Crematorium service in France

[Gardengirl]

A neighbour of ours has died this weekend, not unexpectedly. I have only ever attended a service at our local cathedral for the funeral of someone I knew through a local association, and knew many people there. I didn't go to the actual burial at a nearby village.

Our neighbour's funeral is to be held at a crematorium north of here on Tuesday, and I imagine there will be a large turnout of fireman, as he was fire chief before he retired.

Is there anything anyone can advise about such a funeral; I've been to many in England, but know nothing about them here. I'll be attending mainly to support the widow, who I know reasonably well.

Thanks for any help you can give.

[suein56]

[quote user="gardengirl "]

Thanks for any help you can give.[/quote]

OH and I have been to 2 crematoria services this winter. Both were completely different but in the same crem : the first in English, complete with organ-led hymns and prayers, and the second in French with crematorium-provided classical music accompaniment, no hymns and with speeches about the deceased from members of the family and close friends.

Both services were entirely appropriate to each deceased.

People gathered outside to start with, meeting and greeting each other and the widow (in both cases) welcoming friends. When inside the building the family and close relatives went into the main room first followed by everyone else. They ask that mobile phones are switched off for the ceremony. There is fixed

bench-type seating on both sides of the room for the people attending.

Afterwards we filed out into the gardens.

It helps that our crem is a calm and attractive place in a beautiful

setting.  Amply lit by a gigantic window at the end of the large, lofty main

room which looks out over trees and the countryside. It is an uplifting place.

Sue

[Gardengirl]

Sue, thanks for your post, very helpful.

I popped across to our 94 year old neighbour to tell her about our neighbour 's death, and she asked if she could come with us to the crematorium. However she seemed pretty much in the dark as us, apart from the fact that she's already sorted her funeral out with the same company as are organising Tuesday's funeral. I've been delegated to ring the funeral director tomorrow on her behalf, which should be interesting.......

[Val_2]

My husband was cremated here after an obsequies civile in the village hall which was overflowing with people. At the crem we had to wait our turn for the previous lot to finish andleave although the coffin was already taken inside. Eventually we were taken into the hall which had wooden benches arranged in a fan shape and music played whilst we sat and contemplated the deceased.Then the man in charge read a little in both English and French about OH and we went one by one and put more rose petals on the coffin whilst music played. No religious intonations at all. After all while we were invited if we wished to do so to view the coffin going into the crematorium from behind a viewing window. The children and I went plus my brother and our close friend and it drew a line under all the events of the day and the previous week for us. We then left and later that evening the undertaker who is in the village phoned to say the ashes would be ready to put into the village columbarium on Monday morning. We received a written report showing the temperature of the oven and how long the process took and the weight of the residue which was in an urn we had previously chosen. Due to the law of 2008 at no time we were allowed access to the ashes and they remain in the granite repository now. After the ceremony we were shown into a kitchen and rest room at the front of the crematorium and told to help ourselves to coffe and other drinks which we gratefully did. No flowers were taken to the crematorium, they came to the house later and we put them in the cemetery.

[Gardengirl]

Sue and Val, thank you very much for telling me about cremations you have attended. They showed me that, like weddings in France, no two would be the same, and were reassuring.

The cremation went as well as these occasions can. The crematorium is situated on a hill on the outskirts of a small village north of Alès, near where our neighbour grew up, about a 40 minute drive from our town. The views were lovely. We took our 94 year old French neighbour with us for her first experience of a cremation.

The crematorium complex was big, with large beautiful gardens. There were fixed rows of plastic seating, very comfortable, with others right round the perimeter. They were all needed.

We all waited outside in the shade on a very warm day for April, facing the beautiful views of the Cevennes. There were a lot of men who grew up with our neighbour, friends of the from our town and far beyond, a few of us from our apartment block plus the mayor and his wife. I've never seen so many firefighters gathered in one place before, even when watching Windsor Castle burning on TV, and the two areas of parking were dominated by their various red vehicles. There were many top brass, with their dinky hats, epaulettes and white gloves, ordinary firefighters, a group who formed a guard of honour and others who carried the coffin into the crematorium, wearing ceremonial helmets, one carrying the flag.

Our neighbour had been a fireman for 33 years before retiring and had been commandant of firefighters here in our little town. We were shocked to hear he was only 68, always thinking he was an awful lot older than us. The ceremony was very simple, no hymns or prayers, just an oration from the head of the regional firefighters, two messages from the family, with some recordings of music in between, plus a screen which showed photos on a loop, dating from our neighbour's youth, through his life up to recent times, most with family, lovely to see photos of this giant of a man holding one of his tiny grandchildren, who are now in their teens.

The music played was chosen by the family, and the coffin was taken out through a door at the front to a piece of military music, which we guessed was the local firefighters band, for which we all stood. After that, everybody filed out of the door we had entered through, with the family following. The burning must take place in a separate building, as the room we were in was only a few feet longer, but we saw no chimney on the site. The only flowers were three tributes, which were carried in just ahead of the coffin.

It was a very uplifting occasion for us and our neighbours, especially having such beautiful views around us, and the large presence of firefighters gave the feeling of a big family. I hope it gave the bereaved family some consolation.

Our neighbour said in the car afterwards how pleased she was that she had been able to attend the cremation, and how relieved she had been that the mayor hadn't jumped up to make a speech, as he would normally do on all occasions! Then she laughed and said there was no need since he had already been re-elected yet again. It struck me that he would have known our neighbour for quite a number of years when he was fire chief, on official occasions as well as more ordinary events and around town - he could be seen from quite a distance, so tall, with a very straight, military stance. We were surprised at how short most of the firefighters were, especially most of the top brass, who had worked with him for so many years, when he would have towered over them all.

[PaulT]

Had an email from a friend in France at the weekend and amongst other things told me that a friend of his in France had just been given days to live. Had an email yesterday to say he died on Sunday and was cremated on Monday, i.e. next day. A subsequent email told me that as the condition had been diagnosed there was no need for a post mortem and as cremation is extremely unpopular in France there is no waiting list. Gives a new meaning to 'here today gone tomorrow'.

[Val_2]

Cremation in this neck of the woods is becoming more and more popular especially amongst the generation of people in their 50's/60's these days plus the cost too is considerablycheaper than having the full works and a family cavaux to pay for. As for no chimneys, no there are none, all the heat is re-cycled back as energy and the same with any smoke. You would not know that our nearest one is a crematorium as it looks just like an industrial unit from the road and back. Normally funerals here take place within a couple of days after death, we took a week to hold ours as relatives had to get here and the limit to the hospital mortuary is only six days but there was a bank holiday on Nov 1st that was excluded in our limit. I went to many of relatives and friends back in the UK before we moved here and have to say they used to be so cold, unfriendly and un-nerving with the smoke bellowing out of the chimney stack, here it was more sedate, calm, no rush and no smoke and only €500 for the cremation and all it entailed whereas my aunt paid £3500 in the same year for my cousin in the UK.

[Gardengirl]

Thanks for that info, Val, it seems such a good idea to recycle the heat and smoke; maybe new crematoria in UK won't have chimneys, a lot are quite old now.

I don't know how popular they are here, but there are several people we know of who have been cremated, and others who have them all arranged.

It was interesting in the market today, when talking to a friend about being at the crematorium yesterday, the owner of the café who brought our drinks out asked if it was anybody they would know. When I said who it was, she was shocked, rushed to call her husband and a couple of waitresses came too, all shocked to hear who it was. The woman at the next table was listening in and joined in, said she'd seen M. .....in his dress uniform yesterday lunchtime, so knew now where he must have been going.

Our local paper is a weekly, comes out on Thursdays, our neighbour died on Saturday, was cremated on Tuesday, so it won't be in until tomorrow. Not many people buy the Midi Libre, which had an article about his death, yesterday, complete with photo. I 'm really surprised that the news hadn't got round, as it's a very small town; I would have expected it to spread like wildfire, as he was such a well known figure.

[Val_2]

Do you not have a regional paper like Le Telegramme and Ouest France for here? All the deaths are put in their daily and you can access them online too usually in the afternoon. We also have a regional weekly paper too but no deaths are put in it unless its a nécrologie article on someone well known in the area.

[Loiseau]

In my area of rural France, it used to be the custom for someone (was he known as a "prieur"?) to go round the outlying farms and tell the locals of a death and forthcoming funeral. I guess within the village itself, the cafe- or bread-shop owner would have spread the word.

Angela

[Pierre ZFP]

From time to time we get a notification in our postbox if someone has died in our village or a neighboring one.

Usually it has the name and address of the deceased, names of close family and details of the funeral arrangements.

I nice thing to do I always thought