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.