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 […]
We gonna celebrate your party with you… (Kool and the Gang)
Posted by Sweetpea Am I alone in sensing a nasty niff? The vague whiff, perhaps, of a fashionable diktat in the air? I know it’s not really the done thing, but I have to confess to feeling a little oppressed by the phrase ‘celebration of life’. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a celebratory kinda […]
Top Ten Tips for arranging a funeral
Posted by Moss At the risk of seeming rather tabloid, especially during a difficult period for the press, we recently produced a list of tips for people who are arranging or planning a funeral. I presented this to a group of hospice workers and bereavement professionals who had a number of good suggestions to make, […]
Laughing it off
I’m not supposed to be here (see previous post) but I can’t resist abandoning packing my water wings for a moment in order to give vent to what may or may not be justified crossness. Funerals have, by many people who ought to know better, been subjected to a reductio ad absurdum: three songs and […]
Fogey funerals
There are two ways of looking at it – aren’t there always? Either funerals, by loosening up, jettisoning the f-word and calling themselves celebrations of life, are becoming more meaningful, more expressive of what people want to express; or they have become merely conventions of gaudily-clad denialists engaged in an altogether silly and fruitless buck-u-uppo […]
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 […]
Quakers get down to earth
A couple of months ago I was contacted by Quaker Social Action and invited to a planning group whose remit was the support of people in London on low incomes needing to arrange a funeral. I wasn’t able to go, to my ire. Sue Gill and John Fox* were speaking. I’ve never met them. The […]
Death is cruel and death is ugly
What happens to the human body when the last spark of life has gone? Most people would probably answer: it is cremated or laid in a coffin to decompose under the ground. However, a closer look reveals this to be a very limited view. For there is in fact a wide range of possibilities between […]
