I’m pleased Liz Taylor died the way she did.  Not only was it a fairly quick exit, without too much pain and the indignity of her last days covered by the media, but she also had a great funeral.

Although she wasn’t a member of My Last Song, she may as well have been. And she would have appreciated the Lifebox facility.

She had planned her funeral to the last detail. She wanted to be late for it, so this was an instruction. She wanted it to be interdenominational, so this too was an instruction.

The service included a recital of the Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo and a trumpet solo of Amazing Grace, played by Taylor’s grandson Rhys.

She had the final performance she wanted, but only because she (and her family) had planned it beforehand.

Which is the reason she would have enjoyed visiting My Last Song, which helps and encourages people to plan their funerals as well as other end of life decisions.

Liz Taylor would also have taken advantage of the Lifebox and used it to store specially recorded videos – and one can imagine how good these would have been; readings – similarly dramatic; her life story; and even her secrets – and I bet there are still some she’s taken to the grave with her.

So if you know of anyone who would like to follow in her footsteps, go out in style and be remembered for years to come, you know where to point them.

And who knows, Liz Taylor might have visited My Last Song…we have been getting lots of traffic from California recently.

Marie Curie, the cancer care charity, this week published the findings of a survey that showed that almost two-thirds (63 per cent) wanted to die at home and 71 per cent would like to be surrounded by friends, family or loved ones. In stark contrast, just three per cent wanted to spend their final hours in hospital.

Yet according to the Office For National Statistics 69 per cent of people in England and Wales died in hospitals and hospices in 2009. And think tank Demos believes that by 2030, just one in ten people will die at home, the rest dying in hospitals and care homes.

I believes that personalised death plans will enable people to be more likely to have the death they want rather than the frightening and lonely end of life experienced in many hospitals. The sort of treatment old and dying people can expect in NHS hospitals was graphically shown on Dispatches earlier this week, confirmation of the Health Service Ombudsman’s criticism of how the NHS deals with the elderly.

The main cause of this often appalling standard of treatment of the dyings is that they don’t have a voice because death is so rarely discussed. Despite the best endeavours of Dying Matters, death is still a taboo subject and therefore the dying haven’t been consulted on how they wish their final days to be spent.

Yet if ailing elderly people and those with terminal illness were encouraged to fill in a death plan, it would mean the involvement of family members and family doctors who would then know what end of life experience the dying person wanted.

Dr Chris Browne, contributing editor of the health section of My Last Song, agrees: “As a GP I believe that death plans should be encouraged as they can empower the patient and their families to take greater control of the end of life experience.  This won’t happen without people’s wishes being discussed, evaluated, written down and then acted upon by family members and medical professionals.”

The death plan template within the Lifebox section of My Last Song covers much more than medical decisions. The headings enable the dying person to be as comfortable in mind and body as possible when their final moments arrive.

These headings allows people to state where they want to die, the level of medical intervention they want, who they want to visit them when they are dying, who should be there, what they want to hear, (music, poetry, prayers), what they want to smell (incense, scented candles, oils, flowers), how they want to be touched (hands held, caressed, gently massaged), and importantly and often overlooked, being clear of worries (knowing their loved ones and pets are cared for, their estate is in order, their will is up to date).

After all, pregnant mothers-to-be are encouraged to create a birth plan so that they are confident that giving birth will be as positive an experience as possible. The same should be achieved if death plans were more widely used.

A close friend of mine questioned the future of My Last Song.

“Why,” he asked, “would anyone want to visit a website that makes you think about deaths and funerals?”

“Because if you don’t think about it until it’s too late, it really is too late,” I answered.  ”Death is inevitable so plan for it in advance. My Last Song helps and supports people to plan so that things are better when the dreadful time comes.”

How so?  If your loved ones don’t have the information needed for a death certificate, how are they going to get it when you’re dead?

If family members don’t know your funeral wishes, how can they avoid the stress of wondering what you would have wanted? Some families tear themselves apart when arguing over the type – and cost – of the funeral.

Planning a funeral in advance can save a lot of money. You can take out an inflation proofed funeral plan, or you can think about what part of the arrangements you really need, which can be done by the family, and where costs can be reduced.

And, planned properly, the funeral can be a positive, celebratory and unique event that becomes a treasured memory. Unfortunately, all too often, funerals are rushed, inappropriate services that don’t match the lifestyle or views of the departed. In many ways a traditional funeral is a Victorian religious ritual completely out of place in the 21^st century.

You may even see the benefits of planning a farewell event before the death, so that family, friends, ex-colleagues, neighbours old and new can get together for a party at which you are the centre of attraction, giving your final messages.

Or you can ensure the reception is the sort of event you want to be remembered by…music, dancing, speeches, jokes, great food and drink.

It couldn’t be easier to organise. All the information is available on the website, and then you store in your Lifebox your wishes, the music you want played, the ceremony you want…as well as the other personal details your next of kin and executors will need. Simple…and crucial.

We only have one life, and only one death. My Last Song can’t help to make life memorable, but it can make the ending rather special.

“If you live on in the hearts and minds of those who love you, you haven’t really died at all,” was a powerful if somewhat sentimental quote I came across the other day.

When I read it I thought it summed up the emotional reasons to have a Lifebox, available via My Last Song.

The Lifebox can make someone  ‘live on’ by storing photographs, specially recorded videos and audio messages, scanned documents and uniquely drafted personal information such as life history, details of friends and family, achievements, interests, hobbies and favourite activities including most enjoyed films, plays, holidays, cars, music…the list is as long or short as befits the individual life that is being memorised online.

The ‘saved’ life is not open for all to see if stored in the Lifebox as it can only be opened by the people who have been given the access details by the Lifebox owner. Those granted permission to access the content of the Lifebox would be close family members who, when wanting to remember more clearly their departed loved one, can then play the specially recorded messages and read the letters and share the thoughts that will remind them of the life, personality and unique qualities of their loved one.

Those close relatives will, hopefully, feel less sad, the loss being easier to bear if this information is left for them to access when needed.

They will also admire the foresight of the relative for using the Lifebox not just to store such wonderfully unique memories and personal information to hand on to future generations, but the vital information required by close family members and executors to deal with the probate issues and funeral arrangements.

This type of memorisation, using a safe secure online storage space, adds so much more to the ‘family tree’ information usually limited to dates of birth, marriage and death, names of partner(s) and children, with a few other details added if someone has the time to do the research on the life of the family member thus recorded.

All these are compelling reasons to get a Lifebox, but none as much as the fact that it gives you digital immortality in the hearts and minds of your loved ones.

Co-operative Funeralcare’s use of an industry trends survey to place the brand as ‘thought leader’ in their industry is a well worn marketing device.

But the survey doesn’t tell us anything we don’t know, and in reality highlights the Co-op’s attempt to catch up.  In short the survey of 2000 people and 850 of its funeral companies confirms that more people now want a celebration of their life, colourful events, secular songs, bespoke coffins, green funerals and personal input from mourners.

The Co-op have involved the country’s leading funeral historian, Dr Julian Litten, to opine that the funerals of Princess Diana and Jade Goody have changed the public’s view of how funerals can be delivered.

I think Dr Litten is wrong about this.  The British public can decide for themselves that a religious ritual isn’t appropriate for someone who had no religious beliefs and that as paying customers they will have the send off they want rather than a ‘choose one from three options’ offered by many funeral directors.

Similarly, there wasn’t much that was environmentally friendly about Princess Di’s and Jade Goody’s funerals, yet the demand for green funerals has risen hugely in the last 15 years as people become more concerned about the environmentally damaging aspects of traditional funerals.

No, organisations like the Co-operative Funeralcare have been slow to understand the change in demand whereas innovators such as My Last Song, One Life ceremonies, the green burial movement, suppliers of bespoke coffins and authors of guides such as The Good Funeral Guide have understood the requirements of the now ageing baby boomers and are meeting their needs.

The number of humanist officiants is increasing to meet the demands of atheists for humanist funerals, and I would like to commend the effort put in by one in particular, Simon Allen, who’s contribution to My Last Song has been invaluable.

The funeral industry is on the verge of a big change in how it operates, and this change is driven by consumer demand. Funeral directors are, inevitably, traditional and slow to change although there are notable exceptions.

But they must recognise that many new customers will be from the generation who, when in their teens redefined youth culture. During the next years of their lives they expected to get what they wanted and that’s going to be true for how their end of life (or their older relatives)  is treated.

The one statistic that is still disappointing if not surprising is that 55 per cent of respondents hadn’t discussed their funerals with family and friends.  Death and funerals are still taboo subjects, but the trend I suspect is for this to be reducing, helped by the growing number of online sources of support and information.

I will again plug the Lifebox facility of My Last Song which encourages and enables people to plan their own bespoke funeral event and store those plans and wishes safely for their loved ones to access.  In practice filling in the funeral wishes checklist and the individual death plan will mean discussing the options with close family members.

When death and funerals are more commonly discussed, the numbers of celebratory, colourful and individual ceremonies requested will increase…whether the larger traditional funeral companies are well placed to deliver them efficiently is questionable.

AND stands for Allow Natural Death, and it’s a phrase that American researchers believe will catch on more than the current phrase, Do Not Resuscitate.

The issue about end of life medical treatment is as topical in the US as it is in this country.

In both societies, neither ailing older people nor their younger family members are comfortable talking about death. It’s therefore surrounded by fear of the unknown, and as nobody likes to talk of what they are afraid about, so the taboo about addressing death continues.

Usually late in the patient’s life, he or she will say that ‘I don’t want to be hooked up to lots of machines,’ or ‘I want it to happen quickly.’

How this view is communicated to the health professionals providing end of life treatment is again the subject of confusion and reluctance to address the issue. The patient’s life is therefore often unnecessarily prolonged, the family’s anguish stretches out and the medical staff are not certain how to proceed.

A simple form of words can change this, and the acronym AND is really very simple.

Research in the States has shown that the phrase Do Not Resuscitate is not used by many families because it is a negative and sounds scary, whereas Allow Natural Death (AND) connotes a positive, it implies permission.

It also gains plus points because it uses the word Natural, as in Natural Childbirth and Natural foods.

What starts in the US quickly cross the ‘pond’, and because part of My Last Song’s mission is to encourage people to address their later life decisions before it’s too late, we think AND should be adopted in the UK.

It will give impetus to the Dying Matters coalition’s goal of changing attitudes towards death, dying and bereavement and make it more likely that the patient, the patient’s family and the family GP will discuss the chosen end of life treatment.

My Last Song has created a Death Plan template, within the Lifebox, which makes it easier for people to make the decisions that will result in a ‘good death’. The old and terminally ill will be more in control of the end of life experience they want.

It will encourage families and GPs to talk about death and to plan for it thus reducing the fear of the unknown.

We only die once and, if possible, it should be the experience we want it to be.

The Demos report, Dying For Change, is a closely argued and important pamphlet.

For those without much time I commend the executive summary, and for those with less time, the thesis of the report is as follows.

The demographics of this country mean more people will be dying of old age every year. Such deaths are usually drawn out, complex and costly.

The good news is that much of our extended lives will be better spent…the bad news though is that we are more likely to die lonely and impersonal deaths in hospitals, hospices and care homes. Not surprisingly,  two thirds of people asked in a related survey wanted to die at home.

To reverse the increasing numbers of people who will die in hospital, and to reduce the escalating end of life costs to the NHS, Demos propose some radical changes.

The least radical is to improve the way hospitals and care homes look after people who are dying.

Improving these services won’t meet people’s aspirations to die at home, nor will they reduce the costs to the NHS. So Demos put forward effective community alternatives.

The report suggests that the NHS should invest £500 million a year, only 2.5 per cent of its spending on end of life care, “to create the backbone for community services” to allow a far higher number people to die at or close to home.

These community services include:

• Creating new places for people to die close to home where they could be with friends and family;
• Strengthened family capacity to care by providing a dedicated compassionate care benefit or care leave entitlement to provide financial support to look after a dying relative;
• Creating a properly trained volunteer support network;
• Setting up dedicated 24/7 nursing support;
• Establishing dedicated end of life telephone help lines;
• Setting up a national ‘hospice at home’ service to tend those dying at home;
• Providing people with a key relationship to end of life advisers.

I can only praise a report that addresses the issues that My Last Song faces full on, and in particular the confirmation that the only way to improve how we die is by people addressing dying. As the report points out people are frightened not by death but by dying because family and many family doctors are unable to talk about it. Ignorance and fear go hand in hand, and fear is not what you should feel as you approach your end.

Which is a prompt for me to extol the virtues of the death plan which is in the My Last Song Lifebox, ready to be filled in when most convenient, and with the participation of close family and even the family doctor.

This is not another version of the Advanced Care Plans or Preferred Priorities of Care forms which concentrate on the medical care and treatment.

The My Last Song death plan instead addresses the more spiritual and existential needs of a dying person.

Who do they want to be present? What do they want to see? What do they want to hear? What do they want to smell? How do they want to be touched? How much do they want that their loved ones to know?

The death plan also enables them to be reassured their affairs are in order and that they need have no concerns about family, friends or pets.

If the patient, the family and the medical staff collaborate to fill in the death plan, it will help people leave this life as content as possible which while not something you can put a value on, is priceless.

I was interested in a piece called ‘It’s Your Funeral’ on the Irish Times’ website. An article I wrote on funeral planning in My Last Song is called ‘It’s Your Funeral‘ so if imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, I’m flattered.

The journalist did a great job in compiling within one piece some of the changes taking place in the Farewell Innovators‘ space in Ireland.

It gives details of a humanist funeral celebrant, fairly rare I would have thought in Ireland, and also covers the country’s first natural burial ground.

Most importantly the article states:  ’The best way to ensure you get the funeral you want is to make your wishes known.’

Here it stands four square with the My Last Song approach.  We believe that not only should you want your funeral to be appropriate to your lifestyle and personality, but you should make sure your funeral wishes are known.

Which is why My Last Song provides visitors with a Lifebox in which to store their funeral wishes and the funeral arrangement details so that their close family or executor can access them when the Lifebox owners are about to die or have just died.

My congratulations to the journalist who did such a good job in covering all bases – she even gives advance care directives and Enduring Power of Attorney into her piece – and the Irish Times for covering it. She also coins a phrase that might catch on…’deathstyle’, as short hand for making the funeral match the person’s lifestyle and personality.

When will a serious newspaper in Britain focus on the ever growing Funeral Innovators and the growing market we are servicing?

Quite some time, if the Daily Mail night editor has his way. I’ve  written informative pieces for the consumer editor only for him to tell me that while he likes the story, his editor doesn’t want to carry anything to do with death.

He’s doing his readers a disservice. Nobody, not even Daily Mail readers, lives forever.  Indeed Mail readers are closer to realising this than most, and are in danger every day of being frightened to death.

Oh, and the Irish Times journalist ends the piece: ‘Overall if you wish your death to reflect your life, the advice is to plan ahead and make your wishes known.’

A poll carried out by My Last Song has shown a potentially huge demand for woodland burials in the years ahead.

The poll asked visitors to the website to choose what they wanted to happen to their bodies when they died.  Woodland burial received 35 per cent of the votes with cremation second, receiving 30 per cent. The poll took place in September and there were 205 votes.

Currently 74 per cent of funerals are cremations with woodland burials accounting for six per cent.

Rosie Inman-Cook who runs the Association of Natural Burial Grounds says the poll confirms the rapid rise in the popularity of woodland burials.

“While it will be many years before 35 per cent of funerals are woodland burials, natural burial sites are experiencing a 30 per cent year on year increase in the number of people being buried in their sites.

“The increased demand is reflected by the increase in natural burial sites. The first natural burial site opened in Cumbria in 1993. The number today is almost 240.

“This should meet the demand for the foreseeable future.”

Environmentalists will be pleased with the support the poll shows for eco-friendly funerals and the decrease in those wanting to be cremated.

Julia Hailes, leading environmentalist and author of The New Green Consumer Guide, is not enthusiastic about cremation.

“Burning our dead – along with their coffins – not only creates toxic pollution but has significant impact on climate change too.  The energy consumed in cremating one body is the equivalent to 23 litres of oil.  I’d like a shallow burial in a well run woodland site, so that my body turns to nutrients as fast as possible”

The poll also gave the option of cemetery or church burial using eco-friendly coffins which 11 per cent voted for. Put the two together and 46 per cent of people want their funerals to be environmentally friendly.

These results demonstrate that when people consider their own funerals they are more likely to consider the environmental impact.

But the demand for woodland burials will not be as great as the survey suggests because most people don’t plan their own funeral arrangements. As a consequence, when they die their families are likely to opt for the cheapest or most conventional funeral – cremation.

And that’s why many people attracted by the idea of a woodland burial because it is eco-friendly will probably end up cremated, a  paradox that highlights the importance of planning the funeral you want and ensuring your funeral wishes are known.

It is why we encourage people to discuss, write and store their funeral wishes within a safe Lifebox which their closest family can access when they die and give them the funeral they want.

Ten per cent of people who voted chose to leave the funeral arrangements to their families.  For those of us who’ve witnessed the distress, division and panic when a grieving and shocked family is left to make decisions about the type and cost of a funeral, the ‘I don’t care’ approach is callous.

There’s no excuse for thinking that your ending is someone else’s responsibility.

I’m grateful to longtime friend and songster Gordon Griffiths for bringing these contrasting funerals to my attention.

From the Croydon Advertiser 13 August, 2010:

“It is always very sad when no-body attends a funeral,” said a spokesman for Rowland Brothers, undertakers.

“In this case, the 43 year-old man from Addiscombe who we buried on Monday had changed his name by deed poll to Luke Skywalker.

“The case was passed to us by Croydon Council, and we attempted to contact his family and friends.  But he didn’t seem to have any close friends locally, and because the deed poll office are not allowed to give out a person’s former name or personal details, we couldn’t track down his next of kin or relations. We did our best, but the result was a tragically lonely funeral for Luke Skywalker.”

From the Romsey Advertiser’s website 16 September, 2010:

Funeral was a celebration of Jane’s spirit

“Jane Scoones’ coffin was carried out of East Tytherley church to the sound of Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum and a huge round of applause from the 400 people who attended her funeral.

“It was exactly how Jane had planned her final exit and was the perfect conclusion to a service that was a celebration of her remarkable life, filled with heart-felt tributes from family and friends, including Precious Moments, a song that was written for her by her husband, Rob and sung by her daughter, Caroline.

“Those attending Friday’s funeral were simply asked to remember Jane with happiness rather than tears and sadness and to think of the joy she brought to life rather than the tragedy of her loss.

“Jane’s battle with cancer ended on August 28, at the age of 55.”

Jane Sconnes had the funeral she wanted. She planned it meticulously. She didn’t want tears, she wanted happiness. She wanted people to look back on the good things she had done in her life.

I think that there are thousands of people out there who’s lives are also special…indeed, aren’t all our lives special. And our end of life event should also be special. By being unique, the funeral is a much more satisfying and comforting event for the loved ones, for they will feel more positive.

Jane’s approach to her funeral and the event itself  is a validation of the My Last Song purpose. A good life deserves a good ending!

And if people use My Last Song to plan the ending they (or their loved ones) deserve, and keep those plans safe in their Lifebox, then so much the better.