Missing the point
“We don’t want the wedding to be a happy, jolly occasion. No, we want it to be a lament; an elegy for everything lost. Marriage marks a beginning, yes, but also an ending, a parting from family, a distancing from friends, the loss of personal sovereignty, the extinction of the old way of life. If […]
Variety’s the spice of death
Secular celebrants congratulate themselves on delivering better funerals than ordained ministers. They think they do because people tell them they do. They risk complacency. A secular ceremony is often reckoned better than a religious one not so much for what it does as for what it doesn’t. Remove god and the dead person is free […]
Killing time
Wherever dead people go they are freed from time. It’s our apprehension of this that adds to our sense of their elsewhereness and convinces us that they will not be coming back. It adds to the mystery, too. It is difficult to conceive of timeless existence, much easier to explain death in terms of annihilation. […]
A great day out — and a heartfelt apology
If there was a conference organiser of the year award, it would go to Julie Dunk – technical officer and conference manager of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management – and her partner, Blue. The reason, probably, why there is no such award is that Julie and Blue would win it every year. […]
Joining up dying to funerals
It was very good to hear yesterday from Donna Belk, a home funeral pioneer and enabler in Texas. How I like that term ‘home funeral’ — preferable by far to the UK term ‘DIY funeral’ with all its associations of bodge, muddle, panic and a late night visit from the emergency electrician. Not that […]
What does dying feel like? 3
In general it’s irresponsible, contemptible, to adopt the role of helpless bystander. We don’t like helpless bystanders. Their body language is all wrong, so are their faces. Sometimes, though, you’ve just got to be one. When the plumber calls I serenade him with cups of coffee and ingratiating solicitude, then vamoose, trusting and helpless. What […]
Silly stunt
Co-op Funeralcare are always on the lookout for little PR stunts to get a pic + 75 words into the local paper — heart of the community stuff: a little sponsored run here, a coffee morning and open day there, and sixty quid raised for charity. Nothing wrong in that. No one ever got successful […]
You say it best when you…
At yesterday’s funeral I invited people in the audience to have their say after they’d listened to tributes from the family. I tried to make it easy. I gave them time to think about it in advance, acknowledged that speaking in public is hard, invited them to speak from where they were sitting and reminded […]
Making a killing
There’s a lot of eco-angst out there as the banks go bust and the economy takes on the aspect of a clown car. At times like this I thought bankers threw themselves out of windows, the useless idiots. What’s stopping them? It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. House prices are freefalling and […]
Good grief!
A ceremony to mark the end of a marriage. A funeral for a marriage. What do you think? The concept comes to us from (I think) Australia, the country which pioneered the secular funeral ceremony. One practitioner in this field is Jennifer Cram. I wonder how may others there are? Of course, if you’re into […]
