Bethany was so unsettled by the experience of organising her mother's funeral that she decided to pre-plan her own. 

"I was in a deep emotional state and it was something very sad, and I didn't want my son or my children to go through what I went through," she explains.

So she put aside money and made all the arrangements with her funeral director so that her nearest and dearest will be spared the planning - and the expense.

“I took my son with me when I signed the contract so that he would understand everything that's involved”, she adds. “When I die, all he has to do is pick up the phone”.

Bethany, who asked to go by a pseudonym, wants to be cremated. "I dislike the cold and hate winter. I love to feel warm and joke that my optimum temperature will be when I’m being cremated," she laughs.

And she advises dealing with this inevitable part of life early. When Bethany turned 60, she decided not just to plan it but to pay for it in advance. 

“The younger you make that decision…the better because the closer you get to your death the more morbid it becomes, whereas I lead a very active social, fun life and I don't see it as morbid at all," she says. “Don't wait until you're 85 or something. Do it when you're still active, still enjoying life and you feel in control."

Uptake on the increase

Preplanning one’s own funeral or cremation is still baulked at in Malta. Most people who plan their own funerals are expatriates, such as Bethany, who is British.

But several undertakers offer this service and the uptake is said to be on the increase. 

Preplanning “carries numerous advantages, including the reassurance that funeral or cremation arrangements are in accordance with the person’s wishes”, explains Johann Camilleri, managing director of Iklin-based Camilleri Funeral Directors International (CFDI).

He is one of about 90 funeral directors operating in Malta, who deal with an average of 4,500 deaths a year.

Camillieri is also among those who help arrange cremations abroad.

Cremation was legalised in Malta in 2019 and CFDI applied for a permit to build a funeral home and crematorium on a parcel of land behind the Addolorata Cemetery.

However, although cremations are now permitted – and in increasing demand – there still appears to be a lot of grey areas about how and where to build them.

Five years since the cremation law was passed, there is still no crematorium in Malta. 

Cremations by 2027?

In February 2023 the Planning Authority issued “a policy and design guidance document” for crematoria; to date, nothing has been finalised and Camilleri's plans for a funeral home have been put on hold.

“We were hoping to complete it by 2022. Now we’re hoping it will be ready by 2027." Until then cremations are carried out abroad, mostly in Sicily.

For decades, if not centuries, burial practices in Malta have barely altered.

For example, closed coffins are the norm because the local Catholic church forbids open caskets at funeral masses.

Church rules aside, most graves in Malta are between 80 and 90 centimetres wide, "and caskets are traditionally about 90 centimetres wide, so they wouldn't fit", Camilleri says.

Moreover, the minimum depth of a grave in Malta must be one metre and eighty-three centimetres deep.

Nowadays the most common type in Malta is the three-tier grave, which allows for three burials in one space. Four-tiered graves “are mandatory where geological conditions allow”.

Pandemic problems

But in 2020, these multi-tiered graves posed problems for the first time, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Soon after the pandemic was declared, the authorities decreed that COVID-positive deaths were to be buried within 24 hours, and that graves be sealed for 10 years. 

"This created a lot of havoc for people with family graves", explains Camilleri, "as the grave could not be used for a decade. Imagine a family with three siblings and they're all over 80, and one of them passes. Obviously that person will want to be buried in the family grave but cannot because of the 10-year rule".

To minimise this problem, the authorities set aside a certain number of graves for COVID-positive deaths.

"When it came to the burial", continues Camilleri, "our staff were obliged to wear boiler suits, face masks and gloves. Hearses had to be fumigated after each trip and the body had to be sanitised and sealed with a special liquid. To hasten its decomposition, the body was packed in two body bags filled with lime. And to ensure the coffin was airtight, it had to be screwed shut and then wrapped in plastic wrap."

All this had to be done within 24 hours, including the 'normal' things that need organising for a funeral – booking a church, flowers, music, cars and printing of remembrance cards.

Had cremations been available, the entire burial procedure might have been less complicated for some families.

Undertaker v funeral director

Camilleri defines himself – and others in the same line of work – as funeral directors or funeral agencies and seldom as undertakers.

In the past, carpenters built coffins and if they happened to own a horse and cart, they would also provide transport of the dead – which is what Camilleri’s great-grandfather was and did.

Nowadays few undertakers manufacture their own coffins, most are imported, and there just a handful of importers.

Over time, ‘undertaking’ evolved into the profession that we know today.

According to Camilleri, "there's a very fine line" separating an undertaker and a funeral director.

“In other countries an undertaker looks after everything, including the actual burial itself – the lowering of the coffin into the grave, the interment.

"In Malta, it doesn't work like that, because interments are carried out by cemetery workers”, explains Camilleri. “Our job is more intermedial; we coordinate, we organise and we make sure that all details are handled according to the family's wishes.

“We like to think of ourselves as funeral directors, not undertakers”.

Of the 90 in the country, about a third are registered and ‘above board’. The other 60 or so, according to Camilleri, are either officially unemployed, help at a church or work in factories, and they all organise funerals as a sideline.

“Many have no resources”, he says. “They call us and and rent our hearses, then they buy a coffin from Ċikku. They rent cars from Peppi…they may organise 10 or 20 funerals a year. It's not a full-time job but they are affecting those who earn a proper living out of it”.

While there are dozens of funeral directors, there are just five embalmers in the country, four in Malta and one in Gozo. They replace the blood in the deceased’s arteries with formaldehyde-based chemicals to slow decomposition.

Although the church may not allow open coffin services, it is possible to view a loved one’s corpse at Mater Dei’s mortuary; consequently, funeral directors advise that bodies be embalmed. 

A tragic catalyst

A funeral director with a difference is Miran Sapiano, who at 36 is one of the youngest in the country. Not only that, but she is also the only certified thanatologist in the country.

Thanatology is the study of death and the various aspects related to it. It encompasses the physical, psychological and social facets associated with the end of life. It also covers grief counselling. In Greek mythology, Thanatos was the personification of death and the general term for death.

The nexus in the undertaking business is the family connection, passing from father to son – or daughter. Johann Camilleri’s great-grandfather, for instance, started the business in 1890. Sapiano’s father “inspired” her to follow in his footsteps, but a personal tragedy served as the catalyst. She miscarried and lost twins.

“Together with my husband we grieved and I was a mess. I wanted to do something with that pain”, she says. She discovered thanatology and felt this was her “way forward”, abandoning her career as a pharmacist.

“I am a funeral director, because that’s my passion”, she declares, but she also wants to “bring something new to this country”.

“The way we tackle the undertaking role is transactional”, she says. “You go to an undertaker, and he helps you with the coffin, the flowers, the cards, with the permits and he’s very helpful… job done, it's transactional”, she adds.

“I am very proud that I managed to elevate this role a bit...I help families with the transactional part of the funeral – that's why they ask for our services – but, simultaneously, I support them emotionally as well”, Sapiano explains.

“I try to organise more of a celebration of the life of their loved one", she says.

Her aim is to shift the energy level from sadness to gratitude for having had such a person in their life.

'This is not just a job'

Mario Abdilla – one half of Mario & Lino Undertakers – is another undertaker to have suffered the loss of a child.

In January 2005 his two-year old daughter Hayley was killed in a traffic accident in Qormi.

“Being an undertaker is a mission, it’s a vocation”, says Abdilla, “when I go to someone’s home, I understand what they are going through, I know what they are feeling, I’ve been through it as well.

“This is not just a job; you help people and it does affect you. When I have [a] kids [funeral], I need some whisky to help me go to sleep. It brings back bad memories”, whispers Abdilla, “we suffer too”.

This line of work, says Sapiano, makes “me appreciate my family more, and trivial things that used to worry me before don’t anymore, because I now see how fragile life is…it’s our responsibility to live life to the fullest”.

Before being interviewed, Johann Camilleri, had had a meeting with the grieving parents of a six-year old child and her grandfather.

“We’re organising the child’s repatriation”, he says, “and you do get emotionally attached in these situations. It’s one thing planning a funeral for an 85-year old and it’s another when you’re dealing with a child”.

This was the third child repatriation Camilleri was organising in less than a month.

“This is not just a job; you help people and it does affect you. When I have [a] kids [funeral], I need some whisky to help me go to sleep. It brings back bad memories”, whispers Abdilla, “we suffer too”.

This line of work, says Sapiano, makes “me appreciate my family more, and trivial things that used to worry me before don’t anymore, because I now see how fragile life is…it’s our responsibility to live life to the fullest”.