Explainer

Change

Death & life

25 October 2023

6 min read

Dealing with death – why the fuss?

“No fuss” cremations are getting more popular. Not giving a formal space or process to say goodbye feels like a seismic cultural shift to Jane Cacouris. Part of the How To Die Well series.

Jane Cacouris

Jane Cacouris is a writer and consultant working in international development on environment, poverty and livelihood issues.

A sculpture shows mourning women raising hands and fists to the sky.

The Tragedy of the Sea memorial in Matosinhos, a Portuguese port.

Prilfish, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Widow’s Rip is a notorious swirl of ocean just offshore from Nazaré, a centuries-old fishing village on Portugal’s windy and unpredictable Atlantic coast. Decades ago fishermen used oxen to pull brightly painted boats onto the beach and then rowed into the giant waves. Many lost their lives when the seas were rough. I first visited Nazaré with my Portuguese grandmother as a child and stayed in a fisherwoman’s house with an orange-tiled roof just off the central square. My eyes had to adjust to the gloom every time we went inside as she kept all of the shutters drawn. Even though it was thirty degrees outside, I remember her tanned, crumpled face shrouded in a black shawl that covered her head and shoulders. She wore a black knee length skirt with an array of petticoats and black shoes. As a ten-year-old, I was a little scared. I asked my grandmother when the fisherwoman’s husband had died. “About twenty-five years ago at sea”, she said. She explained it would be a sign that you didn’t love your late husband if you didn’t wear black for the rest of your life.

Nowadays, although fishing is still a livelihood for some who live there, Nazaré is known for its sweeping beach and touristy promenade of restaurants, bars and stalls selling Portuguese wares. But the widows, now very old ladies, who lost their husbands to the sea all those years ago still potter around the town dressed head to toe in black. An ingrained tradition of how to grieve.

No other event in our life brings us closer to facing questions of mortality and eternity than the death of a loved one.

Grief and how we deal with the loss of a loved one is of course deeply personal and expressed differently depending on so many things; culture, beliefs, personality, life experience, to name a few. But in recent years, there has been a defined shift in British society away from some of the traditions that have historically accompanied death.

The growing trend for direct or “no fuss” cremations is an example of this shift, with a rise from 3 per cent of all cremations in 2019 to 18 per cent in 2022 according to a life insurance company’s recent report. A traditional cremation includes a service at the crematorium or place of worship beforehand, whereas a direct cremation does not have a service. Instead, the deceased is taken directly to be cremated with no one in attendance, unless witnesses ask to be present. A simple coffin is used, and the timing of the cremation is determined by the funeral director, usually according to availability.

Why are families choosing to cut out the funeral?

Sources point to a range of reasons. A matter of choice – perhaps a statement of faith that the afterlife is not about funeral rituals, or conversely, that there is no afterlife, and the body will just decompose organically and be subsumed back into the Earth so why make a fuss? It can be for practical reasons such as cost; traditional funeral services are much more expensive than a simple cremation, estimated to be approximately £2,500 cheaper. A “no fuss” cremation can also reduce the likelihood of family division or arguments over the type of ceremony. Or family living in different locations geographically means a memorial service scheduled for a more convenient time can be organised.

All these reasons seem perfectly valid. But not giving a formal space or process to say goodbye does feel like a seismic cultural shift, even for the British, known for our ability to keep our feelings under wraps. Practical reasons aside, are we ducking the emotion that inevitably hits us when we lose someone we love? Or perhaps avoiding the difficult questions that come with death? No other event in our life brings us closer to facing questions of mortality and eternity than the death of a loved one.

On holiday in Nazaré in his youth, my father remembers a fisherman’s death in the house where he was staying. The night before the funeral - with the deceased laid out in the dining room - each of the women in the family took it in turns to sit in the corridor outside, the top skirt of their seven petticoats over their head, wailing in an outpouring of grief so raw that they couldn’t continue for more than a couple of hours. The “wailing process” carried on throughout the night, the role passing from woman to woman until sunrise. Not only was the loss of the fisherman the loss of their beloved, it was also the loss of a working partnership - the women sold the fish that the men brought home – and the loss of the family’s livelihood and income. The wailing was a necessary part of expressing this agony ahead of the funeral service when the rest of the family would come together to support each other.

There are also intensely reverent traditions observed with death in Portugal, particularly within the Catholic church. The burial or cremation is usually no more than three days after the person has died. When my grandmother passed away a few years ago, her body was laid in an open casket in a room of the Catholic church in the mountain village in rural Portugal where she had lived most of her life. The night before the funeral, a procession of people visited her to pay their last respects, including distant family members, whilst my immediate family sat with her all night. People touched her arm or hand, and sat and chatted to one another. After Mass the following day, her coffin lined with lead was sealed and she was taken to the family Mausoleum to be laid beside my grandfather, along with the remains of around thirty of our relatives dating back to the early 1900s.

Brazil, where we lived for several years, has many similarities to Portugal in dealing with death. The time between death and burial or cremation is even faster, usually within twenty-four hours. Family and friends rapidly gather, usually together with the body of the loved one in an open casket. Touching and kissing the body and wailing over it is not uncommon. According to a Brazilian friend, “Bebendo do morto” which means “drinking to the dead” is an old custom where family members raise a final glass of Cachaça, a traditional drink, to the deceased in the presence of their body.

A funeral service is partly about taking a look back at our loved one’s jigsaw of life, at all the pieces that have slotted together to make up their precious and unique time on Earth.

In all these traditions, the funeral service acts as the closure to the first “phase” of grief, and the passing of the deceased into God’s care. The next phase is then the more private continuation of grief for months or years to come.

Christians believe in life after death based on a conviction that as Jesus rose from the dead, so will we. A funeral service is partly about taking a look back at our loved one’s jigsaw of life, at all the pieces that have slotted together to make up their precious and unique time on Earth. Of course, there are damaged and missing pieces, but Christians believe that the jigsaw will be made whole and perfect in Heaven with Jesus. It is also a chance to give thanks for the the life of a human being wonderfully and fearfully made in the image of God.

Regardless of the country, the culture or the tradition, the death of someone we love means that our world will never be the same again. It will continue spinning without them and we have to get used to that. The Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible says:

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die”.

Death is an entire season; not only the end of the existence of a human on Earth who was created and loved by God, but a prolonged period of growth and change for those of us left behind.

Death deserves us to make a fuss.

Article

Change

Character

Purpose

Virtues

14 June 2024

7 min read

What’s the point of purpose?

We need a wider understanding of our purpose – grand or small.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson writes on geopolitics. He is also a business executive and holds a doctorate in theology.

A white arrow on tarmac points towards a setting sun and people walking by a silhouetted lamp post.

Chris Loh on Unsplash.

In his 2009 book Start With Why, the leadership speaker and consultant Simon Sinek encourages leaders and businesses to think about their purpose. He encourages them to answer the question ‘Why?’ before moving to ‘How?’ Sinek’s book is part of an industry, with no shortage of self-help books, executive coaches and university programmes assisting individuals in finding purpose. Surely Sinek is right that a sense of mission (the ‘Why?’) needs to come before the development of a strategy (the ‘How?’ as well as ‘Who?’ ‘What?’ ‘When?’ and ‘Where?’). Yet working out our purpose is not easy. It takes time, effort, listening and crucially, an open mind.

In a ‘purpose economy’ (to use the term coined by writer Aaron Hurst), we risk arriving at fast, superficial, or inflated purposes disconnected from the unique vocations to which we are actually called. Several years ago, I undertook a project, of which elements were shared in the Harvard Business Review. One interviewee stated ‘We are a generation that is ruthlessly comparing ourselves with those around us and our role models at the same time. And if we are not doing something exceptional or don’t feel important and fulfilled for what we are doing, we have a hard time.’ In an age dominated by social media and its emphasis on presentation of superficial images inviting us to compare ourselves with others, these are words worth dwelling on.

This reflection struck me at the time, implying that many people believe that their purposes must be significant. Without grand purposes, we tend to struggle. That interviewee was right. Many of us value purposes involving high levels of excellence if not notoriety, whether pursuing elected political office, climbing the ranks in prestigious industries such as finance or consulting, or entering professions that are well-known and whose value can be readily explained to others (such as medicine, law or accounting).

The problem with an idea of purpose focused on excellence is that only some people will be seen to have worthy purposes. The consequence is more ‘ruthless comparison, in which we all look over our shoulders to what our peers are doing, wondering whether their respective purposes measure up or not. Of course, this issue could be dismissed as little more than a case of early-career angst, in which ambitious self-starters seek to outdo their peers in climbing the career ladder, but I doubt this is a good explanation.

Her calling is not as impressive in the world as the more publicly recognised calling of a profession, but surely the calling is of equal value.

After all, modern workplaces are full of people, across all generations, searching for purpose. More generally, rapid industrial transition over recent decades – whether the loss of the shipbuilding or coal mines (not to mention important parts of the steel industry in recent months) in the UK, or the recent loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States – and waves of technological change leave countless thousands of people feeling lost at sea. A sense of aimlessness is amplified when personal dignity is connected to work rooted in local communities. When this industrial work vanishes seemingly overnight amid shifts in government policy and technological change.

These examples suggest the need for a wider understanding of purpose, which makes room for many kinds of excellence, whether grand or small. Consider the example of a single mother. In comparison to the high-flying politician, business executive or university administrator, her purpose is anonymous. A paid job in the workplace is unlikely to be the source of the single mum’s purpose. Rather, the raising of a family is almost certainly the driving purpose in her life, a purpose which is nevertheless no less significant than those occupying more esteemed, high-status roles.

In the eyes of God, the single parent is called to the vocation of parent (I don’t think there is a difference here between a vocation or purpose), possibly through an unexpected event such as a divorce or passing of a spouse. Her calling is not as impressive in the world as the more publicly recognised calling of a profession, but surely the calling is of equal value. Indeed, from a Christian perspective, the lone parent fulfills a vital role of service in raising children who can help to approximate the Kingdom of God on Earth. Martin Luther pointed it out well: every person has a divine calling providing them with purpose, whether they are aware of this or not.

The idea is that a sense of what we are becoming matters more than the circumstances we find ourselves in.

How then can we define our purpose when elements of culture, technology and other forces tempt us to identify clear purposes as rapidly as possible? To start, it helps to resist the urge to form large and lengthy purposes. Our purposes are often revealed gradually. Even the most profound events altering the landscape of a person’s life must be digested slowly. Tom Wright, in his biography of Saint Paul, writes that after Paul’s encounter with Jesus while on the Road to Damascus, he returned to Tarsus for ten years to meditate on what he had learned. In all likelihood, Paul spent this time working as a tentmaker, working within a ‘small, cramped workshop,’ in which ‘he prayed, he studied, and he figured out all sorts of things.’

It is only ‘by the end of the Tarsus decade [that] Saul had worked out in considerable detail what it meant that the One God had revealed himself in and as the crucified and risen Jesus.’ Paul’s purpose was formed over many years, ‘hammering away’ at what he learned on the Road to Damascus. Had Paul wanted to make sense of his encounter with Jesus in a single go, then his purpose would surely have been truncated, thereby limiting the fulfilment of his unique calling that transformed the world we live in today.

Our circumstances may also limit the scope of our purposes. Our family, geography, gender, and socioeconomic situation all shape the people we become – at least in the short-term. The philosopher Robert Adams writes in Finite and Infinite Goods that ‘One’s actual circumstances condition and in various ways influence and limit one’s vocation. The vocation, however, is not the circumstances, but what one is called to do in them.’

The idea is that a sense of what we are becoming matters more than the circumstances we find ourselves in. The question of who we wish to become is a crucial one, involving personal vision, and Adams sees this question as outweighing extensive consideration given to existing circumstances. Another idea of vocation, proposed by the theologian Oliver O’Donovan, is more gradual. He says that we come to be a certain person over time, without too much planning. Our purposes develop one day at a time. Specific events give us chances to put our purposes into action, but we do not know when these events will occur.

With this approach, clear purposes are formed over time through constant practice, rather than revealed at the outset of an activity.

How then can we find our purposes when they are often ambiguous, intertwined with our personal circumstances, and without too much recourse to self-help books, life coaches or university programmes recommending quick answers?

Our purposes need to be worked out through consistent, small-scale practice of the things we enjoy. For some, this is the playing of a musical instrument, for instance the piano or guitar, two hours per day. For others, this is the constant practice of a given sport in the early hours of the morning. And for others, this is working away on a tricky mathematical problem that simply grips them.

With this approach, clear purposes are formed over time through constant practice, rather than revealed at the outset of an activity. It is then unexpected events – as Harold MacMillan said ‘Events, dear boy, events’ – which shape us. These events may change us, setting us in entirely new directions much like Paul’s encounter on the Damascus Road, or the lone parent following a divorce or death of a spouse. But it is not only the events that create purpose. The seeds of purpose are planted well ahead of time, through practice in relation to the things that bring us joy.

Our purposes, then, should be less a cause of anxiety requiring self-help industries – needing to figure everything out at once – than a reason for play, practice, and prayer, listening to the still small voice – perhaps the voice of God, gently leading us to a settled sense of purpose. This allows purposes we never imagined to reveal themselves to us over time, sometimes merging with – and sometimes out of – our circumstances and personal attributes that are more easily visible.

Rather than search for fast answers to our purposes, we can take comfort knowing that we do not need to do all the work ourselves. We may begin to work out our purpose through action, but trust that our purposes will come to fruition when the time is right.