How to be dead right
Mary Killen
DEBRETT'S GUIDE TO BEREAVEMENT by Charles Mosley Headline, £20, f7.99, pp. 376 The provocative title suggests that there might be a correct way to cry, yet though Charles Mosley himself is fairly keen on pomposity and on policing the purveyors of incorrect form, he has produced an unpompous and rather valuable book on the practicalities of dealing with death. It is also quite a witty book. Mosley's tone is jaunty, nay, irreverent, but this is under- standable when you learn that he himself is a victim of multiple bereavements which include the death of his mother when he was 14 and the suicide of his father.
Mosley gives the details of all aspects of comparative religions and funereal varia- tions; he has a rich fund of death anecdotes from history:
Queen Victoria was greatly agitated about what the correct mourning drill was for a for- eign sovereign with whom One was at war on hearing of the death of Tsar Nicholas I in 1855, during the Crimean War.
And he is good on outwitting the leeches who would exploit you at this vulnerable moment. Warning:
If a firm of solicitors has been appointed as executors be prepared for very steep charges, on average between 1.5 and 2.5 per cent of the total estate. Things are even worse if a bank has been appointed executor [up to 5per cent] . . . A funeral director will get the standard coffin for around £50 but some will charge people £350.
Yet should you try to 'go it alone' Mosley throws out the suggestion that a local chippie should be able to run you up a coffin fairly cheaply — and perhaps bury your dead in the back garden, then remem- ber that
the author of the Consumers' Association book, What to Do When Someone Dies, goes so far as to say unequivocally that the value of the property is reduced by 25 to 50 per cent.
Yet, Mosley remarks, 'As he is an under- taker himself, one is just the teeniest bit inclined to question his motives.'
The reader is warned of typical pitfalls for the inexperienced funeral organiser the mixed-height pallbearers who stumble under the load, the mourners who turn up a few minutes late at the crematorium to find the service over.
There is plenty of interesting, though not particularly cheering, information about death in general. Did you know that British crematoria burn their way through 437,000 coffins a year? Did you know that only 4 per cent of Britons leave estates worth more than £154,000? The potted guide to the world's religions is useful, though unevenly loaded, with Mosley appearing to throw in masses of information on the ones he already knows about and keeping to a minimum on the ones he doesn't.
We'll all be bereaved sooner or later and I would say this could provide a therapeutic and useful 'handbook' in the event. There are not many cheering thoughts in it but there is one from the Band'is, who
constantly apply the analogy of the foetus inside the womb and its lack of information about the world outside to highlight the unknowability of the next life compared with this one.
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