THE DEATH OF DIGNIFIED FUNERALS – May 11^th 2006

 

Cheap pop songs, shoebox coffins and Tesco-style conveyor belts…

 

 

hen my remarkable mother died very suddenly four years ago at the age of just 59, one of the few things we did not have to worry about in the midst of our grief was the kind of funeral she would have wanted. With her usual capable thoroughness, she had written down exactly what she expected, and heaven help us if we deviated from her instructions.

 

A Roman Catholic from the cradle, she expected a full Requiem Mass in a Church – no hurried farewells at the council crematorium for her. She wanted flowers, lots of flowers, rather than the mealy-mouthed ‘donations to charity’ that’s often requested these days.

 

We discovered later that for years she’d been giving 50 percent of her income to her favoured charities. But in death she wanted to be remembered properly, with roses and lilies.

 

We all knew she’d have haunted us forever if we’d dared be so ‘common’ as to spell out a word in blooms, a vogue which was anathema to her.

 

She’d chosen her hymns – including The Lord is My Shepherd – the readings and  biblical text she wanted on her gravestone.

 

There was no doubt in any of our minds that she wanted an old-fashioned funeral in which God figured prominently. But it seems my mother was – forgive the pun – one of a dying breed.

 

Less than quarter of Britons request a religious service, according to a new survey. Rather than opting for traditional hymns like Abide With Me, pop songs by Robbie Williams or Frank Sinatra are played at services.

 

Nearly half of us want our friends and relatives to have a good party to ‘celebrate our life’ instead of a wake, and a tree or shrub, rather than a headstone, to mark our graves.

 

In this secular age, when the sanctity of the marriage service has been so debased that couples can get wed on the run – a bride and groom made their vows during the London Marathon– it’s hardly surprising that funerals have gone the same way.

 

 

od is no longer part of many people’s lives, so why should He feature much – if at all – in their deaths? Marriage does at least have a secular side. It is a civil contract, as well as (in the case of Church weddings) a sacrament before God.

 

Walking down the aisle to the strains of Annie’s Song somehow seems less sacrilegious than being laid to rest to the tinny warbling of Monty Python’s Always Look On The Bright Side of Life on a portable cassette recorder.

 

Without God to make a funeral uplifting, even joyous for those who believe in the afterlife, we struggle to give a secular service any kind of meaning.

 

Instead, we seek refuge in the same kind of nauseating sentimentality that has given rise to the tasteless practice of leaving flowers by the roadside.

 

I recently attended the funeral of a friend who had unexpectedly died from a heart attack, aged just 32, less than 18 months after his wedding. Neither he nor his wife was religious, so the service was at a funeral home.

 

His widow had opted for an open casket, which was silver laminate, not wood. In lieu of hymns, she played a CD of pop music he had compiled for their first anniversary. Then she and his mother got up and, in front of the corpse, slow-danced to the song that bride and groom had danced to a year earlier at their wedding.

 

As if this wasn’t weird enough, in place of a eulogy, the ‘audience’ were invited to stand up and recount our ‘favorite memories’ of the deceased.

 

There followed the same kind of ‘do you remember?’ session you would normally expect down the pub after the funeral.

 

Little wonder that his brother, who had been raised Roman Catholic, tried to wrestle the coffin out of the room before it got any worse.

 

Funerals these days have about as much solemnity and dignity as Uncle George’s fiftieth birthday party.

 

Have we no respect? Are we so blasé about the possibility of fire and brimstone on the other side that we are happy to shuffle off this mortal coil to the sound of Queen singing Another One Bites the Dust?

 

I don’t want to be buried in a glorified shoebox, no matter how ecologically sound, as if I’m a pet hamster. After all I’ve done for them, my children can jolly well pay for a nice bit of polished oak.

 

Nor do I want to be cremated and shunted off on a supermarket conveyor belt through an orange nylon curtain (and who knows whose ashes you could get mixed up with.)

 

I haven’t gone so far as to buy my own plot, since I’m still struggling to pay for my own home, but my mother has a peaceful corner of an ancient village churchyard to call her own – under a juniper tree, from which gin is made – and I wouldn’t mind a shady spot nearby.

 

I can’t imagine anything worse than spending eternity in a government-run cemetery near the M25.

 

We need ritual and ceremony in our lives. We may have all-but eliminated God from Christmas and Easter, but every year the secular traditions grow more complicated. We’ve imported the US-style Hallowe’en; give it another few years, and we’ll have hijacked Thanksgiving too.

 

We may not go to Church anymore, but stand on any football terrace and listen to the fans sing their hearts out to a slew of old hymns, and you’ll see where the congregation has gone.

 

Death should be marked with dignity and solemnity, not quiche Lorraine and boy band ditties.

 

Do you really want to spend all eternity with ‘Angels’ ringing in your ears? A few weeks in the Top Ten was enough for me.

 

Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have a funeral service to write.