Remembering a suicide: outward appearances and inner selves
By RR I’ve recently attended the memorial service of a friend I’ll refer to as B, who committed suicide towards the end of last year. He hanged himself with his belt in a hospital room, just an hour after being sectioned following previous attempts to take his own life. Having had an intimate funeral at […]
Funeral wishes are no more than wishful thinking
‘You can decide everything in advance if you wish, down to the kind of music you’d like – and there’s no charge for changing or updating your wishes at a later stage.’ Golden Charter ‘…pre-planning your funeral is actually a thoughtful and responsible way to show that you care your family … your family are spared […]
Window dressing
An email arrived here recently from a person who has been struck by the way undertakers dress their windows. ‘Dreadful’ is one of the adjectives she used, ‘depressing’ another. She’d like to set up a small business and put them right. Whether or not undertakers’ windows are on the whole dressed badly is a matter […]
Famous last words about
“When they told me they were going to induct my friend George Harrison into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame posthumously, my first thought was – I bet he won’t show up.” From Eric Idle’s eulogy to George Harrison
No Time
No Time In a rush this weekday morning, I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery where my parents are buried side by side beneath a slab of smooth granite. Then, all day, I think of him rising up to give me that look of knowing disapproval while my mother calmly tells him […]
All that we are not
Back in the day – it feels like pre-history but it’s only 5 years – there was very little buzz around death (poor metaphor, I know). Now there’s an ear-shattering din. Back then, in a spirit of open-minded curiosity, I’d blog up anything that caught my eye — arty stuff, Goth stuff, silly stuff, serious […]
Groundhog week
22 Jan is reckoned the worst, most depressing day of the year. This week is as bad as it gets. Nodding in agreement? Reasons to be cheerless, according to Dr Cliff Arnall of Cardiff university are: weather, debt, time since Christmas, time since failing new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and the feeling of a need to […]
The stalemate of funeral choice
Posted by Richard Rawlinson Cherishing freedom of speech we often quote the line, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. So democrats proselytise in order to influence others, and sometimes those influenced leave one tribe and join another. A far cry from relativism, the message […]
Philip Treacy remembers Issie Blow
Posted by Richard Rawlinson Running until 2 March at London’s Somerset House, Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore! is an exhibition celebrating the extraordinary life and wardrobe of the late patron of fashion and art. To promote the show, one of her many protégés, milliner Philip Treacy, talks here. As the interview progresses, he gets increasingly emotional as […]
In your prayers
Some sharp comment here in Monday’s Times by David Aaronovitch: Death prattle Pieties are by no means always religious. I don’t know when the practice began in this country of appending “our thoughts are with etc” to any tribute to the recently departed, but it has gone too far. No one can argue with saying […]
