Bringing death to life
Like you, I haven’t a clue what this ‘ere Big Society is all about. They say, I think, that it’s all about empowerment. It sounds more like the government walking off the job. It certainly means less of everything and of course it’s entirely like politicians to try and kid us that less = more. […]
Two o’clock in the morning
Seventy per cent of us want to die at home, surveys tell us. Probably ninety-eight percent of us, having cared like mad for a dying person, want the corpse out of the house as soon as possible no matter what time of day or night. I don’t get it. Why the hurry?
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 […]
The sacred and the propane
It was a deepseated thing, this duty we felt we owed our dead. A sacred duty – literally. It goes back to the beginning of time. Throughout human history the dead body has always been treated in accordance with sacred diktat, its valedictory hullabaloos performed by shaman or sorcerer, soothsayer or priest. For the full […]
If only they knew…
There’s a new blog over in the US which describes itself as “a revealing look from beneath the veil of silence. The purpose of this blog is to bring truth to funeral consumers, which is often masked by an industry driven by profits. What makes this site different? The creator is a licensed funeral director […]
Death is cruel and death is ugly
What happens to the human body when the last spark of life has gone? Most people would probably answer: it is cremated or laid in a coffin to decompose under the ground. However, a closer look reveals this to be a very limited view. For there is in fact a wide range of possibilities between […]
Monday shorts
Death Ref got there first Time was when I could tuck a story away for a slow news day and not give a thought to any other death blogger getting there first. Can’t do that any more. The story I had been saving up for today has, I see, already been aired on the excellent […]
Shovel-and-shoulder work
The words that follow are by Thomas Lynch, a hero to so many of us in the UK. (In the US there are those who reckon him paternalistic, but we don’t need to go into that. It’s complicated.) Funerals are about the living and the dead — the talk and the traffic between them … […]
Ghoul, calm and collected
For a death-averse people who shut their eyes tight to mortality, the Halloween look is not a good look. But children thrill to it; caring parents wickedly, gigglingly co-conspire. Much of the imagery is so graphically horrifying I’d have thought it would reduce children (and some adults) to lasting gibbering mental breakdown. But it doesn’t. May […]
Really getting real
When Americans decide to do things differently, it seems to me, they make a clean break. Brits, on the other hand, carry over a lot of familiar stuff from the past. I mean, how often does a natural burial ground witness a scene like this? And which has the courage of its environmental convictions and […]
