Death and Funeral options – why you need to do your research now…

Death and Funeral options – why you need to do your research now…

A few people have sent me the link to this in the last week: organic burial pods than turn you into a tree, as opposed to a coffin or regular cremated ash spreading.

This is quite a lovely idea.  They take your body, curl you up in the fetal position, pop you in the pod with some seed, bury you under the ground, and let a tree grow out of you. You can check it out here.  I’m not entirely sure how well a tree would grow out of you, but this is one of the reasons why doing your death/funeral research is important.

A bigger and more important reason though is options.  If someone close to you dies and you find yourself making difficult and new decisions almost immediately, while trying to begin getting your head around this death, you aren’t going to be aware of your options and this instantly limits them.

Imagine suddenly having your own wedding sprung on you.  Let’s say you agree to it but are told you need to make decisions immediately and have to be married within the week. Add to this that you’ve only been to a couple of weddings in your life, they were more or less the same, you didn’t pay that much attention, and you’ve never thought about how you’d like to be married. Also you have a wedding planner who is guiding you who only lets you know a very few of the options you truly have and may be trying to upsell their most expensive services to you. The reality is you have no time to research, don’t know what the options are, are working under pressure…and the wedding you end up having is very likely not going to end up being your dream wedding.

Now translate this into funerals.  The exact same things happen when we have no prior thought or knowledge about funerals.  Now I know you’re unlikely to be talking about a ‘dream funeral’ but you likely do want to be able to make the best options for your person who has died, choosing a send-off that truly is representative of them and a good chance for the rest of you to be together, and be around them.  If this is around your own funeral planning then you likely want to be sure that you leave wishes reflective of who you are and what you want, and also not to dump the whole thing on your family or those closest to you to make all those decisions for you.

The problem here is that you may barely have considered these things, suddenly have a death to deal with, are in shock and trying to process what has happened, while being asked to choose a funeral director immediately (unfortunately many people go to the first local place and that’s the end of it…imagine choosing a wedding planner that way), start planning to have a funeral within a week, and then are being led by a funeral director who, in some cases, will simply give you a few options and often try to push the higher priced ones.  Then the funeral is all over before you really had time to think about it.

I know some wonderful, ethical funeral directors who I would be very happy to have looking after my body and funeral. But, unfortunately, I consider then to be more the exception rather than the norm. On the whole you will generally be given a narrow range of advice and limited options from most funeral directors – in a few cases because they are unscrupulous (in the UK there are endless stories and examples of Coop funeralcare having dodgy practices and attempting to sell only the most expensive options and packages), but very often simply because they don’t know or haven’t be trained in all of the other options, or because their business doesn’t offer these.

This is why it is so important to do some reading or research yourself before you have to deal with a death and funeral – so that you have choices and options.  When you are stressed, in shock, under pressure just after a death…this is not the time that you can do lots of research and decide exactly what you’d like.

And there is an even bigger issue. If you don’t know your options and you don’t know your rights and you don’t know a lot about death…you may make some choices you wouldn’t have if you’d been better informed and you may miss opportunities that you didn’t know you had.

Here are just a few options around death and dying that you have that you may never be aware of unless you’ve done some research first, and also some that may be shocking at first (as they are different from what you understand as the funeral norm) but it may be that actually they’re perfect for you if only you have the chance to think about them:

• That organic funeral pod above. You’re pretty unlikely to hear about things like that from many regular funeral directors
• Doing different things with ashes (you can be made into a diamond, a firework, pot glazing, even tattoo ink…the list is endless)
• Keeping a body at home…even having a home funeral (your local funeral director is highly unlikely to suggest this)
• Getting involved in the caring and the dressing of your person’s body – the right funeral director would guide you or assist you if you wished to do this. This is one of the ones that can be shocking when you haven’t thought it through, but can actually be really healthy and healing and mean that you care for someone in death who you cared for in life rather than entrusting this to a stranger.
• Put off the funeral a little bit. Think about it – why the mad rush?
• Having a cardboard coffin (that you and others can decorate any way you like) or wicker coffin or something else cheaper, more beautiful and more environmentally friendly than standard coffins.  In some places you could even be buried in a beautiful shroud or blanket instead of having a coffin at all
• Having beautiful and specially designed garments that are designed to break-down naturally with the body
• Keeping a body in your home for a little while instead of having it rushed out.  If you don’t understand what happens after death you may panic – as many do – and believe they need to be ‘removed’ as soon as possible.  A good friend of mine had borrowed my copy of the Good Funeral Guide and so when her husband died in the night she understood that she could keep him with her for a while and she had a few precious last hours alone with him before she decided she was ready for his body to be taken.
• Have a simple cremation (like Poppy’s Funerals in London) and then do a service your way – with a celebrant in a hall or just family in a park or on the beach, or even no ceremony at all if this is your preference
• Having someone close to you run the ceremony instead of a total stranger
• Not having them embalmed. Having bodies embalmed seems to be the default in many places but it is a choice, certainly isn’t always (or even usually) necessary, and if people understood the actual process I think far fewer would agree to it so quickly
• A natural burial ground instead of a traditional graveyard
• Having your own coffin designed in a pattern meaningful to your person who has died.  The girlfriend of mine I mentioned before had a bespoke coffin made in a Harlequins (UK rugby union team) theme as this was her husband’s favourite and meant a lot to him.  The people she went through to have it made even contacted the Harlequins on her behalf for permission.  Here are some photos she allowed me to share:

The list I have given above is a very long way from being exhaustive.  This is just an example of things you may not know or may not have thought of.  Some of these may not be available where you are (for example if there aren’t natural burial grounds close by) or your funeral director may tell you some of these are not possible. In some cases this may be true but in others not true at all – it may just be something they don’t do, don’t know about, or won’t tell you about.  Again, this is why it’s so important that you’ve done a little research yourself to know what you can do.

Because people are afraid of death they stay unaware and uninformed and can often believe or be told that many of what have become the funeral industry’s defaults are actually rules or laws, when in actual fact in most places there are very few laws governing death. And these laws are typically not sentimental i.e. they do not govern how you should have a funeral or when.  Instead they are around ‘safe disposal’ of a body and appropriate paperwork to ensure this person’s death isn’t suspicious and has been registered.

I don’t know about other countries but my favourite book is the Good Funeral Guide.  Get it, read it, keep it on the bookshelf. Done.  It’s a UK book but even though I am no longer in the UK it’s still the only book that I carry wherever I travel, as I’m yet to find anything as educational, easy to read, honest, informative, and even witty.  Because death ought to come with a serving of life too.

If you know for a fact that you’ll never die and that no-one you love ever will (ummm…we need to chat) then you don’t need to learn a thing. As you were!  But for the rest of us…..take a little time now to read something useful and be a little bit more informed and a little bit more prepared.  This will help you so much when you find yourself involved with planning any funeral.

Kristie

xx

PS if you want to get a head start on putting a funeral speech together, or are reading this because you’re currently organising one, check out my e-book ‘How to Write and Give a Beautiful Funeral Speech’ for all the tips you need. Click here to take a look.

Tagged as: funeral options, funeral planning, Good Funeral Guide