5.8 The decisions that Robert made with regard to the cremation were thus filtered through expert systems.
It was necessary for Robert to trust individuals he did not know and will never meet, and this is particularly
the case with the funeral director and crematorium staff from Inverness; he needed to believe that they
would carry out their designated tasks efficiently and return Lucy’s ashes to him safely (Giddens 1990).
Without the input of the local funeral director who made all the arrangements it might have been possible
for Robert to convey Lucy’s body to the mainland, but it would have been extremely difficult. While Robert
was keen to adhere to his wife’s wishes it is doubtful that he would have made such a choice without the
experts in place to make such a decision seem reasonable and practicable. As Robert said during
interview, the family did not attend Lucy’s cremation service partly because of the expense involved in
travelling to Inverness, and also because ‘we had things to do here anyway’. If Robert and his daughter
had needed to undertake the physical tasks involved in conveying Lucy’s body to the crematorium
themselves, they would not have been able simultaneously to do the things that they needed to do on the
island.
5.9 The funeral ceremony was planned for the garden because Lucy was a keen gardener and because the
family wished to scatter her ashes there. When Robert spoke her eulogy he gave the mourners present his
own perspective on his wife’s life, of the important aspects of her character and the final days of that life.
He also spoke in an apparently open and honest way about their relationship. In order for Robert to do this
it was necessary for him to engage in a process of self-reflexivity in relation to his role as a husband and
his relationship with his now deceased wife. In addition to this he was also engaging in the process of
writing the final chapter of Lucy’s life (Walter 1996; Arnason 2000), while simultaneously writing her death
into his autobiography. This meant that he was bringing the external event of Lucy’s death into his on-going
life story as a reflexive individual must in order to maintain contact with reality (Giddens 1991).
5.10 The concept of the reflexive individual who engages in self-reflexivity and uses abstract systems to
help in the process of making decisions and then carrying them out is helpful in unpacking how Robert
went about the task of arranging his wife’s funeral. His actions stand out because they were alien to the
social setting in which he lived, but the following funeral was arranged in a location where tradition was
considered by research informants to be much less important than the idea that a funeral should be
personal.
Edinburgh funerals
6.1 Most Edinburgh families employ the services of a funeral director to make the arrangements on their
behalf, and he or she will collect the body of the deceased from the place of death, prepare it for the coffin
and then accommodate it until the time of the funeral. Funerals in Edinburgh are predominantly cremations;
the manager of the local authority crematorium, who is also responsible for the provision and maintenance
of burial space within the city, said that ‘probably 85 per cent are cremations, certainly it must be in the
80s go for cremations as opposed to earth burial’. He also remarked that while some families choose to
hold a funeral service in another location and then come to the crematorium solely for the purpose of the
committal and cremation, for ‘.the majority of them (funerals) the whole service is held here’. All three of
Edinburgh's crematoria have a catafalque on which the coffin is placed when it is brought into the chapel.
Once in place the coffin is covered with a pall cloth so that it cannot be seen by mourners, and at the time
of the committal the coffin is invisibly lowered into the crematory below, where the actual cremation will
take place.
6.2 Those organising funerals in Edinburgh have access to ministers, priests and elders from a variety of
different faiths, as well as the established Church of Scotland and a number of humanist celebrants who
will lead a non-religious funeral. Music plays an important part in many city funerals, and ‘for 19 funerals
out of 20 it would be bracketed by music beginning and end’ (hospice chaplain). Music will also be played
during the funeral service, and usually this will be pre-recorded, but ‘we have jazz bands coming in
.guitarists, keyboard players, pipers of course’ (crematorium superintendent). A eulogy to the deceased
individual is a common component of a funeral, and whoever is conducting the funeral will liaise with the
bereaved family to gather sufficient information to compose a eulogy. As one Church of Scotland minister
expressed it, ‘I make an arrangement to see the next of kin...the main part of that visit is usually taking
them through the whole story of the deceased’.
6.3 Funerals which are conducted by a Christian minister will typically include prayers, hymns and Bible
readings, although often an ordained minister will conduct a service that has little religious content for, as a
Church of Scotland minister said, ‘I’m responsible not only for funerals for the people in my congregation,
but also for the funerals of people in the parish, who may have no church connection at all’. Secular
ceremonies are likely to include poems and readings from philosophers, with the eulogy to the deceased
person as the focus of the ceremony. It is not unusual in Edinburgh to find that family members or friends
wish to take an active role: ‘there began to creep in about the mid 90s...I don't know, the beginnings of a
sort of expressed wish to participate...a lot of families now want some sort of participation’ (Church of
Scotland minister).
6.4 Flowers are a frequent feature at funerals, and these can be standard wreaths or something more
imaginative, as one funeral director described, ‘we’ve had some boats, teddy bears.flowers in the shape
of a Guinness.we get the old ones with the letters spelling names’. At larger funerals there will often be
an attendance card for mourners to complete, telling how they knew the deceased individual and a social
gathering for lunch or tea is an almost invariable practice. As this brief description indicates, there are
commonalities between Edinburgh funerals, but there is nothing that research informants described as
coming from a distinctive Edinburgh tradition. The crematorium manager said that ‘burial’s the traditional
way of disposing of a dead body’, implying that Edinburgh funerals do not follow traditional routes. The
following funeral includes some aspects of common practice, in addition to an example of the widower
acting as a reflexive individual.
http://www.socresonline.org.uk/16/3/22.html
31/08/2011