Welsh funerals: Fireworks, Benny Hill and magic wands
- Published
Christine Jenkins, Craig Perfect and Gareth Jenkins of Baglan Funeral Home arrange numerous funerals each week
"Dying is a very dull, dreary affair," writer W Somerset Maugham once said, before advising people to "have nothing whatever to do with it".
But he never met the Welsh funeral directors doing their best to make people laugh, smile and feel comfortable at the send off of their loved ones.
They have helped mourners with comedy music and scattered ashes using fireworks.
BBC Wales spoke to some of those gently ushering tradition into the 21st Century, while maintaining the sanctity of a time-honoured profession.
'Onesie'
Gemma O'Driscoll, of GE O'Driscoll and Daughters, in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, has helped to arrange a funeral for a comedy-lover who had insisted no-one wear black and the Benny Hill TV programme theme be played.
"If the family want me to wear a onesie, I wear a onesie - if the family want me head-to-toe in pink, I'll wear pink," she said.
A cortege of tractors are used to lead a farmer's coffin to his funeral
Gemma O'Driscoll has no problem wearing a onesie if mourners request it
"To see a room full of people smiling and laughing during the funeral service is really something quite different," she said.
"There's definitely a change toward more of this kind of thing and I think we'll see much greater change going forward."
There are 500 funerals in Wales every week.
And third generation funeral director Gareth Jenkins, of the Baglan Funeral Home, in Neath Port Talbot, has overseen thousands of ceremonies, averaging up to 10 a week.
"When I first started it was very traditional - church, maybe, or chapel, whereas now it's more a celebration of life," he said.
An organic Welsh burial cocoon featuring a dragon
Unconventional ceremonies in Wales have seen an organic wool cocoon used instead of a coffin, motorbikes and HGVs replacing hearses and ashes compressed into diamonds and crystals.
"It's so important that the last memory they [mourners] have of somebody is a pleasant one and any little thing that we can do to make that special, we have to do," Mr Jenkins added.
His wife, Christine, has become an expert at making the dead look their best, curling their hair, colouring their lips and ensuring they are dressed in their own clothes and glasses, if requested.
Firework display
A magician's wand was ceremonially broken and placed in the coffin at one funeral service in Newport.
Ashes were also shot into the air using a firework display in Swansea while another service took place where no-one attended - as the deceased wished.
The unlikely episodes are all featured in BBC One Wales' A Very Welsh Undertaking, a four-part programme exploring the work of those for whom death is a way of life.
James Tovey, of Tovey Brothers, in Newport, arranged a farmer's funeral with his coffin taken past his land on a tractor trailer, led by a cortege of vintage agricultural vehicles.
"I hope he'd be very pleased if he were looking down on us," he said.
Helen Williams has gone from power-lifting to working as a funeral celebrant
Former champion power-lifter Helen Williams, who lives in the borders of Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, now organises non-religious ceremonies as a funeral celebrant.
Ms Williams, who once squatted a then-record 200kg (31.5 stone), said: "The power-lifting has prepared me for this in a strange way. You're carrying the weight of responsibility."
She said reflecting on the person who has died is "core" to non religious funerals, which are becoming more popular.
"Every part of the ceremony is related to that person," she added.
'Hit it off'
Latin phrase, media vita in morte sumus - in the midst of life, we are in death - is often used to evoke the fleeting nature of human mortality.
But the opposite is also true, with death sometimes acting as a catalyst in life for those in the trade.
It certainly provided a fateful introduction for Ceredigion funeral director, Maldwyn Lewis, when he met his now-wife, the Reverend Carys Ann.
She said: "I saw him across a grave and we said 'right, let's meet up', and that was it. And we've hit it off great."
- Published11 October 2011
