Coffin fits
Kate Berridge
ALONG with pest control and locksmiths, undertakers specialise in crisis management, being called upon in circumstances where distress and vulnerability blur the normal rules of business. Just as you don't shop around or quibble about costs when you are locked out of your flat at three in the morning, the speedy removal of a recently deceased relative is generally a matter of gratitude rather than negotiation. Relieved and confused, we let the undertaker take over.
This delegation of death is one of the more idiosyncratic aspects of Western industrialised society. The advent of the funeral home marked the end of domestic death. What was once a matter of community became a matter of commerce, the scent of lilies barely masking the smell of money. Where once the laying-out woman, often the village midwife, tended the dead with nosegays of rosemary and winding sheets, now men in moon-suits slice and sluice them in a disinfected world of gurneys and rubber gloves, a procedure which appears on the bill as 'hygienic treatment'. The living-room is literally that, and while we are happy to 'morgue out. with primetime pathology on television, we treat our own dead like toxic waste and can't wait to get them out of the house. In a strange substitution for personal involvement, we prefer to pay for a multitude of mysterious
services and props that go into the production that is a funeral, and these days we're demanding an approach that is more Merchant Ivory than Ken Loach.
In recent years, on a personal quest to learn more about British death style, I have fraternised with funeral directors and morticians, trawled the trade fairs, inspected coffins on carousels and chatted over biers. In fact, gender stereotypes that would be the kiss of death in most professions are alive and well in the funeral business, as is evident in commercially produced coffin clothes. These backless garments — but one line of a variety of extraneous funerary paraphernalia — tend to be on the theme of nightwear for women (invariably in Cartland Pink) and corporate kit for men; the intimations of bedroom and boardroom hilariously politically incorrect.
After years of uniformity signified by the bland brand of funeral that is cremation, there is a new esprit de corpse. Inexorably, death the last outpost of consumerism has succumbed to market forces. In 1998 the Dead Citizen's Charter was but one initiative heralding a growing concern that the last rights should not preclude consumer rights. In death as in life we now feel entitled to choice, service and value for money. The proliferation of choice associated with buying a cup of coffee — size, bean, topping — resonates in the coffin market. I've seen the coffin as flatpack, backpack and even shoe rack.
The undertaker's riddle 'The man that makes it doesn't want it, the man that buys it has no use for it, the man that's in it doesn't see it' has not prevented a boom in the market. At the flashier funeral homes you will find showrooms gleaming with caskets that both look and sound impressive: the Baronet, the Chesterfield. The colour range is so extensive that with the top end of the range Last Supper caskets, even Jesus comes in black or white. For golf enthusiasts the Fairway to Heaven is popular, and for those who die before they get old there is the heavy-metal Kiss Casket, featuring photo-images of the rock band and boasting a built-in beer cooler. Just as organic has become a brand in the supermarket, `eco' is echoing in the funeral trade, and in terms of returning to nature the fact that it is quicker with wicker means that willow coffins are now the height of fashion.
The expansion of choice inverts the trend at the end of the 19th century when there was a reaction against the excesses of the funeral trade. Dickens was a vociferous advocate of reform: 'Once and twice I have wished in my soul that if the waste must be, they would let the undertaker bury the money, and let me bury my friend.' Where our Victorian ancestors were under immense pressure to observe mourning protocol by spending a fortune on black material — the Courtauld empire, for instance, was founded on the provision of matte black crepe — for us the focus of expenditure is the funeral itself, with an emphasis on the coffin. The pressure to keep up with the Jones's bones remains intense, and there is a residual perception that the longer the line of limos and the bigger the floral tributes, the more kudos for the bereaved.
As well as going out in style, going out 'in character' is a new priority. There is a rich historical precedent for this. A charming example was the 1875 funeral of a Dutch tobacco merchant and heavy smoker who died aged 80. Mourners were given tobacco and pipes inscribed with his name with strict instructions to keep them lit throughout the service and to empty the ashes on the coffin, which was lined with cedar from old Havana cigar boxes. But today similar flair is evident. In a bid to make his obsequies more original, one man is teaching his African grey parrot 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind' so that the bird can lead the congregation.
When the parrot is an ex-parrot and no more, the family may be interested in according it a proper send-off, for pet funerals are proving immensely popular. At Pet Funeral Services in Wales, instead of a chapel of rest, there is a kennel of repose, and no domestic pet is considered too lowly to be accorded a ceremony. In a formal columbarium in black granite, gold letters pronounce: 'Our gerbils Pixie, Dixie and Whiskey. God Bless.' (A niche costs £125, a gerbil about £2.) From gospel choirs to balloons printed with 'Just Deceased', lesbian humanist celebrants to white witches, dolphin bookends for cremated remains to posthumous email messages, there are goods and services for all tastes and budgets. The society that invented the chicken tikka sandwich is taking a similarly flexible approach to funerals, with the result that there is growing tension between form and content. What
John Berger described as the 'dehumanisation of capitalism' is striking in contemporary death style. A rite of passage once shaped by a shared faith is being replaced by a fusion funeral which is more often than not a theatrical declaration of individuality, shaped by merchandise. Compared with other cultures, this consumer model of death, while the hallmark of an affluent society, is sadly synthetic: and, in both monetary and spiritual terms, RIP in white chrysanthemum heads could be said to stand for rip-off.
Previous page
