Ditch the hearse, bring the kids, have a picnic: an alternative undertaker’s tips for a better funeral

theguardian.com:

Sharpham Meadow doesn’t look much like a cemetery. There are no high walls, wrought iron gates or yew trees. You won’t find mausoleums or elaborate headstones. There are no signs of gothic horror. There are plenty of flowers but not the sort that come wrapped in cellophane – these ones are wild and alive. The whole place is wild and alive, with buzzing bees and birdsong.

And yet it is a cemetery or, as this land is unconsecrated, more correctly a burial ground. Spaced out evenly in rows are dozens of graves, simple mounds with a flat stone featuring just a name and dates. The view – over a Devon valley, the River Dart meandering towards its own end – is breathtaking. I wouldn’t mind ending up here.

I am here today to meet Rupert Callender, who set the place up a few years ago and ran it for a while. Actually, it’s a multilocation interview: we also go to his studio flat above an ice-cream shop in nearby Totnes and to his workplace on the edge of town. Plus, there’s the time we spend in his work vehicle, an old Ford Galaxy. With the back seats folded down he can just fit a coffin in there, so long as it’s not too ornate (and his aren’t: they’re generally cardboard or wicker). Today there are just a couple of boxes of human ashes in the back, waiting to be delivered.

Callender doesn’t look much like an undertaker. No dark suit, no obsequiousness or default expression of condolence, no Mr Sowerberry misery. He wears jeans, green trainers and a crinkly jacket, which makes him look more like a hippy of a certain age (he’s 52) or a university lecturer. Scholarly and lyrical, he slips effortlessly into and between Philip Larkin, Brian Eno and The Simpsons. Now he has written a book – part memoir, part rant against the traditional