What hospitals advise the bereaved
If dying really is “an awfully big adventure” an NHS hospital seems an unpropitious point of departure. Most of us don’t want to die in one; most of us (58 per cent) will. Most of us think home is the best place. What’s not so well known is that many of those who have cared […]
The Importance of Being Urnest
That Brits are born with an acute and possibly pathological sensitivity to absurdity is well known. The Great American Funeral has engendered great and gloriously funny books by Jessica Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, neither of which had more than minimal success in laughing Americans out of their (perceived) absurdity. There is method in the funerary lunacies of […]
Companioning Uncle Bob
Companioning Uncle Bob I gave myself the job, the privilege it turned out, of enabling my Uncle Bob to spend his last few months at home. Death was not new to me, but dying was. I was no nurse, just a woman thankful to this dear old man for giving me family when I needed […]
Dead ordinary
Redditch, where I live, is a town most people would only visit by mistake. It is a 1964 new town, a dreamy planner’s dud. We have Britain’s only cloverleaf roundabout. It’s not something I’ve ever heard anyone brag about. Yet we boast our eminent citizens. John Bonham and Charles Dance were born here; Rik Mayall […]
Last goodbye
Briefly, homeless man Kevin McClain falls ill with lung cancer and is taken to hospital, thence to a hospice. His dog, Yurt, is taken to a shelter and rehomed. Close to death, Mr McClain asks to see his dog one last time. Yurt is brought to him. Two days later Mr McClain died. There’s a damp-eyed start […]
Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dying Bed
Now in the time of dying I don’t want nobody to moan All I want my friends to do Come and fold my dying arms Whoa Whoa well so I can die easy Whoa Whoa well so I can die easy Whoa Whoa well so I can die easy Jesus gonna make up my dying […]
RT @GoodFunerals
Impasse between FD and DWP, so the funeral couldn’t go ahead. Who’s the villain here? http://bit.ly/jnbYCO “When the crem curtains closed, all that remained was a pair of thongs.” – http://bit.ly/iFXvtb “Even departed ones born during Stone Age would surely love this insanely crazy idea” : http://bit.ly/miHmG1 Levertons always have a coffin ready for a royal –http://bit.ly/mBmkei SCI […]
I have seen the future and it doesn’t work
The ability to transmute base metal into gold is a very neat trick. So neat, in fact that, as the record shows, it has never, for all the perspiration of the world’s best brains since the dawn of time, been accomplished. The reverse is very much easier, and this is the specialism of today’s alchemists […]
Jaw war
Dear Supporter The Daily Mail is running a poll for a limited amount of time asking ‘Was the BBC right to screen an assisted suicide?’ If you do not think that the BBC should have screened an assisted suicide, please VOTE ‘NO’ NOW (Scroll down the article, about a quarter of the way down there […]
Who wants to be history?
Thomas Friese, an old friend of this blog who has often made us sit up and think hard about memorialisation (commemoration if your prefer the perfectly good old school word) breezed into my inbox yesterday and again today with some characteristically thought provoking ideas. His ideas derived from a tomb in Mount Olivet, Nashville and […]
