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 […]
Better dead than alive
Going through my stats, researching for a blog post, I saw that someone had clicked through a link I did not recognise. So I clicked through myself and found this wonderful account of embalming excellence at Harlem-based Owens Funeral Home “where beauty softens grief” . I used it in a blog post so long ago […]
Embalming: a matter not of if but when
Nobody I can think of would dispute the assertion that it’s good for the bereaved to spend time with their dead, contemplating their absence – what I like to call their very present absence. There is a debate about how dead a person should look. Some people want to spend time with an embalmed, cosmetised […]
Hardening of the heart
What happens to the minds of those who deal with death every day? How do they cope with the endless procession of grieving people and dead bodies? Is it emotionally healthy to specialise in death? Isn’t undertaking something best combined with a therapeutic something else – a little landscape gardening or, in the case of […]
Fast track to eternity
Clever guy, that Shakespeare. He foresaw the viral capability of the internet long before the invention of the penny post. Here’s Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “I’ll put a girdle around the Earth in 40 minutes!” Which is as long as it took young gunshot victim David Morales Colón to travel around the world […]
Skulduggery
Hat-tip to FuneralWise.com for this cheerful story: In Guatemala City, morticians called skullmongers speed to murder scenes looking to snag customers. When rival firms meet on the street, price wars ensue. Some skullmongers offer combos: a coffin, a wake and a funeral for as little as $150. Some mongers even receive tips about murders […]
The Undertaking
The Undertaking is a documentary about Lynch and Sons, the funeral home in Milford, Michigan, which is also home to Thomas Lynch, the man whose writings and poetry have greatly influenced the thinking of so many of us in the UK. It’s a marvellous piece of work. Watch it in its entirety, free, here.
The truth, the half-truth and nothing of the truth
Good word, embalm. Its vowels and its consonants are gentle, emollient, reposeful. Balm. Calm. Serene. Peace, perfect peace. It definitely sounds like a nice thing to do to a dead body, yes? Undertakers hold the view that there are things we don’t need to know and they may even have a point, if what they […]
