I was recently startled by a TV advertisement for low-cost funerals. I was particularly interested as I am 87 and well aware that I shall soon be in the hands of the undertaker. Today funerals have become extremely expensive, so we would normally welcome ways of making them more affordable. How can we cut down on unnecessary expenses? The radical thought occurs: why do we need funerals at all? Can we do without them? What’s wrong with just having the basic bare minimum? The disposal of the dead body is the one absolutely necessary thing. That is unavoidable, but why not do it in the least fussy way possible?
You do not need a luxurious Rolls Royce hearse and a procession of limousines for the mourners. Do people really need to go to the crematorium at all? Do we have to man-handle a costly coffin, or even a simple willow-weave basket? Why not zip up the corpse in a body-bag and transport it to the crematorium in the back of a modest little van? Nobody else but the crematorium staff need be present. The body may be placed in the furnace without any ritual, ceremony, or words of any kind. So there is no need for any priest, rabbi, imam, minister or celebrant. Why pay someone to do something that isn’t needed?
In the TV advert, a number of mature but obviously intelligent and sensible no-nonsense hard-headed men and women appeared on screen to declare, ‘I don’t want any fuss.’ Admirably, they felt not the slightest need for posthumous praise or publicity. Many will feel much the same as these face-the-facts men and women who don’t want to cause any unnecessary expense to their families. We too, like them, don’t want any fuss.
I heed the advice of the late Rabbi Lionel Blue that it is the mark of a lady or gentleman not to leave their affairs in disorder and to cause the least inconvenience to their heirs and successors. I have revised my will, appointed powers of lasting attorney (all at considerable expense). I am trying to be more of a gentleman, but it is far from easy. I am not tidy by nature and am facing the interminable task of sorting out my papers and books. I cannot bear the thought of my books being thrown on to a skip or bonfire. There must be some constructive solutions to this problem, and if I don’t find them, I hope my children will.
To return to the No-Funeral approach. This may catch on. The first TV advert I saw was for a ‘simple’ funeral, and I have now seen yet another firm offering the same thing. ‘Cheap’ funerals could, nevertheless, make a deal of money for the undertaking profession. A clerical friend tells me that this trend has been gathering strength over the past twenty years. Undertakers no longer turn first to parsons when organising funerals, unless the mourners specifically request it. They pocket more money by carrying out the funeral service themselves and have trained members of their firm to officiate. I am intrigued, as I have never been to such a ceremony myself. What sort of language do they use? What do they say?
No ceremony at all, no words said, is a very different matter, very much a new approach. Isn’t it just too bleak and inhuman to be acceptable? Even after Auschwitz we still need poetry. This matter of language is important. A large minority still find the ancient hallowed words of a traditional burial service most helpful, comforting and inspiring. However, people who don’t go to church (that is, the majority) may find such words remote or unintelligible. They find it awkward and embarrassing to be in a church building, unsure as to how to behave. Even a so-called ‘non-religious’ humanist service may still seem unacceptable. A meeting in an unaccustomed setting concerned with a frighteningly taboo subject, death, is something they would rather not face. Remove death far from them so they don’t see it or hear anything about it. Let other, unknown, people deal with it for them. They don’t want to be there. ‘No funeral’ is a form of denial pretending to be strong-minded admirable realism. In truth this is very far from a strong ‘no nonsense’ approach. Far from being brave, it’s escapist. It is far braver to struggle to find some words to do justice to the occasion.
From pre-historic times people have marked death with some acts of respect and reverence. To stuff a corpse into a wheelie-bin to be taken away by the municipal waste-disposal truck seems more like the abolition of humanity than the advancement of reason. I have already written some suggestions for my own final service, about music and readings. These include Rabindranath Tagore’s, ‘I only ask for last kind words from you.’ I don’t want any fuss, but I want to make sure it isn’t a ‘No-funeral funeral’.
Frank Walker was a Unitarian minister (and teacher of English in Further Education) in Halifax, Bristol and Cambridge, 1959–2000.