The Ideal Death Show

Ideal Death Show and Good Funeral Awards 2015

So this weekend took me to London. A little outside of london is a quaint little English village called Winchester and for one day it becomes the hub of death in the UK. The Ideal Death Show, in its second consecutive year, brought fun, facts and deathly frolics.

Their approach to death seems to be quite tongue in cheek but factual which is nice and the village seem to embrace it.

First on my agenda was a public shrouding of  a live body. I’ve got to say I did not expect to get as emotional as I did when watching it but it seemd like such a beautiful personal final act for someone you love. I have often thought that coffins seem too impersonal – cold, detached and lonely. The shroud looked warm, comfortable and protective. The personal act of wrapping your loved one just seemed like you were caring for them like you would a newborn baby.

The fact that it is friendly for the environment and compatible with both burial and cremation was appealing also.

My disappointment of the show was the size of the exhibition. I expected a lot bigger. It was tiny and everyone looked a bit squished on top of each other. This made it difficult to collect your thoughts from one stand to another. There was the usual exhibiits and some unusual ones like a Viking Wicker Ship maker.

Mourning/Cremation Jewelry - the origins

Mourning Jewelry as it was once called (in some parts of the world, still is) is a general term for jewelry that people have used over centuries as a way of honoring and remembering deceased loved ones. It has been around since the 1600’s and the earliest known pieces were hand rings. Pearls were particularly favored as they were thought to represent tears and sadness.

Cremation jewelry began to gain momentum during the Victorian Age - named after Queen Victoria who reigned from 1837 until her death in 1901. Victoria’s husband Prince Albert died of typhoid in 1861. The Queen went into full mourning for 3 years along with her court and remained in mourning for the rest of her life. The Victorians were extremely superstitious, especially where death was concerned and hung black drapes over all the mirrors in the house when in mourning. It was said that if you looked into a mirror when a body was in the house, you would be the next person to die.

The first style of cremation jewelry involved intricately woven hair. Today, most people use a piece of hair or some cremains or ashes as they are more commonly known. Historically hair ‘art’ often served as a love token or keepsake to show affection or commemorate loss or during times of physical separations like war. When people died, hair was often clipped from the head of a deceased person and then woven into a bonnet that would be given to the next of kin.

Nowadays hair is still used in keepsakes and remembrance jewelry but it is more common to use ashes or cremains. The type of jewelry we (www.celtic-ashes.com) offer is bespoke and entirely unique to the wearer and the deceased because it fuses the ash (which for every single person is different) with glass and this fusion creates not a mold but a unique shape, texture and color.

Cremation - the facts - do u want to know tho??

CREMATION  is the irreversible process of reducing human remains to bone fragments through extreme heat and evaporation.

“Cremains” is the technical term for “ashes.”  Cremains are generally gray in color and have a consistency similar to playground sand or fine gravel. The term "ashes" is misleading.

What you get back is not a soft powder, but a grey, coarse material, akin to fine gravel, made from the ground-up remains of bones.

The body is prepared by removing pacemakers, which can explode in the heat, prostheses and silicone implants and sometimes, but not always, jewelry.

The incinerator is preheated to about 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit (593 degrees Celsius) and up to 2,000 degrees F before the body enters.

An average human body takes from two to three hours to burn completely and will produce an average of 4 to 9 pounds of ash, enough to fill a 12″X 4″ container.

The amount of ash depends usually on the bone structure of the person and not their weight.

After the incineration is completed, the dry bone fragments are pulverised by a machine called a Cremulator.

While there may be some inevitable residue mixing, the bodies are burned one at a time to ensure the separation of the cremated remains.

To remove the human remains from the cremation chamber, a hoe-like instrument is used. Every effort is made to completely remove every piece from the chamber floor. However, tiny particles may remain in the cremation chamber and become commingled with particles from another cremation.

Most funeral homes return cremated remains in a small cardboard box fitted with a plastic-bag liner. You do NOT need to purchase an urn because ANY container, including the simple cardboard box, is sufficient for storage purposes.

Playing the drums

So I'm in Starbucks in Baltimore yesterday and Facetiming regarding an upcoming conference for my jewelry and when I hang up the gentleman sitting beside me starts up a conversation about my accent and his Irish heritage. We get into it pretty thick and he divulges some personal information about his parents' deaths and their funerals and how his daughter never met his father, her grandfather.

It's amazing when strangers make a connection, even a quick one. What I thought was cool was he was telling me about his father's funeral and how they had wanted to play the drums but the priest wasn't too happy about it. They decided to do it anyway and he told me about how the sound reverberated through every single person and was so effective and emotional that they decided to go one further and bring the drummer to perform at the cemetery. Apparently the sound echoed for miles. How amazing is that? What a send off! I would never have thought of drums for my own funeral but now I'm thinking bring it on! Sounds like the best way to go out with a colorful bang!

Facebook Legacy Settings

Social media is everywhere these days and it even stays with us in death. We can create memorial pages for loved ones, document their lives via video and photo and now as of February 12th Facebook have followed Google and announced a new policy – Legacy Pages.

Previously, if a person died without someone else knowing their password, there was no way to make any changes. The most awkward of this was the daily reminders to ‘friends’ of birthdays, friend suggestions etc even though the person would never accept the friend request or see the brithday message as they wre deceased. The only way to delete the account was to know the passowrd or show a death certificate and practivally fight with Facebook to close the account.

Now, however, while you are still alive, you name someone else you know on Facebook to be your legacy contact. That person can make changes to memorialize your account. 

This includes:

• Writing a new post/status to show at the top of the memorialized Timeline – maybe some information about a memorial or service.

• Respond to new friend requests from family and friends who were not yet connected on Facebook .

• Updating the profile picture and cover photo (sometimes this is needed where the updated photo is a bit more approriate).

So how can you use this new ‘Legacy’ Setting’?

Open your Facebook SETTINGS tab, choose SECURITY and then LEGACY CONTACT at the bottom of the page. After choosing your legacy contact, you’ll have the option to send a message to that person letting them know what you’ve done.

An Eco funeral

What is an Eco Funeral?

Eco means reducing the amount of C02 that will be produced from your funeral.
Think about the suppliers you will use, the products you will buy and how you can reduce, reuse and recycle. How far will your Suppliers/Supplies have to travel to get to your desired venue? Your funeral can still be everything you desire and have that ‘life celebration’ factor without costing the earth.

Venue

• Can you cut down on travel and have both ceremony and reception at the one venue?
• When talking with a venue ask them what their Environmental policies are and include carbon footprint, fair-trade goods and recycling in your questions.
• Does your venue buy local and/or organic produce? Will they offer you an organic alternative if you wish?
•  

Order of Service

• Try having family sending out the order of service via email
• Use recycled paper or from handmade paper
• Ask people to recycle the order of service at the bottom of the page.
• Use your imagination and give people something creative like something they can use again or even eat!

The Vessel

• Consider a cardboard coffin, woolen or  bamboo or other biodegradable container 
• For your dress use organic materials such as silk and cotton bought from fair-trade suppliers
• Perhaps have your body dressed in a biodegradable cloth such as cotton.

Flowers

• Try sourcing local and seasonal wildflowers. This will you cut emissions that would be generated by delivery.  
• For centrepieces, use oxygen producing potted plants or candles with green foliage.
• Are the Florists flowers organically grown in season?
• Do they recycle & compost? Does the florist work with farmers who follow sustainable practices?

Burial

• Choose a green graveyard for burial.  
• Choose a living marker for your grave plot site such as a tree.

Alternatives

• Opt out of embalming
• New upcoming Irish service Ecolation could be the answer for you if you are preplanning a purely ecological end of life exit.

Happy Christmas Irish Joke

Three men died on Christmas Eve and were met by Saint Peter at the pearly gates.

'In honour of this holy season' Saint Peter said, 'You must each possess something that symbolizes Christmas to get into heaven.'

The Englishman fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a lighter. He flicked it on. 'It's a candle', he said.

'You may pass through the pearly gates' Saint Peter said.

The Scotsman reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He shook them and said, 'They're bells.'

Saint Peter said 'You may pass through the pearly gates'.

The Irishman  started searching desperately through his pockets and finally pulled out a pair of women's panties.

St. Peter looked at the man with a raised eyebrow and asked, 'And just what do those symbolize?'


The paddy  replied, 'These are Carols.'

And So The Christmas Season
Begins......