Endgame
Interesting, isn’t it, how myopically self-absorbed people become when glancing forward to their demise. “Stick me in a binbag and put me out with the rubbish,” they say, men mostly. It’s right up there now in the top ten death clichés alongside “He’s gone to a better place,” “It’s only a shell,” and “She will […]
Second hand truth
“God, this is awful,” I mutter under my breath to my cousin who is sitting beside me on the pew at the front of the chapel. The funeral celebrant, who had never met my mother, is reading the eulogy. On top of everything else, she has a monotonous voice and is droning on about someone […]
Chirpy chirpy tweet tweet
I’ve taken to twittering. Not like a duck to water, you understand; you either get it or you don’t and I’m not sure that I do, so I’m not waving but bobbing. You follow someone doing something funereal and potentially interesting and chances are you get a torrent of repetitious, self-serving chimp-jabber. So having bobbed […]
If music be the food of grief
I’m doing a funeral next Monday. I didn’t know one of the songs they want, so I when I got back from seeing them I called up my faithful friend Spotify and played it through to get acquainted. And to get the running time, of course. As the song began to play, the written words […]
Give me champagne!
William Price on his deathbed Good piece here on William Price, the father of cremation. If ever there was a more colourful life… The title of this post quotes his last words
Bloggledegook
Hiring a funeral service director to deal with all the arrangements for the deceased is a sensible idea. Not only is it affordable but it could take away some of the mental stress that comes with coping with the deceased. The garments, shoes, sock as well as the type of studs to use may seem […]
Famous last moments
Here is a minuscule excerpt from a wonderful, sonorous account of the death of ex-President Ulysses S Grant. It’s not what we get any more, is it, the last deathbed moments of celebs and justifiably famous people? How, when we think of it, we wish we did. Public figures die so much more privately in […]
Life is like…
“Life is like a movie; no one ever wants to walk out in the middle of a movie. But in the end we all do that.” More quotes, please, beginning Life is like… and also getting to the poignant truth, as the quote above does. C’mon, kickstart that brain! Keep Herr Dr Alzheimer from the […]
Somewhere between all and nothing
An email arrives – an enquiry. Can we transport the body ourselves? Do we have to use an undertaker? The enquirer is not limbering up for a home-arranged funeral some time in the imminent future. No, the death has already happened. The undertaker’s men came to take the body away. Their spooky lugubriousness horrified my […]
It takes two taboos
The connection between sex and death is well known. If you want to muse on it further, there’s a pretty good article in the Encyclopaedia of Death and Dying. If you don’t, please don’t read the rest of this post. It’s dirty, you’ll think. Offensive. Come back tomorrow. Which brings us, with a single bound, […]
