Planning a Good Funeral with progressive funeral director Louise Winter

Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri

This is not a subject many of us discuss is it? Birth plans, maybe, weddings, definitely, but we will all die and we all need a send off, however small and modest.

This episode isn't really about planning your own funeral, although it can be of course (but as we'll see, don't be too prescriptive) but it's more that this potentially distressing subject - a funeral is the ultimate distress purchase - is important. Why? A good funeral is the start of grieving, it can help people come together to remember the person who has died.

Because we don't tend to want to discuss funerals (although this is changing, thank goodness) it's very easy to just go with what your high street funeral director offers and not realise there can be another way. Do you know you don't even need to use a funeral director? Or not for all of it? You don't need a hearse, either, or a coffin, or you can make the coffin. There are various possibilities to make funerals more personal instead of, as Louise describes them 'templated'. We discuss woodland burials, the law around funerals (surprisingly few) and much more, including 'what's next' in terms of body disposal.

I think a good funeral is one where, if the person who has died were to magically come alive, they wouldn't feel out of place. And a good funeral can be very healing for those left behind.

Louise is a progressive funeral director and her London based company is called Poetic Endings. She is also the co-director of an award winning festival and community called Life, Death, Whatever which seeks to change how we talk about death and dying and

Louise co-authored of an excellent book called We All Know How This Ends. And we do, don't we? Know how this ends. So let's start talking about it.

Here are the links talked about in this episode.

Josh’s funeral: https://thegoodgriefproject.co.uk/our-films/

https://www.poetic-endings.com/when-someone-dies

https://www.lifedeathwhatever.com

https://www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk

http://www.naturaldeath.org.uk

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jan/06/it-was-an-incredibly-enriching-day-the-families-taking-control-of-death

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