Death and dumb

Over in Austria an undertaker, urged by his PR people, parks his hearse at a blackspot in order to deter sloppy driving. The hearse bears the gloating message: ‘We’re always ready for you.’ The object? Driver sees it, thinks ‘That’s jolly clever,’ slows down and uses that undertaker next time she needs one. Win-win. Read the story in our own dear Daily Mail here.

Over in the US, advertising man Dan Katz damns the initiative: ‘Whenever humor is chosen as an attention-getter, the question always has to be: is it directly relevant to the selling message, or just a gimmick ... I’d argue that it falls short of the real goal, which is to strongly, indelibly link a meaningful benefit (not just death) to the advertiser’s brand ... Creepy for its own sale doesn’t sell, even if it does get top-of-mind awareness. The basics of marketing still apply, including the requirement of having a compelling reason why someone should consider you over your competition.’

To position death as macabre and avoidable is dumb. To use a hearse to strike terror is dumb. That’s so obvious it needs no elaboration. We're too frightened of death as it is.

So if you were an undertaker in the UK (perhaps you are?), would you accede to the wishes of a dead person aged just 85 and display this message on your hearse: "Smoking killed me - please give up!"?

Personal afterthought: I never see a dead person without feeling slightly envious. I often think of that line from Shakespeare: “After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well.”

Ambivalence 2

If contrary ideas can sit happily alongside each other, contrary emotions can go one better: they can merge and become a potent blend. Love and hate, for example. Courage is nothing without fear. As a rule of thumb, would you say that it’s only possible to experience mixed emotions for people we like? Take exasperation. It can go either way. Directed at someone we don’t like it’s a singleminded expression of terminal fed-upness. But when directed at someone we love, it becomes a complex mix of fed-upness and strong affection, because it’s often their most infuriating qualities and actions which we celebrate with much love and most laughter -- especially after they have died.

Let me come to the point. Sorrow and happiness go famously well together. We all know the meaning of bittersweet and we have all laughed through tears. Be prepared to do that now as you read the following obituary from the Boston Globe. It is entitled Graham H Gardner, 22; ‘angel in the service of God’ and it starts:

By common measures, Graham Hale Gardner could not communicate. Traveling in a wheelchair or a jogging stroller that accommodated his 110 pounds, he uttered not a word, and cerebral palsy rendered his hands unfit to navigate a keyboard.

Instead, blue-green eyes that seemed flecked with gold sent silent messages to the complete strangers drawn to his side. He had the kind of silky brown hair that people want to run their hands through, and many did.

“His face had a radiance, and he had a beautiful benevolence about him, so that when he looked at you and connected with you, you felt like the sun shone on your whole being,’’ said his mother, Cynthia. “He just made you a better person with his incredible grace and enthusiasm and kindness, and it was all done without conventional words.’’

Read the rest here.

Ambivalence 1

Interesting, isn’t it, how two contrary opinions need not be mutually exclusive? When one opinion does not displace the other you’re left either tonguetied with indecision or, if they merge, ambivalent. Ambivalence may be seen as fence-sitting, but I think that’s simplistic. To honour two opposed points of view equally seems to me to be a perfectly grown-up way of resolving a problem.

That’s the way my mind was working as I drove home yesterday after seeing Andrew Smith, a funeral director in Macclesfield with a two year-old but already booming business. Andrew does old-school bigtime. It’s what his clients want. And, here’s the point, he does it not for cosmetic reasons, nor to make himself feel important, but in order to create and serve (these are my words, not his) the particular sort and sense of occasion that his clients want. A funeral is something we rise to. And, yes, it is a performance, it is theatre, and any funeral director worth their salt needs to have thought about this, about how the parts are to be played. Any performer who betrays the least self-consciousness or disengagement is fatally flawed. If you can’t lose yourself in the part, all anyone else can see is someone failing to be something they’re not. That’s why costume or uniform is so important. Anything less than perfection begets inauthenticity; it corrupts performance, relegates it to tawdry playacting and renders it meaningless. What goes for the funeral director goes, too, for the spear-carriers – in the case of funerals, the bearers. They need to rehearse. They need to be filled with a sense of occasion – to get into role. And they need to be dressed right. In the bearers’ changing room at Andrew’s funeral home you’ll see a row of immaculately polished oxfords. Not Clarks oxfords, Loake oxfords. The best it gets. Fantastic.

Andrew supposed me to be anti top hat, but I’m not. I’m anti prat in a hat. He also supposed me to be anti-embalming. I am. I am also for it. I can see both sides and I take neither: I am serenely ambivalent. It all depends on how it’s done, why it’s done and the code of conduct in the mortuary. Andrew has a strong feeling about how the dead should be looked after, and he reminded me of something Sean Lynch says in the PBS documentary about Tom Lynch’s funeral home in Michigan: “I have memories as a very young boy of being brought over here with my father as he was working, and watching him and his colleagues dressing and casketing bodies, you know, very quietly, very reverently, doing something for someone that can no longer do anything for themselves, and even at a young age, before I could articulate the importance of that kind of work, I recognised it as something very significant and essential.” If you watch Parts 3 and 4 of the documentary you can see what he means. It’s why Andrew is pro-embalming. He wants people to have the best possible memory of their dead person. Echoes here of Tom: “Watching my parents, I watched the meaning change of what it is that undertakers do, from something done to the dead to something done for the living, to something done by the living, every one of us. Thus, undertakings are the things we do to vest the lives we lead against the cold, the meaningless, the void, the noisy blather and the blinding dark.”

I admire Andrew enormously. I liked the look of Macclesfield, too. Nice place to live, I should think. Certainly a good place to die.

Bloggerel

Blogworld is enriched by (almost) every new e-scribbler with opinions to air, especially those with the skill and the intellect to put words to things we’ve often thought about. There aren’t that many bloggers in the death zone. I wish there were more funeral directors (like Pat McNally) with something to say and the urge to say it. Celebrants are slightly more numerous. We recently welcomed the luxuriantly monikered GloriaMundi, and I hope you check in there regularly. Really good stuff.

There’s a new kid on the block. Welcome, Green Energy Globe. Here are some extracts. First, a description of cremation:

Cremation occurs inside of a crematorium finish with an industrial sort furnace. Typically, by fixation a physique in the repartee or cover of the furnace, it is incinerated and roughly utterly used up by fire. The blazing of propane or healthy gas provides temperatures of 1,598-1,796 ° F and the feverishness turn ensures the physique is marked down to bone fragments with all alternative soft hankie vaporized or oxidized as vented gas.

He or she has this take on resomation:

...there is a brand new child on the retard which offers a opposite arrange of immature “cremation” and nonetheless an additional pick resolution to normal funeral practices. You might instruct to cruise a routine called “Alkaline Hydrolysis” or “Bio-chemical Cremation”. Already used in physique ordering of investigate animals, roadkill, or culled, infirm herds of cattle and deer, it is a quick, safe, and spotless routine of violation down proteins, pathogens, and viruses. During this routine of containing alkali hydrolysis, a tellurian physique is placed in to a steel blood vessel or drum-like container, lonesome with H2O which is exhilarated to 350 degrees, along with the further of a clever containing alkali piece called potassium hydroxide (lye). Potassium hydroxide, ordinarily used to have soap and glass, breaks down the body’s tissues and not as big bones.

GEG’s mind wanders over all green issues. Here, for the living, is a description of how you can use recycled materials to create stunning collages:

Onion or Potato BagOnion or potato bags which have been done up of a cosmetic filigree have been a lot of fun for adding hardness to collage crafts. You can have have have have have have have have make make make use of of of of of of of of of of of them similar to a consume and dab them in paint to emanate a singular hardness and pattern when pulpy simply on paper. You can additionally have have have have have have have have make make make use of of of of of of of of of of of this recycled element over or underneath alternative collage equipment for hardness and interest.

There’s a satisfying touch of Sam Beckett, there. And a great new phrase: to cruise a routine.

Read more, if you haven’t gone cross-eyed, here.

Boxing clever

Mercedes coffin carved by Ata Owoo, now in the National Museum of Scotland

Interesting, isn’t it – or is it – that coffins, after all this time, still look like nothing else, unless it’s other coffins? New materials – willow, seagrass, you name it – are easier on the eye, they don’t reflect the repellent glint of a winter sky, but there’s no mistaking what they’re for. We’ve even stayed loyal to the traditional toe-pincher style and resisted the oblong (but still unmistakeable) casket, now popular in much of Europe and, of course, the USA.

Over in Ghana they make coffins that look nothing like coffins. In their home country these tend to be rejected by Christian churches because they are reckoned to denote fetishism. When they make the voyage abroad they don't go underground, they get put in museums – like the go-faster coffin above, now in the National Museum of Scotland.

In the UK we have our very own Crazy Coffins, and I guess some who commission one actually go and meet their maker in it. But they are still more popular in the art world than in the death zone.

Brides can never be persuaded to go easy on the expense of their wedding dress on the perfectly sensible grounds that they’ll only wear it once. We are proud to spend as much as we can borrow on weddings and as little as we can get away with on funerals. There are obvious reasons for this.

But the cardboard coffin people could knock up some interesting shapes that wouldn’t cost the earth?

Cryomation wins that Shell award

Richard Maclean (Cryomation), Duncan Macleod (Shell) & Mike Morris-Watson (Cryomation)

Congratulations to Cryomation on winning a Shell Springboard climate change innovation prize -a notable vote for this new process, a worthy rival to cremation.

Don't know what Cryomation is? Check out their website here.

Take it to them!

It's widely known in the funeral business that the prices charged by Co-operative Funeralcare and Dignity are on the whole higher than those charged by their independent competitors - the family businesses and new start-ups - so many of them passionate ex-Funeralcare employees who tell me they learned everything about what not to do at Funeralcare.

Funeral consumers don't know about this. They don't do price comparison shopping. And considering most of them buy just two funerals in their lifetime, and most of them don't have any recently comparable experience, they just assume hopefully that the prices charged by everyone are about the same. They assume that Funeralcare, with its ethical trumpeting and working class roots in will be on their side.

Caveat emptor! And here let's exonerate Dignity. Dignity's in it for the money. It's making lots. Well done, chaps! Don't necessarily like you for it, but realise that the rules of the game are capitalism, and that you play hard and, er, fair.

Why do so many independents moan about the higher prices charged by the big boys yet do nothing to get the message out? Because it would look undignified? I don't know that it would look less dignified than boasting about how cheap your low-cost funeral is as you do at the moment in your coded way.

In Nottingham, the eminently respectable and excellent AW Lymn make no secret of their competitive pricing structure. They break it down and spell it out graphically. Way to go, I'd reckon.

I'm grateful to blog follower Andrew Plume for this intelligence. Thank you, Andrew.

Go to the AW Lymn website. Click on the package prices pdf at the foot of the page, right-hand side.

Holiday reading

John Michell

This blog is going on holiday for a week to enjoy fresh sea breezes, long walks and real beers in real pubs. Pubs! The highest proof of the existence of God!

I shall of course be packing some holiday reading, none of it death related though, as we know, Reaper G does have an importunate way of pooping most everything.

I shall also be asking Amazon to send me two books and, were I you (I know, I know, the record shows clearly that I am not), I’d be seriously considering doing the same.

What are they?

First up, Thomas Lynch’s latest. Apparitions and Late Fiction. Read a review here and another here. Now buy it.

Second up: How the World is Made by John Michell. This is the work he was desperate to finish before the cancer did for him last year. Beautiful man, beautiful mind. Buy, buy, buy!

Bye. See you all next Monday.

Window dressing

Photo by Dennypoos

Funeral directors are often criticised for their inertia and, to be sure, many of them, not all, move forward with foot-dragging reluctance. The most evident manifestation of this is their cod-Victorian attire. They are, they seem to be saying, neither of us, nor of our century.

If they seem to inhabit a parallel and altogether uninviting universe, or to exist in a time warp, this is an impression reinforced by the changeless aspect of their premises. But if you were a funeral director, how would you demonstrate vitality, catch the eye, stump up trade?

Difficult, isn’t it? You can’t by any means create demand for your service, nor can you trigger impulse buyers. BUY NOW WHILE OFFER LASTS or INVEST IN THE CHATSWORTH AND GET HANDLES FREE! You can’t move with the seasons: SPRING COFFIN RANGE NOW IN! However good you are at what you do, you can’t stimulate repeat business: BUY NOW GET ONE FREE! You can’t hold sales: 1/3 OFF EVERYTHING. EVERYONE MUST GO!!

If you were a funeral director, how would you dress your front window? Coffins? Urns? Tombstones? Trocars through the ages? Difficult not to look self-parodying, isn’t it? The blessed Paul Sinclair is having a lot of success with his miniature motorcycle hearse. That works well. But you need to be able to ring the changes, go with the seasons, tap into the festivals. And most of those are out. You can't risk looking festive, can you? Halloween is the biggest no-no (I’m having to hold myself back, here) but rack your brain. Which would you choose?

You probably have to go with themes. Memory is a good one. This is why so many undertakers have a Remembrance Day display with many poppies and, at Christmas, a tree hung with many lights and stars. The trick here is not to serve as a grim reminder.

Love is another, and the same caveat applies. Do you like the window at the top? It shows enterprise, doesn’t it? The photographer hated it. Check out his pics on Flickr.

Anyone seen any excellent funeral directors’ windows? Photos welcome. Send me a JPEG: Charles@goodfuneralguide.co.uk.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

Not just for the skint

Nice home funeral story here:

When Cathleen, a registered nurse, passed away at Hinds Hospice in Fresno, no mortuary was called due to previous planning. The Fresno County Coroner's Office transported her to their facility and kept her until her funeral Jan. 26.

The morning of her funeral, she was placed in a silk-lined pine casket built by her husband and family friend Roric Russell.

She was wrapped in a quilt, and her husband of 38 years placed her favorite pillow, a Teddy bear and her guitar in the casket. Bob Carlin and Russell then transported her to the North Fork Cementer.

"I just wanted to help Bob out," Russell said. "I went with him (Bob) to the funeral home and the least expensive casket was $800. I asked if we could build a casket and the mortician told me that no one does that but there is no law against it. I asked Bob if he wanted to build one and he said yes. We bought the wood that day."

Plans for building the casket were found from an old Mother Earth Magazine article.

The Carlins had been together since they attended high school in New Jersey prior to moving to North Fork.

Bob Carlin said he felt good about building his wife's casket as it made the process much more personal.

North Fork musician John Kilburn gave Cathleen guitar lessons for 12 years and helped organize a life celebration, held Dec. 13 at North Fork Studio.

"We were able to honor Cathleen while she was still strong. She sang with us and people got to tell her what she meant to them. It was very powerful," Kilburn said.

I’ve only chosen extracts from the full news story, which you can read here. It stresses how much money all this saved. Sure, it does save money if you do it all yourself, but alongside the emotional value of the experience, that’s a detail.

Two big misconceptions going around at the moment: home funerals are for the skint; funeral pyres are for Hindus. Wrong on both counts. They are for everybody. It’s a choice.

Eliminate the negatives

Photo by Dr Neil Clifton

Dr Neil Clifton / CC BY-SA 2.0

The hearse pulled up, the conductor opened up the back and one of the mourners whipped out a camera. Something gave her pause. She turned to me (I was the celebrant) and said, “Is this not good in your country?” She was German. I told her that convention counted for nothing, but... Then I got some nods from the others so I told her to go ahead. She got some good pics, and I am sure they all cherish them.

We snap away from dawn to dusk but we stop when we get to a funeral. Why so? Because we want it to leave no visible trace? Perhaps. If you want to shut your eyes tight to something, why on earth would you want to take photographs of it?

If you engage with a funeral you’re bound to want to commemorate it, and take away visible and material reminders. What better than photos?

I’m really pleased when I see cameras at a funeral. It doesn’t happen nearly enough. How many professional photographers out there specialise in it? Well, there isn’t the demand, is there?

I don’t know about that. I think that supply can create demand. Give people the idea, show them the way, and they’ll run with it.

I hope that’ll be true of In Our Hearts Images. Here’s a brave new venture. Remembrance photography, they call it. I like it. Good luck to you, Esther and David. I hope you will soon be flattered by many imitators – none near you, of course.

Open air funerals are go!

In the light of yesterday’s Court of Appeal judgement in favour of Davender Ghai and anyone else who wants to be cremated on a funeral pyre, Rupert Callender of the Green Funeral Company, and a Trustee of the Natural Death Centre, has this to say:

The verdict this Wednesday from the High Court accepting the legal arguments presented by The Anglo-Asian Friendship Society and supported by The Natural Death Centre in favour of outdoor funeral pyres is as cheering as it is unexpected. It seems that underneath its musty periwigs and robes, British justice can still feel its way to the spirit of an issue and move radically in favour of the individual.

Of course, this is only a battle that has been won, not the war. The next impenetrable ring of defence, our Orwellian and inscrutable planning system and our perversely selective Environmental Health department will no doubt dig in for a long siege. For those of us who dream of blazing hilltops lighting up the night sky and illuminating dancing crowds, we still have miles to go before we sleep.

The media have predictably missed the point, with all of the major papers failing to grasp the concept that this is a right won for us all, not just those whose religious edicts prescribe it.

The strength of feeling on this matter that I have encountered from ordinary middle class Devonshire folk is incredible. It seems our ancestral memory has been stirred and will not lie down. Only this morning I encountered a woman who railed against not being able to cremate her mother in this way, and the spiritual paucity of what she had to settle for, the ubiquitous twenty minutes in a council run crem.

This is what has really cracked today, the one-size-fits-all funeral box that we have been squeezed into for so long. The people who manage our death rituals, particularly big funeral chains and crematorium consortiums, can be left in no doubt that the fundamental template no longer fits. Convenience can no longer dictate the ritual.

It is of course the crematoriums that are best placed to effect any changes; they solve many of the planning issues by existing already. Crematoriums are divided into those that are privately run, some by big players, and those that are managed by the council. Despite being heavily subsidised with our council taxes, it is the municipal ones that are shabby and run down. In one of our local urban ones, you are locked into a Victorian chapel for twenty minutes, so woe betide any latecomers, and the end of the service is marked by a noise reminiscent of the opening scenes of “Porridge.” The privately run ones, while still being deep in the belly of the capitalist beast at least are open to the whiff of consumer concern. We at the NDC have done our best to tempt them with new technologies, specifically Cryomation and Resomation, but we have also tried to sow seeds of change about how the ritual itself is managed, not just the mechanics of body disposal.

Integrating an area for outdoor cremations would be easy in a practical sense, and show that they do indeed “get it.” It is not quite the showy druidical theatrics of Dr Price that so many of us long for, but it is the beginning of something profound.

Ed’s note: Quoting the Press Association story: “the judgment goes on to state that the difficulties which may be thrown up by planning and public health legislation, should an application be submitted, have not been considered as part of this judgement.

"Furthermore, the method of burning associated with funeral pyres is not covered by any regulations which currently only apply to cremators powered by gas or electricity which are designed to maintain environmental standards, in particular air quality.

"Following the judgment, all local authorities will await further guidance from the Home Office and Defra as regards any proposed regulations or legislation which may control the proposed manner of cremation to ensure environmental standards and public health are protected."

Funny?

Click it to make it bigger.

Use this land for the dead!

Cremationists have always been proud to boast that what they do saves land for the living. It’s true. That more than 70 per cent of Brits opt for the burning fiery furnace saves around 200 acres a year.

Having said which, and having visited a number of natural burial grounds, I find myself seeing natural burial potential almost everywhere, these days. There is a great deal of land which presently does nothing but look after vegetation, birds and insects. Let’s use it!

Here in Redditch we have a New Town built by seriously socialist planners. It was created to house overspill Brummie working folk in bucolic surroundings. There is a road system which looked great on paper. It incorporates the UK’s only clover-leaf road junction, of which we are overweeningly proud. Our roads constitute a nightmare of featurelessness and dementedly speeding vehicles, with ne-er an enforced speed restriction to be seen. That's a downside (don't get me started). But we also have a People’s Park, in the midst of which, dug out of virgin farmland, we have a people’s lake with lakeside parking, lakeside cafe, lakeside visitor centre, lakeside play area and even a tarmac lakeside path. Here, of a Sunday afternoon, we, the good people of Redditch, like to take the air. The shade of Joe Stalin surveys our jostling prams and Staffies, and he smiles.

In the middle of our lake we have islands. I can never gaze at them without thinking what excellent natural burial grounds they would make. There’s a problem with accessibility, of course, and this is what makes them such excellent habitats, but it may daunt those who wish to visit a grave frequently. They could wave and call out from the lake’s edge, of course; it’s only 50 metres away. Would the good people of Redditch settle for a boat trip on, say, four appointed days a year to lay flowers and join in a ceremony of remembrance? I wonder... You could call the islands names like Avalon, Lyonesse, Shambhala. Shall I put this to the town council?

No, I don’t think I have the requisite number of days left in my life. But that has not quelled the notion.

World without East Ender?

From the Independent on Sunday, 07 01 10:

Eagle-eyed viewers of EastEnders have been left scratching their heads after spotting Archie Mitchell standing at the back of his own funeral. Archie's murder on Christmas Day – he was bludgeoned, quaintly, with a bust of Queen Victoria – has been the source of much excitement but maybe he's not as dead as we thought. A BBC spokesman explains: "It's true that he was there. Sadly we can't claim it was a sophisticated Hitchcockian joke. Larry just happened to be on set that day and joined in as an extra."

Final turn of the screw

Here’s a bit of fun, for which I thank my excellent friend Tony Piper. It’s a self-boring coffin, hermetically sealed, with built-in flower and flag receptacle. Two people can (er, theoretically) screw it into place like a capstan. It was patented in 2007, since when there seems to have been little uptake (wrong noun, surely?).

Like all the best ideas, it is limpidly beautiful. Contemplate the detailed plans here.

Words, words, words

Following my post about the ineptitude and ineffectiveness of words, I stumbled on this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald. It’s actually about citizenship ceremonies, but you’d never guess it from the way I’ve plucked the extracts:

Traditionally, ritual, including rites of passage, is embedded in our religious culture. And it is true that religion seems to have a competitive advantage when it comes to this stuff. Religions have been practising their liturgy for a long time. The godly are very good at all of the non-verbal aspects of ritual from bells and smells to crazy cozies to speaking in tongues. Great ceremony is about an absence of speeches and many faiths get this.

Moreover, the godly have the advantage that they feel that they are consecrating their rites in the presence of their transcendent God. That ineluctably gives an ineffable power to the ceremony. The godless will obviously struggle to match that attribute of faith. And we need to get better at the non-verbal stuff. We atheists can talk the leg off a chair but we can’t sing or chant or dance the leg off an amputee.

Now a real rite of passage doesn’t just rejoice in change. It is the change. A ceremony which merely celebrates but doesn’t cause the change is not strictly a rite of passage. Graduation ceremonies from university are rites of passage because you don’t get the damned piece of paper without enduring the ceremony. On this definition, school graduations strictly aren’t rites of passage because the exam marks after the ceremony are the life-changing event, not the school graduation or valedictory service. So funerals aren’t strictly rites of passage because unless you’re a time traveller, your funeral won’t end your life, just celebrate it.

We, of the secular world, often fail to employ those non-verbal rituals that make a ceremony. You can easily cock up even the most moving event by speeches. During my days of municipal service, these ceremonies meandered between inspirational and pedestrian. The pedestrian bits were inevitably the speeches. The best bits were non-verbal – the Mayoral handshake, the familial hugging, the singing of the national anthem, the presentation of the symbolic wattle and the giving of certificate. All of these had no words merely music or actions.

Religions don’t have a monopoly on rites of passage but they do them better than us. The secular world needs to learn more about celebrating without speeches. We need to have rituals we perform together and not passively watch. I think we are still a century or so away from really learning these skills.

At the heart of great ceremony is performance that is not normal. Normal is pedestrian. Words are dull. We need transforming ceremony and that requires anything but speeches.

Read the whole article here.

Norm

I don’t know if you have ever discovered Norm, humane, genial and wise, over at either of his blogs, Extraordinary Expectations or When Death Breaks in... The latter is suspended, now, or fulfilled. On EE, be sure to click all three tabs at the top.

Here’s a taste of Norm. I hope he won’t mind. These are some beautiful words he spoke at the funeral of a man with Down’s Syndrome:

He helped us understand in new ways.

He gave people a new view of patience.

He helped us feel compassion for others.

He made people rethink their priorities.

He helped us realize God’s love for the overlooked.

He reminded people of their frailties.

He cautioned us of our pride and dependence on material things.

He taught people how to love simply and unconditionally.

And now, he has taught us the truth of “ . . . the last shall be first.”

The ineptitude and ineffectiveness of words

Interesting, thought provoking piece about Irish funerals in today’s Irish Times. The writer, Marie Murray, makes this observation: The extent of funeral attendance in Ireland often bemuses our neighbours in England.

She says: Funeral attendance is a statement of connection, care, compassion and support. It encircles those who grieve and enriches those who attend because it connects each person there to the profundity of living and the inevitability of death. Funeral attendees witness the raw emotions of grief and the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to love.

And: Traditional Irish funerals have their own tone, history and vocabulary well documented in Irish literature, verse, story and song. They have their past and present rituals. They are comforting in their predictability.

And: There is consciousness in that line of sympathisers of the ineptitude and ineffectiveness of words.

I like that bit about the ineffectiveness of words. So many of our secular ceremonies are wall-to-wall words.

And: The funeral is the place where the details of the death are recounted, where memories are revived and connections made.

Lastly, There is psychological reason, social solidarity and cultural cohesion in funeral attendance

Read the entire piece here.

My Way sucks? No, it KILLS!

I am indebted to Pat McNally for this. And while I might have added it to my post about My Way, I feel it’s too good to bury.

Over in the Philippines, it seems, karaoke is a popular pastime. According to the New York Times, after a hard day’s work, there’s nothing a weary person likes more than to find a bar, glug a beer and belt out a classic or two.

This is not a matter of audience indifference. You’ve got to be good or you get stabbed: In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads.

One song is strictly off limits everywhere. Simply too dangerous. My Way. The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling My Way in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings."

Why?

Butch Albarracin, the owner of Center for Pop, a Manila-based singing school that has propelled the careers of many famous singers, was partial to what he called the “existential explanation.”

"‘I did it my way’ — it’s so arrogant,” Mr. Albarracin said. “The lyrics evoke feelings of pride and arrogance in the singer, as if you’re somebody when you’re really nobody. It covers up your failures. That’s why it leads to fights.”

The song never leads to carnage at polite British funeral. But I wonder if it leaves a subliminal bad taste in the mouth?

Read the entire New York Times piece here.

Stand up, speak up, shut up

Here’s a nice, to-the-point eulogy:

My 91 year old Dad died on the morning of January 9th, 2010. Prior to his death, we had many discussions about the funeral arrangements, eulogy and his final interment. He wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered along the Charles River in Newton, but my Mother was very uncomfortable with that and preferred the more conventional path of a funeral service and burial. So it was to the 80 people gathered at the funeral home that I was able to deliver the last words that my father, Albert Kramer, wanted spoken on his behalf. He had told me..."Just tell them: To those of you that knew me, well, you knew me. To those of you that didn't, you missed something." I knew him, and I miss him.

From a Weekend Competition in the New York Times. See the rest of the entries here.

And what did you want?

There’s a sprightly piece about funerals in this week’s Spectator. Its content is not available free online, so I’ll transcribe the best bits and hope that I’m not infringing copyright but, rather, advertising the magazine.

It’s by James Delingpole.

If I’d written a film it would have been called Four Funerals and a Wedding, because personally I find funerals much more fun. Not all funerals, obviously. But the funeral of someone who’s not a close relative and who’s had a good innings can be a very splendid occasion.

...

God I hate weddings. The only one I’ve really enjoyed was my own, because I got to decide on the food and the music and all the speeches were about me ... It’s the trappedness I loathe and fear most ... At least with funerals you don’t go with any high expectations of fun and frivolity – whereas at weddings you do, setting yourself up for almost inevitable disappointment. And there’s an unspoken assumption at weddings that, as a guest, you’re privileged to be there and should be grateful to have made it onto the invitation list, which puts pressure on you to be on your best behaviour. At a funeral, on the other hand, you’re thought to be putting yourself out slightly. The family are touched and appreciative that you’ve made the effort. Also there’s no best man, no sit-down food ordeal, you don’t have to bring a present, and if you do behave badly no one minds or even notices because everyone’s on one of those weird, faintly hysterical, ‘it’s what he would have wanted’ post-funeral highs.

Then there’s death. I don’t think nearly enough of us think nearly often enough about this and what it means ... I think that we might all be inclined to live better, more fruitful lives. I thought of this as [the daughter of a man whose funeral he had attended] read out a homily attributed to RL Stevenson (though more likely to be a variant on something written in 1904 for a poetry competition by an American woman named Bessie Stanley). It goes: ‘That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it. Who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had...’ When spoken right next to the coffin containing the body of someone who’s course is run, those words have quite an impact.

On a similar note, this is the poem short story writer Raymond Carver had inscribed on his grave:

LATE FRAGMENT

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.