I did it my way...

According to BBC's The One’s Show last week over 30% of us are now personalising our goodbyes.

The show featured a natural burial park funeral and spoke to some of those involved in helping families to personalise their ‘grand finales’.  And it was interesting to hear the Rev. Paul Sinclair of Motorcycle Funerals point out up until World War 2 funerals always had been personalised.  He said that the move towards the ‘bog standard’ funerals that had since become the norm was in fact a mere blip. 

We absolutely agree that everyone deserves a special send off – an event that is fitting to who they where and what they meant to others.  And because we’re a company that values service to our customers above all else, we can, of course, accommodate highly personalised funerals and provide families with all the time, assistance and support that is needed.

As The One Show presenter said, we spend an awful lot of time and money planning our weddings.  When it’s time to say goodbye to someone special surely they deserve an unforgettable funeral?

The call of the cuckoo....

At Epping Forest Burial Park’s Dawn Chorus Walk a few weeks ago there was a cuckoo calling, a gentle and familiar sound heralding of the welcome arrival of spring after the long winter months. The cuckoo has long held a place in British folklore, music and literature, appearing frequently in the poetry of William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth and Gerard Manley Hopkins, among others.

Along with many of our native bird species, the cuckoo, which flies to the UK from Africa to breed, is in decline (numbers are down by 44% since 1995) and since 2009 has featured on the IUCN Red List as a threatened species. A decline in numbers is also evident in other African migrants, including the swift, pied flycatcher, turtle dove, wood warbler and garden warbler.

There are many possible reasons, including changes in UK farmland use, human population spread and habitat destruction in Africa, climate change, a growing scarcity of food (such as moth caterpillars), and – in the brood-parasitic cuckoo’s case – a decline in numbers of their host species, such as dunnock and meadow pipit. A number of migrating birds also get shot for sport as they cross over the Mediterranean.

Sadly, unless we can begin to understand the exact reasons for these dwindling population numbers and take relevant action, it might not be long before the call of the cuckoo is no longer heard in our woodlands but becomes merely a part of our collective cultural memory, confined to the pages of literature.

Dancing Around The 'D' Word

The good news is that, according to a survey, most people feel talking about death is less of a taboo than it was 20 years ago.

The not-so-good news is that around two thirds of people surveyed admitted they’d not spoken about the type of funeral they’d like.

And it seems we’re still avoiding the ‘D’ word – with 57% of people opting to use the phrase ‘passed away’.

No one is arguing that talking about death can be a very uncomfortable subject but it’s worrying, for instance, that 59% of people said they were scared of dying in hospital – when that’s where most people do in fact draw their last breath.

We see how families sometimes struggle to agree what form a funeral should take – and we strongly advise people to make their wishes known, to spare those left behind unnecessary additional distress.

If you’re one of the 9% who want to live past 100 perhaps you may feel there’s time later for all that – but please don’t leave it until it’s too late!

The survey was carried out to mark Dying Matters Awareness Week 16-22 May (www.dyingmatters.org.uk).