People's attitude to funerals are changing with more focus on the deceased individual and less on the liturgy. Sinead Mooneylooks at the various ways to celebrate a life
A funeral which enables you to mourn the deceased and celebrate their life can be the first step on the road to grieving and, ultimately, healing. In Ireland funeral traditions are changing and this in turn is affecting the way we deal with grief.
Mary Lynch is a counsellor with the Irish Bereavement Counselling service. She believes funerals act as a vital transition between life and death, and central to this is viewing the body - even if the body is subsequently due for cremation.
"Grief is very individual to people - their experience and relationship with the deceased is unique to them. Seeing the body helps to make real the fact of the loss and bring home the reality that they are dead - not breathing, not walking, not alive," she says.
According to Gus Nichols, spokesman for the Irish Funeral Directors Association, modern embalming techniques have extended the time available to view the body and this has led to a revival of the great Irish wake - albeit in a more muted form.
"In the past, there was a big move towards funeral homes because funeral directors built these facilities, but now with modern embalming, people are much happier to bring the deceased back to the house for a few hours or a night and have a few friends over.
"I wouldn't call it a wake in the sense of people keening or people getting completely legless but it's bringing the person home and acknowledging they are making their last journey from their own home."
This is echoed by David McGowan, director of the Irish School of Funeral Directors and Embalmers, in Ballina, Co Mayo. "Even younger people are looking for deceased to be taken home for a night. There wouldn't be all night drinking but there would be drink and food and sandwiches. There are some changes though. It used to be the collective responsibility of everyone in the community to get involved in the funeral. Neighbours of the deceased used to open and close the grave but now they are asking us to do it."
Nichols has also noted an increase in families requesting the removal and burial to be held on the same day.
"Relatives are often exhausted and may have had a six-month horror show at the hospital. People don't want to go through a public performance and shaking hands twice."
Certainly for families in the throes of grief, the funeral can seem like a blur which is why Lynch feels it is important to take your time over the funeral and, if at all possible, to see it as an opportunity to celebrate a person's life.
"A funeral isn't going to satisfy everyone's needs but it shouldn't be all negative. You see funerals where people bring up a sewing basket or gardening tools to the coffin. You learn about unknown aspects of a person's life."
David McGowan inherited the business originally bought by his father as a shop, pub and undertakers. It is now run exclusively as an undertaking business - and it is one where a high level of service is demanded.
"Expectations are very high now," he says. "People are nearly expecting us to arrange the hotels and everything for them. It's not like 'can you do it?', it's like 'we want you to do it'."
Nichols believes we are becoming more assertive in stipulating exactly what we want from our funerals and what we don't want.
"People feel less restricted about speaking up about what they want than they were in the past. In the past, funerals were pretty much by the book. Now we are seeing a more undefined service which is more focused on the deceased individual and less on the liturgy."
Nevertheless, despite a push by funeral directors a few years ago to encourage funeral pre-planning, those who actually do so are in the minority, but a rather vocal one, says Nichols.
"They might have been at a funeral and thought 'God, I couldn't have that hymn - I hate that hymn, I hate lillies'.
"They know what they want and make sure this is written down somewhere. They are mainly retired empty nesters who want to make the funeral more personal and don't want to bother their children."
Their wishes are legally binding if included as part of the will. If not, you have to look to the next of kin, but, as Nichols admits, "That can be a minefield."
A traditional burial funeral is not cheap. The cost of plots alone can vary from €1,500 to €15,000, " . . . if you want your plot in Glasnevin Cemetery by the O'Connell Circle", says Nichols.
Cremation is significantly cheaper averaging €450 and is on the increase, accounting for 30 per cent of funerals in Dublin although it is still only 10 per cent of funerals outside the capital.
Nichols believes this will only increase. "The more people go, the more people see it's an acceptable manner of committal. There's nothing worse than a miserable cemetery when it's lashing rain. However, quite regularly people forget about the ashes altogether and you're phoning them six months later to collect them. It can be quite painful to revisit that grief again."
For many, the time-worn rituals of a religious funeral are particularly comforting in their grief, even if they are not especially religious.
However, what options are there for the some 186,000 people who ticked the no-religion box in the last national census?
Brian Whiteside is one of four accredited humanist celebrants in Ireland who preside over a variety of secular ceremonies, including funerals.
"For some there may be a comfort in ritual but there is a very meaningful emotional and personal ceremony in humanism.
"If the priest stands up and says what a very wonderful Christian the person was and a pillar of the church, that may upset people if the deceased didn't think highly of the church. That isn't comforting. A good funeral is one where there are no lies told."
There is no set format for a humanist funeral. The celebrant visits the family to see how they would like their loved one's life celebrated. Whiteside describes himself as an MC who calls on family and friends to speak.
Although weddings are the mainstay of his work, he is noting some increase in the number of humanist funerals being carried out in Ireland.
"I think in the past, there might have been people who would have liked this kind of funeral but might have felt that for the sake of the family, they would go along with the norm.
"Now there is a confidence in Irish people - they are standing up and being counted; they are saying what they want."
Contact details
Bereavement Counselling Service: Tel: 01-8391766; www.bereavement-ireland.org; E-mail: bereavement@eircom.net. This service is free.
Judith Hoad - Living Earth Funeral Options: www.judithlivingearthhoad@hotmail.com
Civil Funerals: www.irish-humanists.org
Nichols J & C Ltd., (IAFD), 28 Lombard St, Westland Row, Dublin. Tel: 01-6770665/01-671 3461.
David McGowan, Irish School of Funeral Directors and Embalmers, Emmet Street, Ballina, Co Mayo. Tel: 096-70669.