National Memorial Arboretum

​Visit the National Memorial Arboretum

On Tuesday 26th June 2018, we attended a conference organised by the Church of England at the National Memorial Arboretum. The title of the conference was...
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"Just put me in the bin" - Contemporary issues around ashes and bodies
On one of the hottest days of the summer, speakers from the church academia and funeral professionals addressed a marquee full of clergy, celebrants and a couple of cemetery managers (us). 

Some interesting points we took away are: -

• Memorials are hugely important as places to go when there is no marked grave
• there will be 6.4 million deaths in the UK in the next decade
• Funerals are seen as difficult to organise. "In some ways we're so free but we're also a little bit lost" - Denise Inge
• Cremation is never the final rite - burial is final, cremation is the first stage...
• 80% of people now take the ashes away from the crematorium
• What you do with the ashes can be to fulfil the person's identity... Scatter them somewhere meaningful
  
• The place for the remains needs to have permanence
  
• Ashes stored at home are often found in wardrobes after house clearances
  
• Urns are surprisingly stolen in burglaries if the container appears valuable
  
• 'Direct Cremation' separates the farewell from the disposal of remains - this can help the 'flow' of a funeral when otherwise the gathering would be split and the family mourners can miss the wake
  

The quote of the day had to be from a book by funeral director and writer Thomas Lynch:

"A good funeral gets the dead where they need to go and the living where they need to be."