Peabrain

A friend and colleague of ours, a 46-year-old Yorkshireman, born and bred in the UK of British parents, died a couple of weeks ago of lymphoma here in France. He had lived here for approximately half his life, worked for the French educational system but had never taken out French nationality. He was married to a French woman and had four children. He had recently bought a house in the Yorkshire Dales and was to have been buried in his beloved Yorkshire, alongside his parents and arrangements had been made for the transfer to the UK of his body, in a sealed coffin. However, permission was refused by the British Embassy because he was carrying some sort of virus, no doubt picked up during his hospital treatment. The British official was adamant that there was no way that his body could be shipped back to the UK. The only solution has been to bury him here, wait five years and then have his remains disinterred and reburied in Britain.
I must admit to have been very shocked to have learnt all this. Personally I have no desire to be buried in Britain but can quite understand those that do wish to "go back home". At a time when dogs and cats can be readmitted to the UK, for a British subject's body to be denied this basic right seems cruel and wrong. Presumably, had our friend been treated in an NHS hospital and caught the same virus before dying, he would have been been buried all the same.
It would be interesting to know if anyone else has been confronted with this kind of unnecessarily tragic, and seemingly absurd, situation.

EuroTrash

I think that is absolutely dreadful.
I was born in God's own country and although I'm not fussed where I end up myself, I know many Yorkshire folk for whom it is very important.
The British Embassy has lost sight of what it's supposed to be there for, IMHO. It does its best to avoid getting involved in anything, it treats British subjects like an inconvenience when they ask for help, it's one of the most unhelpful organisations I've ever come across and that includes French organisations, and it seems to be concerned mainly with covering its own back and doing as little as possible. A sealed coffin, for goodness sake, what danger was there, and it's not as if the UK is a sterile environment exactly.

MillieF

Peabrain, I have just read your post aloud to my husband, and regrettably found my voice cracking and tears followed. This is really sad, and must be dreadful for his family and friends. This is madness in the extreme, all sorts of horrid grubby sorts are coming in and going out of Heathrow, we don't stop them touching other people, and just imagine what germs money has encountered on its way.

There is a willow tree by a lake in La Fleche where my son learned to walk and our dogs used to play, and my heart will always lie and I pray my ashes will be scattered.

My very best regards...would a petition help do you suppose?

Peabrain

Thank you Millie for your very thoughtful words. Alas I don't think a petition would help, given the adamant inflexibility of the consular authorities, and as our friend has now been buried over here, having him disinterred and reburied in Yorkshire would be a further harrowing ordeal for his widow and four children. They've already been put through the mill over the past two years of treatment and that might prove an ordeal too far. Paradoxically, if one wishes to look on the bright side .... I suppose that having one's late husband and father buried just up the road so to speak, might in the long run prove beneficial and be more soothing in the grieving process.

It's a cautionary tale for those members of this forum that take it for granted that they would be buried back in the UK. I still can't believe it. Is there a lesson here? He died of a very aggressive form of lymphoma and was given the best treatment possible. He had a bone-marrow transplant, which was the only way to save him but in fact it precipitated his death. What should terminally ill expats do? Struggle back across the Channel so as to be able to die in the UK and thus be buried there? I don't know but I find this kind of decision so cruel and heartless.

cardi

There was that case a few years ago when a family took their dead relative on a Ryanair flight as a passenger to Germany because the cost of transporting otherwise costs a fortune. It was theoretically an offence but nothing happened. Sometimes perhaps people need to cut through the petty bureaucracy to do the best thing.

Chatter Static

How on earth do you get a dead person on as a passenger because a passenger can't go in the hold and I don't see how a dead person gets through security got a link to the story?

MillieF

Peabrain, I can see the comfort in grief for your father and husband to be at rest in familiar soil, and hope it brings peace to his family.

However....on a completely different note I've occasionally felt like I've one foot in the grave myself on the odd flight..but both of them? How would you even go about embarking with a dead person..or even thinking of doing so? Whilst the reasons may be most sad, the thought of it has given me the best smile I've had in days...I can't wait for the screenplay!

Tweedpipe

PB,
A very sad story I must agree.
It's a great shame that this cannot be highlighted in the press, and a public call for the British Embassy official who made that particular decision to be clamped in one of the remaining stocks still remaining on a village green, and pelted with rotten debris for 24hrs.

This intrigued me, (or perhaps more truthfully) appealed to my dark sense of humour.
Have just done an extensive Google/Dogpile search, but unfortunately unable to find anything related to the above, or any reports of dead passengers being smuggled onto commercial flights.

What did make me smile however, were the following bizarre requests from Virgin Atlantic in-flight passengers:-
One passenger asked if there was a MacDonald's on board.
Another asked if it was possible for the captain to turn off the turbulance!
And (what I rate as the all-time classic), one passenger demanded that the engines be turned off - because the noise was bothering him....!!

cardi

This is it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8604663.stm

Chatter Static

Note the word "Tried" as opposed to your "Took" I didn't think anyone would get someone dead airside wheelchair or not.

cardi

I know what I would do wit my Volvo.