Last Will and Testament

Lovely man, Jake. Don't know him? More info here

Buy a box and make it better

I love this mission statement from Batesville, the big boy of US box manufacturers—the corp which coffined Michael Jackson:

“At Batesville Casket Company, our mission is to assist funeral homes in creating meaningful funerals that help families honor the lives of those they love. We do this by providing superior funeral products and services that help funeral professionals serve grieving families during a most difficult time.” In particular, they’ll sell a funeral director a box on which he or she can slap a wee markup, which “reflects the personality and taste of your loved one,” and which “can be your final tribute to their life.” A Batesville box even comes with a little drawer in which you can “secure private mementos and farewell messages”.

Nice one, Batesville. If only it were that simple.

As simple, for example, as sneering. It’s all too lazy to come over all Jessica Mitfordish about these bling monsters and other funereal stuff. But it doesn’t pay to be baleful. Sure, if people think they can banish grief by lobbing merchandise at it, they’re going to miss the point. But, given the way we are, it’s always going help.

Nice story

Very nice story of the heartwarmingest sort here.

Terms for conditions

The natural death movement in the UK was pioneered by the good old Natural Death Centre. Its philosophy grew out of the natural childbirth movement and its principles are broadly the same. It believes that by taking control and keeping interventions by strangers to a minimum, we improve the quality of dying for the dying person and its impact on his or her carers. In the matter of caring for the dead, it believes that taking control is therapeutic.

It all makes perfectly good sense. And there’s the nice symmetry of birth and death.

There’s also some symmetry in the vocabulary used. We have home births and we have home funerals, both unobjectionable terms. We have midwives and we have death midwives – or midwives to the dying. And that’s where I falter. A death midwife? There’s a contradiction there, isn’t there? Birth and death are only analogous up to a point, surely? And there's an uncomfortable resonance with Sam Beckett's words in Waiting for Godot: "They give birth astride a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more ... down in the grave, lingeringly, the gravedigger puts on the forceps."

Over in the US (where the home funeral movement is just that, a movement, unlike over here, where it’s more or less dead stopped), that wise old bird Lisa Carlson has just spoken about this. Lisa is the grand pioneer of home funerals over there; it was her book Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love, currently being re-written, that broke the ground.

Here’s what she says:

The term "death midwife" has been a struggle for me. At one point, it seemed like an ideal term for conveying quickly what most of you do or want to do. I've come to feel that "home funeral guide," however, is a far more prudent choice, as it preserves the "education" image when compared to the hands-on "midwife" image ... So many of us in the helping careers want to *do* things for people, to feel needed, including funeral directors, too. But I can assure you from personal experience that empowering others is a much headier "high" than being thanked for something fairly temporary that I did to or for them. (Teach a man to fish . . .)

Home funeral guide. Yup. Like it. Let's have more of you!

Immediate grief

This is a guest post from Jonathan Taylor, an independent funeral celebrant in Totnes and occasional funeral arranger and conductor for green fuse. He is a regular commenter on this blog.

I'm in turmoil.

My son's girlfriend's sister died this afternoon at 4.30. She was hit by a bus
about ten days ago, and we were all just starting to feel optimistic about her
survival, if still very uncertain about her quality of life, until today.

And now there is no life whose quality we have to consider.

I want to tell you how it is affecting me, in case it helps you to hear it as
much as it helps me to get it out into the light. Lovely, delightful, young,
sassy, pretty, infuriating, loveable as she was, she was not my relative, and I
didn't even know her all that well. I'm only on the peripherals of the family
web, which is shaken to its core. I don't seem to be grieving for any one
person I can identify, least of all myself, not yet anyway; but this is as
profound a grief as I have ever felt. The first wave is over, and I'm writing
this while waiting for the next one. Wave of what, though?

While watching myself crying, shaking and screaming into a cushion, I felt like
a wolf, hearing the call from my pack members howling from the mountains, 'all
is not well, leave what you're doing and attend, every one of you.' It's a
primal thing. Animal.

And right now, I'm feeling a deep envy for the animals. Instinct tells them
what to do, without question. They are unencumbered by intellect, with its
attendant beliefs and values and morals and judgements and literature. They
don't have to wonder about what's going on, they just know. And perhaps best of
all, they can howl out loud their unrestrained regret, without having to think
about the neighbours.

So if I've ever expressed an opinion on this blog, dear readers, I take it back
forthwith. I just don't know. This is awful, but even now I can see it's a
good thing that's happening to us all, given that she's already dead.

All for now, with love,

Jonathan

So much prettier than headstones?

My thanks to Melissa Stewart of Native Woodland Natural Burial for this delicious pic (click it to make it bigger) of reindeer at the natural burial ground at Usk Castle Chase.

"So much prettier than headstones!" she says. And I have to confess to a weakness to that line of argument. I'm won over!

Putting death where it belongs

http://www.flickr.com/photos/homefunerals/3522283997/

Time was, when life was hard, death wasn’t so bad, especially if you believed, as so many did, that your recompense for a life of unrelieved misery and privation here below was the reward of unlimited bliss up there. The prospect of paradise makes a lot of sense when you inhabit a vale of tears. And it makes it easier to die, too, both for the dying person and for those around the deathbed. “He’s gone to a better place,” people used to say to each other knowingly, comfortingly. And they felt the justice of it, truly believed it, even looking forward, somewhat, as they said it. But what was once an attractive offer has lost its allure. We lead lovely, comfy lives, now. We’d rather stay where we are, thank you.

It’s the lack of any inclination to contemplate anything better that accounts for attitudes to death today. Call it denial if you want, but I think you’d be missing the point. It’s more the case that we’re having such a lovely time playing out with our friends that we simply don’t hear Mum calling us in for our tea.

You feel the aftermath of this as a celebrant, sometimes, when you go to visit the freshly bereaved. You walk into shock. Paralysed disbelief. It makes no sense to be planning a funeral. Why, he could just be upstairs. The absolute absence of the dead person has yet to begin to make itself felt. And what I often think, as I sit on the sofa while everybody tries to get their head around the presence of this extraordinary stranger, is ‘I wish he was upstairs’. Nothing would better translate unreality into altered reality and enable everyone to get their heads around it.

Dying is bad and it’s getting worse. Now that the priests can tempt no more than a few of us with a next instalment that’s going to be even better, the government dangles before us, instead, the allure of the good death and the new Personal Care at Home Bill. I have my reservations about this good death myth and about the desirability of dying at home. It’ll suit a few of us, for sure. But drawn out decrepitude and protracted expiration call for very expert attention. Nursing homes and hospitals are exactly the right places to be.

In summary, therefore, dying at home can be overrated; being dead at home cannot.

Dignitas

Interesting series of photos from the Guardian taking you inside the Dignitas operation. See them here.

Real time and ritual time

I was interviewed the other day by Margaret Holloway of Hull University. She and her team are researching spirituality in modern funerals. Updates on their research were posted on their website, but they've mysteriously vanished.

She raised what seems to her to be the curious practice of conducting the committal or farewell in the present tense; what did I think? Well, I hadn’t really thought about it. Do I do it, too? Er, now I think of it, yes, I do. We talk to the dead person and say things – thank you, often enough; and goodbye, of course. And people call out, “See yer, mate!” “Go safe, my old son!” All sorts of things, they say.

I can see where she was coming from. Logically, it is bonkers to talk to a dead body as if it were in some way sentient. But logic has rarely troubled me. Intuitively, I have no problem at all. And no one has ever come up afterwards and disputed my tenses with me. Only Margaret.

Let’s not go into the problem of the symbolic role of the body at a funeral. Not today, anyway. Let’s just talk tenses. Time.

And I recalled what I’d read in Thomas Long’s excellent book, Accompany Them With Singing. It’s a marvellous thing. It’s a Christian text, but you don’t have to believe in God to embrace the truth of most of what he says. And he says this about time:

In rites of passage, even nonreligious ones, “real” time and ritual time are two different realities. Take, for example, the graduation ceremonies that are held every year on the campus where I teach. The soon-to-be-graduates put on funny-looking academic regalia, march to the ceremony, and when officials pronounce the magic words, everybody flips a tassel from one side of the cap to the other, and... Voila! People who were students one minute have become degree-holding graduates the next.

Now, all of us on the faculty know that this is not really the magic moment. These students actually become graduates, in a legal sense anyway, several days before when the faculty voted to grant them their degrees. The ritual simply acts out in ceremonial fashion what is already true about them, that they have made the transition from being not-graduates to being graduates. But even though the ceremony does not actually cause them to change status and become graduates, this does not mean that it amounts to nothing.

Real time and ritual time. I wish I’d had that concept objectified in my mind when Margaret called.

Home funeral stories

Some good and inspiring home funeral stories here.

Perpetua's Garden - a great Idea

The really interesting thing about logic is what it makes people do--where it takes them. It starts with a Question which begets an Idea which resolves itself into a Certainty, fortifies itself with Conviction, draws up a Strategy, then acts with Singlemindedness. This is a human thing, it’s not the way the world works, nor does it reflect the way people actually are. Muddle is the word that best characterises creation and its creatures—sometimes joyous muddle, like love; sometimes bloody muddle, like genocide.

To believe that every question has an answer is brave and optimistic. To assert the primacy of the head over the heart is the function of intelligence. So, while the animal part of us celebrates mystery and creativity, the analytical side shuns chaos, seeks answers, desires order above all things. Dammit, we need to make sense of things!

Natural burial is a great Idea—a multi-use site, in itself a holistic memorial. Individual memorials? I shall never forget Ken West uttering just one word in answer to that: “Vanity.” My feelings exactly. But when it comes to doing what I played my part in doing yesterday, removing lovingly placed and expensive flowers from a grave in a natural burial ground, wow, that takes some Conviction, let me tell you—for all that those who put them there knew perfectly well that they had agreed not to.

Thomas Friese is an ideas sort of man, and he has an Idea. He rejects the natural burialists’ rejection of individual memorials. “This,” he says, “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.” In response to James Leedam of Native Woodland Natural Burial Sites, he asserts: “We want a cemetery that blends into and is friendly to nature - this means that we must accept that the human cultural aspect is curbed: that the flowers get eaten [by deer, say] (or we use artificial ones) and that the stone memorial is forbidden. That flowers get eaten and must be replaced is a small concession to nature’s cause which we can easily accept; but not being allowed any kind of enduring memorial means the line has been drawn too far on the side of nature and human culture has lost its place altogether in the cemetery.”

I’ve been following Thomas for a while. I like him enormously. He’s very, very bright. This doesn’t make him right, but it certainly makes him worth listening to. I swapped emails with James over Thomas’s penultimate blog post and agreed: one of the big questions in all this (if you’re going to have ‘em) is how long should a memorial last? Thomas has an answer to that, of course.

Just as he has no hesitation in declaring that the purpose of a cemetery is “To defeat death, of course!” There’s another interesting Idea. Not so interesting to Christians, for whom a funeral has always proclaimed victory over Death. But those of us who believe that death brings us face to face with the Great Perhaps would possibly hesitate to be so categorical. Thomas makes his case with great and attractive cogency.

I have long wanted to know the full extent of Thomas’s Idea—his Perpetua’s Garden initiative. He’s been keeping it under his hat presumably because to disclose it would expose him to the danger of losing it. This is the problem all inventors face. But he is now willing to share it with chosen folk who are willing to sign a non-disclosure form. If you are interested in discovering “a potential answer to the space problem, one which would allow decent and enduring memorialization and the creation (not just the conservation) of green spaces,” contact Thomas through his website.

You won’t beat me to it.

The Great Perhaps?

Post mortem photos

Is this custom going to make a comeback? Why not?

More here.

Pugnacious priests and supine celebrants

A little while ago a United Reformed Church minister wrote this:

I’ve had a bit of a narrow escape : I’m doing a funeral today and went to see the family three days ago. As I was leaving the house, something they said suggested that they had requested that “the curtain should not be closed”. I checked, and it was true. The funeral director had not passed on this important bit of information, and they had not specifically asked me. It sort of slipped out by accident ... So we could have had a situation where they suddenly found themselves, at the most sensitive point of the service, facing a closing curtain they didn’t expect. I was not happy, and have raised it with the funeral director concerned.

I suggested to the funeral director that rather than putting the idea of leaving out the Committal into people’s heads they should leave it to the family themselves to suggest it - at least, as long as it is a Christian funeral to be conducted by me as a Christian minister. The response was that ‘some families prefer it’. Choice is everything . . .

As far as I am aware, there is no Christian funeral liturgy or service that misses out the Committal : I feel the funeral directors are overstepping their boundary in deciding what the content of a Christian service should be. The funeral director was under the impression that ‘the Committal’ was the name given to ‘the whole service’; I think that ‘the Committal’ is that bit of the service (around which the whole thing revolves psychologically) which starts with the words “Therefore . . we commit his/her body to . . etc.” and is followed by the lowering of the coffin or the closing of the curtain.

Take out an act of committal of any sort and, it seems to me, you’re left not with a funeral service but a service of thanksgiving. That’s fine as far as it goes, but it’s not a funeral. In a funeral we stare death down in the light of faith. The curtain, for me, has particularly strong resonance ... It is very appropriate to be left staring at a curtain.

For myself I have said to the funeral director concerned that if they know they are going to ask me to conduct the funeral

> that they do not suggest to the family that they leave out the Committal, or offer it as a ‘choice’. It is my job, not the funeral director’s, to discuss with the family the content of a Christian funeral, and though I’m happy to accommodate their wishes, I would rather they made an informed decision.

What I am uneasy about is funeral directors deciding what is and what isn’t a Christian funeral and then either presenting me with a fait accompli, or (worse) creating a situation where I unwittingly cause pastoral hurt.

It’s bad enough that they sell printed orders to people and are pressing me for the order of service before I’ve even had a chance to meet the family. It seems they want it both ways :

> they assume that the order of service is predetermined such that I can tell them what it is before consulting the family. (As a URC minister I can be a lot more flexible than that). But . .

> feel that they can offer the family (but not me) choice over whether to include an essential element of a Christian funeral.

On the same theme, I have just come across this in the Australian ChristianToday:

Mark Tronson, a Baptist minister, was recently asked by a bereaved family to conduct the funeral as a Christian service ... However, Mark Tronson was distressed when the family told him that the funeral directors had contacted them twice, trying to persuade them to have a civil celebrant conduct the service. Further, the funeral home representative had made several calls to different family members in an attempt to control the service program.

Christian ministers had been reporting this sense of this 'being pushed aside' for some time now, saying that they, too, had been surprised and in the end had to establish their stamp of authority.

In his particular case, to spare the family any more stress in their delicate situation, Tronson had to make it very clear to the funeral home representative that the service was now in his hands, full stop. Moreover, no further contact on this subject was to be discussed by the funeral home representative to any member of the bereaved family other than himself as the Minister.

It appears that the civil celebrant industry may be tied to the management of the funeral homes, who may therefore like to retain control. In this way, the funeral directors have a more straightforward task, in that they do not have to contend with the requirements of the wide and varied forms of community farewells, as expressed by ministers or leaders of the other religions from around the world.

The Christian community needs to be made aware that they can insist on whatever service they like, they do not have to accede to the suggestion of the funeral directors.

The rise of the secular celebrant, whether humanist or semi-religious, is regarded as a good thing, but complacently so. In the UK funeral directors have been incredibly slow to understand that a good secular celebrant makes them look good (for all that a bad funeral director could never make a good celebrant look bad). In the dawning light of that understanding, they have been incredibly slow to bring them utterly under their control.

The relationship between funeral directors and priests was always based in deference—rather like that between sergeant major and commanding officer. They occupied different classes and so, this being Britain, separate worlds. Status was firmly established, as were boundaries. There may or may not have been mutual respect, but that’s another matter entirely.

That demarcated relationship has clearly begun to break down. Funeral directors no longer know where their job ends. Secular celebrants, too, get fed up with them telling them what their clients want in the ceremony. Mind your own bloody business!

More sinister, though, is the way that celebrants in Australia, where the secular movement has been going longer, are now being subsumed and enslaved by the funeral homes.

Given the supine and sycophantic way in which our own celebrants behave, it’ll be happening here any time soon.

Burial depth - my last word

The natural burial ground at Sun Rising taken from their website - www.nrbgrounds.co.uk

For some time now I have been nagging natural burialists about the depth at which they inter their bodies. My concern has been that, beneath the topsoil, a body is not going to enjoy the ecologically positive rot envisaged for it.

I have had this response from Emma Restall Orr at Sun Rising. I think that what she says says it all. Thank you, Emma.

Our burial depth is a standard 4’ – 4’6 on very heavy clay. While I know that many local authority cemeteries bury now at a standard 5’ or 6’, to ensure the option for double interment, I am aware of burial in churchyards that is less than this on occasion, such as where a grave is being reopened for the second interment and the initial burial was not adequately deep. I cannot imagine us ever burying at less than 4’ however, particularly as we have no double graves at all.

While we acknowledge there is an image that our remains will feed the tree planted on top of us, this would require us to bury at 2’ and less. But at this depth, the deceased would risk bring disturbed by badgers or foxes. This is not a risk worth taking, nor is it necessary. The idea is poetic, not practical, and we make this clear to any families who enquire.

Though the sentimental images are valuable in the process of grieving and healing, the ethos of a natural burial ground is (for us) real, down to earth, practical care for the deceased, their families, and the environment, not poetry. First of all, most native trees don’t require rich soil, many preferring soil that is not well fertilised. Secondly, however, burial returns the body’s elements back into the cycles of nature, long term – in a way that cremation does not. The planting of the tree adds to the health of those cycles, and the richness of the environment generally. And this is enough.

Bookcase coffin

I know I've blogged about this before. I'm doing so again because William Warren, the ingenious designer of these handsome shelves which can be reassembled as a coffin is now offering free instructions so that you can make your own. Simply email him your height and build and you'll be able to construct something bespoke - so long as you don't put on too much weight before you need them, that is.

See William's website here. Brilliant!

Priceless

There’s an interesting letter in this month’s Funeral Service Times from a funeral director, Brian Howard. Actually, it’s more of a suicide note, but we’ll come to that. He’s fed up with people ordering funerals they can’t pay for, or for which their dead people did not make any provision. “In our experience,” he says, “nearly every unpaid funeral is a claim from the social funeral fund DWP [Department for Work and Pensions], but unfortunately because of the data protection act the DWP will not discuss a claim or inform the funeral directors of a problem even though the cheques are made payable to us and we have paid for the funeral on behalf of the claimant.”

When someone who’s skint comes to buy a funeral, the funeral director advises them to apply to the social fund. You’ve got to be completely skint to qualify for a funeral payment from the social fund. You have to fill out a long form. It takes them several weeks to decide if you’re worth it. The sum it pays out is likely to be less than the cost of even a basic funeral. Some funeral directors will not arrange the funeral until they can be sure the funding is in place. Most go ahead and keep their fingers crossed.

Until the last few years, funeral directors displayed low aggression in pursuing bad payers, thinking it would damage their image if they did. They’re now going after them with a vengeance. They have to. There’s a cashflow-threatening amount of money at stake.

Gone are the days of two months’ free credit at the expense of the funeral director. Almost all now demand payment of disbursements upfront. Disbursements are the bills from service and merchandise providers the funeral director pays on your behalf.

Something that really bugs Mr Howard is this: “At present any member of the public can walk into [their local authority] bereavement services and purchase a burial plot, cremation, or cremation plot at the same price as a funeral director. And yet if we are not paid for the funeral we still have to pay the local authority, and the applicant receives the deeds in their name ... It appears that we are actually retailing burial plots and cremation service/plots for the local authority, and if this is the case then we should have a mark-up price – at least this would give us a margin of profit to offset non-payment.”

Here is his radical remedy: “I propose that the local authority invoice the applicant for burial plots, cremation plots and cremations, or alternatively stay with the present system, but if we do not receive payment by the time the fees are due we obtain credit from the local authority. They have the machinery in place for debt recovery.”

We can sympathise with Mr Howard—up to a point. But we reflect that funeral directors have worked very hard to be indispensable: to be the sole gateway to all funereal merchandise and service providers. Their business model and their prestige require them to be a one-stop shop for everything a bereaved person needs. They pride themselves on doing everything for their clients, lifting the weight and worry of arranging the funeral off their shoulders. Their message to clients is that of Bob Marley: Don’t worry about a thing / Cos ev’ry little thing gonna be all right. And while this may seem to be very helpful, it is also very controlling and disempowering, both of their clients and their service providers. The Good Funeral Guide believes that the bereaved need to engage with funeral arrangements in a much more hands-on way; that, to paraphrase Beth Knox, once a person is dead the worst thing possible has happened: everything you can do from then on can only make things better. The more you do the better you’ll grieve at the best time for grieving.

Funeral directors have established a stranglehold over funeral arrangements, and this has come back and bitten them on the bum. Local authorities have become lazily dependent on funeral directors to collect their fees. There is no good reason why they shouldn’t collect their own fees from purchasers of graves and cremations. Why on earth don’t they? Because the funeral directors fall over themselves to do it for them. Mr Howard claims that “It appears that we are actually retailing burial plots and cremation service/plots for the local authority, and if this is the case then we should have a mark-up price – at least this would give us a margin of profit to offset non-payment.” No, Mr Howard. You are not a retailer, you are an agent. You make a charge for this in your professional fee.

Local authorities have also become lazily dependent on indispensable funeral directors to arrange for the disposal of dead bodies. The option which is never presented to people is that of refusing to accept responsibility. Citizens Advice gives wrong advice in this matter: “Some people do not leave enough money to pay for even a simple funeral. If this happens, the person arranging the funeral will have to pay for it.” No! Under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, the responsibility for the disposal of dead bodies lies with the local authority. Anyone is perfectly entitled to walk away from the whole business. It was, therefore, perfectly logical for the government in the 1950s to consider nationalising the funeral industry, and for the same reason it is arguable that it was wrong to abolish the death grant. If more skint people walked away from arranging funerals, or more funeral directors refused to have anything to do with them, the government would very adroitly speed up social fund payments.

Mr Howard concludes by sounding a warning to his fellow funeral directors: “As the wording on the burial purchase forms and application for cremation forms suggests that it is the applicant’s purchase and not the funeral director’s, unless we demand a change in the future the DIY service will be commonplace.” In other words, people will become their own funeral directors. We’re all doomed!

Here Mr Howard betrays a misunderstanding of his role—a misunderstanding possibly brought about by his job title. Were he to revert to the time-honoured title of undertaker he’d be able to see his role more clearly. When people take upon themselves the responsibility for disposing of their dead they make themselves accountable in law to their local authority and they cannot shift that legal responsibility to anyone else. They can, though, depute the care of their dead person to someone who will undertake to do that—someone who will also undertake to make funeral arrangements on their behalf as instructed. The local authority is in charge. The executor or administrator is the possessor of the body, the funeral director. The undertaker is custodian and agent, merely.

If funeral directors have become victims of their own self-inflicted indispensability, that is their fault. There are a great many coffin makers, florists, caterers, printers and secular celebrants who will greet this with a smirk. They’d be very happy to deal with the public direct. Coffin makers in particular would be happy to see their coffins sold at a far less exorbitant markup.

Mr Howard, I think you are going to have to bite the bullet on this one. It is industrious indispensability that maintains your pre-eminence. The price you pay is the odd unpaid bill. It’s worth it. If all providers of services and merchandise start to invoice funeral consumers direct, you unravel; you fall apart. Shh. Your letter exposes the extreme fragility of the funeral director’s business model.

To JH: if you will give me a good email address I want to reply to you.

Open air cremation - it's for all of us

Following my post of yesterday, I have had the following response from Andrew Singh Bogan:

Dear Charles,

Thank you for your email; I read the blog with interest and have taken time out of my hectic schedule to submit this response.

The EHRC website (http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/) advises that their "...job is to promote equality and human rights, and to create a fairer Britain. [They] do this by providing advice and guidance, working to implement an effective legislative framework and raising awareness of your rights."

Section 3 of the Equality Act 2006 imposes a general duty on the Commission to conduct its functions with a view to encouraging and supporting the development of a society in which human rights and equality are respected and protected. This includes promoting understanding of the importance of equality and diversity, encourage good practice in relation to equality and diversity and to enforce the equality enactments. Also, promoting importance of the understanding and protecting of human rights, to promote awareness and to encourage local authorities to act compliantly with human rights.

The EHRC, in their application, say that they wish to inform the court as to the UK's obligations to protect minority rights under a number of different international instruments, including the one that you cite. (Incidentally, our counsel did bring these to the attention of the High Court but they appear to have been overlooked). That is but one strand to their expected argument which we expect will deal with the wider concern of "promoting understanding of the importance of equality and diversity and to encourage good practice in relation to equality and diversity".

Turning to your specific concern, the Appellant's case is based in entirety on his religious belief which stipulates an open air cremation. Were it not for his faith he would not have brought his claim. However, I want to make it clear that the case is a much wider one and its public importance is NOT solely limited to Hindus or any minority religious/ethnic group. To think so is to offend the very nature of the mutual tolerance and respect that the Appellant is so vigorously fighting for in his appeal.

Having spoken to our counsel this morning, it is perhaps understandable that the term "discrimination" automatically draws connotations of ethnic/religious minorities. Discrimination, as protected under article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights (part of the Appellant's argument before the court) however is a very wide and powerful tool for all strands of society. It includes within its definition cultural belief, expectation and practice by society as a whole. To interpret this case as being by a Hindu for Hindus is to do it a serious injustice. The Sikh party who has intervened in the case does so not on the basis of religious belief (they accept that open air cremation is not a religious belief for them) but solely on the basis of culture, tradition and perhaps most importantly for your purpose FREEDOM OF CHOICE as enshrined in article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. They argue that if they choose to undergo natural cremations, the authorities ought to recognise their right to so opt and show them the tolerance and respect to do so. Like Rupert Callender, their intervention to secure the option is driven by their ritual practices as part of their culture and identity as a distinct group. Those who are subscribers to your organisation are entirely the same and represent your own distinct group.

To answer your question head-on, this is very much a matter of individual liberty for all citizens of the UK who choose, for whatever reason, to engage in natural cremation. For all who so choose, we should ALL get behind this appeal now because it greatly benefits us ALL.

If the Appellant wins - we ALL do!

In addition, if we are successful in our appeal then the guidance of the Court of Appeal will have wider implications for other aspects of society who wish to secure the right to engage in a genuinely held belief, ritual, custom or practice no matter how obscure it may objectively seem. The connotations are far too wide to cover here. This case as correctly been touted as the biggest case on discrimination thus far and it truly is history in the making.

Finally, I, as does my counsel, agree with Jonathan Taylor, who says "just as it would constitute religious discrimination to disallow Hindu open air cremations, it would be equally discriminatory to confine this right to a minority, or for that matter even to a majority". The application for intervention by the EHRC stands us in good stead in our fight against the authorities in so ensuring and we should all get behind it.

All the best,

Andrew

www.anglo-asian.org

Open air cremation - latest news of the appeal

On 19 and 20 January 2010 the Court of Appeal will hear the appeal of Davender Kumar Ghai against the prohibition of open air cremation upheld by the High Court in May 2009. It was a case made notorious by the intervention of Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who asserted that indigenous Britishers would be "upset and offended" by funeral pyres and "find it abhorrent that human remains were being burnt in this way". Read previous blog posts here and here.

I have just had an email from Andrew Singh Bogan, legal co-ordinator of the Anglo-Asian Friendship Society:

The Equalities and Human Rights Commission has been granted permission to formally intervene in the legal proceedings. They will present their own arguments before the Court of Appeal in support of our arguments.

Given the Commission's prominence, resources and impartiality, it might be an idea for you guys to contact them directly to inform them of your support. This could enable your support to receive far greater exposure...and allow help us to escape censure for submitting late evidence!

However, the Commission's legal team (headed by counsel from Matrix Chambers) would not appreciate any possibility of us 'feeding' them evidence, so any approach should make clear the independence and impartiality of your support. It is fine to say you recently made with the AAFS charity [Anglo-Asian Friendship Society] and we have informed you of the Commission's intervention.

Why has the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) felt impelled to intervene? Because it wants to “draw the court’s attention to Article 27 of the International Covenant for the Protection of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which contains the ‘right of ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities to enjoy their own religion [and] to profess and practice [sic] their own religion.’” It also wants to draw the attention of the court to related declarations by the United Nations and the Council of Europe.

Is it good to see an influential body like the EHRC get behind this appeal? Up to a point, perhaps. But I wonder if it could be counter-productive and play to the xenophobic lobby, something which Straw has already so deftly and successfully done.

Is this appeal just about securing an exemption for a tiny minority of Hindus to practise their faith? I earnestly hope not. It has to be about securing the right of anyone at all, of much faith or none whatever, to opt for open air cremation. As Rupert Callender of the Green Funeral Company has observed: “The recent excavations at the Stonehenge complex show that ritually cremating our dead outdoors is at the heart of our culture. This is about reclaiming ritual ... It is what the natural death movement is all about- the truth.”

I hope that Andrew—who is India at the moment, and very busy—will be able to clear this up for us. Either this is a matter of individual liberty for all citizens of the UK, or it is nothing at all. My jury is presently AWOL.

If you would like to offer your support, email Matrix Chambers: katy.reade@equalityhumanrights.com

Digital floorboards

My friend Simon likes to say that no one’s internet history bears close inspection. He’s speaking for himself, mostly; he’s always flirted more dangerously with depravity than me. My history is saturated with death. Of its concomitant, sex, not a jot. Yes. How boring.

It has not always been so. When my ex-wife got inside my computer she discovered correspondence which expedited the divorce. I was shocked by the invasion and delighted with the outcome.

But that’s another story.

What happens if you drop dead in, say, the next five minutes? Or tonight? Or even, to help you get used to the idea, tomorrow morning at 11.43? What happens to all your cyberstuff?

There are two sides to this. First, while your grievers are buoying themselves up by bravely singing along with Celine - "Near, far, wherever you are / I believe that the heart does go on" - it won't be just your heart. So too will your email account, Facebook page and other digital testimony of your extantcy. You’ll want them to be able to stop the banter, spare themselves, terminate you.

Second, you’ll want them to be able to access accounts, either to close them or get their hands on the money and the digital media and whatever else you've got out there of monetary or sentimental value stored in a cloud server somewhere.

They won’t be able to do either unless they know, 1) what to look for, and 2) what the passwords are.

I remember sitting with a newly widowed widow who couldn’t begin to start winding up her husband’s affairs because she could even get into his computer. The password for that, together with all the others inside, died with him. Heaven only knows what she did in the end. Did she ever discover where all his funds were? I don't know that she did.

There may be some passwords you want to die with you—even if you can’t be prosecuted posthumously. But there are others which you will want to be available. Where can you keep them where no one can find them until the undertaker’s men come to zip you up in a bag and clonk you downstairs?

Awareness of all this is growing—as it needs to. And the answer is arriving—you guessed it—online. Of all the solution providers out there, the one I like best is offered by Deathswitch. Once you’ve stored all your secrets with them they prod you at intervals decided by you: they send you an email to which you must reply. If you don’t, they e-poke you a couple of times. If you still show no signs of life they decide you are definitely dead and contact those people you have designated with messages you composed while still alive.

Google Deathswitch and you’ll find lots of stuff about what they, and others like them, do. There’s a piece in the Guardian here. And the Telegraph here.

They all draw attention to the two major drawbacks of putting all your eggs in one cyberbasket. First, what if the website dies first? Second, what if it gets hacked?

Progress is a wonderful thing. But let’s hear it for floorboards. Even after all these years, hard to beat.

Cross

Just once in a while things, if they are little enough and come in a cluster, can subvert the sunny disposition for which I am justly famous.

This morning I was at Sutton Coldfield crematorium, my first time. I had already got the measure of the place. A telephone enquiry yesterday about whether there was a funeral immediately after ‘mine’ yielded the most remorseless lecture I have ever had from a public servant about the vital importance of keeping within my appointed limits: 20 minutes. Twenty minutes! Once there, I went to strike up an acquaintance with the organist-CD chap. The service before ‘mine’ was over and the mourners were departing to the strains of—you guessed it. “Good heavens,” I said to him, “My Way. What a most unusual song to play at a funeral.” He looked at me with weary earnestness and said it was the song he played most. I was in an irony-free zone. I got ‘my’ funeral off at the stroke of twelve noon. It was always going to be a close run thing, cramming a goodbye to a tremendously nice and loved man into twenty minutes. In the event, we had to do without the interlude for silent reflection, hurry the farewell a little, wrap it up just in time. Only when it was over did I discover that the next funeral was a ‘committal only’—the dead chap had already had his funeral in church and had just come to be burnt. His lot were in and out in five minutes. We could have had five/ten mins of their half hour, no problem, they never would have minded. But when the needs of the institution are greater than those of its users, give and take go out of the window. Still, at least the funeral director was nice to me. “Thank you so much for taking this for us,” she said. I didn’t have the energy to point out that the relicts had phoned and booked me direct, that I was working for them, not her. I just left.

And came home to an article in the Guardian of such pusillanimity that it actually got under my skin. It’s by a creep called Phil Hall, who describes himself as a “socialist, a college/university lecturer and teacher trainer based in west London. He's African by birth, English by culture and in love with all things Mexican.” In other words, a man who’s completely up himself. This is what he says:

There are many contrasting approaches to the arrangement of funerals, from the religious to the secular. But after five deaths and four funerals over the last two years, it seems to me that the humanist way of death is the most salutary.

Wonder what happened to the fifth funeral.

This is because it accepts one simple truth. Human life is constructed like a story. It has a beginning, high points, low points and then ends – definitively.

The humanist way of death recognises the fact that you will die and that when you do, that will be the story of you. From the viewpoint of our human, third person narrative, isn't the idea of heaven a little irritating? A life, like a good book, should never end in: " ... to be continued." Life only really makes sense as biography.

In contrast, religious funerals, where a stranger usually officiates and witters on about heaven, often fail to commemorate a life well lived properly. Religious funerals can be a whimpering anti-climax.

You can see where this is going. It’s just lazy, beastly dawkinism. But an existential event as a narrative event? I hadn’t thought of that. Now that’s really stupid. He goes on (can you take it?):

When Uncle Heini died this month at the age of 99 there was a lot to celebrate about his life. He survived two world wars honourably. Heini was flamboyant and kind. In his 80s he was still travelling from Machu Picchu to China. He even went climbing in the Himalayas at the age of 85. Heini was a well-known actor and a famous clown in the Munich theatre.

But his funeral was completely out of keeping with this, and I blame religion and its obsession with the afterlife for that. It put a damper on an occasion that should have been far more representative of who he really was. The crematorium orchestra played Albinoni and Bach, an actress read out a poem, the theatre administrator gave a thoughtful speech, and then a Lutheran pastor stood up with a wan smile and gave her homily. It was full of religious platitudes. In half an hour Heini's divine reispass was stamped, his celestial ticket clipped. And that was it; curtains.

Phil, you pillock, if you don’t want a Lutheran pastor or any other kind of pastor to talk resurrection at your funeral, DON’T BLOODY INVITE ONE. (Love the crem orchestra, though. In your dreams.)

A little bit of believe and let believe would go a long way from our atheist brothers and sisters. The Zero Militant is becoming tiresome.

Not for the first time (this is unrelated) I wonder why it is that atheists bring their dead people to a funeral. Come on, chaps, think it through: it’s nobbut carcass!

Read Phil's drivel here.

Comin' for to carry you home

The Office if National Statistics (ONS) is beginning to release detailed stats showing who died of what last year. Fascinating. We’ll all be one of those, one day.

All sorts of things I didn’t know. Twice as many women die of Alzheimer’s than men—a factor of men dying so much younger, I suppose. I was surprised by the number of perinatal deaths; I thought there were more. Gosh, 87 men died last year of breast cancer...

The NHS enables you to do a little light prognosticating on your own behalf. Have a play with its Atlas of Risk here.

Have a pore over the ONS spreadsheet here.

Do chimps grieve?

I don't know if you saw this picture/read this story. It's certainly an affecting picture (click on it to make it bigger).

Read the story in the Daily Mail here.