23rd July 2010

A Chaplain’s Diary

 

 Saying Goodbye

 

Over the cliff

We threw my father over the cliff at Flamborough Head in Yorkshire. He and my mother always used to enjoy having a pint and a shandy at the Ship Inn overlooking the huge sweep of Bridlington Bay. Then they would dine regally on local fish and chips eaten out of newspaper spread on their knees in the car. They loved doing that, so when my father died nine years ago it was the obvious place to scatter his ashes. My brother and I retraced their steps, we had a pint of best Yorkshire bitter, a bag of fish and chips and then we took the ashes and their urn container from the back seat and tipped the contents over the edge of the cliff. I could not have thought of a more appropriate thing to do with the two kilogram remainders of eighty-three years lived to the full. A life which passed through India, Algeria, Palestine (as it was then called), Dunkirk and France.

 

Poured him in

A few years earlier we had driven around for almost a week with the ashes of my father-in-law in the car boot. Having died in London we didn’t want his remains scattered in one of those awful municipal cemeteries. For him we had chosen a quiet Staffordshire churchyard, under the shadow of a Norman Church where I was the vicar. My wife and I simply took a spade, lifted a sod and poured him in. Time and nature have taken their toll and somewhere underneath the meadow grass and wild flowers he lies undisturbed.

 

At home

Whenever I visit a bereaved family to arrange a funeral I always ask about what they intend to do afterwards with the deceased’s ashes. Quite often they haven’t even thought that far ahead, whilst others know exactly what they will do. The widow of a funeral I conducted this week told me that she intended to keep the remains at home until she died and then her daughters would dispose of them both together at the same time. For others, many make nostalgic journeys to fulfil the last wishes of loved ones. I suspect that we would be quite surprised to know how many urns and ashes fly between Palma and the UK and vice versa. Some want to go home, whilst others want to be at rest in their favourite holiday haunt.

 

 

All around us

You may not be able to see them but they are all around us – in quiet calas, scattered in the Bay of Palma, buried discreetly in the Tramuntana or other favourite spots. In England Snowdon and Ben Nevis are peppered with them. They are scattered behind trees in National Parks, sprinkled into rivers, emptied into hedgerows or beneath the turf of a favourite football team. I think we would be quite surprised by what is actually happening. It’s usually a very private and personal ritual, yet it often takes place in a public place. Afterwards it’s absolutely invisible. There are no gravestones and no wilting flowers or cellophane wrapping paper. It is a new phenomenon.

 

In control

Until 30 years ago, ash scattering was rare. Invariably the ashes were left at the crematorium where they fed the beds of blooming roses. In the 1970’s only about 12% of human ashes were taken away from the crematoria by the bereaved. Last year in the UK the figure had risen to nearly 60% - reflecting no doubt the increase in cremations as opposed to burials. In the UK in 1946 just 50,000 people a year were cremated – now 72% of our dead are disposed of in this way. Somehow ashes are more personal and easier to deal with. You can’t exactly lug a coffin around in the back of the car for a week. You are in control in a way that you are not in control with a burial or at the crematorium where the system simply takes over. The university in my hometown of Sheffield is trying to analyse this sociological shift. There is a two year study under way entitled, “Where have all the ashes gone?” – a survey looking into the motivations behind this relatively new ritual in the west of scattering ashes. I wonder if it’s because the largely private ritual of choosing a place for scattering ashes leaves a more desirable image than the memory of burial – with the long rows of white Italian marble and small JCB diggers. Cremation is a new phenomenon to many here in Spain where it is still regarded with great suspicion. Yet it can often be a very spiritual occasion.

Since the 1990’s, particularly since Princess Diana’s death, the feeling that you should let go and move on has diminished. Now it’s increasingly alright not to be streamlined by the death process and system but to do it your own way and in your own time. People are much more engaged with the whole ongoing sequence of death and disposal.

 

Strict regulations

Practically of course, scattering ashes is a surprisingly easy thing to do, though here in Spain there are strict regulations about where you can legally do it. In the UK very few regulations exist at all. The environment agency’s website is bossy rather than prescriptive, “Do not hold ceremonies in windy weather or close to residential buildings because of the risk of ashes being blown astray.” Regulations or not, it is something that is quite hard to stop people doing. Many are the boats, which surreptitiously sail out into the bay here in Palma and where discreetly and reverently the ashes are poured into the sea. There’s no fuss, no nonsense, just the occasional red rose bobbing along - and who is going to complain. Commonsense must rule the day.

 

Spontaneity and humour

Inevitably, as with most things, there’s always a humorous side. “What people don’t tell you is how much ash there is – it went everywhere”, “We couldn’t get the lid off the urn and had to use a screwdriver to prise it off”, “It was raining cats and dogs. ‘Just typical’, my grandmother would have said.”  Spontaneity, humour and freedom is something we all crave in our family rituals – green burials, civic weddings and naming ceremonies are all part of a swing towards a more individual response to major life changes. The trend is towards personalisation rather than “conveyor-beltisation” – if there is such a word.  A close clergy friend and colleague recently conducted a short ceremony to mark the disposal of his father’s ashes. He had conducted similar ceremonies a thousand times – but this was his father and half way through he just couldn’t go on as the tears welled up in his eyes and a lump rose in his throat. Fortunately his wife, who holds no candle for Christianity, was there and she took the prayer book from him and took over. We still joke about it because both my friend and his father, who was also a clergyman, would have found it very amusing that the non-Christian daughter-in-law with a Jewish background had the last word!

 

 

Life goes on

Avoid the garden at all costs. It’s surprising how many people don’t think what they will do when they move on or sell the house. It’s very tempting at the time but in the long run it just causes confusion. There is a lot of world out there instead. Think carefully and take your time – there is no rush and you cannot pick the remains up afterwards. The ash scattering scenery may be changing and I suppose that makes us all conscious that we’re all getting older but that life goes on. It is the living after all who scatter the dead. Life and death are so inextricably mixed for us all.

 

Father Robert Ellis is the Anglican Chaplain of Majorca

The Church of St Philip and St James

Nunez de Balboa, 6

Son Armadans, Palma

Tel: 971 737279

e-mail: anglicanpalma@terra.es