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[...]My Last Song Blog » Blog Archive » Sex and death in a witty exchange[...]…

I also hate to be gazing on the exposed aluminium bier/trolley legs under coffins. so ugly. a bit of velvet wouldn’t hurt there.

and hymn rehearsals the night before. weddings have rehearsals so why not.

A repulsive trend here, is the playing of football team songs in church funerals. A video screen and folksinger were part of the last church funeral I was at – it was like a variety show. By all means do that, but not in a church.
I hope to have a fancy-dress funeral. No gloom for my friends.

The social/musical climate of sixties USA was nothing like today. The album really should not have had ‘a woman’ on the cover at all, of any skintone, but sex and music … well, you know. rock on

It’s as well to take a fatalistic approach. Genes, personality, life experiences weigh heavily — ask my brother, who has just about broken free just in time.

It’s very sad, but I salute your friend’s perverse integrity. He has release now.

A very wise old bird once cautioned me that it is vanity to suppose that we can avert things like this. You did very much more than nothing. You were there for him. What more could you have done?

Can I make a plea for one more inclusion? I think Brian Jenner deserves huge praise and all the accolades going for his inaugural Six Feet Under Convention in Sept 2011. I know he is maturing plans for the future. He’s a bit of a genius in his own right, is Brian, one of life’s true originals.

I like the idea of old and young collaborating to populate a Lifebox!

I don’t know that it is right to characterise judicious circumspection as U-turns. Give me circumspection to evangelical idealism any day. We’ve been there and the scars are still unhealed.

Congratulations on having found such an excellent commentator.

I watched British pilots on their return from a mission on the news last night. I wondered how on earth they felt.

Just one thing worries me before I start filling it up. Can you or anybody else see what I put in? Naturally, I want a place where only I can go.

And I know that a lot of folk regard me as confrontational — and my own jokes as brutal. Oh yes, I am aware of that. Because I am no friend of death — by which I mean the deaths of others.

My feeling is that most people are prepared to have a much more serious conversation about this than DM acknowledges — starting with schoolchildren.

Perhaps I am puritanical. Or grumpy. Or representative of a minority only.

But I acknowledge — well, preach, actually! — the importance of working collaboratively.

I’m sorry and surprised they did not snap you up.

As to the strategy of using humour to get people talking about death, the question is: does it, or is it merely diversionary? I suspect — I’m not saying I’m right –that it may be the latter. I like to think that I have as good, if not a better, sense of humour than most, and I have been kicked for that. It’s context that’s the important thing here. Humour plays as important a part in helping people to cope with the prospect of death as it did in the trenches of the first world war. But, and this is the important thing, those soldiers were in no two minds about the catastrophe they found themselves in the midst of: this was heavy-hearted humour. They were seeking, not to trivialise terror, but to make it tolerable. And that is the very serious role that humour has to play. It is an expression of courage. To die bravely, and therefore cheerfully, is the best thing we can do for those we leave behind.

So I wonder, I really do, whether the sort of jokey humour deployed by Dying Matters encourages people to address the important issues in a grown-up way and courageous way. My feeling is that it does not. But my mind remains, I emphasise, absolutely open. Presently, Dying Matters is a big tent which I find myself outside. Obviously, I would feel far happier if I felt I would be comfortable within.

This is an important debate, I feel. I know I am not the only one who is unhappy about Dying Matters’ strategy. So let’s keep talking!

As for the ‘victorian relegious rituals’, I think attitudes towards death were healthier then. Practically and honouring what a loved one would have wanted were paramount. Fear of death was minimal not just among adults but also children, despite the same grief and trauma people experienced. There are some funeral directors who are open to change and moving forward with new ideas, but as I wrote in my thesis on death;
funeral directors are responsible for the fear created around death because they came and took the responsibility of caring for a loved away from familys. The parlours that everyone used to allow for a viewing of the deceased was no longer needed. That room then became the ‘living room’ and undertakers transformed their new establishments into ‘parlours’ to give the look and feel of comfort as if in a home.

If you’d like, you can listen to samples of my music at:

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/martinjeff5

You can also download the CD from iTunes at:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/precious-memories/id364844355

Some funeral homes have purchased multiple copies to give to families as a memento.

If you are interested, please email me at jmartinpiano@gmail.com

Thanks for your time,
Jeff Martin

I wonder what Stalin’s would have been like? Pol Pot etc? Also maybe we’d have had more certainty on the identity of Jack the Ripper?!

Kaye

It’s a ticklish idea, MLS, and I am tickled. Perhaps he would have lightened up for his friends — a sort of psychopathic Nigel Mole.

Thank you so much for sharing our link on your site. They are certainly interesting times in which we live (and die) and change for the better is very much on the horizon. It’s so good to see so many people sharing their views and skills on end of life and bringing it into the public arena.

I feel, so far as the Soul Midwife Foundation is concerned, that our job can not always be done by family and friends, as the comforting of the family and friends is a big part of what we do (especially for those families that are struggling). Another huge part of our commitment is the spiritual content and we are finding that the fear around an impending passing (especially to those souls who have had no spiritual input throughout their life) is so great that a great deal of spiritual input is required to help ease this and enable a graceful, dignified and peaceful passing. We are all trained in some sort of spiritual healing, whether it be reiki, shamanic work, spiritual counselling and the Soul Midwife training itself has a great deal of spiritual content, otherwise I don’t think we would be drawn to this work.

Having said that family and friends so often find themselves midwiving their loved ones and they do it very well through pure loving intention – not everyone would need our services but we are there for those who do. As you say, a small “dot on the landscape” but very much committed to enabling a “good death” for those wanting to take control of their own passing.

Charles, I love your quote about the music you go out with. Excellent choice. May I use your quote on my web-site?
With best wishes.

One small quibble. Now that our elders are no longer looked after by their communities, I’d be extremely sorry to see the state wash its hands of caring for the elderly for the sake of big-society theory, especially when volunteering has been falling yearly.

At the same time, I believe that the elderly have a duty of responsibility, especially now that medics can turn their dying into a protracted hell.

Like you, if I read you right, I am all for people reclaiming their dying and their death with the aid of people who can help them do that. Dying isn’t just about the drugs you need to be crammed with, it’s also about the music you go out with. Mine’s a Mozart.

The real credit goes to a generation who pushed the boundary’s around them, saw what was already on the market and utilised this. This really started with weddings.

ALL celebration of life events have changed their format over the past 20 years because people are inspired, there is so much on offer. People are less restrained by why they are told they must have. Funerals have changed but at a slower pace because most Funeral Directors’s are fighting against the change due to being scared, lazy and greedy! I was with a funeral director the other day, he had a massive attitude about the photo montage my client had because he didn’t like all these ‘bells and whistles’ changing the format (grrrrrrr)!!!!

Every man and his dog know co-ops latest released wasn’t anything new or exciting *yawn* – ‘Celebration Of Life’ yes yes we all know what it is, BUT the fact is you only get one if a) your funeral director is awesome b)your celebrant / minister is awesome c)you have awesome friends and famiy supporting you d)you are tough strong and able to find the energy to go out there and really find awesome people like us Funeral innovators to deal with direct!

But to say that the funerals of Jade Goody and Diana had anything to do with this change, funeral historian or not, like Paul I would have to disagree. All those funerals allowed us to do was come together as a country united in grief, albeit briefly whilst we watched countless mouners dropping off bunches of flowers and handwritten notes, wondering if it was a good enough reason to take the day off work.

Not forgetting that both funeral were superbly religious, Jade was actually Christened on her deathbed. Now had they mentioned Malcolm McLaren’s funeral I’d be more inclined to agree!

So yes, the report tells us nothing those with our eyes open hadn’t noticed ten years ago. Though on the plus side if the coop spreads the word that it’s ok to ask for a celebration of life, cardboard coffin and secular music, and that in turn gets more people asking for, no demanding! a better funeral – who am I to complain!

I don’t quite understand these funeral plans, I thought the point of them is for the person purchasing to express in advance exactly the kind of funeral they want and then to pay for it? I thought this would remove the need for ‘upselling’?

Personally I hope that people will learn to celebrate the life far more and invest time and energy on arranging more personal details to do with the service and that the funeral directors will aid them in achieving this. I went to a funeral recently and a dove was released at the graveside. I have no idea what that cost, but the effects of it were so powerful and moving as it signified the spirit flying free – it was poignant and memorable; far more so than the flowers and the purple coffin. I think the canny funeral director will be looking to understand that people do want value (especially when it comes to coffins) but can perhaps make the difference in enhancing the service that they offer by offering a wider range of benefits to the experience itself.

There will always be people who think that the more they spend, the more it ‘proves’ the love that they felt for the deceased (or perhaps to assuage guilt), those who want to do it as cheaply as possible and those who determine to plan a funeral befitting the person as they were in life. A good funeral director surely listens and meets those needs, even if that is sharing how the client can save money if that is what they want. If a client has their needs fully met (whatever they may be) they will tell their friends and THAT referral business is how a funeral director should be looking to boost their income IMHO.

There’s something tawdrily Canute-like about these people. Do they really think they can stop people from finding out now that they have the means and the informants? The industry works like a sort of informal cartel. ‘Traditional’, you say. The sooner obsolete in its present form the better.

Geography is on our side in this country — we are all more or less nearby. Yes, let’s get out there and raise consciousness!

There is a place for integrity. And there is a place for muddle.

also hooraaa for the Irish Times !

Interesting that the Mail wants nothing on death. It likes people dying and being killed, and wouldn’t hesitate to do a piece on a transsexual funeral director or a homicidal hearse driver. We live in trivialising times.

I like to think I coined ‘deathstyle’, but I am conscious in claiming so that I probably pinched it from someone else unconsciously. The cardboard coffin, I like to say, is an ultimate deathstyle statement. So it is. Which is why funeral directors hate it so much. It doesn’t make the sort of statement they like. Their dissonance is part of the problem. But that’s another matter entirely!

Everyone should read the Rolling Stone piece about Stanley McChrystal. It is darkly revealing. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236?RS_show_page=1

I’m with you in the conclusion you draw, LMS. Bring them home.

The (very good) choir sung achingly beautifully, and this old atheist reflected, as the they sung this: http://tinyurl.com/y9vrpv5, that church music can create particular moods appropriate for some funerals that secular music struggles to replicate. The eyes of the unchurched, youthful multitude were misty, too.

Hymns will die as people stop learning them, and stop needing to do certain ‘traditional’ things to ‘legitimise’ their funeral. But much modern music does not lend itself to community singing — and community singing forges and expresses community.

I fear we shall just have to do without it.