Advice for when it's time to say goodbye (Funeral Services in general)

Member Name: rosebud2001

Product:	Funeral Services in general
Date:	01/06/09 (248 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Er...none.

Disadvantages: Many.

I wholly expect to get a low read rate on this review - after all, who on earth wants to pass the time by reading about funerals? And I know what you are thinking - "it's that laugh a minute rosebud here to depress us again".

Well trust me, that is not my intention and I hope you will stick with this and hopefully learn a little about something we all hope we won't have to do and that is organising funerals.

I have twice had the misfortune to be involved in organising funerals. The first one was my father's, which took place just 3 weeks after my daughter was born. My father died in London, where I lived at the time, and my mother, who came down from Scotland initially to help me with the baby, had absolutely no idea what to do or where to go, which as you can imagine, put rather a lot of pressure on me.

The second one was my husband's and strangely, the experience of helping my mother organise my father's made it an altogether easier task. Ironically, my husband died in London too, where he was working at the time, and which is where he was from; but we had relocated to Edinburgh a few years before.

The most important thing I believe when you organise a funeral is to stick to the wishes of the deceased as much as possible. My husband, for instance, had clearly stated he wanted to be cremated, which caused some raised eyebrows amongst his older Catholic relatives. My mother had never spoken to my father about his wishes and he apparently seemed to only care he was cremated - so she ended up delegating the music to me and my sister.

When my father died, we didn't really think to shop around to choose who would organise the funeral - there was a funeral director's located close to my home in London and my mother and I went straight there to organise it. In hindsight, this was a big mistake - we should have made more enquiries and looked elsewhere but hindsight is easy to have after bereavement.

The staff you encounter at a funeral director's tend to be very sympathetic and will try to help you out from their own experience. Some of this is extremely helpful but at the end of the day remember a funeral director isn't a public service - it is a business so you should be prepared to be offered expensive coffins and cars you may not need.

A good funeral director however will take everything on board for you. They will ask if you wish to have a priest, minister or other religious or non-religious official there to speak and will organise this for you, ask about hymns or music you wish to have played, help you choose flowers and help organise the venue for you.

Both funerals I have been involved in organising were cremations and the first thing we had to decide was which crematorium to use. My mother was adamant she didn't wish to have my father cremated at Mortlake because she didn't like the name - something I found very strange - so a booking was made at Kensal Green instead. At no point did we discuss price differentials or anything else for that matter.

Once the crematorium was booked, we could press ahead with other arrangements.

We organised a hearse for the coffin and a car for family and friends. We then had a vicar recommended to us but my mother balked at the price of having anyone speak at the funeral and neither she nor my dad were religious, so I ended up doing it myself, and two songs were chosen to play at the start of the funeral and at the committal.

Committal is when the coffin "leaves" us and depending on the crematorium this can be having curtains drawn around it, or it can slowly move through doors before going to the cremator.

I am glad I spoke at my father's funeral, even though I was desperately nervous beforehand as I had never spoken in public before but I felt I was able to give something back to him at the end of his life.

When my husband died, this was never going to be an option however. There was no way I would have been able to hold things together for long enough to do it.

I did, however, have to organise things long distance as once again a loved one had died in London and this time we no longer lived there.

I flew down for a day to retrieve my husband's possessions, register his death and then organise the funeral. Looking back, the fact I had to do things from a distance probably helped me find the best local funeral director as I had to do some research.

I chose a funeral director who was local to my brother-in-law as I wanted the funeral to commence from his home in Fulham. During this process I made several telephone calls and visited several websites. I discovered some funeral directors only deal in burials (why they cannot state this in their advertisements I do not know) and eventually found a company which were a short distance from my brother-in-law's home.

In the course of my research I had discovered that the cost of funerals can vary wildly, especially now that big business has moved into the market. All advice given online was to stick to independent funeral directors if at all possible, especially one that belonged to a trade body. The company I chose belonged to SAIF (The National Society of Allied & Independent Funeral Directors) which gave me peace of mind that I was not being overcharged.

I also asked more questions this time about crematoriums and discovered that Kensal Green charge considerably more money than Mortlake, something that I had never thought to ask when helping to organise my father's funeral. It's easy to assume that because a crematorium is a council owned service that prices will be similar - but clearly they are not.

So I decided upon Mortlake, a choice I have to say I am very glad I made - I found it a much more pleasant venue all round, irrespective of the fact it was also better value for money, and found it had a more comforting aura too.

The funeral director was also able to recommend and organise a humanist speaker for the funeral. My husband was adamant he wanted religion to play no part in his funeral so it was a relief to get this easily organised.

The speaker phoned me to take notes but I basically e-mailed her a written eulogy which she edited to fit into her time slot and that was that. She had my phone number but asked me by e-mail how our surname was pronounced, which of course resulted in her pronouncing our surname incorrectly. This was a minor thing, but an annoyance nonetheless. For this service she charged £175, which I personally think was a bit on the high side, but I suppose "men of the cloth" charge similar fees. It strikes me as a bit of a "nice little earner" however.

Music was rock - I chose two songs my husband and I had both loved, and going back to the raised eyebrows I already mentioned amongst my husband's elderly relatives they arched ever upwards at the humanist speaker and rock music, but I know it's what my husband wanted.

I was also able to add to things quickly and easily by telephone - for instance we quickly discovered we would need more cars than originally requested and one phone call sorted this out for us.

I delegated flowers to my sister-in-law. At my father's funeral there was only one family wreath, but my husband came from a far larger family and many people wanted to send flowers. I told my sister-in-law the wreath I wanted and she and my nieces ensured the flowers were at her home before the cars arrived to take us to the crematorium.

Obviously my husband's funeral was a far more difficult experience for me than my father's had been. I also decided that our daughter should go, despite being unsure of how she would behave. Fortunately she sat through the service in silence although I am unconvinced she realised fully what was happening. She didn't attend the wake afterwards however, because my sister-in-law had suggested a venue she thought allowed children, but in reality did not.

I was also met by friends I hadn't seen in years - most of them dressed smartly but sombrely for the occasion. I say most, as one of my husband's more eccentric friends saw fit to turn up in track suit bottoms and flip flops (in March!), but he paid his respects nonetheless. Some people seemed to be offended by this but it didn't really bother me and my husband wasn't one to stand on ceremony much either and would probably have had a good laugh about it.

I appreciate this is a topic many of you will find morbid and dull, but sadly funerals are a fact of life and they are an expensive one at that. My husband's was a relatively cheap one but it still came in at well over £2,000.

If you were going to spend that kind of money on other major consumer goods, you would research it and I find a funeral to be no different. A lot of companies sadly prey on people when they are at their most vulnerable so you need to have your wits about you.

The best advice I can give you if you are involved in organising a funeral is not to do it alone - have a friend or family member help you and make sure you don't get steamrolled into something that is too big and too expensive. Ask questions about how much things cost and don't think you are being tightfisted in doing so either, even when words such as "economy" are bandied about in an effort, I believe, to make you feel this way and hopefully spend more money.

The main lesson I have learned about from organising these funerals however is to make sure someone knows what you want when your time comes around, and leave clear wishes behind for your loved ones. It may seem like an obvious thing to say, but it makes a difficult job a little easier if you know that you are following the wishes of your loved ones.

www.saif.org.uk

Summary: Some information to consider if you have to organise a funeral.