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One of my jobs is taking funerals in the UK. (It's always useful for a project manager to have access to a number of deep holes). As the article says, things are different in Europe, and even between the constituent countries of the UK. In England, where I am, probably 90% of funerals lead to a cremation rather than a burial. There was a revolutionary change from "illegal and heretical" to "absolutely fine and normal" in a short period of the 19C. I've taken a service at the original crematorium in Woking, which has plaques for a few notable people including Eleanor Marx and Alan Turing. That made the London Necropolis obsolete - a huge graveyard in the same town, with its own dedicated railway leading out of Waterloo station, built when London was running out of room. I said I took a service at the crematorium: most crems are run by local councils, have one or two chapels as part of the complex, and are set in a cemetery. Stand-alone crematoria for direct cremation do exist, and I think that this will be the way of the future, with funerals taken with a box of pre-cremated ashes rather a coffin, mainly to reduce cost. Cost is high, though far from as high as in the USA: no embalming, hence no need for vaults for pollution control, simple coffin which is cheaper and only needs four bearers, crematoria run more as a public service than as a profit centre, ashes often scattered rather than needing a grave. But it still ends up costing a lot because so many people are needed to run the service. We do have the equivalent of body disposal by the county. A basic funeral is funded by the local authority, and it is a funeral, not just body disposal. I've done a small number where someone has died with little money, and without known friends or family. I have spent some time contacting pubs, churches and clubs to find anyone who might want to come or be able to tell me anything for the eulogy. It's a fascinating job - I can't think of anyone other than midwives who can visit homes from such a wide section of society and hear life stories. Today I took a huge funeral for a matriarch from a very clannish area of the town - you often get four generations of a family living within a few hundred yards of each other. It's a very different culture to my own middle-class background. It's also fun to go to the biennial National Funeral Exhibition - several thousand people who are habitually kind and empathetic, descending on an exhibition hall in the middle of an agricultural showground, to see the latest advances in high-altitude disposal of ashes and demonstrations of the manufacture of wicker coffins (personally I would go for the felt coffin). My wife is looking forward to it, though she has advised me that if I continue to call her Morticia she's going to be picking up some business cards for her own use. |