Covid update January 2021
Happy New Year to all our followers. Following the lockdown announcement last night, this is how funerals are looking in England now. As before, a maximum of 30 friends and family can attend a service but only six people are permitted to attend a wake. Crematoriums...
Coming out of the Cocoon
As we head into July, the funeral world is looking more like its old self though there is still a way to go, and things change week by week. Face to Face: we are now holding socially-distanced arrangement meetings in our office; the option remains to use Zoom or the...
Bringing The Funeral Home
Several weeks into this pandemic, and as funeral content is forced to shrink, a space opens up to develop new practices, with the possibility of greater poignancy and deepened intimacy amongst the much reduced attendance. A small, simple funeral can bring intimacy...
A young daughter’s tribute
Bicycles, sushi, sweets, pizza, nature, stars, mountains and the ‘King of the Mountains’ jersey– the story of a young father’s life as seen and painted by his very talented six-year-old daughter in the kitchen in their house on the Bath Rd, Stroud. A very simple...
The fastest getaway car in the world
Family Tree have been known for doing funerals that are somehow ‘different’; if we are asked to help with a ‘traditional’ funeral which has that familiar look and feel, there are still aspects we can suggest – together with the family – will reflect the...
The times they are a-changing: church funerals
Family Tree do not just ‘do’ humanist funerals or green burials! Not a recent development, but brought home by the three most recent funerals we have arranged. Today we had an extraordinarily beautiful – even exciting – high church funeral in Tewkesbury Abbey....
Dying Matters Awareness Week
Ever keen to raise awareness of end of life issues, Family Tree Funerals are hosting an event and taking part in this week long national awareness-raising event; around the country events will be taking place which aim to get death, dying and bereavement to be taken...
Rings on her Fingers
I can clearly see the shapes and shades of the back of my father’s hands, the bruised copper bracelet he wore on his wrist to help with his arthritis: and he died in 1977. I vividly remember my mother’s lovely rings. They were part of her. Amongst the 90...
Death and Dying … the Latest Media Darlings.
A friend in Stroud sent me a link to an article in The Telegraph about ‘Britain’s Craziest Funerals’. Big colour picture of a brassy gold Batesville ‘Promethean’ casket ($24K) was followed by a bling-filled piece (possibly written by the...
Life in the Grave
Before the actual funeral we always check the grave for correct placement (and sizing!); often we would line it with hay, or leaves, or lavender – even soft branches – anything to soften the rather austere looking clay/shale floor. Checking the grave at Gloucester...Shoulder High, with Friends
In the USA coffins are trundled on wheeled trolleys. Not so in the grand old United Kingdom: or at least in our Stroud funerals! Here friends and family hoist their beloved shoulder high and can swagger and stagger together with him one last time down the aisle. Here,...What to do when someone dies
We will tell you exactly what to do, and help and guide you through each of the different stages.