Monday shorts
Death Ref got there first Time was when I could tuck a story away for a slow news day and not give a thought to any other death blogger getting there first. Can’t do that any more. The story I had been saving up for today has, I see, already been aired on the excellent […]
Different cultures, different customs
Here’s how they do it in Swaziland: EZULWINI – The funeral of Ziggy Carvalho was turned into a ‘mini rally’ as mourners watched his friends showing off with their cars. This happened at KaBhelina yesterday morning during a short prayer held at his home. This was before his body was taken to the burial site […]
Thirty funerals in thirty days
Over in Albuquerque, Gail Rubin has set herself the task of attending and writing up thirty funerals in thirty days. She got under way on Saturday. It’s going to make for a very interesting social document. At this stage, of course, many of those whose funerals she will describe are as yet still alive…
The feminine touch
According to Hindu custom it has always been the duty of the eldest son or senior male relative to light a funeral pyre. Here in Britain, it is very rare indeed for a female to be one of the small group to witness a dead person being loaded into the cremator. But, I was interested […]
Really getting real
When Americans decide to do things differently, it seems to me, they make a clean break. Brits, on the other hand, carry over a lot of familiar stuff from the past. I mean, how often does a natural burial ground witness a scene like this? And which has the courage of its environmental convictions and […]
Relieved to be British
Many American funerary practices are so barking mad I don’t bother writing about them. This blog is Britcentric not because it is xenophobic or incurious but simply because it confines itself to goings-on of relevance to Brits. Sure, we’ve picked up one or two bad habits from the US. Embalming may or may not be […]
One to see
There’s an exhibition on at Compton Verney, 13 November til 12 December, entitled Kurt Tong: In Case it Rains in Heaven. It’s a photographic celebration of the Chinese custom of burning paper consumer goods of all sorts — clothes, cars, iPods — in order to provide for the dead person in the afterlife. It’s a custom that probably […]
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 […]
Rite and trite
There’s an interesting article in yesterday’s Guardian about funeral rites in the Church of England Book of Common Prayer (BCP). Here are some tasters: Life expectancy in Tudor England was mid thirties, and about a third of children died before attaining the age of ten. Mortality was very much in the air and on the […]
Something for the weekend
An insight here into the Nigerian way of death. For mankind, death is an inevitable end. Whenever it comes, no matter the age of the dead, pains, sorrow and unquantifiable anguish are its accomplices. Ironically, this is simply not so for those in the business of coffin making and funeral management. While their patrons mourn […]
