More than just a matter of tone
This is an interesting blog post. Here’s a taster: What I hate most at funerals is the tone used by the officiant (almost wrote: the presiding officer). No matter what the religious faith may be, the person in front of the congregation speaks as if he knew … I think it’s the tone of voice […]
Pets and people together forever
It’s intriguing to see what grabs the attention of people, especially when it’s something you don’t, yourself, reckon to be at all eyebrow-raising. Down in Cornwall, Penny Lally at Penwith Woodland Burial Place is burying pets with their owners. So remarkable is this reckoned to be that the story has whizzed round the world in […]
Does mass burial horrify you?
Interesting piece in USA Today on mass graves in Haiti and the importance people attach to marking the spot where their dead are laid – a physical point of connection. “We are hard-wired to want to know where our dead are, whether we believe in a superior being or not,” asserts Curtis Rostad, an Indiana […]
Letting go
Obachan Funeral 2008 from Steven S Friedman on Vimeo. There’s a thought provoking post over at Mindfulness and Mortality about the role of the body at a funeral. Among many other interesting ideas, blogger Gloriamundi articulates this: Somehow, people have to let a body go. It’s very difficult to do, because the life of the […]
On whose authority?
It’s an interesting fact that a funeral director can go to a hospital mortuary and collect a dead person to bring back to their funeral home on the verbal instruction of that dead person’s executor. That’ll be good enough for the mortuary. If a funeral director whom they’ve never seen before turns up, they may […]
Funeralcare screwupdate
Naughty scenes, it seems, recently shattered the reverent if gloomy atmosphere of George Pettit and Son, undertakers to the good people of Chester. At the staff Christmas party all manner of impropriety seems to have been committed. In an admirably tight-lipped and understated report, the Sunday People spells out in caps the words STRIPPING, THONG, […]
Thomas G Long
An interview with Thomas G. Long, author of Accompany Them With Singing – The Christian Funeral. from Westminster John Knox Press on Vimeo. Thomas G Long here, one of this blog’s great heroes. Though he comes at funerals from a Christian viewpoint, most of his ideas have a universal application. He talks about the growing […]
Worst funeral songs #1 – My Way
There was a little light larking at the Dead Interesting blog last week as we debated best funeral songs for atheists. Off the tops of our heads we came up with You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere – Bob Dylan, No God – Darkest Hour, Heaven is a Place on Earth – Belinda Carlisle, and, from Rupert, […]
Some conflict of interest, surely?
Michael Parkinson HM Government Dignity Ambassador for old people, and… …the face behind Sun Life funeral plans, which are… …Co-operative funeral plans. Tut tut.
Singers for Funerals
From their press release: Singers for Funerals is the brainchild of two professional opera singers, mezzo soprano Kirsty Young and soprano Toni Nunn. Both have performer with professional opera companies across the UK and beyond, including Kirsty’s own company, Hatstand Opera. Between them, the two ladies have sung in over 600 venues in the […]
