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 […]
The difference between you and it
I think we’ve all done some good hard thinking, over the last few months, about the value and role of the dead body at a funeral. The discussion of this, and other matters, has elicited some extremely interesting ideas and some statements which, to my eyes, look likely to become axioms. I’m thinking of Gloria […]
Maggie Brinklow on what makes a good funeral
Everyone agrees that choice in funeral arrangements is a good thing. Even the UK’s most Jurassic undertakers are nodding their heads fervently on this one. They’ve come round at last (sort of). It’s the mantra in Funeralland: Personalisation x 3 (I can’t be bothered to type it). There’s money in it, of course. Because personalisation […]
A trappist funeral
From the Salt Lake Tribune: Brother Felix McHale, one of the founders of Utah’s 63-year-old Trappist monastery, was sent out of this world Tuesday the same way he lived: simply. After a funeral Mass in the chapel at the Abbey of the Holy Trinity, Felix was lowered into his grave on a plywood slab, taking […]
Ambivalence 1
Interesting, isn’t it, how two contrary opinions need not be mutually exclusive? When one opinion does not displace the other you’re left either tonguetied with indecision or, if they merge, ambivalent. Ambivalence may be seen as fence-sitting, but I think that’s simplistic. To honour two opposed points of view equally seems to me to be […]
