Bhupen Hazarika: A funeral larger than Diana’s
Did you know that earlier today, in the Indian state of Assam, a funeral was held that was expected to be the one of the largest the world has seen in recent years? Yesterday the Times of Assam reported that: Unofficial sources have claimed that the number has already crossed the number of attendees who […]
A Catholic take on funeral diversity
Posted by Richard Rawlinson First, may I thank this blog’s host for encouraging me to think about my own expectations of funerals as a Catholic. One readily assumes theists and atheists approach funerals differently, just as we part ways on the subject of the soul’s life after the body’s death. Some non-believers might find following […]
The Importance of Being Urnest
That Brits are born with an acute and possibly pathological sensitivity to absurdity is well known. The Great American Funeral has engendered great and gloriously funny books by Jessica Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, neither of which had more than minimal success in laughing Americans out of their (perceived) absurdity. There is method in the funerary lunacies of […]
Give me champagne!
William Price on his deathbed Good piece here on William Price, the father of cremation. If ever there was a more colourful life… The title of this post quotes his last words
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 […]
Zombie journalism
Here’s some nasty journalistic furystirring from the Daily Mail under the headline Councils to stockpile bodies to cut the costs of cremation Bodies will be stockpiled for cremation under new rules to cut costs and carbon emissions. Rather than being cremated straight after a funeral, corpses will be stored for days in coffins or body bags […]
Promession and cryomation go head-to-head at the ICCM
The prospect of Promession, the brainchild of Susanne Wiighe-Masak, has been around for a few years now. It offers an extremely attractive alternative to cremation. It is clean. It is gentle. Above all, it enables us to return to the earth in an environmentally useful way. If you want to remind yourself how it works, […]
They think it’s all over…
It’s interesting to note that two of the most important drivers for change in modern funerals have come, not from pro-active consumers or wild-eyed visionaries, but from urgent if mundane economic and environmental needs. They are, famously, natural burial and’ less famously, the held-over cremation. Ken West, for all that he is a visionary, made […]
A Good Send Off
A Good Send Off was the title of this year’s Centre for Death and Society (CDAS) annual conference. Well, part of the title – the snappy part. In full it read: A Good Send Off: Local, Regional & National Variations in how the British Dispose of their Dead. It took place last Saturday in Bath. […]
Cremation: an alternative to burial or an alternative to bother?
There’s a fine new essay by Thomas Lynch in the The Christian Century. It’s as wonderfully well written as you’d expect – seductively so. Much of what he says about the modern funeral he has said before: that it “too often replaces theology with therapy, conviction with convenience.” Here are some extracts to whet your […]
