Having worked in the funeral industry for many years, the price of a cremation lasting only forty-five minutes has never sat well with me.
How can it be right?
The coffin arrives while the mourners are watching and waiting. Then they are stuck for words as the coffin is brought into sight, an eerie silence fills the air while a knife could cut the atmosphere. Then a family member becomes inconsolable while five men carry the coffin into the chapel. The service takes place with no time to adjust. A eulogy is read, two or three pieces of music are played then at the end the committal takes place.
This is all within thirty minutes!
The forty-five-minute allocation is from when the first person walks into the crematorium until the last person leaves. This is so the funeral behind can take their forty-five minute allocated slot.
What has led us to this, and what is wrong with the ways we are currently conducting cremations?
First, we need to understand how our funerals have come to exist as they do today. Before the 1900’s most people died at home, not in hospitals, care homes or hospice, these were simply not freely available. So, when someone died, it would more often be at home and they would stay at home until the day of the funeral. Before the 1900’s the undertaker’s main two roles were to provide a coffin and transport from home to the grave, but if the home was close to the graveyard, transport was not required as the family and friends would carry the coffin from home to the graveyard themselves.
The changes to the way we look after the deceased have come about since the early 1900’s. Since then, undertakers or Funeral Directors as we now call them, take the deceased from, more often a hospital or hospice to the funeral directors, then from the funeral directors to the cremation or burial. For more about how funerals have come about in today’s society see The Undertaker AT Work 1900-1950 https://www.brianparsons.org.uk/undertaker.html
Other than the deceased not staying at home, undertakers as we now know them, have not changed very much over the last 100 years. Take for instance the uniform of pallbearers and conductors. The conductor still has his top hat and cane and they all wear a waistcoat and tailed jacket with grey pinstriped trousers.
Personally, I don’t think taking the deceased to the funeral home has helped us as a society to deal with death and funerals. We have become very fearful of even talking about dying.
Many people say it is seeing the coffin arrive at a funeral that is too emotional for them to cope with and many also report not being able to remember what was said at the funeral service. This is a typical reaction to someone in shock or in emotional distress.
Try to imagine, if we had kept the tradition of keeping the dead at home until the funeral takes place, how we would cope with a funeral today? I am a fully trained psychotherapeutic Counsellor, and know only too well, the more we are exposed to things and ideas, the less we fear them.
While it might be too late to turn the clocks back by taking the deceased home, it is not too late to start embracing further changes by removing any unnecessary traumatic elements.
Discover how more people are turning to direct cremation as an alternative to the traditional funeral:
Traditional funerals dying out in UK as no-frills options rise
