Why so long between the death and the funeral?
Thursday, August 8, 2013 @ 10:12 AM
Yesterday, we attended the funeral of a very close friend here in the UK. We were ready to - finally - head back to Spain last week, but we had to delay our departure. Although our friend passed away on 22nd July, it wasn't possible to arrange the funeral until 7th August - that's 16 days after he died.
It wasn't even as if he died over the weekend, either. It was Monday afternoon, and his widow fully expected to collect the death certificate on Tuesday and make the necessary arrangements. However, first of all the right person wasn't there to sign it, and then the Coroner had to be informed. Although our friend was suffering from terminal cancer, as he hadn't seen a doctor in the seven days before he died, the Coroner needed to be involved, and he (or she) wasn't available for a full week. That's rather disconcerting in a city with around 300,000 inhabitants.
For all its bureaucracy, in Spain, it's possible to bury your dead within a matter of days rather than weeks, so why is the interval between death and the funeral so protracted in the UK? Not so long ago, you could reckon on a week between the death and the funeral - maybe a couple of days more if the death occurred during the weekend. Does anybody in the industry have any insight into why it takes so long to say goodbye these days?
