Edited by
Nicholas Albery
Lindesay Irvine & Stephen Evans
Published August 1997 by
The Natural Death Centre
6 Blackstock Mews, Blackstock Road
London N4 2BT
tel 0871 288 2098
fax 020 7354 3831
e-mail: rhino@dial.pipex.com
The printed version of this book is now no longer available. The following are available in printed form: The Natural Death Handbook (the Natural Death Centre's main 382-page book focusing on woodland burial, cardboard coffins, funerals, etc) £15.50 incl. p&p by credit card; and After Life (£6.50 inc. p&p). You can place a secure online order here.
Copyright © The Natural Death Centre 1997
The Natural Death Centre has many publications available free on the Internet, at the location: http://www.globalidesabank.org/naturaldeath.html
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0 9523280 4 6
Printed by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts SN14 6QA
The 5th English Day of the Dead (on April 20th '97) began in the garden of the Natural Death Centre in Cricklewood with the unveiling of a painting that went up two storeys of the house - at the ground level were a body's clothes and detritus - an old copy of the Times stuck onto the canvas, plastic bags - and leaving the body heading upwards were naked spirits somewhat in the style of Matisse, spiralling towards the sun. This painting, by Josefine Speyer, one of the directors of the Natural Death Centre, had to be held against the wall to prevent it blowing to shreds in the wind.
To its left was a terrifying multicoloured 6 foot high head of Yama, the Tibetan God of death, with gaping mouth and sharp incisors, a giant mask brought down from an artist's colony in Scotland by Alice Francis, its creator. Her ambition is to set up a Scottish Natural Death Centre and woodland burial ground near Laurieston and to help people design funeral processions and celebratory funerals. Meanwhile, she and her partner and child (soon to be plural) will travel round villages in a large gypsy wagon, which can double as a nine-seater theatre, taking their puppet show with them.
To the right of Josefine's painting, on two trestle chairs, was Barbara Rae's coffin with painted panels, each telling a story - for instance, the descent into Dante's inferno, the setting sun, the message 'Bon Voyage', butterflies, a flying stag and, inside the lid, a poem by Maya Angelou ending "Good Morning!". Barbara had got a dozen friends to paint the coffin with her on her 45th birthday, in open recognition of having been given a terminal diagnosis for her cancer. On the back edge of the coffin was the single word 'Mummy', painted in a variety of colours, on the precise instructions of Barbara's 4 year-old-son, who did the letter 'y' himself.
In the cold sunshine, and standing in front of these artifacts, I gave a short speech of welcome for the 30 or so members of the public and media who had gathered in our small garden: "This is a day for remembering the dead and for reflecting on our own mortality," I began "and it carries on from a Christian festival of death in Springtime that was celebrated in this country until the 9th century. In 837 Pope Gregory IV hijacked the day and moved it to gloomy autumn, so as to harmonise with Germany, but we have rescued it for springtime, knowing that it is easier to contemplate death when life is burgeoning on every side." I pointed out that the events at the Centre were part of a nationwide day of events and that a number of woodland burial grounds (where a tree is planted instead of having a headstone) were having an open day on this afternoon and that in the evening, we were encouraging families up and down the land to light a candle at dinner time for a friend or family member who had died, and then to go round the table relating a memory or feeling about that person, so that the younger members of the family would begin to get to know their ancestors. And I ended by saying that it is the Natural Death Centre's belief that to become more aware of death can stimulate our creativity and artistry, deepen our philosophies, reorder our priorities and render our living more intense, opening our hearts to love and compassion.
Back indoors, we had The New Natural Death Handbook Awards ceremony. Five of the 16 Award Winners were present to speak about their work. Collecting their 'Highly Commended' Award, Mary Mallatratt of Peace Burials described their South Yorkshire Woodland Burial Ground and its imaginative activities, which include railway funerals. Gerald O'Connell from Oakfield Wood Green Burial Ground near Manningtree, told of the team spirit they developed planting 11,300 trees and hedging plants in three weeks, non-stop from dawn to dusk, and how good he feels about funerals there, amongst the birds. Richard Edwards from Edwards Funeral Directors in Wigan, winner of the Award for Best Funeral Director in the North West, told how the 'hard sell' American firm SCI now controls 15 per cent of the funeral trade in this country and has an annual turnover internationally of £2.5 billion. SCI even controls the special pre-payment plan offered by the charity Age Concern, a scandalous misjudgement on Age Concern's part.
Roger Gillman collected an Award for his funeral firm in Tooting, which several readers of the Natural Death Handbook had recommended for its sensitivity and exceptional helpfulness. Paula Rainey Croft, winner of an Award for the best and most artistic funeral shop - Heaven on Earth in Bristol - also helps people with funerals. Paula related how for one sea burial she is arranging, the deceased left instructions that he was to be dressed only in his swimming trunks. But, jokes aside, Paula went on to confess how exhausting it all was, making and decorating the coffins, running the shop, arranging the funerals, and that she sometimes feels the need for a support group herself. Simon Dorgan, the furniture maker who is Paula's partner, told how he at first heard Paula say "Let's start a coffee shop" and he replied "Yes, go for it!" only to discover that she had said "coffin shop"! And now he makes bookcases that later convert into funeral caskets and many other unusual and innovative designs.
We then went round the room, people introducing themselves and saying what had brought them to this event. For Erika it was a horrible standard-issue funeral she had been to, and the desire to find something better - "I would hate these circumstances when my time comes". Diana told how a funeral director had acted like a sales person with a catalogue when aggressively selling a coffin and funeral arrangements for her mother. Tatiana described her car accident, where she was knocked unconscious, and woke briefly to think she might be dying: "It was the most peaceful and happy mood I'd ever experienced, and my dominant feeling was gratitude, a sense of the truth, 'This Is It', a mystical mélange. So I'm not afraid of death now." Alice told how she is beginning to grow willow coffins, a willow bed that will be ready for cropping in a year's time. Kate said that funeral directors were to most people like locksmiths, tradespeople you turn to in extremis, without quibbling at the costs, and that for too long funerals have been an exercise in crisis management; what she liked about the Natural Death movement was the openness of its cultural activists and the encouragement to people to prepare for death in advance.
Esa Longley, an art student in Sheffield, then passed round photographs from the burial of her young sister, Rosie, and told a very moving story: Rosie had died suddenly from meningitis at the age of 6, and a hundred of her friends had gathered for her burial on private land in Kent. Within this land was a labyrinth that had been used for solstice parties, and here Rosie was buried in a velvet sack, with her father carrying her to the graveside. People read out poems, helium balloons were let off, and some stayed to party all night. Everyone had brought with them not cut flowers but potted plants, rose bushes and trees. Now it remains a very special, very holy place. Rosie's mother, Liz Daniels, added that it had been a privilege to be her mother and that whenever she sees the friend who dug Rosie's grave, she is reminded of that day, and remembers him as the gravedigger.
For the next event, the Natural Death Salon, we drank tea and coffee and ate biscuits, grapes and bananas, and Barbara Rae hosted a philosophical enquiry on the theme of 'is it rational to fear death?' We read out a Philosophy Today summary of the thoughts of Sartre and Heidegger - Sartre particularly came across like a barrister arguing his pessimistic brief, who could with equal facility have taken the opposite line. For Sartre, death robs life of meaning, because even a death that appears to bring a "rounded wholeness" such as that of Sophocles, relies on the unpredictability of death, the chance occurrence that the life was not cut short prematurely. Whereas for Heidegger, death, in so far as we live in constant anticipation of it, liberates us, allowing us consciously to choose the lives we live, instead of blindly following society's norms. We must avoid, says Heidegger, attempting to persuade a person who is dying that "he will escape death and soon return to the tranquillized everydayness of the world" and we must ourselves avoid this "everyday falling evasion in the face of death".
Barbara Rae got us to brainstorm our fears of death - in my case I put it down in part to performance anxiety, how difficult it may be to die in the way one would wish, as one's body and mind disintegrates. For others, it was everything from a fear of being left alone, to a fear of loss of control and a fear of extinction.
We then were given women's magazines to chop up and make collages of, with a view to helping us realise how such media encourage an avoidance of all thoughts of death: there are only images of beauty and youth and sexiness, there are no old people, no hints that life may come to an end.
As a finale, Barbara Rae gave us reasons why it was rational to fear death, and an equal number of reasons why it was irrational. She herself, she said, was in two minds about this issue. But what was clear from her Salon, was that she has gained immense vitality and insight from her encounter with her own imminent demise, for despite the energy-sapping nature of cancer treatments, "I wake up each morning," she said, "full of ideas for the day, I can't wait to get going."
I don't know how many families around the country will have followed our suggestion of remembering their dead at supper time on this day, but we did. We each lit a candle for someone we loved and told the others about that person. My candle was for Marcelle, my companion walker, the only member of my walking group whom I could rely on for rainy days - I miss her, not only for myself, but at second hand, for her children. Liz's candle was for her mother, her son and, most recently, for her daughter Rosie - "my treasure box, my mate, my lovely partner, my daughter, my teacher, yes, my good box of treasure".
I felt admiration for the participants who were able to be so open, despite the presence of radio, TV and newspaper journalists; and admiration too for the media themselves, who not only recorded but also participated, talking of their friends who had died, all of us in awe of the universality of death.
- The next English Day of the Dead is on the third Sunday in April each
year. Please suggest possible events to: The Natural Death Centre, 6 Blackstock
Mews, Blackstock Road, London N4 2BT (tel 020 7359 8391; fax 020 7354 3831;
e-mail: <rhino@dial.pipex.com>; web: <http://globalideasbank.org/naturaldeath.html>).
- Green Undertaking's new Celtic cardboard coffin (71 inches long) is
available for £55 plus £10-35 delivery (£20 delivery for
the ready-assembled version), from Alan Goldingay, Celtic Caskets Ltd, 11
Hillside, Tutbury, Staffordshire DE13 9JG (tel & fax 01283 815992).
This webpage forms part of the Global Ideas Bank (www.globalideasbank.org).
Book
Orders: To order any of the other Natural Death Centre or Global Ideas Bank books.
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