Quote of the day
“I suppose it’s a cliché to say you’re glad to be alive, that life is short, but to say you’re glad to be not dead requires a specific intimacy with loss that comes only with age or deep experience. One has to know not simply what dying is like, but to know death itself, in […]
Free the Ison Four!!
What on earth is going on, we ask ourselves, at Henry Ison and Sons, Coventry? Laurel Funerals has suspended four members of staff, including two funeral directors and a hearse driver. We have fearlessly hunted down two of the accused and… well, we wonder, we really do. They have no objection to being highlighted here. In […]
Participation is transformative
From an article by Cassandra Yonder, home funeral guide and death midwife: The difference between home and “traditional” funerals is subtle yet significant. When families choose to stay present to care for their loved ones in death they come to understand in a real and meaningful way that the physical relationship they had with the […]
In Memory
Andras Schram, the maker, says: 7 years ago I lost my grand father, I was unable to make it to his funeral as I was travelling. The first moment I had a chance I visited his grave. It was late fall in Hungary and as I looked around I saw how beautiful the light was […]
The austerity effect
In austerity-hit, cash-strapped Spain, body donation is up, funeral costs are down and people can no longer afford to pay the rent on family graves. At Son Valenti cemetery, in Palma, Majorca, 6,200 grave owners have defaulted on their annual rent of €10.50 per body, forcing the local municipality to evict entire families from their […]
No more faking it
A fine feminist manifesto here from Grace Mutandwa in the Zimbabwe Standard: A group of my female friends are tired of being stuck in the house during funerals while their boys hang out at the shops and do fun things. The girls want to know why it is cool for the boys to visit the […]
Piece of mind for the man with the plan
There’s an unsparing piece in The Times, 11 November, on financial products associated with funeral planning: Hundreds of thousands of the poorest pensioners are losing thousands of pounds by buying into poor-value funeral planning products offered by some of the most trusted high street names. Funeral benefit plans offered as add-ons to over-50s life insurance […]
Eat up your greens
GFG hero Thomas Long questions the value of happy funerals. “To start at the end – to start at the celebration … without processing the sadness, jumps over steps and in effect paralyses us … If one really wants to be sure that one will remain sadder for longer than necessary, then pretend to be […]
Intolerant of intolerance
Posted by Richard Rawlinson The picketing of military funerals in the US by the Westboro Baptist cult is well-documented. Less so are increasing incidents in Holland of Muslim youths disrupting non-Muslim funerals. One undertaker says youths on bikes stop processions and bang on the roof of the hearse, shouting ‘One dog less’ or ‘Jews, Jews’. The […]
What makes for a ‘bad’ funeral celebrant?
Posted by Carole Renshaw, a civil celebrant The market of Humanists and Celebrants seems to be growing! I’m sure more are spilling out of the training programmes……….than they are withdrawing or giving up the cause! The plethora of new websites……new training provider logos………new leaflets………gives us some confidence that numbers in the profession are on […]
