Here is some research which could prove useful in the future in some way. They are looking for volunteers for a telephone conversation and / or questionnaire from time to time.

https://www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk/2018 ... nt-1773639


Hope the link is allowed.

Well I have very recent (last week) experience of a funeral. It was conducted largely in Welsh so I can't really say much about it other than I felt very deprived not to be able to belt out the hymns like everyone else was doing.

My weirdest funeral experience was of being given one of those little ratings cards with smiley/neutral/sad emoji things on it to rate the crematorium. 'Would you recommend us to friends and family?' - that type of thing.

I have some unease about trends in funerals tbh. But I suppose once you're dead people can do what they like (though if anyone tries to play Robbie Williams at mine I shall be back to haunt them all).

Oh yes - I like to be able to blast the hymns out too if not too choked up at those points.

to the crematorium rating system. But they should have some kind of system for real feedback. Some are not great.

What trends don't you likE?

Last close relative I helped organise funeral for, we didn't use the service slot at the crematorium. We used the local church instead with the coffin present. That was "good". A proper organ for blasting out the hymns and no narrow time slot to squeeze into or other mourning party to bump into before or after.

My most recent funeral was my mum's. We booked a double slot in a very rural crem so that we had all the time in the world and no feel of it being a conveyor belt. I think people should be free to choose to do whatever they want to do. What one person thinks right and proper may not fit with another person's beliefs and although they may not like it, it isn't really up to them, it is up to the family/friends to represent the person they loved and have lost the best way they know. This might be seen as a "trend" but I think it is very much like weddings - people see things they like and want to replicate.

For reasons which should be obvious from seeing the juxtaposition of those quotes, I think I had better not say.

The trends I don't like are continued "funeral poverty", people trying to sell things in connection with funerals which are "green" but which aren't necessarily so, and the marketing of things like "memorial diamonds" which purport to make diamonds from your loved ones cremation ashes at an extortionate price - it's more likely that any carbon from the cremation ashes which does make its way into the industrially processed diamond was from the coffin rather than the body.

And also "green belt" schemes to push up the value or income from what was greenfield greenbelt by pushing a special case to have a crematorium or woodland burial site there. Death has become a bit of a free-market (expensive) free for all.

Having been to quite a few funerals over the years I have formed a few likes and dislikes along the way. I do like funerals that reflect the personality of the person being farewelled. I have been to one or two that were completely sterile. It would be hard to know exactly whose service it was without the programme. The hardest to deal with though have been the 'no funeral' situations where there is no real focus for grief or commemoration.

By far the weirdest experience at any funeral I have attended was the eulogy that contained such wild inaccuracies we all sat there in cringing horror throughout. Afterwards the police arrived to interrogate mourners about some unusual circumstances surrounding the death.

My most recent experience was my mother's. We had a service in church (very much a celebration of her life) followed by brief prayers at the crematorium - the coffin remaining behind the curtains at the crematorium until we'd left (i.e. no squeaky rollers etc). I thoroughly enjoyed it in fact, I only hope people enjoy my own as much (eventually - no rush!). The only jarring note from my point of view was the other male relatives all wanting to carry the coffin which I thought was a bit creepy and unnecessary.

For an uncle's funeral a few years ago, my cousins had chosen as one of the hymns one not 'everyday', but not totally unfamiliar to this 'C of E' atheist. Only they decided to use the tune that their dad, a church choir member of several decades' standing, had written himself.

I think we were into at least the fourth verse before some of us had worked it out. DH didn't even try.

Apart from that, the proceedings were remarkably jolly .

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Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.Groucho Marx

My father's funeral was very nice, short service in the chapel at the cemetery, eulogy by his oldest friend who knew him very well and then a burial plot under a beautiful tree. All followed by tea with plenty of cake. He would have liked it

I have an irrational fear of cremation and will come back and haunt my nearest and dearest if they don't put me in a beautiful sunny plot in the local churchyard.

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Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad !