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| Death doesn’t need our respect. Let’s celebrate life at funerals | Death doesn’t need our respect. Let’s celebrate life at funerals |
| (25 days later) | |
| Laughter, joy and celebration aren’t words that are traditionally associated with funerals, but in the past few years we’ve seen the rise of the happy funeral, with “celebration” becoming a well-established funeral trend. In fact, when the Sky News journalist Colin Brazier wrote in the Spectator that he had politely asked friends to “leave their Hawaiian shirts and pink helium balloons at home” and wear black to his wife’s funeral this month, it made the news. | Laughter, joy and celebration aren’t words that are traditionally associated with funerals, but in the past few years we’ve seen the rise of the happy funeral, with “celebration” becoming a well-established funeral trend. In fact, when the Sky News journalist Colin Brazier wrote in the Spectator that he had politely asked friends to “leave their Hawaiian shirts and pink helium balloons at home” and wear black to his wife’s funeral this month, it made the news. |
| “Wearing black gives people licence to be lachrymose,” he says, “If you see someone blubbing outside a pub wearing a black suit and tie, you have a clue as to why.” Even I (someone who once made a loved one a video eulogy that reduced the congregation to giggles) understand the longing for the rigidity of a Victorian mourning ritual. It communicates that you’re in pain. | “Wearing black gives people licence to be lachrymose,” he says, “If you see someone blubbing outside a pub wearing a black suit and tie, you have a clue as to why.” Even I (someone who once made a loved one a video eulogy that reduced the congregation to giggles) understand the longing for the rigidity of a Victorian mourning ritual. It communicates that you’re in pain. |
| Are we finally learning to talk more openly about death? | Rebecca Nicholson | Are we finally learning to talk more openly about death? | Rebecca Nicholson |
| Such a ritual would have stopped colleagues asking me, after two weeks of compassionate leave, “Where have you been, bloody part-timer? Off on holiday again?” causing me to blurt out that we’d found the eight-day-old corpse of my father-in-law. | Such a ritual would have stopped colleagues asking me, after two weeks of compassionate leave, “Where have you been, bloody part-timer? Off on holiday again?” causing me to blurt out that we’d found the eight-day-old corpse of my father-in-law. |
| And yet, if I had to pick a side, I’d take the celebratory funeral every time. Traditionalists might argue that wearing bright colours to funerals trivialises death. I agree. That, I think, is the point. We don’t want to trivialise the loss, but why not trivialise death? | And yet, if I had to pick a side, I’d take the celebratory funeral every time. Traditionalists might argue that wearing bright colours to funerals trivialises death. I agree. That, I think, is the point. We don’t want to trivialise the loss, but why not trivialise death? |
| Forgive the language, but fuck death. It wins every time; it doesn’t need our respect. It robs us of our self-esteem, our individuality. We spend our lives denying that we’re mere mammals crawling about the earth, by imbuing ourselves with cultural value. We develop tastes, opinions, preferences and passions, we produce art and name buildings and children and stars after ourselves, we have stories and narratives. | Forgive the language, but fuck death. It wins every time; it doesn’t need our respect. It robs us of our self-esteem, our individuality. We spend our lives denying that we’re mere mammals crawling about the earth, by imbuing ourselves with cultural value. We develop tastes, opinions, preferences and passions, we produce art and name buildings and children and stars after ourselves, we have stories and narratives. |
| When we die, we’re demoted. We become like everyone who ever died, every beast, every insect, every perished germ. This is why we don’t speak ill of the dead; it’s kicking them while they’re six feet down. | When we die, we’re demoted. We become like everyone who ever died, every beast, every insect, every perished germ. This is why we don’t speak ill of the dead; it’s kicking them while they’re six feet down. |
| The rise of the celebratory funeral is an effort to elevate the deceased back up to where we think they belong. A common complaint about traditional funerals is that they can feel impersonal; cookie-cutter services that don’t capture who the person was. By focusing only on the loss, we risk making “they’re dead” the most salient fact about them. | The rise of the celebratory funeral is an effort to elevate the deceased back up to where we think they belong. A common complaint about traditional funerals is that they can feel impersonal; cookie-cutter services that don’t capture who the person was. By focusing only on the loss, we risk making “they’re dead” the most salient fact about them. |
| If handled sensitively, a celebratory funeral could also help children process their grief. We project a lot of our fears about death and grief on to children. We mistake our terror for theirs, to permit ourselves to protect them, but the result is often just making it clear a discussion is off limits. | If handled sensitively, a celebratory funeral could also help children process their grief. We project a lot of our fears about death and grief on to children. We mistake our terror for theirs, to permit ourselves to protect them, but the result is often just making it clear a discussion is off limits. |
| Annie Fielder at Whiffle Pig (a community interest company that aims to reduce social isolation) was planning to go into schools in East Lothian and Derbyshire to educate children about death, but was told by one school staff member that she’d have to do so without using the words “death” or “die”. Yet The Corpse Project, a UK-based exploration of dealing with the body after death, found that young people wanted to learn about death, and the body after death, in school. | Annie Fielder at Whiffle Pig (a community interest company that aims to reduce social isolation) was planning to go into schools in East Lothian and Derbyshire to educate children about death, but was told by one school staff member that she’d have to do so without using the words “death” or “die”. Yet The Corpse Project, a UK-based exploration of dealing with the body after death, found that young people wanted to learn about death, and the body after death, in school. |
| I’m writing a book about death festivals around the world, where a more celebratory approach is taken to death rituals. Having observed death celebrations in several places, westerners do seem particularly death-phobic; perhaps because our funerals really are goodbye. | I’m writing a book about death festivals around the world, where a more celebratory approach is taken to death rituals. Having observed death celebrations in several places, westerners do seem particularly death-phobic; perhaps because our funerals really are goodbye. |
| The changing face of funerals: why we did it our own way… | The changing face of funerals: why we did it our own way… |
| In Mexico, funerals mark the start of an annual visit: families sit in graveyards on the Day of the Dead with flowers, food, drink and an all-night celebration of their late relatives’ return. In Tana Toraja in Indonesia, families keep the corpses of their loved ones in their homes for years, and even when they are buried, they are regularly exhumed, given new clothes and walked around, appearing in selfies with their descendants. In the central highlands of Madagascar, relatives are exhumed every seven years to be wrapped in fresh sheets and then reburied – but not before a huge, raucous party. | In Mexico, funerals mark the start of an annual visit: families sit in graveyards on the Day of the Dead with flowers, food, drink and an all-night celebration of their late relatives’ return. In Tana Toraja in Indonesia, families keep the corpses of their loved ones in their homes for years, and even when they are buried, they are regularly exhumed, given new clothes and walked around, appearing in selfies with their descendants. In the central highlands of Madagascar, relatives are exhumed every seven years to be wrapped in fresh sheets and then reburied – but not before a huge, raucous party. |
| It’s not that only people in the west fear death – in fact the idea “Asians don’t mind dying as much as us” was an effective bit of propaganda deployed during the Vietnam war by Americans to play down self-immolaion by protesting monks. | It’s not that only people in the west fear death – in fact the idea “Asians don’t mind dying as much as us” was an effective bit of propaganda deployed during the Vietnam war by Americans to play down self-immolaion by protesting monks. |
| But if the aim is, as Robert Webb wrote in his book How Not to Be a Boy, for love “to make death’s victory a hollow one”, the rise of the celebratory funeral is surely a secular attempt to catch up. It’s a way of saying, “You win again, death. But that doesn’t mean this is about you.” | But if the aim is, as Robert Webb wrote in his book How Not to Be a Boy, for love “to make death’s victory a hollow one”, the rise of the celebratory funeral is surely a secular attempt to catch up. It’s a way of saying, “You win again, death. But that doesn’t mean this is about you.” |
| • Erica Buist is a freelance journalist | • Erica Buist is a freelance journalist |
| Death and dying | Death and dying |
| Opinion | Opinion |
| Children | Children |
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