Dulce et decorum est?
I don’t suppose anyone is left unmoved by news coverage of the repatriation of dead soldiers from Afghanistan and their subsequent solemn processions through Wootton Bassett. Everyone has an opinion, as is their entitlement. These soldiers are members of that group of people who have both a public role and a separate personal life, so, […]
Jonathan Taylor’s funeral preferences
Jonathan Taylor is an independent funeral celebrant in Totnes, and an occasional funeral arranger and conductor for green fuse. That’s not all he is, of course. There’s a lot more to Jonathan. He’s got a literary side, for example, and refers to one of his short stories in what follows. Everyone’s funeral wishes are different. […]
Dead letters
I’m not an expert in grief therapy—or therapy of any kind. I was sent to boarding school when I was six. Sounds privileged, I know, but think upmarket orphanage. Boarding schools pride themselves on teaching children to be independent. Don’t children become independent anyway? Whatever, a good British boarding school teaches you the art and […]
Getting over it
For the Victorians, sex was the great taboo. Nowadays, it’s death. Every time I hear someone begin to say that I jam my fingers in my ears. I may even moan softly. Gibber a bit, even. I’m, I can’t tell you, I’m just so sick of it. Talk about cliché, god, it makes even the […]
Funeralcare screwupdate
Margaret Miller, of Dundas Road, North Berwick, passed away last Monday, aged 88, having paid her local Co-operative Funeralcare branch two-and-half years ago to be buried in the same grave plot as her parents, Andrew and Margaret Miller, in council-owned North Berwick Cemetery. However, following her death, her relatives were told by Co-op staff that […]
The truth, the half-truth and nothing of the truth
Good word, embalm. Its vowels and its consonants are gentle, emollient, reposeful. Balm. Calm. Serene. Peace, perfect peace. It definitely sounds like a nice thing to do to a dead body, yes? Undertakers hold the view that there are things we don’t need to know and they may even have a point, if what they […]
That Tom Lynch libel case
There are times when we feel acutely that the UK and the US are ‘two countries separated by a common language’. When our common language is voiced by the monstrous Republican right, the gulf looks unbridgeable. But where funerals are concerned we have much talk about and much to learn from each other. And there’s […]
Bodies to bling
I’m on holiday. I don’t want to court controversy for a couple of weeks (the weather will stop me getting hot under the collar.) But it never did any harm to be a little provocative in the interest of animated debate. So, I say, good taste will always hide behind convention because it is too […]
Sam
The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said I read those lines of Philip Larkin at the funeral of a 16 year old boy who’d died of cancer. They were just right for all sorts of reasons. It was May. Sam, a good artist, had a thing for painting trees. All through […]
The mind is its own place
The Guardian ran a short piece on Saturday about those who work in the death industry. One of the themes was humour as a coping mechanism. One of the interviewees was Andrew Leverton of Leverton’s, by appointment undertaker to HRH the Queen. Asked if he found aspects of his work darkly funny he replied, “I […]
