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.

Necropolis

I've been reading Necropolis: London and its dead by Catherine Arnold (published by Pocket Books at £7.99.) It is a fascinating ghoulish romp through the graveyards of London from Roman times through to the death of Diana. It demonstrates strongly how the look of London has been influenced by the manner in which we have treated the dead and the battles that have waged over land use. The ever-growing population has constantly overwhelmed the inner city capacity and planners have always under-estimated the number of dead. Gradually the dead have been buried further and further out of town thus constantly re-shaping our geography.

Arnold is at her strongest dealing with 2 periods: the plague and Victorian death. Of the 1600s she gives graphic descriptions of stinking corpses and dreadfully overcrowded graveyards. She tells us fascinating nuggets of information: At the spot where Brompton Road and Knightsbridge now meet, excavations for the Piccadilly Line between Knightsbridge and South Kensington Underground Stations unearthed a pit so dense with human remains that it could not be tunnelled through. This is said to account for the curving nature of the track between the two stations.

She also gives excellent accounts of Victorian reformers like Chadwick and the pageantry of funerals such as that of the Duke of Wellington, organized by Prince Albert himself. There are lots of curious anecdotes throughout, from the scandal of Enon Chapel just off the Strand where 12,000 bodies had been buried in a space measuring 59 feet by 12, at 15 shillings a time to the fascinating story behind the burial of the unknown soldier after WW1. It is a cornucopia of macabre delight.

It is possibly weaker about the story of the rise of cremation. It charts the beginning of the story but doesn't then go on to study its impact in the last century and the thinking behind the choices people made, and indeed the massive success of cremation in the UK. These choices also have an impact on the geography of London. However Arnold doesn't set out to look at the landscape of death today. Her story rattles through the wars and the flu epidemic and skids to a halt with Diana and the national outpouring of grief. But the debate today about how to accommodate our dead in dwindling space that is competing with housing for the living has clear echoes in the history she relates. It's no new crisis. It's just one that we perennially face up to too late.

Going out with a bang

Phillip Pullman had to work quite hard to achieve the firework display that he wanted for his stepfather and he succeeded thanks to a favour from a friend. After I received Phillip's account,I rang around a number of fireworks companies and couldn't find anyone that would agree to do it. But today, there is a UK company which does nothing but funeral ashes as fireworks so if Phillip does choose to do it for himself, he will probably find it easier to arrange. The company is Heaven Above Fireworks (www.heavensabovefireworks.com) and Fergus Jamieson set it up after hearing an item on John Peel's Home Front on Radio 4. He heard a contributor saying how much they would like to be turned into a firework and he thought, why not? Thus was born a business opportunity.

I asked Fergus why he thought fireworks were a good idea for ashes. "It's important to grieve" he says, "but it's important to look back and to celebrate all the wonderful things in people's lives. No one leaves a firework display without a smile on their face."

Interestingly, Fergus says that over a half of the calls he receives are from people planning their own funeral. I guess if you don't tell people what you want, people naturally go back to default mode and give you a traditional send off, so if you want something different, you need to plan it yourself.

But now the shopping begins. Costs start at about £900. The only thing you can't do is go up in a single rocket...that's too risky. You can choose what size and style of display you would prefer. You can have a green and white display if you're Irish or a red, white and blue one if you're a Brit. Some people want a small display that they can set off themselves in the back garden. Some want a giant display with all bells ringing. You can choose between a mixed display, perhaps even with your name written in lights. Or you can choose a noisy, rocket based one so that you really go out with a bang.

This time, my mum is really enthusiastic. "Do it anywhere you like, anywhere that suits you." She like the idea that everyone would have to smile. They could chomp on their baked potatoes and knock back their wine and lift their heads up to the night sky and wave goodbye.

A blaze of fireworks

I have been fascinated with the idea of going off as a firework for a while now. A couple of years ago I read somewhere that children's author Philip Pullman had rocketed his stepfather up to the stars in a firework display. Could it be the case, or was it part of his fiction? I wrote him a note and this was his reply.

The fireworks idea came to me when my sister and I were wondering what to do with the ashes. My stepfather died at the New Year, and his various children were scattered all over the world: one in Australia, another in America, one in Scotland, tow in England, and although those of us here in Britain could make it to the cremation, it was going to be vary difficult for my half-brother in Australia and my stepbrother in the USA to make it in time.

So I suggested that we regard the actual service as a formality, and set up a real farewell later in the year, when everyone could get there without difficulty. Then the question arose: what form should the farewell take? Obviously we’d have to scatter the ashes, but there wasn’t really anywhere in Edinburgh, where he spent the last couple of years of his life, that was special to him; there was no reason to go to sea and scatter them there; but we felt we ought to do something special.

“Let’s send him up in a rocket,” I said, half-seriously.

But my sister jumped at it, and so did the others. My stepbrother, when I suggested it to him over the phone, roared with laughter. It was such a zany idea that we couldn’t resist it. I only wish we’d thought of it before he died – he would have loved it.

So then the problem became – one rocket? Two? How many would we need? And should we do it ourselves? I had visions of buying a couple of big rockets from Woolworth’s or somewhere, and spooning the old boy in, and sealing him up with duct tape. But then they might be too heavy and make it un-aerodynamic, or something, and he might whizz up and turn round and come straight down again.

Anyway, my sister, who knows everyone, found a firework specialist in Edinburgh, where she lives, and handed the job over to him. He was a part-time firework man – in his day job, he’s an anaesthetist at one of the Edinburgh hospitals. He said we’d need thirty-five rockets, and named a price, and we said “Go ahead.”

So on the appointed day we all gathered in Edinburgh and had a boozy supper and drove out to the headland where the firework man did his displays, looking south across the Firth of Forth. As the daylight was fading we walked a mile or so along the shore till we came to the spot where the rockets were being set up, all along a big long rack, with the firework man just setting the fuses. It had been raining all day, but it was just clearing, although the clouds were still low. We could see the lights of Edinburgh across the water, and there were naval ships manoeuvring in the Firth. My sister’s children were very excited, and we were all a little drunk, I think, and when it was all finally ready my stepbrother – his oldest child – said a few words, brilliantly, actually; and then my sister set off the first fuse.

What a display! It was wonderful. Each rocket was bigger and more beautiful than the one before. It went on for minutes, and the sky was full of stars, and with each star there was a bit of the old man.

And my little niece, who was nine, looked up and said very decidedly “That’s the way I want to go.”

As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t mind going like that myself. The thing was, it was funny and happy and beautiful as well as being sad. So I think it’s rockets for me too when the time comes.

I hope that helps.

Yours, Philip Pullman

Family and funeral fantasies

My mum was very taken with the notion of going up to space and going out with a bang. But there was dissent when we discussed the issue at dinner. My sister Becky didn't like it. It was far too off the wall for her. She likes a bit of tradition and feels that funerals are the time like no other for employing tradition. She would like a Rolls Royce for a hearse with a tasteful floral display on top. No horses, and no flowers spelling 'sister' or 'auntie'. She wants the weeping children to carry her coffin on their shoulders. She doesn't want a church service, having rarely stepped inside one. "But I don't want one of those crematoria that looks like a 1960s prefab" she adds. She wants to be buried in a picturesque graveyard, and she's got her eye on one in Wandsworth. I know the one she means (on Bolingbroke Road) and I feel sure it's bound to be full. I know I need to explore how you do get to be buried where you want and how to find a crematorium you like.

My mum reckons Becky's fantasy burial has cost tens of thousands of pounds already and says she hopes she's leaving the money to cover it. Then it's back to the rockets. My son Nicholas says it would be no fun (unless you went to see the launch) because nothing would happen. He wants fireworks. That's next up.

Beam me up, Scottie!

If this blog had music, it would now be playing Reach for the stars. As of the last couple of years, it has become possible to shoot your ashes to outer space in a rocket. What an exciting, stellar way to go.

You don't go up in your urn strapped in like the little dog or monkey of early space exploration. In fact only a gram or so of your earthly remains get to go on the journey. You do it in company with several hundred other people's remains on a commercial space launch. If you're planning on going quite soon, you might be in time to beam up with actor James Doohan, better known as Star Trek's Scottie. He's off and up this spring on The Explorer flight, the sixth space shot to carry ashes.

Even if you decide this is the thing for you, you still have a lot of choices to make. I'm beginning to think that to organize a good funeral you probably need to like shopping because there are so many consumer choices.

The company that organizes rockets is called Celestis and at the bottom end of the market your celestial send off can cost from as little as £400. According to their website, you can choose the Earth Return service. In this option, the ashes go out to space and come back to you (with a certificate to prove where they have been.) Or there's the Earth Orbit service. The spacecraft is placed in earth orbit and may stay there for anything between 10 and 240 years before it re enters the atmosphere "vaporizing like a blazing shooting star in final tribute." You can choose to go into Lunar Orbit (starting price $12,400) or the Voyager service which takes you into deepest space (starting 2009.)

If you send a gram of ashes, the price is of course less than if you send the maximum 7 grams. Those left behind get a video of the event. And they can, if they want, go to the rocket launch for themselves. All this can be organized through the British agent Heavens Above Fireworks.

I think this send off might well appeal to a lot of baby boomers who remember sitting up all night to see Apollo 11. Space exploration has always seemed fantastic and dreamy and an astonishing achievement so it does feel like a fitting end for someone of an adventurous nature. On the Celestis website, you can scroll through a list of those going on each flight and there's a brief biog and tribute to each. It gave me a shiver of excitement as I envisaged all these folk as astronauts. It gave them the aura of heroes. I think it will catch on.

Funerals reflecting lifestyles

In 1998 a very dear friend died completely unexpectedly. Jay Reddaway was only 41 and all his friends were deeply shocked. We hadn't experienced much in the way of death before and certainly not amongst our contemporaries. There was a memorial service held for him at the Roundhouse in London. At the time the Roundhouse was just a shell. A very imaginative set designer friend hung black drapes around the central area. The "service" was conducted inside the tent with pictures of Jay projected onto a screen. Friends made speeches and then, accompanied by Bruce Springsteen's Chimes of Freedom, the drapes were theatrically raised and suddenly we found ourselves transported into a much larger space with tables laid for lunch. Nobody who was there will ever forget it.

The marvel of the event was that it so suited Jay. It had the panache that he had in life. It was the perfect reflection of who he was.

I don't think funerals should be "one size fits all." It's great if they can be tailored to the person they are honoring. That's why I was so taken by the Rev Paul Sinclair and motortorcyclefunerals.com. They claim to offer the first and only motorcycle sidecar hearse in the UK. There are photos on the site of men in black leather and large, powerful motorbikes and sidecars with glass sides to make visible the coffin inside. The pictures make me want to laugh and cry. For someone that loves motorbikes, this would surely be a brilliant way to make your final journey. I can imagine the sidecar hearse followed by a couple of dozen bikers in convoy, with their engines roaring. I must remember to mention it to a biker friend.

Be at your own wake

My mum hates parties. She gets really nervous beforehand and doesn't enjoy them that much when she's there. She'd rather have an informal picnic in the park than a formal funeral. The last thing that would appeal to her is to do what 56 year old Andy Fitchett is planning on doing: being at his own wake. ( I spotted this story on 15/2/07 on BBC News.)

Andy Fitchett has been diagnosed with cancer and has been given 6 months to live. He set about planning who needed to be contacted when he dies. "Sorting all my stuff out made me start to think about all the people who had come into my life and touched it. You meet loads of people, make lots of friends but sometimes you don't stay in touch, despite having the best of intentions. I realized I wanted to thank them all for being part of my life and being my friend, that's why I decided to go and organize my own wake."

Andy is doing it in style. He's booked Swindon Town Football Club and is selling tickets for the night. Proceeds will go to charity.

One of the commonest comments at funerals is "John/Jane would have loved this." I suppose there's no point in having a great party and not being there to enjoy it. It is becoming more commonplace to be told that you only have so long to live. It was the Aids generation that started making living wills popular (especially because there was so much fear that loved ones would be cut out of the mourning process.) so perhaps Andy will lead a new fashion in not only preparing funerals in advance, but actually being there.

It's My Funeral

For the first 30 or 40 years of my life, I went to a lot of weddings. I'm in a new phase now. Next week I'll be going to the funeral of the mum of a dear friend. A fortnight ago I went to the funeral of a lady I'd known since I was a child, I'm probably doing 5 or 6 funerals a year and I expect the number will rise.

With each death there's the loss of the person who has died. There's also the loss of part of myself. Those people knew me in ways that newer acquaintances never will. I know that's rather a selfish outlook but it makes their funerals even more important. The event is a memorial to them...and these days usually a celebration of them...but it is also about the times and feelings and relationships we had in common.

My friend is arranging her mum's funeral rather brilliantly but at huge speed. Most people only have a week or two to do the planning. How extraordinary that is when you think how long we spend planning our weddings or even the christenings of our children. The problem is that most of us leave all the arrangements to those we leave behind.This week a report by Mintel concluded that very few people make any plans for their own funerals and yet most of them believe that pre-planning would be a good thing.

Perhaps we all believe that if we put our heads in the sand and don't talk about death, that it won't happen. Or perhaps it is worse than that. Perhaps we fear that if we make plans for the event, that it will bring it on.

I have made a will because it has been drummed into me that it is the only responsible course of action. But I haven't made what is called a "living will" to let others know what I want to happen when I die. My husband wouldn't have a clue. And these days it isn't obvious. Even the Church of England has recently held an exhibition to show how you can jazz up a funeral, but outside the church (of any denomination) the choices are now wide open. You can be scattered at sea. You can be buried in your garden. You can have a non-religious service. You can be accompanied by the music of Elton or Rod Stewart or Elgar. You can have a service based around your hobby whether it's motorbikes or painting. You can be shot up to the stars in a rocket or turned into a piece of jewelry.

Most of us now move around and don't die near where we were born so where to rest is problematic. I'm not sure how many people remember the verses to the traditional hymns (the next generation certainly won't) so singing could be a problem. I'm not sure how comfortable I feel about being buried in a churchyard when I haven't stepped inside a church except as an architectural visitor or for a school concert for many years. No wonder my husband wouldn't know what to do if I don't even know myself if I want to be buried or cremated.

I'm going to try to find out what is available and how to pre-plan what I want. I'm not alone on the journey. My mum, Beryl Paterson, is 72. She's divorced, a lapsed Catholic and profoundly pragmatic. She wants to sort out the options because a) she doesn't know the answers, b) it's fun and c) she doesn't want to burden the rest of the family with the decisions. So there are the two of us in search of a decent funeral. One that's good enough to die for.