Problem
How to get everybody to the funeral venue - driving before or with the cortege?
How to arrange transport from the funeral to the refreshments?
Organise the line-up?
What to say?
Display photos?
Drive and park at the reception/refreshment venue?
What could Go Wrong?
1 The People Who Know The Place Still Get Lost
This happened to me twice.
a) The lady at the care home said ,"I know the crematorium," so we didn't send her directions. She just wrote the time in her diary.
We didn't have her mobile number to call and ask, 'Where are you? Are you on the way?' which we should have done twenty minutes in advance.
Later we discovered she went to another crematorium, nearer the care home (instead of the one nearer our home) because, 'that's where most people at the care home have funerals'. She had bought flowers, which we never received, and wasted both her money and time. We had worried all through the funeral, watching the door, wondering if she was late.
Funeral Clothes
Out first problem of the day, at the recent event, was: what to wear? What was the dress code? At a wedding, our family said they did not want to tell people what to wear. But it's embarrassing if you get it wrong.
All Mourners, Family and Guests Wearing Black
There are three sets of clothes styles.
1 Traditionally everybody wears black. (After attending several funerals were nobody wore black, I arrived at a huge Catholic funeral in a countryside church in England. I was wearing my reversible jacket. I had to crouch on the floor hiding in the pews. I struggled to remove my coloured patchwork jacket and reverse my jacket to black, put it back on and stuff my bright scarf in my bag.)
Seeing the mourners setting off, we were able to ascertain that they were all wearing black, not dayglo yellow and pink.
Next Of Kin Only In All Black
2 Only next of kin wear black, like white for brides at a funeral, so you can distinguish the immediate family from a distance in a crowd.
You don't want to look as if you are one of the funeral party, the next of kin. This happened to me on one occasion when I wore solid black at another family's funeral but only the morners wore black. A stranger assumed I must be a daugher or mother or ex-wife next of kin and came up and shook my hand and patted me on the back and told me, "I am sorry for your loss".
What could I reply? The first time I was speechless with surprise. The second time I said, 'thank you - and who are you? Then I explained who I was.' The first person must have thought they'd done their duty speaking to the widow, when they hadn't.
3 Bright Colours
The deceased (such as a rock star who is homosexual and knows they are dying of cancer or HIV, for example, has specified in their will that they want bright colours, such as their favourite colour of purple or red or pink, or something to cheer up the family and children).
So, we changed clothes and dressed in sober black. We could see the cortege outside in the street.
Driving Before Or After The Cortege?
It is usual for the cortege to start from the house. Then the neighbours can see you going.
One person wanted to drive following the hearse, to find the venue and form a cortege. However, another neighbour advised against it. He said, "They drive very slowly. You create a traffic jam which nobody else on the road can overtake."
He was right. The more I thought about it, the more I could see he was right. We needed to arrive early, to be there to greet the mourners.
When we arrived, there were dozens of people. (One mourner commented, 'That's because she was young." If you have a 90 year old's funeral, sometimes they have few friends alive or well enough to travel. With a school, you might have an entire class, brought on a bus organised by the funeral director, bearing the funeral director's name.)
Shiva and Chairs
At a Jewish family funeral tea and the prayers held one evening or as many as seven, (Shiva is hebrew fr seven) you 'sit shiva' meaning the family sits on low chairs, easy to spot the family when everybody else is standing and a group of people are together at the far end of the room on low chairs supplied by the synagogue.
At one shiva when I was in my early twenties I wore black leather trousers and discovered leather was wrong and trousers were wrong.
This time I thought I would wear a reversible jacket, black one side and coloured the other. I could reverse it from black if I had got the dress code wrong.
My family said, "That's too casual. You have to dress formally, to show respect."
Breakspear Crematorium and the funeral service organised by Hearden and Daughters was good. I noticed Suzanne stroking the arm of of the widower before he got up to speak.
Going back to the house is a lot to organise. You don't want to risk strangers walking in. You have to tody up, make space, organise where people will put clothes, pick caterers to serve, clear up afterwards.
I heard one family say that they were staying with relatives and did not even want to go back to the house.
Why Choose The Barn?
Every other funeral tea I've been to after a cremation at Breakspear in Ruislip was held nearby at the Barn Hotel.
I must admit that Barn Hotel is one of my favourites, historic, paintings, landscaped grounds, easy to find as it is just beyond the station, Ruislip station. I've been there to several teas, dinners - and funeral teas.
I wondered whether the Stadium would be a bit second best. People can get lost between the cemetery and the house. I remember a joke about people who ended up at a hospital following another funeral guest back to the house. It turned out that the person they followed was a doctor on call.
Convenient Location - Stadium
If the Barn hotel is convenient, the Stadium is even more convenient. The stadium is steps away form the entrance of the crematorium, which is in sight of the crossroads by Majestic wine supermarket, on the road leading down to Ruislip Lido and the restaurant.
Often you come out of a cemetery or crematorium and head to a house or hotel and start proceedings with a line up to offer words of consolation.
After a service at the Crematorium (in loving memory of Suzanne Elizabeth Roig) we came out of the service into the open air and queued to speak to the family and stand for a few minutes talking by the flowers on the ground outside. I thought this was good. You can then do that at the funeral, and move on to happier moments at the lunch or tea.
What do you say to the family? The Jewish standard saying, which saves you from having to decide what to say, gives you something to say if you are tongue
We went to the Stadium at lunchtime. There's plenty of parking outside.
After you have parked and lined up, the funeral cortege arrives, bearing the hearse with flowers. The next of kin are directed into a waiting room. The rest of the group queue outside on a covered walkway.
We found it quite hard for those with wheelchairs and zimmer frames to get through the queue to join their spouses or the waiting room.
The funeral directors had cordoned off the front row of seats for the immediately family. There were no ushers. Not enough seats for everybody, so people stood at the sides and back. The guests sorted themselves out. I saw one man on the end of a row get up and offer a seat to an elderly white-haired lady.
I stood for a bit, then asked somebody on the end of a row if they could move up. The man might have offered me a seat if he had been alone. But they were with a spouse and instead decided that both of them would move up.
My Conclusions and Notes For Next Time
1 Give everybody written notice of the date, and time, and venue.
2 Ask everybody to arrive 15 minutes early. That gives you time to chase anybody who has overslept (students, grandchildren) or got lost (the elderly, epople driving from far away, areas with more than one cemetery - such as Cheshunt in England - orthodox and liberal Jewish cemeteries, Hendon in London, England, which has several cemeteries and 'the Hendon cemetery - where my late wife was buried' (written in a will), could be one of several. Asking for a cemetery means passers-by direct you to the wrong one.
3 Phone anybody vital who is late. Phone them fifteen minutes before hand. Phoning at the start of the ceremony is too late. They call back five minutes later and your phone rings in the middle of the service. (This happened to me - not at the funeral but at a Toastmasters International meeting the same day, when I phone somebody who was late to see if another person should take over their role.)
4 Indicate the Dress Code
(I'm stopping for a food break. More later.)
Funeral Seating
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.
