'There are alternatives, but they need planning and family members need to be involved.' Photo: Mayron Oliveira / Unsplash.
‘There are alternatives but they need planning.’
Thinking outside the box: Michael Yates on funeral preparations
My wife and I are approaching a collective 160 years – halfway between our respective eightieth birthdays. This certainly concentrates our minds on a whole range of end-of-life issues! Questions arise about what arrangements are appropriate for Friends. The ‘Funeral Wishes’ form may be useful for some but does not address the more knotty questions. Most go down the well-trodden line of burial or cremation – the cost of which rises year by year. There are alternatives, but they need planning and family members need to be involved.
There will be those who wish that assisted dying was legal. Dutch friends assure us that their system works satisfactorily and with a minimum of abuse. Until such time as we follow suit, it may be that some Friends might wish to consider making it clear that they do not wish to be unnecessarily kept alive. We know of Friends who have a clearly-worded declaration in open view for paramedics and others to see.
Another consideration concerns the donation of vital organs. This, apparently, is a straightforward process.
A much more radical suggestion is the donation of one’s body for medical research. Details of how this can be set up (under the Human Tissue Act 2004) are available. The body of the deceased is delivered to a university’s faculty of biological science, with which an agreement would already have been made. The donor would know that their body was useful for the training of medical students, and so for the benefit of future generations. (It should be emphasised in advance that in certain cases the body may not be acceptable.)
What to do then? There is the possibility of arranging a cremation without any ceremony or service whatsoever. The body is delivered to the crematorium, which cremates the body at a convenient time (for example, when no other body was due to be cremated in the more usual way). The cost of this is far less than for traditional cremation with all its trappings. The body, when delivered by an undertaker, friend or relative, can be in a very basic cardboard coffin, further reducing the financial and environmental cost. I remember many years ago being shown by a Dutch undertaker friend a cardboard coffin-shaped bookcase where the shelves could be removed to become the lid of a coffin!
For those Friends worried about the environmental damage of the process of cremation, might it be worth considering the purchase of sufficient trees to be planted to balance it out? Better still, purchasing of trees could be done in advance as an individual (bearing in mind how long it might be before even elderly Friends reach their life’s end). Might this, in some cases, become a Local or Area Meeting concern? Contacting The Woodland Trust now might be a good place to start.
