The Sea Lady

Very few people make plans for their own funerals despite most of them thinking it would be a good idea, according to recently published research. My grandmother pre-paid her funeral as a matter of course. She knew what she’d be getting, that it would be paid for and that it would be done according to her wishes. Today that’s not the fashion although curiously there is now a massive consumer market and a baffling array of choices not available in her day. Some people do want to choose for themselves rather than leaving a myriad decisions about cremation, burial, rockets, urns, natural burial grounds, church, chipboard, wood and the rest to the bereaved.

Novelist Margaret Drabble is thinking ahead. She has always wanted to be cremated when the time comes. Now she has learnt about the high carbon emissions from burning corpse and coffin; and that cremation is also responsible for 16% of the UK’s mercury pollution from the fillings in our teeth. She is alarmed. “I’ve got lots of fillings. I don’t want to be a major polluter!” But the burial alternative doesn’t appeal to her much either. “I don’t like the idea of being underground. What I’d really like is to be buried at sea. But I don’t suppose it’s allowed.”

Like Drabble, I too rather assumed that burial at sea was banned, unless you were a sailor. In fact, sailors aren’t buried at sea. A Royal Navy ship leaving Portsmouth will sometimes stop for a 10 minute ceremony led by a chaplain before scattering the ashes of an old seafarer, but that’s the limit. My grandfather was a sailor with the Royal Navy and when he died in Australia, the navy there gave him a send-off at sea. His ashes were scattered while the Last Post was played. He would have been proud. Most of us are unlikely to be honoured by a trumpeter and a naval salute.

Sea scattering is possible for civilians too. “It’s very popular with residents of Weymouth” says Helen Allen from the local Co-operative funeral directors. RNLI volunteers take ashes out to sea, perform a short service and then tip the ashes overboard. The families wait in the harbour and watch as the lifeboat circles the spot twice before returning. Alternatively, families can stand on terra firma and tip the ashes into the water themselves. The key thing advises Allen, is to do it soon after the funeral service. “We had a lady who couldn’t decide what to do with the ashes for 7 months. In the end the RNLI took them out to sea for her but she got upset all over again. Scattering gives closure after the funeral service.”

There’s no license required ( so long as you don’t inter the ashes in an urn) so there’s nothing to stop you having a swimming party with the ashes or scattering them to the 4 winds and the waves from a beach or boat of your choice. Tam Charles-Davis from the Brittania Shipping Company for Burial at Sea has one word of warning. “Make sure you know which way the wind is blowing! It sounds flippant but you don’t want to end up with a face full of ash.” Drabble, however, remains unmoved. She wants neither a swimming party, an outstretched arm scattering from the shore or a yacht in the bay. She wants the real thing. Body overboard, and no cremation pollution.

It turns out, if she really, really wants it, she can have it. There are only about 16-18 burials at sea each year and they are strictly regulated. There are only 2 designated spots for corpses at sea off the English coast. One is near Newhaven and the other is the Needles, off the Isle of Wight. Anyone organizing a sea burial needs a license from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) (or the Scottish or Welsh Assembly). The terms of the license require a medical certificate to prove that the body has no fever or infection. The body may not be embalmed (the embalming process slows down decomposition). The coroner needs to be informed as a body is being removed from England. A sea fishery inspector is appointed to check the coffin to make sure it meets the regulations.

The coffin itself has to be made of solid softwood to be biodegradable. It has to be butt-jointed and strengthened with steel brackets to ensure it can take the stress of being dropped into the water. The body has to be tagged with its registration number and the telephone number of the licensee. The body can be lightly clad “commensurate with modesty” in biodegradable materials. The coffin has to have a couple of dozen holes drilled in it and also be weighted with 200kg steel, iron or concrete. The body also has to be weighted. Chains weighing 10% more than the body weight, wrapped around the body are recommended. All these demands are of course to stop rotting corpses from turning up on beaches or getting picked up in fishing nets by hapless trawlermen.

It does happen. That’s the objection of the coroner for the Isle of Wight. 6 bodies or body parts were washed ashore on the Isle of Wight over 4 years from the nearby marine burial site. In 2005 the coroner’s office submitted recommendations to Defra for changes in sea burial practice including possibly stopping burials at sea altogether. “It’s usually dog walkers on the beach who find the body parts” says coroner’s officer Richard Leedham. “It’s distressing for them. And it’s distressing for families with missing persons who think the body might be their loved one.” There is also a financial implication. It costs around £8000 to identify remains, which has to be paid by the council.

The coroner is advocating taking DNA samples from the body prior to burial and storing them on the missing persons’ database, to ease identification if body parts are later washed up. He believes this would cost about £300. It would be paid as part of the burial license, which is currently free. Defra are looking into the suggestion. They point out that very few bodies actually wash up onto the shore. However in view of the risks, the licensing authority normally recommends that, rather than burial of the body at sea, consideration should be given to the scattering at sea of cremation ashes.

Some of those who are not persuaded by the ashes option and want a sea burial for themselves, sign up to a register held by The Brittania Shipping Company. One man who signed up in 1988 has just rung in to update his address. His funeral, at today’s prices will cost from £4,150 for the marine coffin and full maritime interment. “You’re just as likely to get someone from Birmingham wanting a sea burial as someone who has a sea connection” says Tam Charles-Davis. “Usually people prefer a funeral service first at their local church then close family only go on board for the interment. Elderly people in particular don’t want to go out to sea.” Ceremonies are tailor-made but Elgar’s Nimrod is a common choice of music to accompany on board proceedings.

Neither the legalities nor the risk of coming up again from Davy Jones’s locker have yet put Margaret Drabble off. She thinks she might well be willing to order another hundred kilos of weights to keep her under. She considers whether there might not be a good business opportunity in it. “Fishing boats could take bodies out on ice, tip them out, catch their fish and return with the fish on ice. No need to travel one way empty!” Drabble’s latest book is called “The Sea Lady” and is suffused with her fascination for the sea. Her interest in rolling with the waves, now she knows she really can, is keener, though she would like to know whether this really is an ecologically satisfactory solution. Would her bodily remains contribute to the marine food chain? She would like to think so. She needs an answer to this before she commits herself to the waves. It may be woman overboard, but not for a long while yet.

Made to measure service

A friend went to a funeral yesterday in a crematorium. She went expecting the traditional funeral set up and was a bit taken by surprise. "I thought, he's a funny vicar" she said. Then she realized the man hosting the service wasn't a vicar at all, but a friend of the chap who had died. She was taken completely by surprise. "I had no idea you could do what you liked and you can just hire the facilities." She said the funeral was very appropriate and incredibly personal and not at all religious.

Gravedigger man

I was drawn up short this morning when reading The New Yorker (12 March 2007). After blithely saying in the previous blog that I wasn't too bothered what happened to my earthly remains, I read: "The obsession with burial and what to do with bodies once life has fled is a defining human trait." The author Adam Gopnik suggests it is as much a subject of poetry as love or jealousy and points to it as the central subject of The Illiad and of Sophocles' Antigone. He is right. Indeed I can think of no other animal that fusses over the the carcasses of its dead.

The New Yorker piece is largely about the death of Anna Nicole Smith, the former oil millionaire's wife whose remains have been battled over in court by her mother and boyfriend. Anna Nicole has now been buried but if the appeal succeeds she could well be dug up again, in an obsessional tug of war. Gopnik quotes Antigone: "It is the dead/ Not the living, who make the longest demands/ We die forever."

Clearly there is something elemental about this concern with the hereafter and corporeal remains. But I have a feeling that I am not alone in thinking that the ritual of leaving, the sense of occasion, the marking of the moment are becoming increasingly important in people's minds. As we are loosing the conventional rituals, there is more scope for adapting them to suit yourself, more scope for creativity and choice. Perhaps it is a sign of our increased narcissism that we want to register more of our worldly character as we leave the world behind.

Aristocrat rises from the dead

The body of an English aristocrat who died in 1919 is about to rise from the dead. (Daily Telegraph 1/3/07) Sir Mark Sykes died of the Spanish flu, the virus which killed 50 million people worldwide. Scientists now looking for clues to help them fight against avian flu believe that Sir Mark's DNA may be a key. His genetic material could help them understand the flu virus and help them prepare for the outbreak which they all agree is coming.

Why Sir Mark? The reason is that he was buried in a lead lined coffin, probably because of the fear of the disease escaping and spreading. As a result it seems likely that his body may have been preserved in good order over the last 90 years and perfect for genetic sampling.

Sir Mark's grandson and other descendants have all agreed that it is in the public interest to dig him up and the rest of us should be jolly grateful. It's a good thing he wasn't cremated.

In the museum world, the legitimacy of doing research on human bones (let alone digging them up as I described in an earlier entry at Spitalfields) is hotly debated. It is particularly sensitive in cultures where ancestors are worshiped. People's remains should clearly be treated with respect but most buried bodies (sans lead coffins) rot anyway. If any surviving bones or body materials can help science, then why not?

I don't think I care greatly about what happens to my body after death. I care about the ceremony and I like the idea of being buried or cremated with a degree of dignity, but when you're dead you're dead. I'd be very happy for my organs to be used to help other people. I'd probably draw the line at being cut up by medical students but that's only daft embarrassment on my part. Sir Mark's DNA being taken from his corpse doesn't damage him even if his body disintegrates more quickly with access to the air. The gift just adds to his legacy. He's setting a fine example.

Funeral gets green light!

I had a call last night from Rev. Holy from St Luke's. He was taken a little aback when I said it was my funeral I was trying to organize. Clearly he doesn't get many calls like this. I said I needed to know whether I come within his catchment area. "How on earth do I find out?" I asked. "You ask me" he said. Pen at the ready, I told him my address and I wrote down the limits. Nightingale Lane on one side through to Bolingbroke Grove on the other. I was nowhere near. I realized with a pang of real disappointment that if I went down this route, I'd be allocated to the church up the road with which I feel no link, no connection at all. I don't want any religious ceremony. I only want it if it's St Luke's.

Rev. Holy could hear me going off the idea. "All that means "he said "is that's what's legally enforceable. People who live in our catchment are entitled to a funeral here. The church is the established church so that's the law. But for those outside the catchment, it's down to the discretion of the minister."

He then went on to explain that, as with schools, if you've got a church that's particularly desirable and you have endless people competing to use it, you may have to put in some conditions. I held my breath, wondering where I stood. "If you want to have your funeral here" he went on, "we'd say fantastic!"

"Fantastic," Rev Holy says he'd say"fantastic" to having my funeral at St Luke's! I am so chuffed. I feel like I have won a prize, joined the in-crowd, secured a bit of my future, resolved a part of the big problem.

I tell my mum. "Did you ask him about me?" she asks. I admit I was completely selfish and didn't mention her even though she's likely to be ahead of me in the queue. "I can't think there'd be a problem" I reply in a rather superior in-the-know way.

Location, location, location

Today I thought I should consider funeral and burial locations and realized I know very little about what is and what isn’t possible. A friend is just in the process of organizing a funeral for her mum and decided it would feel right to have it at the church where her parents were married over half a century ago. They no longer live in the area. She found the details of the church online and sent an email. A reply told her that she had made a convincing argument for her case and everything was arranged. The interesting point is that a case had to be made. There is no automatic right to have a funeral in a church of your choice or indeed to be buried in the graveyard of your choice.

I contacted the Church of England press office and asked what the considerations were. Many churchyards are now closed for burials because they are full up (they do of course still hold funerals) but those that are open will take you if you are a member of the church or if you live in the parish. Apparently every street in the country is part of one parish or another so it is post-code lottery as to where you get.

If you want to be buried in a cathedral it is a different matter. There are not many interments within the buildings. Some like St Paul’s will now only take ashes. Usually the only people to be buried in cathedral grounds are members of the clergy attached to that cathedral. At St Paul’s, it is the Dean and Chapter of the cathedral who decide if your ashes can be interred there.

I think mum and I are unlikely to get dispensation to be buried at a cathedral or indeed at a bucolic country church of our choosing (although I can think of several I might like.) I decided to be more realistic and to investigate St Luke’s Church in Battersea. I’m not a church goer but I do visit this church on a pretty regular basis because it is associated with my children’s school. We go there for Spring concerts and Christmas carols and it is a place therefore with good associations. I drink mulled wine here with other parents and tears of pride come into my eyes when my children stand at the alter to read dodgy poems they've written or play in the junior school orchestra. It’s also a rather beautiful red brick in a high Victorian building with a basilica lined with shining mosaics. Signs hang in the pews reminding one of the virtues: perseverance, humility and so on. I can imagine having my funeral here, close to home in a place which has formed part of the geography of my life. But there is no graveyard! So whatever, there will be no one-stop shopping here. And I haven’t yet established whether my home is within the parish boundary. Goodness, it feels as difficult as trying to get a place at a local school!

The Skeletons of Spitalfields

We're still no closer to knowing whether we want to be buried or cremated. Either choice is loaded with complications. It seems that cremation is not necessarily the green option. In the heat of the furnace, toxic emissions are given off including 16% of the UKs mercury emissions. That is of course from our fillings. To be buried conventionally uses up valuable land space for rotting corpses. I'm not sure there are any green burial sites near where I live in South London. That's all to be researched.

Meanwhile, reading Necropolis (Catherine Arnold) reminded me of a film I made, oh, probably 20 years ago. It was for the series Chronicle and it was about a remarkable excavation carried out in the crypt of Hawksmoor's Christ Church Spitalfields in East London. Archaeologists found 1000 skeletons which all dated from the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries. What was extraordinary about the research was that all the coffins were clearly labeled and the corpses names and dates from their coffins and their tomb stones could be matched with parish records. Thus whole biographies could be constructed of people who had died 2 centuries before. One of these was Louisa Courtauld who died in 1807. As she was a part of the famous fabric family there is a portrait of her in life. In front of me I have a picture of her skull and a photo of her portrait. It is a remarkable juxtaposition.

There was fear, when the coffins were opened, that cholera or the plague might still be contained within. In fact the worst the researchers had to face was the disgusting smell emanating from the corpses. Some of the corpses were in an amazing state of preservation, with leathery skin still on their faces and fabulous bonnets and dazzling golden fabric draped around their bodies.

Any research that disturbs corpses has to be undertaken with real sensitivity. Christ Church was dilapidated and unsafe and the crypt needed to be emptied for repair and reconstruction work so the coffins needed shifting whatever. I went to meet Louisa's descendant who seemed happy that the work was contributing to knowledge about funeral practices. And proud of his portrait of his great, great, great (I think!) grandmother!

Of course graves do get moved on a pretty regular basis. I remember when my grandmother came on a visit to England from Australia where she lived. Her daughter Kathleen had dies of diptheria as a child and she went to visit the grave. It wasn't there. It had long since been turned over to make room for the next inhabitant and the one after that. Unless you have a mausoleum of your own on private land, your resting place in death is for a limited time only.