There are no surprises about the music chosen for Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, for clearly she and her family discussed her demise, which is all too rare due to our society’s still strong taboo about death and dying.

The former Prime Minister didn’t share this irresponsible approach to one of the most important decisions we must take, as she insisted she did not want her body to lie in state or money to be spent on a fly-past. Even if she had dismissed the idea of planning her end of life event, as a past Prime Minister she would have been leaned on to approve her funeral arrangements of which the songs and readings are hugely important elements.

Her staunch Methodism was well known and she often cited Christianity to justify her support for the market economy and capitalism. Her Methodist upbringing will thus be commemorated by Charles Wesley’s hymn Love Divine, All Loves Excelling and her patriotism by the music played at the start and end of the service by a British-only group of composers, and the last hymn, I Vow To Thee My Country.

Lady Thatcher wanted the service to be ‘framed’ by British music, hence the scores by Henry Purcell, Gustav Holst, John Ireland, Herbert Howells, Edward Elgar, Frank Bridge, Charles Stanford, Hubert Parry and Ralph Vaughan Williams. The pieces by Johannes Brahms, Gabriel Faure and Johann Sebastian Bach are excellent choices too.

The order of service features Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality and TS Eliot’s Little Gidding.

She also decided that she was to be cremated, which is a break with tradition, and one of which we approve. We would have approved even more had she (or her family) chosen a green funeral and a woodland burial.

While not Thatcherites, most of the My Last Song team are old enough to understand her place in history and admire her courage in standing up to bullies whether the undemocratic trades union bosses holding the country to ransom or the fascist Argentinean military dictator General Galteri invading the Falklands. And on balance we agree that her funeral should reflect her place as a major figure, unlike the political pygmies that followed her as Prime Minister.

My Last Song was created to encourage and support people to plan their own or their loved ones’ funerals so they have the end of life event that best reflect their lives and values.

We have many thousand visitors every month but don’t think these include the Thatchers. Even so, it’s encouraging to know that the family’s planning of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral validates the My Last Song message. For what’s good for former Prime Ministers should be good for the rest of us too.

In its annual attempt to get publicity and show itself as moving with the times, Cooperative Funeral Care has issued the results of its latest funeral music survey.

It’s an interesting and commendable exercise, based on over 30,000 funerals in the UK conducted in 12 months up to September 2012.

The survey confirms the continuing demise of hymns and rising popularity of secular songs. Both types of music are still played at very many funerals, confirming the popularity of the modern British funeral, which is a mix of secular and religious elements, readily agreed by most CoE and other low church denominations.

As it has been for many years now, Frank Sinatra’s My Way heads the list of secular songs. Given the Cooperative Funeralcare’s attitude to funerals, exposed on Channel 4’s Dispatches, some might think Sinatra’s cover of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes more suitable.

The release of this year’s survey fuelled the interest of NME, pop music’s must read source of news and views, and its readers and writers have risen to the challenge of selecting their last songs with gusto.  Those under the age of 30 should read and enjoy and then if inspired, send in their fave five funeral songs to My Last Song, so far lacking more modern music.

During his excellent talk on funeral desert island discs,  Paul Gambaccini revealed that the original lyricist of My Way electrocuted himself  standing in his bath changing a lightbulb shortly before the release of Sinatra’s version, thus losing the huge royalties that would have boosted his bank account.

Gambaccini also made the case for two other brilliant farewell songs from Sinatra, Always…a poignant  reminiscence of a love affair,  and  It Was A Very Good Year, in which the singer, now in the autumn of his years, looks back on a lifetime of romantic attachments. There are a number of My Last Song aficionados  of Frank Sinatra, and other tracks recommended are We’ll Be Together Again, Goodbye (a particular favourite of this writer) and I Thought About You.

So when thinking of a Sinatra song for the farewell ceremony, there are many alternatives to My Way, which Paul Anka re-wrote to be an emotional but now rather hackneyed mass seller.

Long live the resistance! Today three more of the so-called Islamist Force to Protect Britain are no more.

It was the now usual pattern. At one of the bases where the Islamists are training those of our young men disloyal enough to take their place when they return to the Middle East next year, one of our resistance fighters enrolled only to take the first opportunity to slay the occupiers.

In fact, the ‘loyalty’ of most of these trainees is questionable…many either belong to the British Intrepid Terrorists (BRITS) resistance movement or are sympathetic to us.

While we BRITS are still divided between Catholics and Protestants, fundamentalists and atheists, moderates and extremists, England versus the other nations, we’re united by our belief that we should run Britain the way it has been run for centuries and our hatred of an army that has slaughtered so many innocent British people.

We didn’t invite the Islamists here to shore up the corrupt Blair regime, but they invaded nevertheless, telling us and the world it was for our own good because Blair was ‘moderate’ whereas we BRITS and our supporters – most of the population – wanted free elections, a free press, an independent judiciary, equality between men and women, decent education for girls, tolerance for people of all backgrounds and religions… and to drink alcohol as we have done for centuries.

Yes, some of our beers ended up on the streets of the Middle East but that is hardly an excuse for an army of muslim zealots to tear up our barley and destroy our breweries.  How would they like it if we sent our troops to ruin their poppy crop?

Faced with such occupiers, hostile to and ignorant of our traditions and values, the British people (apart from those who gain from assisting the Islamists and the Blairite administration it’s shoring up) have made their lives hell.

The Islamists policy was to defeat the BRITS (believing we were an unpopular group of extremists) and then convert the rest of the British people to be ‘moderates’, to support Blair and his cronies, to keep our boys and girls apart as they grow up, to persecute gays and minorities, to abstain from alcohol and give groups of local elders powers to decide civil disputes. They should have known the British would never be told how to live by people who have no idea of our history and values.

And despite their use of the most advanced weapons and the terrible toll of lives of our freedom fighters, our bravery and determination to remain British has given us victory.

The Islamist Force to Protect Britain were doomed from the start, and our resistance has forced them to announce they are going back to their countries – Saudia Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and those other feeble states who have sent their young men on such a thankless task.

Their politicians’ face saving tactic in the months before they go is to train some of our people to be police or security officers to enforce Blair’s corrupt laws after they pull out.

Their stupidity knows no bounds…this training gives our brave resistance fighters the weapons with which to kill their trainers, and the easiest of opportunities to do so. No wonder the people of these Islamist countries want their young men to leave as soon as possible.

The BRITS have won! We fought them in the back streets of London, the Yorkshire moors, the Scottish Highlands, the valleys of South Wales. Now they are holed up in their compounds, going on meaningless patrols of moribund villages, and even here we BRITS kill or maim them.

Long live the free people of Britain! And if those Islamists have any sense, they won’t interfere again in countries they know little about and have little interest in.

Three more British servicemen have been killed by rogue Afghanistan policemen they were ‘training’ as part of our strategy  to make the Afghan forces and police loyal to the Government and professional in the way they carry out their duties. We are told this justifies our intervention in Afghanistan in 2001.

I hope the politicians who involved the UK in Afghanistan, those that continued with this flawed foreign policy and the senior military men, either active or recently retired, who announce to the media that our strategy is paying off, sleep well at night.

I’m not sure how they can as they have sacrificed over 400 brave young lives in an excise they knew was doomed. History alone should have taught them to stay out of Afghanistan, though if they had analysed the situation in the country in 2000 the only sensible decision would have been to leave the country to sort out its own divisions and problems. The argument that by confronting the Taliban in Helmand province the streets of our cities would be made safe from Islamic terrorists is palpable nonsense.

Let’s hope that the abject defeat suffered in Iraq, the unsuccessful campaign against the Taliban (a collective noun for warlords, Islamists, bandits and nationalists) in Afghanistan and the failed and dangerous state that Libya now is – all reports show a descent into anarchy and lawless revenge killings – will stop any thought of intervention in Syria.

The situation there is desperate…it is beyond comprehension how Syrians can kill and torture fellow Syrians, how President Assad can turn his troops on his own people, how doctors turn in patients to the authorities if they have been injured while demonstrating.

But as the Russians and Chinese have argued, to use force in Syria in an attempt to bring peace will make the situation worse. Russia in particular knows first hand how the various factions are being supported by Saudi Arabia and Iran, whose enmity makes every dispute in the Middle East a war by proxy. Israel is, of course, happy to see a hostile neighbour at war with itself and will do nothing to help resolve the situation.

Add to that the febrile atmosphere of sectarian hatred: Christian against Muslim, Shia against Sunni, and the previously persecuted Alawis who now control the army and security forces determined to hang on to power at any cost. The President’s family is from the Alawite community and was from a poor background until his father rose in the military and took power in a coup in 1970.

You have only to read about the Hama massacre to know what Assad has inherited from his father and other family members.

Syria is now gripped by a civil war and the international community is unable to impose a peaceful outcome.  We will look on hopeless, horrified, depressed and desperate to alleviate the suffering. But we will also be helpless…we cannot help and to try will only make matters worse.

A touching and important blog deserves close reading, though have a tissue near by.

It’s from Dr Kimberly Manning, who works at Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta Georgia. In it she describes how and why the decision was made not to prolong unnecessarily the life of one Mrs Cafferty and how it was accepted by her family, there at the hospital by the side of the dying woman.

When challenged by a colleague why the medical team shouldn’t do all they could to keep this patient alive, Dr Manning replied: “Mrs Cafferty is dying.”

The blog continues: “I stated the facts and left it at that. In silence, it set in. I could see their wheels turning. Imagining those same things that I was thinking like, Why are we sticking her with needles and pricking her fingers for blood sugars when those things hurt? Why are we not focusing on keeping her as comfortable as possible?

“We entered her room that morning and…discussed these things with the family. By this point, Mrs Cafferty was lapsing in and out of consciousness, so this conversation took place with her children. And no, this was not the first time that the subject of end-of-life care had been brought up with them, but it was the first time they were ready to accept what was happening.

“ “Let her go in peace,” the eldest daughter finally said. “This is our decision. Mama would not want us to keep her alive this way. Please just keep her comfortable.” The rest of the family nodded in sombre agreement.”

Why this is important is that it describes a changing of a mindset that assumes the medical profession should do all it can to keep someone alive regardless of the diminution of quality of that life, to one where the futility of such intervention leads to its withdrawal. And so, with the informed consent of the family, medical treatment is ended so that death can come naturally, with no more tubes, chemicals, machines or doctors’ valuable time used to delay the inevitable.

In short, society and the medical profession are beginning to believe that while the prolonging of life is accepted as a medical absolute, to prolong death is a futile, cruel and costly perversion.

To make this changing view of medical practice more acceptable, it’s essential that people have their individual death plans, filled in following discussion by the ailing patient, their close family, their medical professionals and if appropriate a minister of religion.

My Last Song has created a holistic death plan that covers the medical, physical, emotional, spiritual and practical issues, even down to who looks after the pets. It includes considerations such as the aromas the patient wants to smell, music to hear, people to be present, where the patient wants to end their life and, of course, the level of medical intervention.

Its aim is to make the end of life as comfortable and comforting as possible.

The easy to complete template can be found in the Lifebox section of My Last Song. Once filled in, it can be securely stored, updated and accessed by selected loved ones so the end of life experienced by the dying will be one supported by those like Dr Manning who have the quality of their patients’ lives foremost in their minds.

I was very encouraged to read this excellent blog by Gail Ruben.

Gail runs A Good Goodbye out of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Its strapline, which appeals hugely to the My Last Song team, is ‘Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die’. We have two straplines which benefit from greater brevity but lack the clever humour. They are: ‘Plan Your Exit Strategy’ and ‘A Good Life Deserves A Good Ending’.

Gail’s blog looked at what she loosely titles funeral films, and then describes the great music played in the soundtracks.  Quite a few have been chosen by visitors to Family Bhive in their fave five – the five songs they want to be remembered by, or played at their funeral, or send off party. Several haven’t yet been chosen but should be listened to because they are  excellent farewell songs.

What was encouraging was the confirmation that there is  a growing interest in the importance of getting the right music played at your farewell, rather than clichéd hymns (and I recognise how important hymns are for those of the Christian faith) and even clichéd secular songs.

My Way comes top of those songs that show little imagination. There are better Frank Sinatra tracks, even though Paul Anka’s lyrics are very apt for the final review of a life about to end.

In the past few months there have been increasing number of online forums, mainly in the US, Canada and UK, discussing funeral songs. The range of suggestions has been vast, covering most modern music genres, as well as arias and classical pieces.

Anything which makes people think about their mortality and plan to make it as positive and successful a goodbye as possible should be encouraged. That’s why we are part of the Dying Matters coalition here in the UK and want to share information and ideas with people like Gail Ruben in the US.

There’s probably no harder conversation to have with anyone than to tell them they are dying, or that they should consider their death. Indeed so difficult do many people find it that it’s never broached. The reluctance is understandable, discussing a person’s death is likely to cause upset or raise suspicions.

So we take the easy way out, and the end of life decisions are then made for the dying patient rather than by the dying person. Hence the medical professionals will assume that the family expect medical intervention.

Family members too will take decisions, usually confirming the doctor’s view that they want prolonged medical intervention so their loved one lives longer.  Some will decide they haven’t the ability, facilities or inclination to care for a dying loved one and so the person whose life has run its course is left to suffer unnecessarily prolonged intervention in a frightening and often lonely hospital.

Very few medical professionals or close loved ones will think about the sensory elements of the dying person’s end of life experience. Where do they want to die? Who do they wish to be present, or not present? What do they want to see – photos of loved ones, lovely views?  What smells would they like to experience as their life ends? Do they want their hands held, to be caressed, to be massaged?

They will, of course, want to be rid of concerns, so issues such as their funeral wishes, their probate, and the care of their property and pets, should be dealt with in advance so they can ‘die in peace’.

The Royal College of Physicians’ report that recommends that doctors are regularly trained on communicating end of life treatment with their patients is clearly limited to their role in providing suitable end of life treatment. Quite rightly, they see the need for planning for the death well in advance in the hope that patient and doctor have a meaningful discussion. The palliative care, which should extend to the spiritual and physical, will be limited to the medical.

My Last Song believes that by having a personalised death plan, the medical decisions and the existential decisions can be discussed and agreed at the same time, with the involvement of the patient, the medical professionals, loved ones and if appropriate ministers of religion.  We’ve created a death plan template to make it as easy as possible to fill in, edit and save.

The result should be a more comfortable and comforting end of life experience, and if this is the likely outcome, then the discussion is less difficult to initiate, less likely to be misconstrued.

A survey on people’s end of life wishes carried out by the California Health Care Foundation in late 2011 came up with the following findings:

67%: Making sure family is not burdened financially by my care;
66%: Being comfortable and without pain;
61%: Being at peace spiritually;
60%: Making sure family is not burdened by tough decisions about my care;
60%: Having loved ones around me;
58%: Being able to pay for the care I need;
57%: Making sure my wishes for medical care are followed;
55%: Not feeling alone;
44%: Having doctors and nurses who will respect my cultural beliefs and values;
36%: Living as long as possible;
33%: Being at home;
32%: Having a close relationship with my doctor.

The Foundation, in summarising the findings, says that there’s “a disconnect between what Californians want (a natural death at home) and reality.” The various poll answers, available in the pdf, prove this conclusively.

What’s true for Californians is true for older people in this country too, and in most developed nations facing the same issues of increasing numbers of old people, the taboo around discussing dying and death, and medical advances which make prolonging life in hospital more likely than a natural death at home.

So, how to make the end of life experience less a ‘disconnect’ with what people want and more a positive, comfortable and comforting experience?

Well, encouraging ailing older people and the terminally ill to have a personal death plan would be a great step forward. It would enable the patient, their loved ones, their medical professionals and, if appropriate, their ministers of faith, to discuss openly and honestly the end of life experience the patient wants, and if at all possible, deliver these wishes.

We have created a holistic death plan that covers the medical, physical, emotional, spiritual and practical issues, even down to who looks after the pets. Less prosaic are considerations such as the aromas the patient wants to smell, music to hear, people to be present, where the patient wants to end their life and, of course, the level of medical intervention.

If the adoption of death plans became widespread, far more people would have the end of life experience they, and their loved ones, want.

To make it easy, there’s a simple to complete template in the Lifebox section of My Last Song. Once filled in, in can be securely stored, updated and accessed by selected loved ones.

The more people who have their death plans, the more seriously they will be taken by the medical profession.

I saw the other day a memorial message: ‘Gran will look down on us from heaven’. It made me wonder in a semi whimsical way, Where is heaven?

It isn’t ‘up there’ in the sense that somewhere between the earth and space is a place where God looks down, angels flutter around and saved souls swan around feeling happy, though the more active somewhat bored…how do you do occupy yourself for ‘eternity’?

Space missions to planets and amazingly powerful telescopes haven’t come across heaven, and thanks to scientific advance we’re discovering the vast limitless expanse of space. Heaven has still to be found above us, and our spirits will have to travel very fast to reach it if it’s further than we’ve discovered so far.

I might be proved wrong and a camera on board a rocket heading for the sun might shortly send back  pictures of endless rolling hills, clear streams, clean streets, stately homes and chateaux, cake shops, choirs singing and angels plucking at harps, rows of well stocked vegetarian food stalls, sandy beaches, warm calm seas, England winning Test matches, but I doubt it.

God’s up there, Christians have been told for many hundreds of years, along with a neat hierachy of semi human helpers: cherubims, seraphims, angels and saints with special privileges such as front row seats to hear the choirs and quality time discussing serious issues with God. Jesus is up there, at His right hand, as he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven.

Paintings and frescos have depicted these Elysium scenes in wonderfully realistic works of art down the centuries, their creators having no doubt that the firmament they were depicting was real, God and his crew were above us, we were being judged from on high, heaven was waiting for us if we believed, and who in those days before science provided more empirical answers, wouldn’t?

For Muslims, paradise is also tangible as a bounteous bejewelled garden where, notoriously, vast numbers of virgins wait to give solace to martyrs as they arrive.

This is now considered a mistranslation of the original ancient Arabic description, and a good thing too when you think of the moral ambiguity.  But it shows that Islam like Judaism, Christianity and most religions, has created a place with physical properties where our souls, spirits or reconstituted bodies are summoned when we die.

I try to get my head round this, but can’t. I conclude, not with any pleasure, that heaven doesn’t exist. If I accept it’s a metaphysical place, it simply confirms that this definition of heaven is a device used by religions to avoid the inconvenient truth that it’s not there.

This metaphysical destination for our souls by definition has no tangible location, no pearly gates, walls, clouds to sit on. It’s a place that religions create to reassure us that when we die there is more to follow if we are good and obey a God who has not only created where we live but where we’ll go next if we pass whatever test, given final sacraments or are part of the elect. There are all sorts of obtuse rules for our entry to paradise, not surprising really, as it adds to its mystery.

The metaphysical definition of heaven has another problem for me. If heaven isn’t a physical entity, does it have a timespan? Put another way, if heaven doesn’t exist as a place, does it exist in time? When did this metaphysical heaven start to host spirits and souls? At what stage in our evolution did man have a soul? Were we only given souls when we understood the nature of our relationship with God, or when He started his relationship with us?

I don’t believe we started from Adam and Eve, so when during our evolution were we advanced enough in God’s eyes to qualify for entry to heaven? Was heaven rather lonely for the first few thousand years, and is it not uncomfortably overcrowded now?

Silly questions I know, for if it’s a metaphysical place; it’s neither empty nor full, it’s not a real place.

The more I think about it, the less chance I have of  finding heaven.

There’s a lot happening in the normally quiet death and dying space.  Much of this activity is due to the London Southbank Centre’s courageous decision to put on a week’s events centred on death, in an attempt to reduce society’s reluctance to face mortality.

Part of this will be Sandi Toksvig’s memorial lecture, which she trails with her trademark endearing and engaging wit here.

I’m also looking forward to Paul Gambaccini’s Desert Island Death Discs event, as it will look at the top funeral songs and what they tell us us about our attitudes to departing this world. Will he, I wonder, have gone through the 130 or so lists of farewell songs sent in by visitors to My Last Song?

The Natural Burial Ground’s funeral survey results have also been released, and have some interesting if rather partial findings. The survey has clearly and unsurprisingly been answered mainly by those in or close to the funeral business. What we liked about the results was the large percentages of people who go online to get information about funerals and who have written down or told relatives of their funeral wishes.

Sadly as these wishes are often misplaced or disregarded, such admirable intentions are a waste of time. Which is why people should store their funeral wishes and the vital information required by close loved ones immediately after the death in their own Lifebox.

High on the news agenda today was the story that data from the Office for National Statistics showed that dehydration or malnutrition was linked to 25 deaths every week last year. This is the shocking and depressing counterpoint to the admirable efforts others are making, often out of benevolent self interest, to encourage a change in how the British in particular look at death.

Depressingly it is still true that the vast majority of people don’t think about death and don’t talk about death until it is literally too late. And so the chances of having a good death are still remote as we pointed out earlier, with almost 70 per cent of people dying in hospitals or hospices even though over two thirds say they want to die at home.

My Last Song has supported the case for the terminally ill and the ailing elderly to have their own personal death plans, rather as mums-to-be have birth plans. This way the issues surrounding the end of life can be addressed in as calm a way as possible, with the involvement of loved ones, medical professionals and if appropriate, ministers of religion or other comforters.

After some research we created a holistic death plan template which covers emotional, physical, medical, practical and spiritual issues to make the end of life as comfortable and comforting as possible.

Funeral wishes, death plans and the raising of the public’s consciousness about death and dying are pointing in the right direction, but there’s still a long way to go.