"My mum was my best friend,” Elena tells us. “She was an artist and a trailblazer from a working-class immigrant family. She tended to work in watercolour or etching medium, but she got into pretty much anything creative. She did her degree at Wimbledon Art School. Then she became an art teacher to adults.”
“She was not at all your run-of-the-mill person.” Elena says. “Hence the reason it's been lovely to find Poppy’s, because I cannot imagine having gone with anything ‘bog standard’ or generic for my mother.”
Elena’s brother, Phil, was an award-winning animator and graphic artist. “He was the lead animator on a team for a game called Medieval 2 in the noughties – he and his team won a BAFTA for that.”
“He was a very vibrant person,” Elena says. “He was one of the first members of Surfers Against Sewage back in the 90s. There's a documentary on the clubbing scene and how it evolved in the UK, and he's on there, dancing at Glastonbury Festival!”
Elena discovered Poppy’s in an unconventional way – by getting accidentally locked in Lambeth Cemetery, where our Tooting office is based, one evening. “It was after 5pm and I knocked on your door, and a lovely lady let me out!” she says.
When her mum died, the business of organising the funeral fell to Elena.
“I’d never done it before. I started phoning around. I was absolutely shocked by one particular high street chain - I simply couldn't believe the lack of tact in the way she was explaining their process. There was also a very heavy push for premium packages.”
“I thought there must be a better way - and then I remembered Poppy’s,” says Elena. “I thought, oh, maybe this is kismet, because my mum loved painting poppies.”
Elena’s mum spent the final weeks of her life in intensive care. It was a great comfort to Elena to know that her mother would be looked after locally and gently in our light-filled mortuary in Tooting. “It’s such a brutal process and I felt her body was very badly violated. I felt very strongly that I wanted to know where her body was and how it was being treated from the second she was collected.” Choosing Poppy’s, Elena says, “meant that I was able to know where my mum was. I knew the people who were looking after her at every step in that process.”
Elena was unsure about whether it was necessary to have her mum embalmed.
“It would be further disruption to her body, which had undergone enough,” she explains. “Gemima [one of Poppy’s Client Support Advisors] explained to me that high street funeral directors use embalming because they don't have a mortuary on-site.” Elena chose not to get her mum embalmed. “It was a no brainer. It wasn't about cost for us at all. It was about dignity.”
Elena knew that her mum didn’t want a big funeral service. Hannah, one of our funeral directors, supported Elena to arrange a very intimate cremation service. “We stuck to her not wanting a funeral - that's why we decided to go with the open casket and just immediate family members. We chose a classic coffin with flowers on top. We put some of her garden inside the coffin. We each put a white lily inside, and cards from us all.”
Elena’s mum always drove a Mercedes, so the family chose a pink Mercedes for the funeral vehicle. “It was quite uplifting - it kind of cheered the kids up to see it.”
Elena and family also chose to ‘witness the charge’.
This means they were present to observe the coffin being placed into the cremation chamber. “That was really important to me. I've never been through the process before and it just allowed us to say goodbye, intimately, honouring her wishes.”
“When my brother died subsequently, I cannot tell you how much comfort it was, for all of us, to approach Hannah and Gemima at Poppy’s again,” Elena tells us.
Elena made different funeral choices to reflect her brother’s unique personality.
“That is when I realised how very non-pushy Hannah and the team had been with my mother's funeral,” Elena says. “Because this time I did want the live feed; I wanted the photographs; I wanted a double booking at the crematorium. And they had not pushed that at all with me the first-time round.”
Elena chose a plain white coffin for her brother, which she decorated herself over the course of two weeks, incorporating imagery of phoenixes, surfing posters and stickers. She learned how to do acrylic pouring in order to create patterns across the top and bottom of the coffin, and decorated the inside, too. “It was very important for me to make an artwork for my brother, to the best of my ability,” Elena says.
The family also placed special items in Phil’s coffin and dressed him to reflect his personality. “He was wearing the keepsake jewellery we gave to everyone at the funeral; he was wearing a quality pair of shades, because he always wore shades. My children selected the bracelets and rings he wore.”
On the day of the funeral, Phil’s coffin was carried in by friends and family. Poppy’s arranged a live feed for the funeral, along with a video recording of the funeral for those who couldn’t attend. Once again, Hannah was the family’s funeral director. “She was fantastic before and on the day,” Elena says.
