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 […]
They think it’s all over…
It’s interesting to note that two of the most important drivers for change in modern funerals have come, not from pro-active consumers or wild-eyed visionaries, but from urgent if mundane economic and environmental needs. They are, famously, natural burial and’ less famously, the held-over cremation. Ken West, for all that he is a visionary, made […]
There’s nowt so crap as a crem
Over in Lufkin, Texas, a new funeral home has opened. What’s different about it? It offers one of those familiar back-to-the-past initiatives which mark progress in funeral service: it’s owner is making his clients aware that they can have the funeral at home – if they want. “It used to be that before there were […]
One family’s take on the perfect funeral
The following is taken from Ben Heald’s blog and so much speaks for itself that I don’t need to add another word: Nothing can prepare you for losing close family suddenly; and I don’t want to dwell on the personal loss. What I’d like to talk about is the learning I’ve taken from the experience […]
Embalming: a matter not of if but when
Nobody I can think of would dispute the assertion that it’s good for the bereaved to spend time with their dead, contemplating their absence – what I like to call their very present absence. There is a debate about how dead a person should look. Some people want to spend time with an embalmed, cosmetised […]
Test drive it first…
Here’s an intelligent, beautifully written piece from Salon magazine in which the writer describes the consequences of his father’s final request No. 5: “My body is to be placed in a plain pine box. I would like my children to make the box.” In his last years my father, the writer William Manchester, told me, […]
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 […]
Burying Jed Kesey
Here’s an extract from an account of the funeral of Ken Kesey: It was the least maudlin memorial service and funeral I’ve ever been to—his family and community loved him and shared his disinterest in sentimentality. At the burial at his farm his corpse was right there in front of us. People filed by and […]
Quickie Wednesday
Interesting piece from Canada on home funerals in which a ‘death midwife’ (gotta find a better term than that!) acknowledges that funeral directors can, in the right circumstances, do the job as well as her. She’s right, of course. Good funeral directors are not the enemy. Read it From Pam Vetter’s newsletter, this tragic account […]
Not just for the skint
Nice home funeral story here: When Cathleen, a registered nurse, passed away at Hinds Hospice in Fresno, no mortuary was called due to previous planning. The Fresno County Coroner’s Office transported her to their facility and kept her until her funeral Jan. 26. The morning of her funeral, she was placed in a silk-lined pine […]
