Super-sacred
Tina Hurley wants to establish a funeral pyre at her home in Elephant Head, Arizona, inspired by the pyre at Crestone. Hurley said she was inspired to create an alternative funeral approach after attending a traditional service for her favorite aunt at a funeral home where she felt compelled to control her emotions. The family then […]
Off with the blinkers
I’ve got a feeling it’s time for a change of direction here at the blog. It doesn’t cost me a great deal of brainpower to keep it going, but it does cost an awful lot of time scouring the internet, panning for gold. Conscientiousness can play funny tricks with a chap. I sit here feeling […]
I’ll be back, sez Prezza
Cessation is a leading signifier of death — discontinuance, expiration, quietus. Not, it seems, if you are a member of the House of Lords (which, the record shows, you are not, you are a commoner, so there). Speaking after being defeated in his bid to be elected as a police commissioner, John Prescott said: “I’m […]
Quote of the day
“I suppose it’s a cliché to say you’re glad to be alive, that life is short, but to say you’re glad to be not dead requires a specific intimacy with loss that comes only with age or deep experience. One has to know not simply what dying is like, but to know death itself, in […]
Free the Ison Four!!
What on earth is going on, we ask ourselves, at Henry Ison and Sons, Coventry? Laurel Funerals has suspended four members of staff, including two funeral directors and a hearse driver. We have fearlessly hunted down two of the accused and… well, we wonder, we really do. They have no objection to being highlighted here. In […]
Participation is transformative
From an article by Cassandra Yonder, home funeral guide and death midwife: The difference between home and “traditional” funerals is subtle yet significant. When families choose to stay present to care for their loved ones in death they come to understand in a real and meaningful way that the physical relationship they had with the […]
In Memory
Andras Schram, the maker, says: 7 years ago I lost my grand father, I was unable to make it to his funeral as I was travelling. The first moment I had a chance I visited his grave. It was late fall in Hungary and as I looked around I saw how beautiful the light was […]
The austerity effect
In austerity-hit, cash-strapped Spain, body donation is up, funeral costs are down and people can no longer afford to pay the rent on family graves. At Son Valenti cemetery, in Palma, Majorca, 6,200 grave owners have defaulted on their annual rent of €10.50 per body, forcing the local municipality to evict entire families from their […]
No more faking it
A fine feminist manifesto here from Grace Mutandwa in the Zimbabwe Standard: A group of my female friends are tired of being stuck in the house during funerals while their boys hang out at the shops and do fun things. The girls want to know why it is cool for the boys to visit the […]
Piece of mind for the man with the plan
There’s an unsparing piece in The Times, 11 November, on financial products associated with funeral planning: Hundreds of thousands of the poorest pensioners are losing thousands of pounds by buying into poor-value funeral planning products offered by some of the most trusted high street names. Funeral benefit plans offered as add-ons to over-50s life insurance […]
