What hospitals advise the bereaved
If dying really is “an awfully big adventure” an NHS hospital seems an unpropitious point of departure. Most of us don’t want to die in one; most of us (58 per cent) will. Most of us think home is the best place. What’s not so well known is that many of those who have cared […]
The Dead – Billy Collins
The Dead The dead are always looking down on us, they say, while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich, they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven as they row themselves slowly through eternity. They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth, and buy discount cialis […]
DADBA
There’s a nicely written piece over at Obit magazine, a review of a new book, The Truth About Grief: The Myth of Its Five Stages and the New Science of Loss (Simon & Schuster), by Ruth Davis Konigsberg. It’s probably worth reading. It’s a demolition job on certain schools of bereavement counselling — those informed […]
Normalising death
Back in 2008 neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick, in his book The Art of Dying, made this observation: ‘There are plenty of papers about palliative care and pain control, but very few about the mental states during the dying process.’ It’s something that’s often discussed, the un-joined-upness of dying and death, even in hospices. The National Council […]
The aloneness of the bereaved
I was struck by this post by a blogger in Canada concerning the aloneness of the bereaved. In this case, it’s Helmut Schmidt, former Chancellor of Germany, at the funeral of his wife of 64 years, Loki. She died on 21 October aged 91. The funeral was on 1 November.
No going back
That modern death has failed to find its place on the continuum of ordinary life events is something we all recognise and more or less vehemently deplore. For most a funeral is a hermetically sealed, isolated (or devastated) worst-day-of-my-life episode rarely to be recalled, and only then with a shudder. We quarantine the bereaved and […]
Eulogy rides again!
Reports of the death of Eulogy magazine are exaggerated. A little while ago I was rung by its genial editor, Alfred Tong, and informed that the second issue would be available online only. It’s out now, and includes among all sorts of things a sprightly piece by Julian Litten on his preference for burial. Find it here.
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 … […]
The only way round is through
Once upon a time people dreaded dying. They couldn’t be sure it would be painless. They dreaded being dead, too. Some feared the unknown. Others lamented the end of their existence. A very few people had no fear whatever of being dead because they trusted in a joy-drenched afterlife. But even these people dreaded dying. […]
Site I like
There’s interesting work going on over in Boston, Massachusetts. Two women, Ruth Faas and Sue Cross, offer a range of services to the bereaved. They have a reading room where people can sit in comfort and find out about death and dying. They offer advice and contacts to those wanting a green or self-managed funeral. […]
