Thoughts of a funeral-goer
Posted by Lyra Mollington Before Daisy met Barry, they had both been unlucky in love. Daisy’s unhappy marriage ended when her husband dropped dead of a heart attack. Barry’s wife left him and he discovered that their marriage had also been an unhappy one. With the events of recent weeks we have found out quite […]
News roundup
Funeralworld tends to be a very quiet, even dull, place — well, in Britain it is. And perhaps we should be grateful for that. If we glance over at our friends in the US we find much more goes on. In the last few days… A hearse driver died while taking a body to a […]
What a smashing funeral!
Posted by Richard Rawlinson I’m revisiting a post by Charles in January about whether a funeral can ever accommodate the venting of chaotic feelings generated by death. If so, what behaviour can be ‘officially’ appropriated: formalised wailing, hurling plates against a wall, a punch bag in the vestibule, or even a bout of fisticuffs between mourners? […]
Busybody nonsense update
A quick update on the attempt by Christopher Harris to persuade Woodstock council to abandon its requirement that ‘all interments [of ashes] … must be arranged by an approved professional firm’ We foregathered in the council chamber. Green baize-covered table, mace thereon, oil portraits of worthies from various lost ages, Union Jack, evening sunlight streaming […]
Stat of the day: cost of living
22 per cent of all health spending goes to people in their last year of life.
Do animals have souls?
Cat-loving cleric and huge character George Callender, one of the GFG’s favourite and most admired funeral celebrants/ministers, talks here on Channel 4’s 4thought about what happens to our pets when we die. Sorry, we can’t embed it. “I have officiated at many pet funerals over the years, and I believe that animals, like us, when they die, […]
This is for everyone
Posted by Belinda Forbes, celebrant. For some of the participants, when an event as life-changing as the Olympics finishes, it is like a bereavement. So it was appropriate that at the Closing Ceremony on Sunday evening Eric Idle performed Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life. This is a song which I have been asked to […]
Busybody nonsense
Christopher Harris Some time this evening Christopher Harris will deliver the following speech to Woodstock Town Council, calling upon it to strike out its requirement that the interment of his father’s ashes be superintended by a funeral director. Here’s another example of someone tenaciously pursuing the rights of the bereaved with an important test case. […]
Switched off but still sparking
Today’s theme is ashes, by the way. In her brilliant book Making an Exit, which not nearly enough of you have read, the author, Sarah Murray, plans her own dispersal. First, she wants to be resomated and reduced to the pure white ‘ash’ characteristic of the process. What next? Scattering, of course, for cremation is, and […]
As you get older your friends start to die.
Posted by Sue Gill We’ve been to some truly awful funerals and I’m sure we’re not alone in that. Sometimes the ceremonies were healing, but more often they were formulaic and irrelevant, and we left feeling sometimes angry, sometimes guilty, frequently in despair. That’s what compelled us to write the Dead Good Funerals Book, to offer […]
