I was saddened to receive this contribution to the Gay and Lesbian Funeral Issues section of My Last Song by a contributor who asked not to have his identity revealed.

It is appalling that such cruel attitudes still prevail, and difficult to know how to counter them apart from being more honest and planning for the inevitable death of a partner in a same sex relationship and how the funeral will be handled.

I would like to hear the experiences of others in similar situations and any advice they have.

“My first, and only, partner died six months ago. We were together nine years, but we unwisely delayed getting a civil partnership and he was only ‘out’ to his close family and a few mutual friends.

As a result, I had no rights when it came to his funeral. All the major decisions were made by his grieving mother, who told me that it would break her heart to have someone stand up and talk about her son being gay.

I was allowed to attend the funeral, and as the only person able to use a computer properly I was tasked with composing the eulogy as it was dictated by her family. However, I was not allowed to be mentioned in it, and at the funeral the mourners were hustled out of the church quickly by his family to avoid me talking to them.

There is no point trying to explain how psychologically mangled this has left me, I leave it to your imagination.

Suffice to say, those you think these attitudes are a thing of the past are horribly, horribly wrong.  It is no exaggeration to say that the two worst events in my life were, in order, his death and his funeral.”

I first met Roger Crouch when I joined Westminster City Council in the late 1980s.

He was a special adviser to the leader, Dame Shirley Porter. She had just taken me on as head of press and PR with a remit to get her as much favourable publicity as possible. Mine was the fourth such appointment in a year and Roger told me he didn’t think I’d last long but that he’d do all he could to help.

Well, I survived for two years and before I left we became close associates, if not friends. I admired his intelligence, honesty and witty barbed comments about Westminster’s elected members and his colleagues. I think he admired my tenacity and knowing when not to obey Dame Shirley, and definitely for organising a memorable Christmas party.

While at Westminster Council Roger met Paola, who also worked in the leader’s office, and whom he married a few years later.

I had left the council by then, and had since rarely contacted Roger. The last time was ten or so ago years when he spoke warmly about his young family – son Dominic and daughter Giulia – and his love of life in Gloucestershire. I remember him saying that Dom had slight learning difficulties and was a wonderful boy.

Roger then came to my attention following the dreadful circumstances of Dom’s tragic suicide in May last year.

Dom jumped from the top of a six storey building close to his school.  He was being bullied at school because he kissed another boy in a game of dare. While on the roof he texted 999 to get help…it didn’t arrive and he jumped.

Following his son’s death, Roger, at one time head of children’s services at Gloucestershire County Council, embarked on a campaign to prevent bullying, particularly homophobic bullying, in schools. He threw himself relentlessly into this mission and in November was named the gay rights charity Stonewall’s Hero of the Year.

Roger’s early life had not been easy, and the last months must have been terrible.

His mother died when he was only 11. He left school at 16 before studying at night school to get into Kings College Cambridge to read history then getting a degree in public policy and administration from the LSE.

A successful career in local government followed, and a happy family life which meant more to him that anything else.

Then, in the last two years, tragedy built on tragedy. His sister died a few months before Dominic’s suicide. And a few weeks ago his nephew died in Afghanistan, a death which must also have affected Roger, a pacifist.

Sometime during the afternoon of Monday, 28 November, Roger hanged himself. Yesterday was his funeral. 

The yellow roses on his coffin were later laid on Dominic’s grave.

It was with more than a little sadness I learnt today of the death of singer Dobie Gray.

I was in my early teens when his soul dance hit The In Crowd came out, and I loved its energy and clever hip rhymes. And I’m not the only one – someone chose it as a song they want played at their farewell.

As I moved from soul to jazz, pianist Ramsey Lewis did a soul jazz cover of The In Crowd which I played endlessly.

I didn’t know it but a year after The In Crowd Dobie Gray recorded Out On The Floor, which was to become one of the biggest tracks on the northern soul scene. Ten or so years later I first knew of this track, and since then I play it often, dancing with increasing stiffness to its many and steady beats per minute.

I didn’t really follow his career but was very pleased when the country influenced Drift Away, among these suggested funeral songs, became a hit in 1973. Indeed, in the 1970s Gray became that very rare thing – a commercially successful black country singer.

It’s worth listening to a ‘best of’ compilation to see what a fine country artist he was, with a great ear for the best songs in a genre that has more than its fair share of poor ones. Loving Arms and There’s a Honkey Tonk Angel are two of my particular favourites.

Like many soul singers he began by singing in church choirs in the south where his family were share croppers.

Unlike most of his contemporary R‘n’B singers he also had a relatively successful acting career, and also wrote songs for artists including Ray Charles, Johnny Mathis, George Jones and Don Williams.

Dobie Gray was an intelligent, charming, dignified and talented artist whose voice has given pleasure to hundreds of thousands down the years.

He’ll be missed but his music will live on. We’ve chosen our favourite five Dobie Gray songs here.

Drift Away is a particularly appropriate farewell or funeral song, with this the last verse: “Thanks for the joy that you’ve given me,/I want you to know I believe in your song./Rhythm and rhyme and harmony,/You help me along, makin’ me strong.”

This morning’s juxtaposition of interviews on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme with investment guru Jim Rogers (close colleague of George Soros) and Martin Sorrell, head of marketing giant WPP, provides good insight of why we face economic meltdown.

Rogers gave his view about  China’s huge donation of funds into the Euro bailout fund. He stressed that the proposed Euro crisis solution was a scam as all it did was to put back the time when the real issue has to be addressed. Most of the developed world, especially the US, are spending more than we earn.

Then Martin Sorrell came on to answer questions about WPP’s third quarter performance, growing nicely but reflecting a slow down. He was also asked to justify his rapidly increasing and huge remuneration. This on a day when research has revealed that pay for directors of the UK’s top businesses rose 50 per cent over the past year.

When asked whether companies should spend more or less on marketing in an economic downturn, Sorrell predicatably said they should spend more as clearly this means greater profits for WPP, the umbrella under which sits multi-national marketing giants including Ogilvy, Young and Rubicam, Chime Communications and TNS. For Sorrell to answer they should spend less on marketing would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.

WPP’S marketing agencies are in business to increase the market of their clients. They have only one aim: to make people spend more, to buy their clients’ products and services. And as WPP’s inexorably increasing profits and growth prove, they are brilliant at it.

Herein, however, is the root of  the problem. Marketing companies have succeeded for many years now in making people think that the acquisition of something is more important than whether they can afford it.

This is unsurprising, for it would never enter the heads of well paid executives, creatives, planners, researchers working in WPP’s companies, rewarded for their success, that the majority of the people they are aiming at don’t have the money for the latest gadget, garment, gourmet experience… And so individuals, families, communities and indeed states where these marketing geniuses operate most effectively get further into debt.

One day, and that day is approaching faster than we care to think, the whole edifice will come tumbling down, and when it does, the millions we are paying ourselves will count for nothing.

On a micro level, families are finding it ever more difficult to pay for funerals of loved ones. If it helps at all, we give advice on how to reduce funeral costs. It’s not advice you’ll get from funeral directors such as Co-operative Funeralcare or Dignity Funerals.

The 1st October is the International Day of Older People, and given My Last Song’s appeal, we are right there in that space.

The international element is the most important, in that it aims to campaign for pensions and greater provision for older people in the developing world. Alas, My Last Song can do nothing to support this goal.

But on a more individual level within the UK, US and other English speaking countries, I hope we can do something to ensure the wisdom, experience and values of each older person will remain after they die. 

This is not to assume that older people are about to die – thank heavens we are living longer and more healthy lives. But the older we get the more we must address our mortality.

And when doing, think about subscribing to a Lifebox into which you can put your memories, your wisdom, your achievements, your photographs…even your secrets. This will be secure so that only you, and after your death your chosen loved one(s), can open the Lifebox and access the information.

There is no such thing as eternal life, thank goodness. However, thanks to digital technology and perpetual storage on Cloud servers, your memories can live forever thanks to the Lifebox. And, as you are a member of the ‘Older’ community, these memories will include your nuggets of wisdom, experience and personal history that would otherwise be lost forever.

The smiles that so readily crossed the faces of David Cameron and Barak Obama when they were together this week hid something sinister.

Their message – that the world will be a better place when countries behave like theirs – is contradicted by their foreign policy actions.

No sooner had Prime Minister Cameron waved President Obama goodbye than  he announced the deployment of Apache helicopters in Libya.  

Our objective is clearly to get rid of President Gaddafi through military rather than political means…yes, killing the same ruler that we rehabilitated a couple of years ago as the newly found friend of the west.

The BBC this morning suggested that the helicopters were likely to be used in targeting Gaddifi as he sped nightly from local hospital to local hospital to avoid NATO attacks.

Apache helicopters are very efficient killing machines with their night vision optical targeting devises which guide large calibre bullets onto the target with unerring accuracy from long distances.  It’s likely that Gaddafi will be soon killed or decide to surrender.

However, if Cameron follows the new US doctrine of dealing with its enemies, Gaddifi won’t be given the opportunity to surrender.

It is clear that Osama Bin Laden was in no position to defend himself when he was shot in the face in front of his cowering family by the crack US Naval  Seal team, a murder and breach of international law watched live by the President and Secretary of State in Washington.

Bin Laden should have been brought out alive to answer for the wicked crimes he orchestrated. This would have justified the American’s uninvited encroachment into another state’s territory and given the world a message that if the US is going to act as an international policeman, then the criminals will end up in court rather than murdered without a trial, rather like the victims of corrupt police squads in Baltimore.

Bin Laden would also have been more useful alive than dead as it’s difficult to get information from corpses rotting on the sea floor.

Cameron and Obama will get away with breaking international law and ordering the murder of terrorists and rulers they have fallen out with as well as the loss of innocent lives as a result.

But David Cameron should understand that the British people don’t like bullies and hypocrites. Nor do we want millions of pounds spent fighting wars that don’t concern us. 

And when the news bulletins show the funerals of the young helicopter crew lost when an Appache is hit by a ground to air missile, we will ask why more British lives are being wasted in futile campaigns that only increase the animosity of those who don’t share our values.

It is, I think, quite a common view expressed during the funeral reception that it’s a shame the person whose life is being remembered wasn’t there to enjoy the company of the gathered friends, family, ex-colleagues, neighbours.

Many people have also told me that they imagine what their funeral will be like because of the people who will attend and hear the tributes, listen to the last songs and swap stories and reminiscences.

These are probably the reasons why living funerals are becoming more popular here and in the US.

When speaking to comedian Arthur Smith, by chance a neighbour of mine, about My Last Song, he told me that his brother Richard, a respected doctor, had written a blog supporting the advantages of living funerals, not the least of which is the advanced planning means far flung loved ones can attend whereas they are unlikely to make the funeral at shorter notice.

A living funeral is the logical destination of the wish to have a farewell ceremony that is a celebration of your life, rather than the traditional grief-fest.

And why not have a ‘party of a lifetime’ to celebrate your life with the people whose lives have touched your life. You can thank them, remind them of their importance to you, swap memories and stories, share your achievements and hopes and, not least, be the centre of attention.

As the founder of My Last Song, I would also emphasise the importance of selecting the music that you’ve most enjoyed, and which has special significance.  The same attention should be paid to the food, the drink and the other details that will make this a party that people will never forget.

You should also organise someone to make a video of the party, or at the least take still photographs.  The video and images can then be put in your Lifebox to be accessed by loved ones in future years, so that your memory, and your memorable last party, can be enjoyed many times over.

Clearly you have to take your family with you, and some of the more traditional members might disapprove.  However, the advantages over and above people’s liking of a good party, include the fact that they won’t have to pay for a reception once you’ve died and also reducing the grief they might otherwise feel when faced with your demise.

After all, how much better to look back on someone’s life and remember the warmth and enjoyment of a final celebration than wish they had been able to share this once it’s too late.

Once the grim reaper has called, the party really is over.

What a woefully dishonest letter Prime Minister Cameron and Presidents Obama and Sarkozy wrote to the world today to justify their ill judged military intervention in Libya.

It was written after several members of the coalition refused to be further drawn into what will be a long and expensive military engagement as the rebel forces, helped and probably armed by Nato, face stalemate in confronting Gaddafi’s better trained and equipped military.

Cameron, Obama and Sarkozy are trying to take the moral high ground on the day when their commanders first denied the Libyan Government’s claim that they had bombed Tripoli, only to admit it hours later when journalists told the world they had witnessed the bombings.

Their letter gives the impression that the Libyan people are at one against Gaddafi who is only staying in power by engaging in ‘medieval sieges’ of rebel held towns, ‘raining down shells and missiles on his own people’ who he is ‘mercilessly massacring’.

We know propaganda when we see it, just as we know that for several nights it was Nato bombs that were dropped from great heights.

We can also work out that a fair number of the Libyan people are not deserting Gaddafi and that his troops are more loyal than our leaders would have us believe.

It’s clear to all except these three ‘world leaders’ that the outcome of the Libyan conflict must be a sound political agreement, with the two sides negotiating a compromise. Yet this letter rules out any solution in which Gaddafi ‘plays a part in Libya’s future Government’ though several paragraphs later, and almost as an afterthought, the letter states that ‘it will be the people of Libya, not the UN, who choose their new constitution, elect their new leaders and write the next chapter in their history.’

The authors of the letter should contemplate that final clause, because in fact Libya hardly has a history.  It is an artificial construct as a sovereign nation state, having been loosely governed by the Ottoman Empire from the mid 16^th century and the Italians between 1911 and 1947. It’s made up of Arabs and Berbers, neither of which place loyalty to nation above that of village, tribe, clan or religion.

Historical fact is a minor inconvenience for our leaders, confident that the mass of Libyans are hungry for western style democracy, with ‘homes and hospitals…basic utilities and the institutions to underpin a prosperous and open society.’  And as they say, Nato members ‘will assist in rebuilding’ what they and Gaddafi have destroyed.

That, I’m afraid, rather gives the game away. A lot of western companies will get rich contracts once the final shells have landed and the bodies buried.

This is an edited contribution by Kwame Twumasi-Fofie to My Last Song which shows that not all Ghanaians are happy with the growing trend for expensive and party-style funerals in Ghana. 

Among Ghanaians in general, and the Akan people in particular, one event that brings us together more than any other is bereavement. 

In rural Ghana where even now birthday and wedding celebrations are virtually unknown, funerals have always been a significant feature of our social life. However, as funerals are all about mourning rather than partying, I believe that we in Ghana have lost its meaning, replacing it with commercialisation and exhibitionism.    

Until quite recently, one significant aspect of Akan tradition was that mourning and feasting never went together. Today, however, when you attend a funeral you may be forgiven for thinking that it’s a big party with huge amounts of food on offer.

Video coverage has also become a familiar item on a funeral budget, which given the cost in what is still a relatively poor economy, makes little sense. 

Another well documented fashionable trend is the use of expensive coffins. They are now so costly that people are now deliberately destroying them after depositing them in the grave so they won’t be stolen!  

Until very recently, bereaved family members only wore rubber sandals on their feet as it was considered inappropriate to be mourning while in expensive clothes. These days, however, ladies’ funeral clothing in particular is more suitable as party outfits. 

It is now common for bodies to be kept in the mortuary for six months or longer to enable dilapidated homes to be renovated or sometimes new ones built before the burial.  

Previously the body would be buried as soon as possible and the funeral held at a later date.  Now dead bodies stay in the mortuary for as long as it takes people to raise funds for a ‘grand funeral’.  

The high cost of funerals is mainly due to our brothers and sisters living outside the country.  Most of them are usually constrained from visiting home as regularly as they want due to their limited finances.  Yet in their attempt to impress some spend lavishly on funerals with borrowed money which on their return, they try to recoup by organising parties under the guise of funerals. 

And the irony is that we do not really care much about the final resting place of the dead.  Cemeteries in Ghana are often neglected, with weeds growing among the graves. 

It would be better if the huge sums of money spent on funerals could be used to improve the final resting place of our loved ones.  

It’s time our traditional rulers, politicians and religious leaders waged war against expensive funerals because it is destroying our society.

The Quakers have been philanthropists since the commercial success of Quaker family businesses and individuals in the 18th century.

In 1867, Quaker Social Action (now known as QSA) was set up in the East End of London as a result of the appalling poverty affecting the working class in that area.

Some 144 years later, the levels of poverty have, thank goodness, declined, but poverty still exists in the East End as it does in many parts of the country. And the recent recession, increasing unemployment and public sector cuts are making the situation worse for a lot of families.

Last year, to meet a growing concern, QSA launched Down To Earth, a project that addresses what I’ll call for shorthand, ‘funeral poverty.’ The project helps people living on low incomes to have the funeral they want at a price they can afford.

As their website explains, “when someone close to us dies, money is often the last thing on our minds.” In 2008 the average cost of a funeral was £7,000, and for families facing financial disadvantage and low income, finding that amount of money can be the first step in a downward spiral of financial difficulty and debt.

It can also cause a great deal of family strife and individual anxiety, at a time when people face extreme distress and anguish.

The Down To Earth project deserves much credit and support for addressing a very real issue that’s all too often ignored, along with everything else to do with our demise.

It may not be a particularly popular or attractive good cause, but consider its main purpose…’to help bereaved people to plan a funeral that honours and celebrates the life of the person who has died, but which will not have a negative effect on their own financial future.’

Hopefully Dying Matters will use its increasingly high profile to support Down To Earth, and also visitors to My Last Song, which has chosen QSA as its April Charity of the Month, will see the benefits of leaving a legacy so that their deaths will mean that the funerals of others need not cause distress and hardship but can be a fitting end of life event for those less fortunate.