Baby boomers now take to funerals in pubs
LONDON: Boomers have decided to extend the guests drinking time at their funerals, by cutting out the church and cemetery section.
It’s a hot Friday afternoon and inside Collingwood’s Tote Hotel, a heavy metal band, dressed like Vikings, is playing a scorching set.
The band, Barbarion, makes the crowd smile with their head-banging music, flowing grey hair, bare chests, and fur and leather attire. They even have a cannon that shoots out confetti.
A coffin lies on a trolley in front of the stage, but it’s not a prop. It contains the body of Steve Ellis, who died aged 42.
Welcome to a 2021 funeral, which is less about suits, religion and rigid formality, and more tailored to the dead person’s personality, at a place they would feel at home.
The mourners, many dressed in jeans and rock T-shirts, drink beer as loved ones give speeches. They write messages on the cardboard coffin. A can of beer has been opened on top, for Steve.
Some of Steve’s friends and even his mother, Dianne, get up to dance. The band, some of whom knew Steve, chant, “Steve! Steve! Steve!”
Celebrant Kimba Griffith, dressed in a black leather skirt and a T-shirt emblazoned with her company’s name, The Last Hurrah Funerals, tells the crowd they are here “to farewell a true one of a kind, master of shenanigans, uber nerd and total legend: Steve Ellis”.
She says he took his own life, but never lacked love and friendship, and urges people to seek help if they feel low.
Ms Griffth’s voice rises as she says: “We come here to throw this killer funeral/gig/wake, in order to honour Steve as fiercely and fully as we can! Am I right?” Cheers ensue.
Ms Griffith, who has conducted 65 funerals since starting The Last Hurrah with business partner Nastassia Jones a year ago, prefers to term its style as “unique” rather than “alternative”; they’re not theme funerals, but seek to capture someone’s essence.
A keen horticulturalist’s funeral might be held in a beautiful garden; a well-known bar fly was honoured by the hearse stopping at his favourite pubs and his football club. Some clients might prefer an Irish wake-style service at home, with the coffin in the lounge room.
“It’s about having a funeral that reflects the person that died so that when you turn up as a friend or family member, you say, ‘that’s them’,” she says.
Dianne Ellis gained comfort from giving her son a send-off “he would have really liked”.
She didn’t want a “boring hearse” — The Last Hurrah used a 1973 white Cadillac hearse — and “didn’t want that sycophantic fake sympathy” of a conventional service.
Steve had done work experience at the Tote while studying sound and lighting, and loved music and a party.
“He loved the Tote. That place meant a lot to him,” she says. “I felt such a wonderful sense of peace after that funeral, as crazy as it was,″ she says.
James MacLeod, managing director of Tobin Brothers funerals, says there has been a trend towards more creative funerals, be they at a pub or involve mourners playing barefoot bowls.
”People want to celebrate their loved one’s life in a manner that befits them,” Mr MacLeod says.
One Tobin Brothers funeral was held on a vintage train; one memorial service on a Boeing 737 jet; and one funeral was held on the banks of the Murray River, with the coffin arriving by boat.
Kelly Scott, a senior vice-president of the Australian Funeral Directors Association’s Victorian branch and general manager of TJ Scott and Son funeral home in Kyneton, says during the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been more services held outside, which has “almost given people permission to think outside the box”.
