The presence of the dead is essential
We bear mortality by bearing mortals — the living and the dead — to the brink of a uniquely changed reality: Heaven or Valhalla or Whatever Is Next. We commit and commend them into the nothingness or somethingness, into the presence of God or God’s absence. Whatever afterlife there is or isn’t, human beings have […]
Funerals must address dreams, too
In an excellent article in the Christian Century, the Rev Samuel Wells, an American, describes taking a British funeral. There are lessons here for clergy, funeral celebrants and undertakers. And so it was that I was called to preside at the funeral of Michael. Michael had had a difficult life. He had Duchenne muscular dystrophy. […]
Reaching the Fathers
The second in a series of guest posts which consider the question, ‘What is the purpose of a funeral?’ by Jenny Uzzell The first ‘purpose’ of funerals that I am going to consider is the one that, arguably, has the least relevance to most people in the modern western world. For most of human history […]
A eulogy sandwich is not enough to nourish grief
As Jenny Uzell embarks on a series of posts which will consider the knotty question, What Is A Funeral For? it’s worth reflecting on what has been a game of two halves, funeralwise, in the last fortnight. Two people have expressed contrasting approaches to a funeral. First, there was Dave Smith, who arranged the funeral […]
The Purpose of Funerals: Overview
The first in a major series of posts by guest blogger Jenny Uzell, scholar and undertaker One of the highlights of the National Funeral Exhibition for me earlier this year (other than the chance to contemplate, yet again, the many ways in which my life has taken an unexpected turn for the bizarre) was hearing […]
What would you like to see on your TV?
When media people phone the press office here at the GFG-Batesville Shard, their requests for information often conform to whatever they suppose to be trending. “We’re doing something on living funerals. Are these catching on?” “No.” “We’re doing a documentary about the dying process and we want to film someone actually dying. Can you help […]
I like large funerals, they’re so intimate
Posted by Richard Rawlinson “I like large parties, they’re so intimate. At small parties, there isn’t any privacy.” With this memorable quip in The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald captures the emptiness of Jordan Baker, one of the flappers who attend the parties at the mansion of Jay Gatsby. A great thing about The Great Gatsby […]
Funeral attendance in a transient, modern world
Posted by Richard Rawlinson (who is 100 today) The love between husband and wife or parent and child is natural, bred into us over millions of years. Not so friendship, apparently. Until farms and villages started to appear around 35,000 years ago, people allegedly refused to talk to each other, networks of friends being anathema. Fast […]
Born on a barge and borne to his final resting place on a barge
Walter Harrison was born on the coal barge Baron in July 1921. He lived on the canal for 30 years and worked on the waterways for much of his life. Family and friends of the pensioner, known as Wally, followed the coffin along the towpath. Full story here.
That bloody box
“This was a funeral that celebrated unity. Like all other funerals. That bloody box: the awful finality: the dreadful unduckable certainty that life has to come to an end. So of course it was the same today. We knew she was dead, and all of us, no matter how little interest we take in politics, […]
