Watch

Read

The funeral business is very traditional. We have occasions when people ask which is the most popular funeral, "What do you think is happening in the funeral trade now?" and I have to say that the most popular funeral is still the traditional funeral. Tradition is important to people because they’ve obviously had funerals in families before, and they tend, the majority tended to follow the traditions that they’ve always been used to in the family. No matter how young and how old, invariably there are people in that family that have had a traditional funeral in the past, and they often want to emulate it. When people come to arrange a funeral we do think it’s most important that we have people that will spend at least an hour, if necessary longer, to sit and talk to families, and we can usually get all the information from them as to know what their requirements are, and it’s amazing, the diverse amount of requests that we get when our staff are arranging funerals. We do have designers that give us colour schemes for carpets and for furnishings. So when people come and sit down, we don’t sit at a desk, we sit in a, we sit with them in what we try to present as a sitting room.

So when they’re sitting relaxed in an area, as a family area really, so that you can sit and talk to them in a more natural environment, I do feel that when you have involved everyone, including the very closest of relationships in those funeral arrangements, they do get a sense of achievement that they have been part of that process and they … and it gives them an enormous sense of satisfaction at the end when they’re leaving to go to their reception or to wherever they’re going after the funeral, and for the future really. And I do find, I see clergy and officiates at funerals, not preaching to a congregation but actually talking to that family for everyone to hear, but it’s more of a personal way of conducting that funeral for that particular family. Because they’re always visited before the actual funeral, the person does know what the needs of that family are, and they do need sometimes just cheering up slightly, and they do achieve it, and I think that’s very important. Everything’s important. You temper what you do to what the family want.

I personally run, am principal of, a traditional firm of undertakers, and we conduct an awful lot of funerals, I feel, because things don’t change; my pallbearers wear short morning dress, as they did when I was a small boy. We do wear different coloured ties and we will wear suits if people want it. But we can only do what people want and tradition is still very important to people, and whatever people want, an undertaker should produce, and if it’s along the lines of tradition, by all means do things in a traditional way. If asked if I see change, I do see change. People seem to be publicised more if they have a funeral that isn’t traditional and it’s of interest for people to see something that’s different.

If, for example, on television all the funerals that were depicted were traditional, then possibly more people would want to go along with that route, but they’re not, and they have the choice of seeing how other people have their funerals conducted. And the use of coloured coffins, the use of whatever vehicle they want for the coffin to be transported from A to B, the way people are dressed, the cemeteries that they’re actually, they go to, where they then go to a woodland cemetery or wherever they go, people always have the choice. But you’ll find that the religious people and the people that do attend church want to go to church. We find that people that are well known in a locality, whose family have been in the locality and someone dies and they conduct a funeral, it’s invariably they want to go to that church. They have traditionally gone to that church, and the fact is that so many of their peers are elderly and they get, they can go and get the support from those people if they go to their local establishment.

When you consider that we’re dealing in a very sensitive area, we do get thanked far more than probably any other profession in the country for what we’ve done, and we do get inundated with lots and lots of messages and cards, and I often say to people when they ask that question, "How can you do that and be an undertaker?" and my staff are asked the question, the response is that we get a massive sense of satisfaction because we almost invariably get thanked for what we do.