Modern grief 1 — Why teddy bears?
Posted by Charles In a decorous piece of invective in last Friday’s Daily Telegraph, Damian Thompson analyses the way people express grief today, and why: A few weeks after the murders of the schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002, I stood in Soham parish church with the vicar, the Rev Tim Alban Jones. […]
Spoilsport
My father told me that he attended a funeral in the parish of Tuosist, in South Kerry, at the turn of the century. As the coffin was being taken in a cart to the local graveyard at Kilmackillogue, three women keeners sat on top of it, howling and wailing at intervals. The parish priest, on […]
Muffle the bell, put crèpe on the door
Bouquet of Violets by Edouard Manet Posted by Kathryn Edwards AT no time does solemnity so possess our souls as when we stand deserted at the brink of darkness into which our loved one has gone. And the last place in the world where we would look for comfort at such a time […]
Thoughts for Lent
Posted by Richard Rawlinson “I’ve been to funerals where I was pretty sure the majority were atheists and they listened to the vicar say the deceased had gone to a better place and everyone’s toes curled. We can’t prove it’s not so but the chances that it is, are rather meagre. If […]
Publishing event of the year!
The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, […]
Hold up, hold on, stop crying your heart out
In a comment stream following a provocative post by someone or another, probably Richard, our religious correspondent, I suggested that because death generates chaotic feelings, many of which seek to vent themselves in disorderly behaviour, funerals ought to accommodate this. Our brilliant and erudite new commenter, Jenny Uzzell, reckons there’s no call for it. Well, […]
Secular shiva
There’s an interesting article about grieving in the New York Times. The writer describes an accidental discovery of the value of secular shiva. First, what’s shiva? Named after the Hebrew word for “seven,” shiva is a weeklong mourning period, dating back to biblical times, in which immediate family members welcome visitors to their home […]
Death Cafe
Do you follow Death Cafe? If you don’t, you really ought to pop across and check it out; it’s brilliant. It doesn’t have have an agenda or a campaigning platform; it doesn’t address itself to a particular constituency or type or sect. It believes, I hope I’m right in surmising, that death should be part of general discourse. So […]
Remembering Josh
“REMEMBERING JOSH” is a film that records the life of our son Josh, as it was remembered at his funeral early in 2011. Josh Edmonds died in a road accident in while traveling South East Asia in January 2011. He was 22 years old. Our film is both a tribute to him, with many wonderful […]
Brutally creative chaos
You may remember this post, The Chaos of Meaning, about the photographic essay which Jimmy Edmonds created in commemoration of his son Josh. If you missed it, click the link and go see it; it’s rare that we are lucky enough to post anything so extraordinary and beautiful. Above is a trailer for a film […]
