Matthew Perry buried already?

[CherieBabySpliffUp]

I don't mean this to be an insensitive question but why has Matthew Perry been buried so quickly? Is it customary in America? Admittedly it was nearly 20 years ago but when a family member died unexpectedly at home in the UK we had to wait over a month before the body was released.

Sounds completely normal to me.

In Scotland most funerals take place within a week (or less) unless there's some kind of delay with autopsy.

@CherieBabySpliffUp
Here in Belfast if you die of a known cause on a Monday your body brought home on the Tuesday and ur buried on the Thursday, wakes are normally a two night thing 3 of the priest can't fit you in.

Jewish people have funerals very quickly. Was he Jewish?

Thank you so much, but it was actually back in 2018

Jewish funerals take place in Jewish cemeteries and are organised quickly by the Jewish Burial Society. They don't affect any other funeral.

Within 48hrs in the Jewish/Muslim religion (possibly less) and a colleague’s relative was buried within 4 days in Europe, it’s normal, particularly in Spain and Italy.

You know that Christians, Jews and Muslims have funerals in their own places of worship and their own cemeteries right?

😳

I remember Eamon Holmes talking about Ruth his wife and that her sister died and it was a couple of weeks until the funeral.

He said that’s not what happens in Ireland and he thinks it makes the grieving process harder.

I don’t think we can blame covid - had a succession of old family members
die over the last 10 years. Funeral has always been 3-4 weeks after death.

my mother comes from a family of funeral directors. They are adamant it used to always be less than a week “back in the day”.

that all said all the funerals I’ve been to have involved people flying in from abroad etc. that’s pretty difficult at very short notice.

My South African relatives were relieved we didn't have the funeral immediately for late dh. They'd have missed it as they needed to apply for visas.

All the burial funerals I've been to in Ireland have been 2-3 days after death. The last funeral I went to in the UK (Scotland) was about 10 days because of the wait time for the crematorium.

I live in rural Scotland funerals take place within 3 days if no issues.

There were a host of limitations on who can complete a death certificate introduced after Harold Shipman which can make it very difficult for bereavement teams (even in hospitals) to find a doctor who is legally able to complete them.

It’s not uncommon that if somebody was admitted to hospital over the weekend and dies the doctors who were on shift (and crucially wrote in the notes as that is the only ‘proof’ they saw the patient) may not be back in until later that week. It’s also not uncommon that somebody may die around changeover time and the doctors in the notes are now working other jobs (and may even be in different hospitals) making it even harder to track them down.

It’s often the more junior members of the team who do the writing so getting to the bereavement office to complete the paperwork can be tricky against the demands of the ward (and no matter how bad you feel for the family it’s difficult to justify leaving jobs for a living patient). Bereavement offices are only open 9-5 (and some I’ve worked shut over lunch) making it more difficult.

Nobody likes leaving the paperwork - I used to feel awful when I’d seen a patient over the weekend, then been post on-call/taken a bit of AL, come back the Friday afterwards and was approached by the bereavement team as I was the only doctor in the notes so nothing could happen until I came back to work. I always tried to prioritise getting to the bereavement office when I was in foundation (mostly because I’d use doing the paperwork as my break and have a sandwich at the same time) but it could be really challenging when you’re the only junior covering 30+ patients as it is.

This does all go back to the systemic underfunding of our public services and failure to meet the demands of a rising (and in many cases aging) population and a change in culture re church burial vs secular cremation. As somebody pointed out earlier the demand for cremations far outstrips crematoria capacity. For those who needs a post mortem there is a critical shortage in autopsy pathologists. The country in general needs to have better conversations about death and investing in building more crematoriums etc but I can’t see it happening any time soon. The crisis in pathology has been known for decades but despite lobbying from the college the government has consistently failed to engage with the issue.

Just to add (and again, back to short staffing) that with the trend of having to rely on locum doctors and ANPs/PAs etc to deliver acute care due to doctor shortages this is only going to get worse as many of the staff seeing patients might legally unable to complete certificates (ANPs, PAs) or be the other end of the country/never do another shift at the hospital again (locum doctors).

I suggest that you're mistaken. We have friends and relatives scattered across the country. When I expressed shock, they all said the same. That it was the same where they were. I can't speak for everywhere, but in various parts of Yorkshire, the West Midlands, the East Midlands and Gloucestershire, the waiting situation was the same.

The sheer number of deaths at the height of Covid will have made things even worse then, but there's no reason for that to be an issue now that death rates are back to what they are before. There simply isn't the capacity, and there wasn't before Covid either.

Very normal for Scotland

I think waiting longer is better.
It gives people a chance to come to terms with it and be in a better place mentally when the funeral does happen.

Otherwise it's all over with before you've had a chance to process what's happened.....

I also think this 2 or 3 day thing comes from back when refrigeration wasn't invented. Bodies had to be buried as quickly as possible before the decaying process was too far advanced.

This isn't a UK system, the very long wait for funerals appears to only be an English thing. The rest of the UK do it quickly, same as America.

it’s not even an English thing, in some areas it’ll be 2 weeks if you’re not worried about day and time, but many people are particularly about day and time so it stretches to 3 & 4 weeks. In other areas where it is heavily populated ( south east has three quarters of the population of England) it’ll be 4 weeks due to demand.

rural Scotland isn’t going to be heavily populated and getting a time and day is much easier due to less demand

How do Jews and Muslims get a death certificate immediately, in order to conduct the burial within 24 hours?

They use the same funeral directors in the main though. The undertaker from the Co-op told me that Muslim's take priority in terms of time to burial. I was pleased I even managed to arrange a funeral at all, being that the community was predominantly Muslim. However, I don't think that's the reason for lengthy waits. It's probably a relic from Covid times.

We're very slow in the UK. Several years ago when a relative of mine died, the burial was a month later.
This year, a friend of mine had a bereavement and it was 2 months between death and burial.

I'm always surprised when I read how long it takes to bury someone in the UK. In the Netherlands we have to bury them within 5 days by law. In case of a suspicious death it's different but in all normal cases it's five days maximum. We once couldn't find a center to cremate a family member on time due to the christmas holidays and we needed to provide paperwork to official ask to lengthen it to six days.

Basically you get a call that your aunt died and the service is next tuesday. It's a very busy time when a parent dies because you need to arrange almost everything within a day to make it work.

I find the policing of language in this type of scenario when it's clear that no offence was meant tiresome.

Personally I don't infer that commit = a crime, and I suspect that a lot of people don't. It's also defined this way in the Collins English dictionary.

I agree that, as you say, the emphasis should be on providing support.

Basically you get a call that your aunt died and the service is next tuesday. It's a very busy time when a parent dies because you need to arrange almost everything within a day to make it work.

that seems so unkind, you’ve just lost your dearly beloved and you have to be rushing around with additional pressure of time limits.

id think 10ams to 16 days would be optimal, enough time to arrange without rushing around.