‘I want the world to see what they did to my baby’
From The Star, Toronto: If Americans knew what bullets did to human flesh, they’d support gun control. So perhaps they should be shown in living colour what bullets do to small bodies. A mere description is insufficient for the literal-minded. Noah Pozner, 6, was one of the 20 child victims in the Sandy Hook shooting […]
A ceremony of ashes
Posted by Vale We could do with thinking more about what the scattering of ashes. A while ago Evelyn published a wonderful post on the blog (find it here) about scattering Muriel’s ashes in an ‘open, high place’, and I came across this poem recently by Edward Storey. It’s a record of a committal, a wonderful […]
Funeral for a peacock
Carmella B’Hahn, of Bowden House Community, near Totnes, has allowed us to share here her letter to friends about the death and funeral of her significant companion-animal. I feel compelled to write about a happening here that has touched me to the core. Many visitors to Bowden House will have encountered an iridescent display of […]
Great myths of Funeralworld
Posted by Richard Rawlinson No. 1: The committal is when the curtains of the crematorium’s catafalque close. The final committal is when the ashes from a cremated body are buried in an urn, or perhaps ceremoniously scattered to the wind. Or, of course, when the body is buried intact in a coffin, cutting out the […]
The price of a good pic
The subject of this photo, taken after the shootings in Newtown, Conn, says: “I sat there in a moment of devastation with my hands in prayer pose asking for peace and healing in the hearts of men. I was having such a strong moment and my heart was open, and I started to cry. “All […]
What we learn
“We quit this life without fanfare or flourish. We die as we live: simply, unadorned, and unknowing with little more true understanding of deeper meanings than that with which we entered this world.” Source
Post-mortem
Source “Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has cast up in my time or is like to — this art by which even the poor can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of […]
Sarco turns up in Northumberland garden
A retired couple in Northumberland have discovered that an unregarded planter in their garden is in fact a Roman sarcophagus dating from the first or second century AD. They stand to make £100,000 by selling it at auction. Full story in the Daily Mail here. FACT: The word ‘sarcophagus’ derives from the ancient Greek word ‘sarkophagos’, […]
The biggest social issue coming down the pipe
From an article in last Sunday’s Sunday Times: You may not be part of Britain’s 6.4m-strong army of carers yet, but if your parents are still alive, the dilemmas surrounding how to look after them as they get older will surely come. Future Identities, a government report published last week, drew attention to what one expert calls the […]
Add the GFG blog to your Facebook torrent
You can have the GFG blog spewed into your Facebook feed if that’s how you’d rather ‘consume’ your deathnews. Type, er… hang on a minute… ah, yes, ‘Good Funeral Guide’ into the searchbox, go to the page, and ‘like’ it. Brings a refreshing chill to the heedless merriment of your ‘friends’. Don’t forget that you […]
