To really really hate these funeral plan adverts?!

[sharkirasharkira]

They are just fucking everywhere at the moment and they drive me absolutely mad. They're also getting really guilt-trippy and almost emotionally manipulative!

You know the ones -

Older couple/couple of friends, discussing their dearly departed's recent beautiful funeral and commenting that they couldn't POSSIBLY afford anything THAT nice!!

Or alternatively saying that X passed away recently and HER POOR FAMILY they had to cough up MANY THOUSANDS for a funeral!!

Translation -

That selfish person had the temerity to die and not leave thousands behind specifically to pay for their funeral. They've put their loved ones in SO MUCH DEBT!! How AWFUL of them!

Cue the ad for pre-paid funeral plans, etc etc.

Just winds me up that they are pushing SO hard to get us to feel so guilty. I have enough guilt in my life, thanks. I don't need any more from bloody adverts!

I don't want a funeral, at all. I would much rather my loved ones spend their money living life, seeing the world, having fun, or putting it towards their futures rather than wasting it on buying me a very expensive box for my remains to live in.

If you want to have one of these plans, or pay thousands for a funeral then that is absolutely your choice. No issue with that. I just don't want it shoved down my throat every time I turn on the TV! Aibu?

I mean, obviously they are at the funeral but not in a knowing state!

but if my, very much loved, parents were to go any time soon I wouldn't have a penny to pay for an expensive funeral, and neither would my siblings. So we wouldn't have one

You can't just chuck 'em in a skip Op.

They key there is the word 'expensive' husky. There are alternative options for those who don't want or can't afford 5x funeral cars, FD, expensive coffin, etc etc.

Thank you Baldrick. It's about choice after all.

At the end of the day you will be dead so you don’t know that your diy funeral will be carried out.
If I had a family member who wanted such a thing I might well say ok but when the time came skip down to the co op as no one knows how they will react when the time comes.
I will do a funeral plan as I don’t want to give my family the extra grief or expense of dealing with my remains.

I don’t particularly like the adverts but then I don’t think it is realy possible to do a likeable advert for a FP.

It’s not the funeral plans I object too, but the ads. for them. Why would you take muddy parsnips into someone’s sitting room? Why doesn’t June just shove the wrongly delivered post through the letter box? (I obviously watch too much tv...)

Funerals still cost around £2k for the basic 'public health' funeral, with no cars and the absolute basics in terms of coffins and funeral directors (probably just someone to oversee to ensure that it is done properly, but with no ceremony).

That's still expensive to almost everyone and beyond the reach of many. There are council grants available, but these have gone the way of everything else 'council' and entitlement will be scrutinised very closely - if there is money available from the estate, the council won't pay.

So is it more disrespectful for me to be put in the back of the car or for my last wishes to be ignored?

@LoislovesStewie honestly it would depend how your family feel about it. If they’re happy and can cope with it, fair enough. If it’s something they’d find extremely distressing while they’re already grieving, I’d say it’s unfair.

As our parents got older, my brother and I tried several times to encourage them to sort out something for their funerals. They never bothered, so when my mother died last year we were left scrabbling around for the several thousand pounds that it cost to pay for her funeral. All of my mothers money had been either squandered or used to pay for her care. Whilst neither my brother or I am on the breadline neither of us were in a position to pay up,without it having an effect on our lives.

My father now has a plan in place that he took out when he saw how much we had to struggle for my mother.

On the bright side it was the first time in many years that my brother and I agreed on anything and that was that our mother was a selfish bitch to the end.

I'm at those expecting their grooving relatives to scrape their broken remains off the road, wrap them, dig a big hole and bury them. Seriously, what the fuck? Yes, we get if that YOU don't want a fuss, but how awful for your family.
You can say you don't care, and your family may say they agree, but when the time comes, and your relatives are not the big burly men they are now (even if still alive) they'll likely rather not do this, and end up coughing up out of their own pockets for it to be dealt with. At no cost to you! Well and thoughtlessly played.

I think our funeral (or lack thereof) plans should be more about what our loved ones might want and what's easiest for them, and less about what we want. What with us being dead and everything.

Oops, make that grieving, not grooving.

And herein lies the problem. This was not unusual 100 years ago, until the great Western Death Machine took over the process of caring for a loved one after death -- it has become industrialised and hidden away. I know not everyone wants to deal with their loved one's dead body, but it is sad that it has become very much an unusual thing rather than the norm

I am not particularly squeamish. Have seen several dead bodies, done some auxiliary nursing with the elderly so a high death rate on that ward. I also found my grandfather when I was 11 years old. He had died in his sleep during the night. However, I don't know if I'd manage to prepare my DH for burial though. I certainly couldn't lift him and we don't have a big family to help.

Yes, it's the way things used to be done. Childbirth used to be handled without recourse to medical care and sometimes older female children helped to deliver their own siblings.

We certainly were less squeamish long ago, that's for sure.

Well when an absolutely basic funeral whether its in a field or a crem is £1- £2k its still a lot of money to expect someone else to find to bury you. So any funeral could be classed as 'expensive' so any random person living from pay day to pay day without a few grand in the bank spare.

I’ve seen many dead bodies, I worked in care homes long enough to have sat with several people at the end of their lives, and prepared them for the undertaker coming. I’m in no way squeamish.

When Mum died, last year, I was there. I washed her, got her ready, brushed her hair and changed her nightie. It broke me, because she was my Mum. My biggest regret is going back into the room hours after she’d died and giving her a kiss. It has haunted me ever since, because she was cold and didn’t look like my Mum any more.

It’s really not about squeamishness.

I have a funeral plan because I nearly died of sepsis and there would have been no money to bury me, which shocked me into sorting it out!
The adverts are awful mostly because of the terrible acting, and who has that many parsnips in summer? Doesn't whoever wrote the ad understand parsnips? The parsnips worry me more than my funeral. (I too have too much time on my hands.)

@SoddingUnicorns

I see what you mean. I am so sorry it happened that way for you

Lois it is not about respect. Your family might promise these thing s now but when the time comes be unable to carry out these wishes. Bereavement hits us all differently and they might just not be capable of following these wishes.

I would argue that there are many situations which are distressing, terminal illness, dementia, for example. We cannot avoid distressing situations , sometimes we just have to deal with it. I know I think differently probably from my own experiences, but does no-one think it is just the final kindness we do for loved ones? I do realize that there are circumstances where it would not be appropriate but someone has to prepare the deceased for burial don't they?

The local authority are obliged to provide a paupers funeral if there is no money available from the Estate of the deceased and no one willing to pay for a funeral. It is very basic but it is there if there isn't any money available.

I would argue that there are many situations which are distressing, terminal illness, dementia, for example. We cannot avoid distressing situations

We can't avoid those situations you mention above; but we can avoid forcing our bereaved relatives to wash and dress our decaying, smelly, oozing bodies.

@AbsolutelyBeginning I realised my comment read like a dig at you, I’m sorry, it honestly wasn’t meant to be.

I think it is different, or it was for me anyway, when it is someone very close. I did the same for my Grannie and it didn’t have quite the same impact as my Mum. I may be being over sensitive though, the way Mum died has left me with PTSD so I’m probably not the best judge.

Like I said, I suppose it depends on how family view last wishes. If they are going to be caused immense distress by carrying them out, I’d say it’s kinder to find an alternative. If they’re happy to do it, fair enough.

I don’t like the adverts I agree. However my MIL passed away suddenly at a young age and so had no funeral provisions. As we were at the time struggling financially we had to go for the cheapest options, even that cost nearly £2k and that was the basic coffin, no funeral cars, flowers bought from a supermarket, wake held at home etc. She still doesn’t have a headstone as that’s another £1k minimum. It’s very expensive to die these days.

Lois I lost my husband last year. He didn’t die peacefully and his final stages of dying lasted a week. It was none of this going gently into the night bollocks. I love that man more than anything and spent 30 years and raised a family with him but after he passed I was barely coping with getting up in the morning. I would have promised him anything to ease his passing but I know I wouldn’t have been able to care for his body myself. I found it hard enough seeing him laying in the chapel of rest where someone else had wash, dressed and cared for him. He looked peaceful then and I would much rather remember him that way than having to remember cleaning the odour of death from him.

I say this being a strong unemotional woman. It was not the first death I have dealt with, nor the first body I have seen but sometimes you have to accept that you can do no more and let someone without the emotional ties take over.

Both my mother and Mil have paid for their funerals upfront and written instructions.

I want to be cremated I do not want to be buried, I have a phobia of worms and bad claustrophobia. Yes i’ll be dead but I still want to be buried, the other fear I have is being buried alive. They do check very well but these 1in a million slip ups happen so at least if i’m cremated there is zero chance. I also know where I wish my ashes to be sprinkled.

The problem I have is we have no children, by the time I die as the youngest with 1 sibling who is in ill health and the possibility DH might pop his clogs before me. How do I make sure my wishes are carried out? Obviously if I die young there will be people to carry out my wishes but not if i’m the ‘last one’