The order is rapidly fadin’
Blog reader Kathryn Edwards has drawn our attention to an interesting article in the Guardian. Thanks, Kathryn. In it, Rosanna Greenstreet tells how her aunt Molly donated her body for medical education or research, thereby denying everyone the benefit of a funeral. Greenstreet tells us what family and friends did instead: Molly didn’t believe in […]
Quote of the day
“It is costly to our society in general, quite beyond the church, not to observe the death of a person in a way that witnesses to the dignity of the person and the meaning of life and death.” Thomas G Long Source
Doctors need to grieve, too
There’s an interesting piece in the New York Times here about the emotional difficulties doctors experience when working with people who are going to die. People often characterise doctors as cold and uncaring when, in fact, they may simply not be coping: We found that oncologists struggled to manage their feelings of grief with the detachment they […]
What shall we do with the baleful baggists?
“Stick me in a binbag and put me out with the rubbish.” We hear this sentiment voiced so often these days, it’s reached the status of both cultural indicator and cliché. It is a very good way of aborting talk about death and its aftermath, and it is a gambit deployed almost exclusively by men. Why […]
Dead Dad
Brian Appleyard writes: Mueck exhibited only one piece at the Sensation show: Dead Dad, a hyper-realistic sculpture of the corpse of his father. The first shock was that it was little more than half life-size. The second shock was — well, I’ll come back to that. Some years later, Craig Raine, the poet and critic, […]
Philosophy and death
Posted by Vale Yale University is starting to experiment with free open access video based learning. One of the courses it’s offering is run by Shelley Kagan who is Clark Professor of Philosophy at the University. It’s all about death. This is the course introduction: There is one thing I can be sure of: I […]
Politics and funerals
A topical post from our religious correspondent, Richard Rawlinson Timed to counter the low turnout of voters at the mayoral and local council elections last week, did you catch the BBC advertisement challenging political apathy by chronicling how so many everyday activities–from the fat count in our sausages to the safety of cyclists on the […]
Allowing death to arrive naturally, as desired
The sage doctor who stood at the bedside as I held my dying grandmother said, “We seem to die one organ at a time.” I, however, have come to believe that we are too focused on the failing of the organs to rightly perceive the dying of the person. Death comes in many different ways, […]
This morning I stood at my grave…
Posted by Charles Philip Gould, one of the architects and strategists of New Labour, died of cancer at the end of last year. Before he died he bought himself a grave at Highgate cemetery. Below is an extract from his final book, which he finished dictating hours before his death. When I was recovering from […]
The first f***
Posted by Vale A favourite – even hackneyed – funeral song. The words really work though – and it’s the only possible accompaniment to this short video of some of the tributes at Graham Chapman’s memorial service. Was this – as John Cleese claims – really the first f*** at a memorial service? Some things […]
