Ash astray
A man suffered humiliation and distress at the hands of an airport security agent when she insisted on opening a jar containing his grandfather’s remains and then dropped them on the floor. John Gross, of Indianapolis, was trying to bring Mario Mark Marcaletti’s ashes home from Florida and had them in his bag in a […]
New life for dead house
For sale, a beach hut fit for an undertaker, Goth or melancholic. It’s the old mortuary at Saltburn-by-the-sea, it comes with its original slab, it’s Grade 2 listed and it’s on the market, guide price unknown. For further details, contact Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council. Hat tip Tony Piper
Deathbed marijuana
From NorthJersey.com: As a funeral director, Joseph Stevens regularly heard mourners talk about how they had purchased marijuana on the street to ease their dying loved ones’ suffering. They would mention how the drug improved their ailing relatives’ quality of life during the last weeks of their lives. Marijuana provides relief to people on their […]
Mourning glory
By our funeral historian, Richard Rawlinson Ashes into Glass is a jewellery company that inserts cremation ashes into crystal glass rings, pendants, earring and cufflinks. See the results here “It has helped me feel a little calmer about losing my dear Mum by knowing that a little part of her is always with me,” says Teresa Evans […]
Ready, steady, gone.
“Most of us do not want to die in the ICU tethered to tubes — not the quality of life we expect. Yet only 30 percent of us have made arrangements to prevent this from happening. Death and dying is a tough subject for us to broach. Be aware that very few of us will […]
There but for the grace…
From the Sun, 18 July: An undertaker with Britain’s biggest funeral firm has been arrested on suspicion of snatching a dead gran’s savings. Former Co-operative Funeralcare worker Grahame Lawler, 37, is suspected of rifling through the pensioner’s household belongings less than an hour after she died. Could happen to any funeral director? The Sun understands […]
Thoughts of a funeral-goer
Posted by Lyra Mollington It turns out that I am a terrible patient. My sister Myra used to be a nurse so this wasn’t a winning combination. Mr M collected me on Saturday and I’m recuperating at home. Thankfully I’m no longer confined to my bed although walks on the common are out of the question […]
Sharp rise in Pauper’s funerals
Posted by Vale You’d be forgiven for thinking that Oliver Twist is in a workhouse somewhere asking for more. It seems extraordinary in 2012 that there are headlines like this in the Daily Telegraph this week, followed by the stark (and slightly ludicrous) quote from Kate Woodthorpe of the University of Bath that it is: […]
The Deciphering
Posted by Vale The Deciphering How busy we are with the dead in their infancy, who are still damp with the sweat of their passing, whose hair falls back to reveal a scar. We think of wiping their skin, attending them in the old way, but are timid, ignorant. We walk from the high table […]
Library of dust
Posted by Vale Oregon State Insane Asylum closed in the 1970s after operating for nearly a hundred years. Over that time inmates died, were cremated and their remains, stored in copper canisters, were stored uncollected. The photographer David Maisel has made a photographic record of them. He writes: The approximately 3,500 copper canisters have a […]
