How changing attitudes are reshaping funerals

Funerals are changing. For some families, the traditional service remains an important moment of witness and togetherness. For others, the cremation happens quietly, with a gathering held later — or in a different way entirely.

In this episode of The Pure Podcast, our content lead Sabine Groven speaks with Prof Kate Woodthorpe, sociologist and co-director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, about how our attitudes towards death and funerals are evolving.

Drawing on more than two decades of research, Kate reflects on how conversations around death have shifted from something once seen as niche or uncomfortable to a subject people are increasingly willing to approach openly. They discuss the rise of direct cremation, the growing influence of digital memorials, and the reality that today’s families are more used to questioning tradition and making choices that reflect their own values.

In the interview, Kate mentions two research papers:

‘My Memories of the Time We Had Together Are More Important’: Direct Cremation and the Privatisation of UK Funerals: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380385211036350 

Bodies and ceremonies: is the UK funeral industry still fit for purpose?: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13576275.2016.1205574?casa_token=4yR8RBtSo5QAAAAA%3AKZ9aWY-en4UinZbZfRsICzjMWBkYea5hXqrUX_emJH5uiwwxSJWvobGF-d3pPQweDtzGrCOQbEU

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to episode 4 of the Pure Podcast. I'm Sabina, and today I'm joined by Kate Woodthorpe, Professor of Sociology at the University of Bath and co-director of the Centre for Death and Society. Kate has spent more than 20 years researching how we experience death and the end of life as a society. In this episode, we explore how funerals are changing and what research tells us about grief, remembrance, and the ways people come together after someone dies. So let's begin by hearing a little more about Kate and the work she does.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

So I'm a professor of sociology at the University of Bath in the UK. I'm also co-director of the Centre for Death and Society there, and that's a research centre that specialises on the end of life, and we're not attached to a medical school or or or or sort of clinical practice, so we tend to look at the social and political and economic and cultural contexts in which the end of life is experienced. I've been doing this for 20 years now, which I find jaw-dropping. I've done a lot of work and research on funeral costs, on families at the end of life, on cemeteries, crematoria, um and most recently on whether or not deceased people's uh funeral wishes should have some kind of legal protection. And I'm really interested in this area because I think how we handle death collectively as a population is a bit of a mirror back to us of of what we value in life. And um when I first started out, people who were interested in death and dying, I think were seen as rather niche and rather strange. And over 20 years, uh I think I've seen a lot of change for the better in terms of people being much more prepared and willing and able to talk about some really difficult subjects, but to do so in a very constructive and open way. So I've seen a lot of change in 20 years, and I think it's I'm very pleased to talk about some of that today.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Yes, attitudes are changing definitely to how we talk about death. But you started 20 years ago when it was more of a taboo subject. And so I'm interested to know what led you to study this area.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Well, most academics who specialise in death and dying have had some personal experience, something that opens their eyes to what what happens, and I'm no different, and I've written about this, so I've I've made it public before. I had some very profound experiences in my formative years, so I had some friends who who were killed in a car crash when I was a teenager, and that was it was life-changing because uh I realised how precious and precarious life is, how how there are no guarantees. I felt very strongly at the time, and I still feel this 30 years later, and it because it is almost 30 years, which is just incredible. It's almost like everyone's got a little egg timer over them, and no one knows how much is left in that little timer. The sands of time, you know, are uh decreasing. And and it's just driven me massively, I think, in my life to to make the most of everything. And so that's that's where I got interested in it, or or I realised, wow. And then I had some more deaths in quick succession, but of more elderly family members, and their funerals were all really, really different from my friends through to my relatives. And then when I was doing my degrees in sociology, I think I'm really interested in how people work, but collectively as a k as a society and communities and families, it's not necessarily about individuals, it's about those kind of relationships that people have, and to institutions and to organisations. And I always just ended up coming back to death. I didn't plan it, it wasn't a deliberate thing, it was more about actually I just find this really interesting and it key and it does. I really think it's not about death necessarily, it's about how what we value in life and how we live our lives and what we want to leave behind and the memories we want people to have, what rituals help people to um manage that transition when someone's died, um, you know, that they're not in their lives anymore. It's really a powerful point of life that can teach the living a heck of a lot.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yes. Absolutely. And we're going to talk a bit about your research now. So there is this widespread belief that a funeral service is essential for healthy grieving. So I wanted to ask you, what does your research tell us about that?

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Well, I think funerals are changing. Yeah, that's a really, really critical to to to say upfront. And I think that's not because the need for ritual is necessarily changing or the need for social support, but it's more about people's expectations, people's normal patterns of communication and coming together, where people get support from. What I've observed over the last 20 years is funerals are really critical for some people, in terms of that is where a major source of support and solidarity and community for them. It's very important for religious beliefs. It's also particularly the manner in which someone has died, um, can be absolutely critical to whether or not a funeral is important to that point. So when it's a very premature death, very unexpected, um, very shocking, maybe violent in a car accident, like I was talking about with my friends, or um that's classed as premature, you know, so someone who's under 74, 75, there's something there about our sense of injustice of a life cut short, and I think at those points that funerals uh have a very different purpose. However, the evidence suggests that the evidence that is available, not just from me but from others, that funerals don't actually shape people's grief outcomes that profoundly, and that relationship isn't necessarily there. But what we don't know is, and there was some excellent work in Japan that was done, that also raised the point and the question about, well, is a funeral necessarily about grief or is it about re-establishing social relationships with people? And that I think that's very a very important point, but I would also then counter that by saying, um, and there's no there's no I haven't done a study on this, and I think there's a gap to understand that, is that if more and more people's way of receiving and giving support and staying in touch with people is online, which it is, and that's a really recent phenomena, that's what in the last 15 years, we don't yet know how that's going to play out. But if if people are more used to that at least, from people who's sort of 70 and below, who have who are very digitally literate, it might actually be quite unusual to come together in person and in a very public way and see people, and you might not need it because actually your connections are you manage them in different ways. You don't necessarily have to be with people in person. And we did a we also did a study that looked at cremation choices, cremation funeral choices, and that in part of that included direct cremation. And it was a very small sample pre-COVID, and there's lots of caveats to it in terms of the people we spoke to, I feel were very confident in their choice of why they'd done a direct cremation. So they were willing to come forward and to talk about it as a positive choice. But what we got from that was a different narrative to what they were doing, so it was it wasn't necessarily just about costs, it was also about control. So a lot of them had uh ex the person had died from dementia, perhaps, or a long-term illness, and they'd said many, many goodbyes, and they were exhausted at the end of it, and they just couldn't they couldn't do the performance of a funeral. Others felt that they actually wanted to they recognized there was a need to deal with the body, the b something has to happen, you know, when someone has died, that b their body does need to be dealt with in some way, but they wanted to have a funeral ritual or some kind of gathering at a different time of year, in a different location, to make sure that people could be there, that it was a perhaps invite only. So it was a very it they wanted to do something that was that was kind of behind closed doors, and that's what we that's what we wrote about in a paper that I can perhaps send to you in as a link to include with this when you share it. But that's we're saying that perhaps this this is actually perhaps what we're seeing as well is for those people for whom it is a conscious choice, rather than it being out of necessity and financial, it's actually giving them more options because it means that they're not under pressure to do a very conventional formulaic funeral, that they can really take the time to think about oh, maybe do some of the ashes on mum's favourite beach, when so and so can come back from where they live now, perhaps in the in the school holidays, so the drunk grandchildren can be there. You know, that they they're just changing what might be possible. And and I do think that's a really important point to make within all this about these debates about the value of a funeral or not, because it's about gatherings are still important, but there's different ways of doing gatherings, and perhaps that's what we're seeing. It's not necessarily saying funerals aren't important, but it's just actually there's more options now and ways to do it. But there is a massive caveat as well, is that what we don't know, and I think there is a real need for research, is when direct cremations happen, there will be a cohort of people that might have expected to be invited to a funeral, and they're they're often not privy to the the immediate families in perhaps invitation only event, or to this kind of like concentric circles almost. So they've got the immediate family, and then and as you go out, there's all these people who might have expected to be there but don't, aren't, and what we don't know is what what's it like for them. What's what and also what is lost for them. And we do need to understand a bit more about that because that's that kind of question of are we m are we losing something really important as a way of for those people to come back together as a sort of extended family or old school friends or colleagues? Or is it actually that they're all can they're all connected online anyway and they don't feel the need to see each other in person? We don't know.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Yes, I have a lot of follow-up questions to this. So you talked about we live our lives so much online now and digitally, and when someone passes away, it's quite common that you will have an online site with pictures of them and people can light digital candles or they can write tributes, that kind of thing. Do you think that can replace some of the coming together that people feel like a sense of saying goodbye, although it's digital?

SPEAKER_01 11:35

It's a very good question, and there's quite a lot of research that asks that. You know, is the is the digital replacing the in-person? And I I don't get a sense of that there is a consensus as to whether it is or not. And and and then on then you've got this other dynamic that's coming in about the dead kind of continuing online now because of people's social media platforms, for example, and there's all the videos that you can access and their their digital footprint. Um, and that's a lot in the news at the moment, about access to that, those and whether parents can have access to it and other people and who owns what in terms of data. And then you've got a whole industry that's developing that is actually about I don't know if you've heard of these things called Thanabots or actually being able to take people's likenesses and their voices and you know, either deliberately or not deliberately, they could have recorded them deliberately for this purpose, or it's just taking stuff that was there online and actually then creating their likenesses, and then you can interact with them. And that, I mean, we're going into science fiction realm there, but I think that's going that that has a really destabilizing effect potentially on what does it mean when you are dead, and have you have you gone? And also people's control about their memory, you know, what is left behind, you know, what is left there online forever. And I think, well, forever as long as you can access it. I think there's there is a lot happening, and it's happening at speed, and research at least can only be paying catch up all the time.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Yeah. Yeah. I was recently talking to um Dr. Mary Frances O'Connor, who's a grief expert, and she was talking about how grief is a form of learning that your loved one is gone, and so if you have constant access to their likeness, I can imagine I'm not an expert in this, but I can imagine that it would be much harder to fully move on with your grief, although it's not something that is a chapter that you close, but I can imagine that it's harder to go back to life when you have that constant reminder.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Yes, uh, I mean it's this isn't my area of specialism, but as a human being, I think I I think a lot about the po um the film Ready Player One. I don't know if you've seen that, but this idea that actually your virtual life becomes more meaningful than your physical life. That's where you're living. So there's there's I think there's so much that's happening at the moment in terms of how people are engaging with the virtual world. And is that, you know, that that question that you asked, is it replacing the real life or is it supplementing it? And I think I mean I i it it's it's still evolving and will continue to evolve. But yes, I'd have thought, I mean, I'm not a psychologist, but I'd have thought psychologically having having people that you know have died actually continue to engage with you without it being part of a religious belief system. I don't know what that does to people's psyche in sense of here and now. I don't I don't know if there's any evidence on that yet because it not it hasn't actually happened enough for us to know.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah. I want to talk a bit more about the research into grief experience between people who've had a traditional funeral and those who didn't. What can your research tell us about this idea that traditional funerals are therapeutic and non-traditional kind of memorials um are not?

SPEAKER_01 15:15

There's no way of actually knowing whether something at that point, whether that's directly connected to a particular outcome or not. What I would say is that there is increasing variety in funerals. So this idea of a traditional versus non-traditional, I think is actually really blurring now. I've worked a lot with Simon Cox over the years, who you know is a consultant in funerals, funeral expert, and he would talk about his disaggregation. It's almost like people are approaching funerals thinking about rather than buying an off-the-shelf package, um, you know, one size fits all, it's actually thinking, okay, these are the bits that I will outsource to a funeral director or someone else to lead on, but these are the bits that I will handle myself. These and the and there's this kind of it's a much more of a mix and match model now. And I think what's coming is more and more of that. Because if you think about who the next consumers are of funerals in the next 10 years, it's going to be people who are much more digitally literate, but also have had their whole lives have been consumers. So they are used to shopping around, comparing costs, not necessarily deferring to authority. You know, this is the way it should be done. They'll be going, Well, actually, am I willing to spend£2,000 on that? Hmm. You know, that's what's going to be happening because that's what people's experiences. They will arrive at this point in their lives with a lot of experience of making those kind of decisions rather than just handing over and going, okay, this is the way it should be done, and this is what's expected. There'll be more considerations that'll be made. And their recremation throws an absolute, you know, a bomb into that in terms of I don't know if that's the right word, but because there's a really big question there, do we even need to do this at all? Can we do something that is, like I say, behind closed doors, invite only? Do we need a funeral director? And that's really challenging to the funeral sector. Very, you know, this is their livelihoods. But I would I would say that you can't, you know what is coming in terms of consumers, you can't change that. This is people who were born from the 90s onwards, who have uh, you know, lived a life of being ever more used to getting what they want or having to make consumer decisions about what they spend their money on. And so that's that that is it it's kind of inevitable, I see it.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Yes, absolutely. And also when you hear about it from other people, maybe some friends or family have done it, it it becomes a bit more normalized because I think it's one of those things where you do what you think is expected of you and you don't really question it. And now people are starting to question it, question it and um consider their options.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Yeah, and I but I think I think what does concern me is when when people are choosing direct cremation because they're so worried about money, and that because we're talking about it in terms of it being a very positive choice and it being something that's quite meaningful when people don't have choices because because the cost of living is now such that their disposable income and their ability to save is under such pressure, I think that's when there's a whole other kind of issue to be thinking about because choice choice is not available to everyone. And I think that's where a lot of concerns come from from people who who are very concerned about the rise of direct cremation, what is lost for those people for whom they don't have choices. It's it's becoming the only viable option for them, and what is lost in terms of their social support networks or loss of people coming together. So I get that, but again, there isn't, to the best of my knowledge, there isn't any sort of really robust, independent research in that area, and I think there needs to be.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Yeah, exactly. And um coming together, I mean, there isn't anything stopping people from coming together with a direct cremation. There are so many um nice ways that people can do that, but again, it's because there isn't a set format, people are having to think about it and consider it, and sometimes that might be challenging as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Yeah, it is challenging, and I think also I think the whole sector, including direct cremation providers, need to do m need to do much more to build public trust. There's a quite there's a lot of I think a lot of cynicism about the funeral sector and practices and the transparency of how f how bodies are being managed behind the scenes and where cremations take place and the care of the dead. Yeah, we're seeing that right now. There's huge inquiries going on and police investigations about the care of the dead. So I think there is a a very big work to be done by everyone in the funeral sector to really reassure the public and consumers about how what goes on behind the scenes so that you can trust the providers. And that includes yeah, like I say, that in absolutely includes direct cremation providers.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Absolutely. I am from Norway where cremation is not that it's just the last couple of years become more normal than burial, but no Norway's a very traditional country. And uh we had a family member pass away last year, and because I do what I do for a living, I've I thought we could we should do a direct cremation that would be appropriate for this person. There wouldn't be many people attending the funeral, it would give us a bit more time. And people in Norway, like my friends and family, didn't even know what that was. And when I told them that this person had passed away, they went, When is your funeral? And I said, Oh, we're actually not gonna do a traditional funeral, we're gonna spread uh the person's ashes in May, where we used to have a cabin, because that would be really nice. And people are like, Oh, okay, that sounds good. So I I was more worried, I think, about that people would judge me because there is this expectation to to do things a certain way, but it didn't happen. It's just that people hadn't heard about it.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

But that ra to me, that raises a really important point about who is a funeral for? It's a massive question. Is a funeral for the deceased to say goodbye to them? Is it for their immediate family or their immediate network who will really feel and notice that that person is not there? Or is it For the wider network and meeting these kind of social obligations and expectations of what other people want. And I think I think that's part of that whole point about people being savvy consumers and used to more used to at least getting the kind of services that they want. I think people overall are going to feel a bit more confident about perhaps pushing back about what is expected and saying, well, you may, you know, that I may be getting a bit of pressure from people at when's the funeral. First question to ask, but and feeling a bit more confident to say, oh, actually, there isn't going to be one, that we're going to do something that's at a different time of year, it's an invite-only affair. So I think there is, you know, the funerals are emblematic or sim symbolize bigger social changes that happen. And we're talking about massive social change that's happened over decades about people being very consumer-oriented and much more individual, you know, individually, you know, it's about individual fulfillment rather than social obligation. And I think because people have been living longer and longer with an aging population, funerals have remained rather untouched. And now we're actually, now we're seeing more funerals taking place. And you know, what what has happened to most other industries and sectors is going is happening now is funerals.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Yeah, exactly. And it has it is um a sector with a lot of tradition and very heavy traditions and very similar rights for a long, long period of time. So probably natural that it's taken a while. But when you start to question something, I think you kind of realize what isn't what isn't for you. And some people always want a traditional a lot of people always want a traditional way, and that's absolutely fine, but it's yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

But it's it's it's the what is happening now, I think, with that kind of pushback about funerals, is what happens with weddings 50 years ago. So my understanding about weddings, you know, they used to be much more public. You would invite the local community, there would be an element of it, it anyone could turn up, at least to the service, the legal part of it, and you invited all of your extended family and all your parents' friends. Um, and then divorce laws came in, and people people didn't get married for life. Their civil partnerships came in. There were people started to think, mm, actually, we can do this differently. People might have multiple partnerships and multiple marriages, not even getting married at all, having a civil partnership over their life. And and I think what's happened what happened there similarly is now going to happen with funerals. And actually, do we need to do it this way? Uh uh, do or are there other ways to do it that suit us? And that may that may be that you have you still might have a funeral on the day of the cremation. It might be that it's only four of you are there, and you to bear witness to the body actually being cremated, and then you have a memorial service a few months later that's much more public and uh also when you're in a different place in in the terms of immediately post-death versus a few months later on. And I do think there is a lot to be learned from other religions, and I I I don't know too much about it, but I really like the idea of orthodox Jewish n culture where actually you deal with the body quite quickly, and then you have a series of rituals afterwards, and actually I think that's wonderful. I think that's one you know, actually that's what people need. They need it, you know, there's a there's this build-up to a funeral and then nothing. Actually, what people uh oftentimes, just from my own experience and observing it, is people there is an element of something has to happen immediately, but actually they need it over time, they need certain support over time, and can we not build in more rituals or more comings together afterwards as well to help them sort of transition into life without this person?

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Absolutely, yes. I think that sounds really nice. I'm actually writing an article at the moment about different ways of saying goodbye, um, and it's not about memorials or uh spreading ashes or funerals, it's more about those little things that you can do either together or alone to help you say goodbye because I think as individuals we will have different ways that will work for us, and one ceremony on one day, like you said, that's not that's not gonna be enough for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

No, and but also uh and it's about your entry point into those conversations. So there was a really good paper written a few years ago by uh a colleague of mine at the University of Bath called Tony Walter, and he took he questioned, and I I can share the link with you as well for this, but he queried whether if people had a different entry point to funerals to talk about them and to plan them, would they do things differently? So he was querying whether if your first engagement was with a person who was more focused on the ritual and the meaning from the ritual, would you do things differently? Rather than you know immediately making the phone call, handing over the body, and then you're suddenly on a track of what happens, but taking that time to think, hmm, could how could we do this in a way that meets particular needs, honours the wishes of the deceased person, but meets our own needs, which might be quite different, manages their the level of pressure that you feel from other people or not, depending on how confident you feel with handling that? That was a really good paper as well, that really influenced my thinking.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Yes, that sounds interesting. We'll link that in the description together with your research as well. So I wanted to ask you what does it change for people when the cremation and the commemoration are not tied to the same day?

SPEAKER_01 28:00

I think well a really critical point for anyone listening or thinking about doing this is considering how important your body is. Because what the the point of having a funeral on the day of the actual burial or cremation in this case is is about actually witnessing it, witnessing that, you know, whether they're in a coffin or you even see them, but more likely in this country it's it's just a coffin. That but to be in the presence of the coffin, to know that the person's in there, to know that they're being cremated in that same time period can be very, very powerful. Um but for some people it doesn't matter as much to to pay uh pay with you know to observe that, to bear witness to it. And I think part of that is the decline of religious belief and faith and the idea that something else is going to happen afterwards. I think part of that is also the way in which most people die now, which is in older age, with lots of illnesses, and with a body that has been failing for quite a long time, and and for the people who for whom we've got dementia or Alzheimer's, there's been a kind of split almost of the of the person and the body, and you hear a lot in in research on dementia, and that that the person went a long time ago. So you know the idea that that that the person is the body and the body is the person is changing because of the way in which people are dying. So that and that then changes what the extent to which people feel they need to be in the presence of the body at that point, or whether ashes are sufficient. And of course, ashes have a lot more options because they cut they're portable. So you can split them up, you can take them to different places, you can do different things with them, and you see people doing some really creative things, or scattering them around the world, or scattering them in locations that they went to on family holidays when they were young, or holding on to them and merging them with other peoples, and then doing something with them. So there's all sorts going on with ashes, and there's been quite a few studies on ashes about their destinations that are really interesting. That's a whole other kind of creative industry for what you know what can be done with them.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Yeah, you can send them to space and create diamonds and all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

So that's deeply personal, you know. Because some people the idea of wearing jewellery that is that contains ashes is abhorrent for others. It's wonderful. They're always with you. Or you put them in tattoo ink and have tattoos. I mean there's all sorts that you that can be done.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Yeah, and that can be really based on the person you are honouring or yourself, what you want to do. I've told my mum that I'm gonna make jewellery out of her and she quite liked that.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

I think I think the main thing for anyone who's thinking about this though is to whether you what whatever kind of cremation and ritual you would like is to is to explain why. Because I think that gives people a kind of framework then to think, okay, to what are we working within? So if if mum or dad really wanted a direct cremation because they didn't want but they didn't want money spent on it, okay. So that's we need to how are we going to but we really do need something? How do we manage that to to honour what they wanted whilst also getting what we need out of it? Um and there's also the other way around as well, uh, for people who have want the you know, specify that they wanted a funeral and then the family go, oh no, we're gonna do a direct cremation, um for whatever reason, cynically the money is part of that. I think for then the person who has made their wishes known that they want a funeral, they need to be really explicit as to why, and they need to be really explicit about who they expect to carry those wishes out and who they they want to do this on their behalf so that they can ensure that um that there is a negotiation there that you know someone is advocating on their behalf. So if someone else comes in and says, Well, no, we're not going to do that, we're going to ignore their wishes entirely and do what we want, there's someone going, hang on a minute, this isn't right. We're going we'll have to find a middle way.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

Yes. That's a really interesting point because advocating for the rights or wishes of someone who has passed away and treating them with respect even though they're no longer there.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Well, that's what the Law Commission are looking at now in England and Wales about whether actually people's wishes, funeral wishes, should have some kind of legal protection because family can come in and say we're not doing it. For all sorts of reasons. And it and it might not be because they're bad people or about money. It could just be like that's actually not what we need. But then the question is, well, who again, going back to what we talked about, who is it for? Who, you know, what are you trying to achieve here? And in the vast majority of families, my experience and evidence shows that there is a negotiation and people find a way through. But if your family is very fractious, fractured and fractious, if you've got estrangements, got very strong views, that can be explosive within families. And that's what I'm looking at right now is well, and how and what's the role of the funeral sector in mediating that? And to end on a really positive note, I think funeral directors and the funeral sector is they're doing a heck of a lot of work that's massive, that's invisible behind the scenes in terms of mediating between families. For those families who were really stuck or can't agree or agonizing over how much to spend, and you've got a funeral plan and you've got people's wishes known, and the the living want different things, and they have a really critical facilitative role in trying to find a way forward, but they can't ever make that public. And I think that's again goes back to something I said earlier about that transparency. I think that's a whole load of work that needs to be done to show the value of that work so that people can feel really confident if they're they're doing a direct cremation, they're do the reasons why they're doing it, and likewise, if they're doing a funeral, the reasons why they're doing it that way.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Thank you so much to everyone who has been listening. For more resources like this one, and to be the first to hear new episodes, go to purecremation.co.uk forward slash subscribe. Until next time.