To hate that funerals take place weeks after the death?

From that link - "All requests for out of hours urgent certification will be considered on a case by case basis"

So anyone can request it, regardless of religion. It's just that "certain religions" have the ability to also actually proceed with a swift burial following the expedited certification due to there not being long waiting times for burial slots. So the requests are made and often, but not always, granted and then a burial takes place.

For what it's worth, we were denied an expedited certification for my FIL as the guy in charge had gone home, so had to wait until the morning. And that's despite us belonging to a "certain religion" 😱 It's almost like there isn't actually any preferential treatment based on religion, and we're actually all treated equally.

(Sarcasm not directed at you @useres101848woyr but at the people desperately trying to claim that Jewish people and Muslims get some kind of preferential treatment not available to others.)

When I worked in the funeral industry, the direct cremation slots were early in the morning, before the attended funerals, and they fitted in 3 a day. Direct cremations certainly weren't allocated an hour slot.

My dad's funeral was two and a half weeks after his death, which was because of a cancellation, which seemed a strange thing to cancel a funeral to me! It seems to be the norm to be at least three or four weeks.

Many European countries it is within 48 hours, for example Spain, unless it is suspicious circumstances. I never understood why so long in the uk.

in the uk, do they charge per day for ‘holding’ the body until the funeral? I would t surprise me if the delay is profit related.

I am sorry for your loss. It does seem to the the norm now!! I know when my grandfather died just before the first lockdown my granny wanted it done asap and it was just under 2 weeks after however it was a church service and there seems to be less of a wait for them here compared to crematoriums. I am glad though as if it had been any longer we would have been in restrictions - thankfully we were able to hold a normal sized funeral just before everything got limited and feel for those who couldn’t do that. When my granny lost her son last year it was nearly a month but in that case I thought it was pretty quick as he did have to have a post mortem and a toxicology report (which actually came back after he was already cremated).

I think sometimes it can be down to paperwork being delayed too.

look after yourself 🌸

I'm sorry for your loss - even if expected it's a horrible thing to go through.

I think it's just a very personal thing.

When my dad died in 2021 it was expected to a degree and just under four weeks. I'd always thought it was too long between but for me it was really helpful.

I needed that time to organise things, admittedly but I'd already given it some thought. There were personal additions that I wanted to add which took time and ultimately I found the process quite important to me.

Having tow place of service caused the delay. Sometimes people have a service with the crematorium taking place at a later date.

A Recent family funeral would have been delayed if we had wanted the big funeral cars. We just drove to the church ourselves.

That is very unusual. I was given the death certificates the next day both times. And that was just a few years ago.
I know though if there is a post mortem it can take far longer.

The religious institutions perform some of the last rites if there is no one commercially to do it. Our local Mosque had volunteers preparing bodies during covid and transporting bodies, as undertakers could not do it fast enough. If you have these things done, all you need is for the cemetery to use the small bulldozer to dig up a hole and lay the artificial turf and planks around it.

It's awful to have to wait, it just prolongs the unsettling misery. It's a month round here but when my FIL died 10 years ago it was only a week's wait. No idea what's changed. The crematorium has been enlarged so maybe it's lack of staff or something.

If you want your vicar/ priest/ celebrant to preside at the crematorium, you may have to wait — particularly during the winter when more deaths occur
But you shouldn't have too, people die all over the world and countries manage to respect the dead and the family by organising a quick funeral.
It is inhuman that loved ones wait weeks.
That the deceased is stored. Just awful that a rich developed country like England cannot manage it.

Not necessarily. It’s just as likely a person will go to a funeral home as be laid out at home. Just depends on the wishes of the family.

Find the wait in the UK utterly bizarre as my norm is that the funeral is within days of the death. We had family pass seay in the UK this year and was 4 weeks to the day for the funeral

Gosh that's very difficult. My mam was buried within two days of her death. It feels shockingly quick at the time but it does give you time to process and start picking up the pieces of your life.

Not able to organise a piss up in a brewery. The country, not the OP.

Most of the Europe is 1-4 days after death. Two weeks in the uk.

Pathetic.

Why are you so incapable? Of everything?

Sorry for your loss, the wait is the hardest part. You need to do what's best for you.m

Funerals are taking about 17 days in my area.

My only experience of direction cremation is a friend, it's an odd experience. His sister struggled with it and this was compounded when they kept tinging up to say he'd been transferred here, there and everywhere. It wasn't a pleasant time gir her hut hopefully not all experiences are like that.

My mum was bullied into signing my dad's death certificate even though I pointed out it was incorrect. She was threatened with legal action, not very helpful for a 75 year old who's just lost her husband of 54 years. It was the day after he died there was time to sort it but the pressure was horrendous. The hospital wrote a letter but that wasn't accepted by GRO so when we told the hospital they helpfully just told us to send the letter with instructions of what'd we'd already done. The certificate has never been corrected as a result so it says he had prostate cancer when he didn't. It's incredibly unfair to put family me,bers under such duress when they didn't make the mistake. After seeing my mum being bullied into signing the documentation, we were handed the certificates. I was feeling pretty pissed off now, I'd sat with my dad as he died the day before and just seen my mum bullied. I took the certificates and handed them back, there was banding on the print which made it harder to read. They were replaced after some huffing and puffing about it. I was very much in the not my problem mood when she said the printer was to blame snd its going to cause me some extra work. Surely if your printing legal documents you make sure before hand that the printers working. The irony is there's an edit on his birth and marriage certificate.

I love your humour OP. You'll be grand. It won't be fun but something tells me you'll be OK. Take care and keep looking for the laughs.

They also have to wait for the death cert. So, if they don't get it in time, their funeral is equally delayed

and the crematorium charge for the delay - somewhere in the region of £300

I've only read OP's posts.

Is this your first experience of deep grief (parent, sibling)? I don't mean to patronise you, but over the years I have learnt how grief impacts me, that as hard as it is, and that all the waiting seems to compound it, it is part of a process.

It is normal to dread the funeral, and I agree, waiting all this time gives room to ruminate.

Your grief will continue after the funeral obviously, but I do think you will feel a sense of relief, your shoulders dropping, not 'closure' but a movement to the next stage. The limbo between death and funeral is awful, and I know now that once it's behind me I will feel a bit better.

Agree - my dad died a couple of years ago and it was 3 weeks before the funeral. The delay was getting a crematorium slot, there is obviously limited availability and not enough slots. A new crematorium is being built not far from me as they clearly need to expand capacity. It never used to be like this, I do remember there was a delay with my granddad because he died late in the evening on the thursday before Good Friday, so we couldn't even get a death certificate until the Tuesday, but I think the funeral was maybe the Monday after that.

A friend's mother died in Ireland just before Christmas on a Friday, she was buried the following Tuesday.

The fact that other religions can organise it faster shows that YANBU

I prefer the longer time, it gives me more chance to ease the unstoppable waves of emotion to actually cope around people.

It’s horrendous, OP. I come from a country where the funeral takes place a few days after the death, and I think that’s so much better.

My grandmother died in a nursing home on Friday evening (years ago). Nobody comes to pick up the body before Monday. And the doctor of the nursing home signs death certificates only on fridays. The city she lived in only does burials 2 days a week on Thursday and Saturday. Most extended family lives elsewhere so they wanted the funeral to be on a Saturday so in a city of 200 000+ people the Saturdays are really busy. So yeah, it took forever.

A pp said that they had to wait 10 days for the death certificate, so how are certain religions able to have the funeral after 2 days without one?

Most hospitals have a 'quick release' (sorry definitely not the correct term) system where the body can be released for faith and cultural reasons for a 24 hour/48 hour burial.

This is an example of a hospital's policy on this but they all have them.

https://secure.library.leicestershospitals.nhs.uk/PAGL/Shared%20Documents/Deceased%20Urgent%20Certification%20and%20Release%20Outside%20Normal%20Hours%20UHL%20Policy.pdf

They're not.

They also have to wait for the death cert. So, if they don't get it in time, their funeral is equally delayed. But the bits after that are quicker because their religious leaders work things out differently. And culturally the communities are set up to deal with this quickly.