They say that death and taxes are the only two certainties in life. But there seems to be a third, linked to death and as painful as taxes. It’s the astronomical cost of organising a funeral.
My partner’s father died recently, and for the honour of a bog-standard cremation in a far from fashionable part of East Anglia she was charged just over £4,000. Jo felt no shame in asking for the cheapest option (it’s what her father would have wanted — he was never a man to waste money), and so the answer came as something of a shock. When a figure has you imagining the cheeky little jaunt to the Caribbean it could fund instead, you know things have turned serious.
‘How the hell do they justify four grand?’ I asked.
Jo went through the itemised list. Flowers: £150. She examined the picture of the lilies that would adorn the coffin. ‘A florist would charge you 40 quid for those,’ came her verdict. Aluminium urn for the ashes: £66. Not being so au fait with the urn market (who would be?) she couldn’t pronounce with any confidence — but we both knew that £66 was over the odds. The crematorium’s costs weighed in at £852. Another £76 went on the ‘service stationery’, essentially 20 copies of the words to the hymn we’d be singing. Though in fairness to the funeral directors, they did, after the funeral, send us one of the copies in a ring-binder, together with some photos of the flowers and a covering sheet saying that David had died ‘aged 82 ears’.
There was also a payment for £160, listed as ‘doctor’. Eh? A death certificate had already been issued by the hospital, and unless the undertakers were straying well beyond their remit and attempting a last-minute resuscitation, it was hard to see why a doctor would be needed.
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