Head-in-noose funeral plans
There was a good and much-needed hatchet job on whole-life insurance in the Daily Mail last month: Funeral plans aggressively advertised to older people – often during daytime TV ads – have been exposed as a raw deal. More than 4.5 million people hold these plans — otherwise known as whole of life policies — which pay out […]
Monday shorts
Death Ref got there first Time was when I could tuck a story away for a slow news day and not give a thought to any other death blogger getting there first. Can’t do that any more. The story I had been saving up for today has, I see, already been aired on the excellent […]
The labourer is worthy his/her hire
While I was well out of it last week on my guano-spattered rock set in a silver sea, the militant wing of this blog’s readership did a number on Lovingly Managed. It seems to have ended in either mutual exasperation or bewilderment. Probably a bit of both. Heavy breathing, for sure. Perhaps the greatest dialectical […]
The aloneness of the bereaved
I was struck by this post by a blogger in Canada concerning the aloneness of the bereaved. In this case, it’s Helmut Schmidt, former Chancellor of Germany, at the funeral of his wife of 64 years, Loki. She died on 21 October aged 91. The funeral was on 1 November.
No going back
That modern death has failed to find its place on the continuum of ordinary life events is something we all recognise and more or less vehemently deplore. For most a funeral is a hermetically sealed, isolated (or devastated) worst-day-of-my-life episode rarely to be recalled, and only then with a shudder. We quarantine the bereaved and […]
It’s what she would have wanted
Here’s a new poem by Wendy Cope published in the current Spectator. I hope she’ll forgive the flagrant breach of copyright and see this instead as a promo. Its sentiments are very contemporary. My Funeral I hope I can trust you, friends, not to use our relationship As an excuse for an unsolicited ego-trip. I […]
Lifed off
As you read this Big Rinty is dying in Shepton Mallet prison. Big Rinty? You wouldn’t know of him unless you’d read Erwin James’ columns in the Guardian or his books. Big Rinty is one of the long-term prisoners with whom James became friends during the twenty years of his life sentence. Here’s James: Rinty […]
Gail’s marathon
I wonder if you’re following Gail Rubin’s thirty funerals in thirty days? I’m hooked. She’s on no. 3. For me, this is a social document and a celebration of the lives of ordinary people. For you? Find her blog here.
Zombie journalism
Here’s some nasty journalistic furystirring from the Daily Mail under the headline Councils to stockpile bodies to cut the costs of cremation Bodies will be stockpiled for cremation under new rules to cut costs and carbon emissions. Rather than being cremated straight after a funeral, corpses will be stored for days in coffins or body bags […]
Eulogy rides again!
Reports of the death of Eulogy magazine are exaggerated. A little while ago I was rung by its genial editor, Alfred Tong, and informed that the second issue would be available online only. It’s out now, and includes among all sorts of things a sprightly piece by Julian Litten on his preference for burial. Find it here.
