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.

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, told the global conference on Afghanistan’s future that international support after foreign forces withdraw in 2014 is crucial if Afghanistan is to remain stable.
Many observers foolishly regard a long-term international commitment to Afghanistan as critical, as Western forces prepare to leave the country by 2014. To date, almost 400 British troops have died in Afghanistan, to add to many more from the US and other allied countries.
Karzai no doubt has his eyes on the £4.5bn a year that ‘experts’ believe is needed if the country is to stay at current levels of development. Up to now, the vast majority of aid money has ended in the bank accounts of his friends and family.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has said that the objective of the talks is “a peaceful Afghanistan that will never again become a safe haven for international terrorism.”  This goal won’t be reached as neither Pakistan nor the Taliban are taking part. 
I find it amazing that those who believe that Afghanistan can be turned into a peaceful liberal democracy are unwilling to address the following:
1. Afghanistan isn’t a conventional state, but a series of local centres of power run by warlords, Islamists, criminals, elders, many of whom are also locally elected leaders who resent the inefficiency and corruption of Karzai.
2. Afghanistan is made up of two major ethnic groups, the Pashtun and the Tajik, with several smaller groups subdivided into tribes.  Tribes often occupy specific areas such as valley passes and are suspicious and hostile towards other tribes. It is not possible to unify these groups or deal with them as if they are unified.
3. Some of these groups straddle national boundaries and have little loyalty to any nation but to their own group, its customs and beliefs. Their culture has nothing in common with Western values.
4. The Taliban are not interested in international terrorism. They are a loose alliance of Islamist gangs and individuals, many from other countries, who want to fight the occupying forces and install an extreme Islamist code of living, often supported by local tribes and villagers.
5. The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan can’t be closed. It is almost 2000 miles long and much only passable by those who know the mountain passes.
6. Pakistan cannot, even if it wanted to, control the homegrown Islamist militants who want to help their co-religionist zealots in Afghanistan.
7. Afghanistan, like most muslim countries, is divided between a Sunni majority and Shai minority with mutual fear and loathing. 

All the money and armaments in the world won’t change these facts.
So the quicker the West leaves the country to find its own solutions, the better, and also the more successful the solutions will be.

I’m just not sure about hymns. By that I mean I have launched a website called My Last Song which encourages people to plan the funeral that best matches their beliefs, values and the individual lives they all, we all, lead.

The idea for the website came when I attended two funerals of contemporaries who were music lovers and yet their funerals where what I call  ’cut and paste’ …same hymns, same eulogies, same ritual as everyone else, just the names changed.

But my friends were not ‘everyone else’, and at the very least the music played at their farewells could have reflected their musical tastes and talents.

Like the majority of the UK population, my friends didn’t go to church and had no religious views.  Their funerals nevertheless featured hymns.

People inside the church knew the hymns and there was something cathartic about the mourners – family and friends of very different ages and backgrounds still shocked and grieving – singing together. We were unified in creating a shared emotion, each recognising it was part of a traditional, if anachronistic, way of saying goodbye.

At both wakes, people commented upon the paradox that they enjoyed singing the hymns while accepting they didn’t have any significance to the lives of our friends we were remembering.

Would secular, contemporary songs have had the same affect?

I have also attended humanist funerals when the contemporary secular songs selected gave very specific messages to some, but not all, of the assembled mourners.

The affect on this group was profound – some smiled, some nodded knowingly, some broke down, and most joined in the lyrics.

Others at these funerals, however, were rather left out,  didn’t get ‘the message’ and must have felt less able to say goodbye properly.

Even so, on balance, I believe that choosing hymns because they are an ‘easy option’ and that all age groups and backgrounds will join in (less and less the case in our diverse society where an increasing number of  people will have close friends of different faiths or none) is a less satisfactory choice than selecting music and readings that are true to our beliefs and lifestyles.

At My Last Song we are interested in what others think and have a poll on the type of music you want played at your funeral on our home page.

Please take part.

The launch of my website, My Last Song, and the publication of the Good Funeral Guide highlight the change in society’s view of funerals and planning for death.

I started My Last Song because I believe people should plan their own funerals, not leave it to grieving loved ones or to funeral directors who are likely to make the wrong choices.

The Good Funeral Guide, like My Last Song, empowers consumers with information.   “It is the first independent consumer guide and shines a spotlight on the secret world of the undertakers,” says author Charles Cowling, who also makes the following perceptive remark which has the added benefit of being an excellent sound-bite:

“The baby boomer generation reinvented youth culture; now they are reinventing death culture by reclaiming funerals from the undertakers and ministers and re-casting rituals for their dead.”

I hope the traditional one-size-fits-all funeral is finished, for it is a poor way to say goodbye to a loved one, or to be remembered by.

Instead we should recognise the virtues of the new funerals for a secular age.  As Charles points out the ‘new’ funerals should have some or all of these five features:

• celebratory – preferring gratitude to gloom, laughter to lamentation;
• personalised – a funeral as unique as the life lived;
• participative – the involvement of family and friends in caring for the body and creating their farewell ceremony;
• secular or spiritual – rejecting orthodox religious rituals; and
• iconoclastic – quirky music choices, outrageous dress codes.

Charles rightly argues that people attach little or no value to a traditional funeral because they get so little out of it and “resent paying what it would cost them to buy a decent second hand car.

“Only when they experience the transformative powers of a more relevant and personal funeral will they embrace a more positive attitude to death and how a person’s life is commemorated.”

Traditional religious funerals are less likely to achieve this if chosen by the family of the departed loved one because it seems the ‘right thing to do’, or it is the assumed default of the funeral director.  A decreasing proportion of our society have religious beliefs so it makes little sense to assume that a religious funeral is an appropriate ceremony around which family and friends mourn and remember a loved one.

As I argue in Honesty At The End, it is dishonest to organise a religious funeral for a dead loved one who had no religious beliefs to appease other members of the family.

The best way to avoid this is to plan your own funeral and ensure your family and executors know your wishes.

Which  is what the Vault section of My Last Song is for…safe storage of the details that the family will need once you have died, and for much longer if you want future generations to have an insight to the sort of person you were and the life you led.

Charles agrees: “Planning ahead is a responsibility we shouldn’t duck. To ignore death means we won’t have the ending we deserve, and our loved ones will be left to sort out the mess at a time when they are shocked and grieving.

“But if the funeral is a positive, unique and memorable event, the family will feel they are getting financial, emotional and spiritual value.”

Here are 10 reasons why atheists and agnostics have religious funerals:

1.  The family made the decision.

Most people don’t plan their own funerals. Families are likely to choose a religious funeral as will be suggested by the funeral director, who they don’t want to contradict. Plan your own funeral so the decisions are yours and not your family’s.

2. It is the ‘right thing to do’.

Strange how people want to ‘do the right thing’. But no, it’s wrong…it’s hypocritical…it’s nonsense.  The ‘right thing’ is to be honest.  If you are atheist or agnostic, or believe religion an obsolete and negative force in society, a religious funeral is not the right thing to do.

3.  If there is a heaven, you want to go there.

Religion as an insurance policy, hey. By having the vicar, priest, or other religious officiant saying the right thing, you will go to heaven. I don’t think so, and if it’s as easy as that it makes a mockery of the whole thing.

4.  It’s what the funeral director recommends.

Nearly all funeral director’s staff are well trained, professional and compassionate.  If they assume the family wish for a religious funeral for the departed loved one, the family goes along with it.   So, plan your funeral otherwise it is planned for you.

5.  Older members of the family are religious and you don’t want to upset them.

It’s your funeral, not theirs!

6.  The hymns are nice and it is good that everyone says goodbye singing rousing hymns.

A very good reason to have a religious funeral…unless you don’t want one.

7.  Previous generations are buried in the church graveyard and there’s space for one more.

Fine if you want to go along with the family tradition, but not if you don’t.

8. It’s cheaper than hiring a humanist officiant.

A church funeral is fairly inexpensive while humanist officiants charge more to take the ceremony. But you get what you pay for…my experience is that the vicar will read out biographical facts supplied by the family members following a short visit, while the humanist officiant will take more time and trouble to understand the nuances of the life that is being remembered.

9. If the vicar/priest is in charge there’s less likely to be a family argument and nobody will stand up and say what an evil bastard he was.

If the family is worried that your funeral could end up in a family argument, it is less likely to happen in church…so it will all kick off at the reception.

10. These days most Christian ‘religious’ funerals aren’t that religious – you can have secular music, secular readings and family members and friends can deliver the tribute.

The modern British funeral became ‘mainstream’ with Princess Diana’s half religious, half showbiz send off. Now most churches will agree to mix and match religious and secular.  This is a good solution if you want to please most of the people most of the time.

You have a choice: boring, dull, sad, dreary, hypocritical religious funeral, over in less than an hour to make way for the next family. Or, a unique event that marks your life, values and beliefs, a ceremony where people remember you and smile, listen to some great music, share honest memories, eat and drink well, and think: that was a great way to say goodbye.