Though rain berated the street
An Taoiseach Enda Kenny carries the coffin of his mother Eithne from the Church of the Holy Rosary in Castlebar yesterday, assisted by his brothers John and Henry and his nephew, Henry Jnr. THEY came in their thousands to pay respect to her loved ones, and though rain berated the street outside all morning long, […]
Wants out
Since a stroke six years ago Tony Nicklinson’s life has been, in his own words, ‘dull, miserable, demeaning, undignified and intolerable’. Tony can only move his head and his eyes. He has locked-in syndrome. And now he wants to die. In fact, he’s demanding the same right to end his life that any able-bodied person has. But […]
Sal-ute
Yesterday’s funeral of mafia aristo Salvatore ‘Sal the Ironworker’ Montagna was notable for the thinness of the attendance — in contrast to the hundreds who turned up to say farewell to Nicolo Rizzuto Sr in November last year. Montagna was shot last Thursday as he left a house on Ile Vaudry. Mortally wounded, leapt into […]
The right job for a good person
Quaker Social Action’s Down to Earth project in the Ease End of London is a practical service helping people living on low incomes to have the funeral they want at a price they can afford. They are brilliant and they have asked us to bring your attention to this vacancy: Development worker — £25,005 – 36 hours, […]
Angelina Jolie a funeral director?
Sometimes you have a tantalising glimpse of what might have been. If things had turned out differently, the path less travelled chosen, Angelina Jolie could have been a Funeral Director. In an interview recently, the actor said that: It sounds like this very strange, eccentric, dark thing to do but in fact I lost […]
Burning news
Two interesting crematorium stories for you. The Sydney Morning Herald, in a story colourfully titled Crematoriums add corpse power to electricity grid, reports that Durham (Eng) crematorium is planning to “use the heat generated during cremation to provide enough electricity to power 1500 televisions. A third burner is to be used to heat the site’s chapel […]
Taha Muhammed Ali
In October a great Palestininian poet died. Taha Muhammed Ali was self taught and, all his life, earned his living as a shopkeeper in Nazareth. He was witness all of the agonies and upheavals of the time – but but when he thought of his own death dreamt only of sleep and tea. Here’s the […]
US Funerals Online Seeing a Huge Increase in the Number of People Looking to Compare Funeral Prices
Posted by Charles Are there, we wonder, any lessons British undertakers can learn from this article on PRWeb: Many funeral homes today have their own websites, but most of these seem to have forgotten to include information about the one thing that is on most people’s mind. How much does a funeral cost? There is […]
Where do you stand on funeral pyres?
The Natural Death Centre, veteran pioneer of the better, greener funerals movement, passionately and vocally campaigns for open-air cremation on sustainably sourced wood pyres. If you want to find out why, be patient, I’ll give you the link in a minute. Where do you stand on funeral pyres? Do you embrace them or would you […]
Police arrest dead man at his own funeral
There’s a lovely story in today’s Mail about the funeral of a runaway solicitor, Andrew Paterson, who died from a heart attack on the beach at (nice way to) Goa. Paterson was on the run from the old bill. Had been since 1987 when the long arm almost caught up with him in the matter […]
