Rebranding the Dismal Trade
Funeral directors know that they are viewed with suspicion, aversion, distrust. It’s what they do that lies at the root of this – the dark art of dealing with dead bodies. Yuk. How different they are from us. We don’t like people who are different from us. But most people express their feelings about funeral […]
The terrible price of longevity
Here’s an incredibly powerful and superbly written account from the New York Times about the consequences of life-extending interventions by medics. It begins: One October afternoon three years ago while I was visiting my parents, my mother made a request I dreaded and longed to fulfill. She had just poured me a cup of Earl Grey […]
Death Matters
I don’t know if you ever wander over to Death Matters. It’s a descriptive title for a website and blog which is trying to awaken in a death-denying people a full and informative awareness of their mortality – in order that they may live better and remember better. It’s a one-person enterprise. We don’t know […]
Glarin’ or hollerin’?
Since most progressive developments in funerals are reinventions of or reversions to past practice, it’s always a good idea, now and then, to peer into the mists of history and see if there’s anything that can be plucked out, dusted down and dressed up for the 21st century. The funeral mute, for example. Men dressed […]
Last-chance snap
Sweet story here from Georgia, USA recounted in the Monticello News: A cousin of mine, Larry Lynch, was in college with a young man from deep south Georgia in the “piney woods” section of our state. The young man told of the death of his grandfather several years back. When grandfather died the neighbors […]
Looking like death
Most people don’t reckon to look their best when they’re dead, but this was not how the status conscious citizens of Palermo in Italy saw it. Starting in 1599 the Capuchin friars were mummified or embalmed, then displayed, standing, in the catacombs beneath their friary. The idea appealed to the wealthy citizens of Palermo, who […]
Different cultures, different customs
Phero Tran Tieu’s Funeral from Joseph Pham on Vimeo.
The Art of Dying
Is death really a taboo in our society? It’s a strong word, taboo, and I don’t know that it’s the right one. If there is a reluctance to confront death it is just as likely that it is because we are all having such fun being alive and feeling healthy. Reaper G is a spoilsport. […]
It’s only a rehearsal
Here’s an interesting practice. In South Korea, where rapid industrialisation has generated societal angst and personal dysfunction—things capitalism taught us here in the UK ages ago—a Mr Ko Min-su has devised a training course in which participants rehearse their own death. The purpose is to teach them to re-evaluate their priorities and value their lives. […]
The Grim Reaper requests the pleasure…
This blog is going for a few days’ holiday by the sea on its island home somewhere in the English Channel. For the duration its thoughts will, unwontedly, be with the living (ie, those who have not yet died). But it undertakes to return in dead earnest. Mortified? Then while away some of the time […]
