To hate that funerals take place weeks after the death?

Not surprised at cost of digging, it was £600 to inter my brother's ashes in my father's grave. Plus tip to grave digger (he was waiting to fill the hole).

I'm really sorry for your loss.

When my mum died in October we were able to have the funeral 8 days after her death and my sister thought it was far too soon. You can't please everyone.

That's kind of the point, no? People do die so we should have the infrastructure to inter/dispose of their remains respectfully and in a timely manner.

As for my father's death, that was a blessing (when it finally came) not an inconvenience. But the pain of his loss would have been helped if we hadn't also had to bear the fact that he was basically decomposing in a freezer for 2 months whilst we waited to say our final goodbyes.

I really don't get the lack of priority for (or the red tape around) dealing with death in the UK. I'm British but living in Azerbaijan for 25 years, which is a Muslim country. Here the dead are buried within 24 hours pretty much without fail, whatever the cause of death.

So with no notice at all and no advance planning, the day after the death there is a gathering of family and friends either at home or in a funerary hall (can easily be up to 200+ people), people take time off work, plus washing the body, finding/buying/preparing a cemetery, grave and burial. I've not been closely involved with a funeral, but..all the organisations are just geared up to this timescale.

If the gathering is at home then there is usually a marquee pitched in the street, with food served, separately for men and women. So the marquee goes up, gets used and comes down in maybe 48 hours end-to-end. If it's a big marquee for a lot of people, the street gets closed. Nobody complains. In the funerary hall (not quite sure what it's called officially) again separate rooms for men and women, food served, imam saying prayers, etc.

If it's someone from your office (even a parent of someone in your office), pretty much the whole office will turn out. No company issues, it's just what you do.

And after that, closest family and friends off to the cemetery for the actual burial. All that...by the end of the next day.

Wow! Didn’t know is the norm know. We had a family death last month and where I’m from the funeral is usually within 24 hrs. It was a struggle to delay by a couple of days so that I could get there ( my flight was over 20 hrs).

How inconvenient of people to die.

When my mother died pre-millennium, her funeral took place within 5 days, in spite of the need for a post mortem. When my father died 15 years later, it was almost a month before a service could be arranged. Same place, same time of year.
Population changes with no increased crematoria must account for some of that, though it still varies between areas. A friend and I recently lost close relatives within a couple of days of each other. Ours was considered fast because the cremation took place in under 3 weeks. My friend's family has to wait an additional fortnight.
I do think that a little additional time to prepare a good eulogy and get arrangements right can be useful. My mother's death was both sudden and untimely, and having written eulogies for other family members with less trauma and more thinking time, I regret delegating that to someone with less need to grieve.

Exactly, which is what I was getting at in my earlier post. The more flexible you are, the earlier you'll get your funeral.

The other aspect is the undertakers themselves. Most will only have one hearse, 1 or 2 cars and a fixed number of drivers/assistants. They can't do two funerals at the same time, probably struggle to do two funerals in a day unless there are several hours between them. And the drivers/assistants are often casuals who work between a few different undertakers as they won't be full time permanent staff. All in all, not only do the undertakers have to juggle all external elements of the funerals (vicar, church/crematorium, etc), they have to juggle that against their own internal resources, i.e. hearse, cars, staff, etc.

If the only convenient slot at the crematorium is, say, Monday 15th, and they've already got a funeral booked on Monday 15th at a different place an hour or two before or after, then they clearly can't book the crem slot for you, can they?

Having been in a place where I was helping book funerals you get everyone wants to book the crem between about 11 and 3 or preferably either at 12 or 2 depending on how far people have to travel. So I don't think extending the times would please many people.

But also some people have other expectations like:
the minister to come back from their holiday (or do it on their day off) to do it on the date they want,
the church to be available for the time they want (despite the church being hired out to other people),
to be able to get in several hours (or the night before) to put out anything they want,
the church to provide volunteers to do the catering/steward/musicians (what do you mean the musicians are normally paid; they should do it out of respect for my relative that they've never met) and
the order of service to be prepared and printed out to their exacting standard.

And when you have that you are working a balancing act with diplomacy to try and sort as much as possible without causing distress to the funeral party, but also without upsetting your regular hirers who are needed for finances, and your volunteers who do a heck of a lot for free and you really don't want to turn around and say that they're never doing it again because they feel they've been taken for granted.

So finding a date can be difficult.

Just had my DSis funeral - 5 weeks after death.

I am drained, emotionally and physically ( had to clear her home) and I could really do with another 5 weeks off work to recover.

It's awful.

Sorry for your loss. I agree it’s hard having such a long wait. It’s almost like you’re in limbo until the funeral. The grieving process starts after you lose the person but the funeral brings it all back up to the surface.

One problem is if crematoriums did services to 6-7pm, some people won't like that especially they can't 'switch off' all day. Others got further to travel back home etc.

Saturday funerals in a cremation often cost £500 more than weekday, so costing may also be an issue

I was going by your statement about England and its traditions with Australia following them - I was going to funerals 40 years ago which were traditional and they didn't have a long wait after the death, 5-7 days was the normal tradition. Though 40 years ago there weren't 40% of the population over 50 years old which made a difference to the numbers of people dying. For various reason funerals take a long time in England, undertakers have concerns about this fact when taking care of their customers. The reasons vary from getting the death certificate promptly due to staff at register office, to simultaneously organising a vicar or celebrant and the popular times at a crematorium.

Ah yes, thanks, I know lots of the details can be agreed upon on advance, and I believetgis is quite common for terminally ill people. I was referring to the idea that you could book the date of the funeral before the death had taken place.

I have sat down with families before someone has died, in one case with someone who knew they didn't have long, and put together all the details of what kind of service they want and where, along with noting their choice of music, flowers, etc. Nothing was booked but we put the file aside for when it was needed.

I once arranged a funeral where the widower was adamant that he never got out of bed early and he wasn't even doing it for his late wife's funeral so he wanted the cremation to be as late in the day as possible. I pointed out that on the shortest day of the year in Scotland, he would be arriving at the crematorium in the near dark and exiting it in the pitch black; he agreed to have the second last slot.

Well I suppose if you come from a faith where a quick burial is required, and your family are also of that faith, then it adds to the distress and pain felt by the bereaved in a very specific way, as they would feel the deceased is effectively being buried outside the faith.
I'm an atheist and happen to think British funerals take far too long, but I don't think this justifies facetious claims of unfairness or discrimination.

I had to re-read that to ensure it hadn't said mother in law. 😁

TBF very few employers will give paid leave to attend an Aunts funeral. You may get an hour or so off to attend the service but that's all. I can understand it would be a long day for the immediate family, but perhaps preferable to waiting four weeks.

Following on from earlier comments. I was an administrator at my local church and a man came in to book his mother's funeral. I asked the usual questions including the date of death. He said, "Oh, she's still alive, but should be gone soon".
He was irate when I refused to book a date!

I think quick burials are mandated within Judaism. Others have said up thread the delays are due to a lack of cremation slots, so I suppose it being a burial, and presumably in a cemetery connected to the synagogue, makes the difference

No. With my mum I tried to get things set up but they wouldn't do anything.

How does it work for those cultures who must have a very quick funeral?

Would it even be allowed? Would the undertakers accept the booking? If you didn't die before the booked date, would you have to pay the fees? Is there a cancellation policy for funerals? So many questions...

I can only guess it is due to stricter medical checks and the amount of cremations in the UK.
Much of Europe have much higher burial figures than cremations. More churches and more graveyards.