death. But it’s a puritanical and an invidious duty. Because the chances are that our own death will be, in Betjeman’s words, “A losing fight with frightful pain / Or a gasping fight for breath.” We know that. Ask Farrah.

Yes, it is grown up to talk about our own death. It is also grown up to know what we’re talking about. But there’s really not a lot to say.

Spit it out, close your mind and crack on. We have much to be frightened of. Que sera...

However you spin it, death is pants.

Exit strategy

2009-05-13T08:24:00.002+01:00

This is not unusual these days: you see someone entranced by a song and when it’s done they say fervently, “I want that played at my funeral.” You’ve done it, too?

When you’ve done it once it becomes a habit. Sometimes a new song displaces an old one. Sometimes you want it played as well.

The list can easily get too long. At too many funerals these days we all have to sit through too many. There’s no point in doing at a funeral what you can just as easily do at home.

Three’s probably enough.

For the last year or so I’ve been rooting for Arlo Guthrie’s Motorcycle Song. Don’t know why. Don’t ask. Funeral planning is never enriched by the application of reason.

Arlo’s out of the window, now. I’ve found Four Strong Winds. This is definitely the one. This version. It’s the loveliest thing I have ever heard or ever will. You too, perhaps.

(Write down all your favourite songs. They can be printed on your service sheet. Your friends can go home, create a playlist in Spotify, fill a big glass and think about you.)