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In the Kokomo Perspective, Don Hamilton writes: 

Back in the early 1940s, they had funerals in the homes. A relative would die, and their casket would be placed in the corner of some room in the house, so that visitors could come and pay their respects. Most of the visiting family members would spend the night with the dearly departed laid out in the next room.

To a boy of 10, this was not pleasant, especially at night when going to the bathroom required a trip past the deceased in the darkened room.

Shadows danced across the casket, cast by the moonlight and the blowing leaves from the trees outside the window. The dim lighting could play tricks on your eyes and make it appear as though the person in the casket was starting to move. You talk about hot footing it across a floor. I ran to and from that bathroom as fast as my 10-year-old feet could carry me.

 I remember when the widow lady next door died. Guess what? My brother and I slept upstairs, and our younger sister slept downstairs.  Her window was directly across from the window where the neighbor’s casket could be clearly seen.   Well, it wasn’t long before our sister (Becky Beane), was yelling for dad. My dad, in turn, yelled for me and made me go downstairs and sleep with my sister.  I, of course, had to sleep closest to the window.

I got the courage to look over toward the neighbor lady, all dressed in black and somberly laying with her arms neatly crossed. Just as my imagination began to soar, my sister touched my leg with her toe. I know she did it to scare me, and it worked.   It seems funny now, but it wasn’t then.

I am not sure when they stopped the practice of having the body of a loved one displayed in the home, but I am glad that they did.  

[Source]

Here’s a lovely story from the Isle of Anglesey, reported by the BBC.

A local funeral celebrant, Tim Clark, has founded a choir to sing at funerals. He has named it Threnody. Tim says: “Many [secular] funerals are at crematoria, where there is not a tradition of choral singing. We aim to change that, and to help people to join us in song. Increasingly, I’m finding that people would like some singing along with some recorded music.”

Threnody’s repertoire, comprising both sacred and secular music, includes many Welsh favourites whose names we shall not give you because you’d never be able to pronounce them. 

What a difference the fresh immediacy of live singing will make. Here at the GFG Batesville Tower we applaud this initiative to the echo.

It’s such a good idea we hope it goes viral. 

Full story here. 

Posted by Vale

Ronald Searle is no more. We marked the day here at the GFG Batesville tower with a blog post and a brief period of mourning by dressing like Alaster Sim playing the headmistress of St Trinian’s. Enuff said.

But, in the pages of the Economist, the grate Molesworth himself has remembered him in the way that only he can. He say:

ART is for weeds and sissies whose mater hav said Take care of my dear little Cedric, he is delicate you kno and cannot stand a foopball to the head. Whenever anebode mention Art they all sa gosh mikelangelo leenardo wot magnificent simetry of line. Shurely the very pinnackle of western civilisation etc.etc. Pass me my oils Molesworth that I may paint my masterpeece. The headmaster sa gosh cor is that the medeechi venus hem-hem a grate work so true to life reminds me of young mrs filips enuff said.

Molesworth sa on the contry the most beatiful form in art is a Ronald Searle GURL from St Trinian’s in a tunick with black suspenders and armed with a hockey stick to beat the daylites out of another gurl or maybe just a teacher chortle chortle. Mr Searle sa he hav based her on his sister Olive. She hav wild platts and an empty gin bottle in her pocket a sack of poysinous todestools two sticks of dynamite and possibly a hippo on a lede while an old crone alias a teacher sa from a window Elspeth put that back AT ONCE. Or she will be sharpening a massiv knife on a grinder with grusome heads of gurls on a shelf behind and the headmistres will be telling the surprized parent this is Rachel, our head gurl, ha ha ha.

Of course Searle’s life and work went far beyond the gates of St Trinian’s and the doors of St Cedric’s. Molesworth follows him all the way. It’s a brilliant obituary and a true tribute to a grate man. Read it all here

With a Festival Day Pass for Saturday 28 January or Sunday 29 January, muse upon mortality, tackle the taboo and join us for a weekend of discussion, workshops and talks.

Ask questions, share your stories or simply be enlightened about the end.

Including:

–  Assisted dying: The Human Rights Debate with Jon Snow

– The Long Goodbye – Meghan O’Rourke recounts her personal experience of grief from her memoir

–   A Scattering – Christopher Reid reads from his Costa Book Award-winning collection of poems

–  27: the age the rockstar died by Paul Morley

– Death Bites – Hear all about death including cryonics, the art of obituary writing, what happens to your data after you die, and body politics                             

–  Of Mutability – Jo Shapcott reads from her Costa Book Award-winning book

–  Writer Ian Clayton tells his heart-rending experience of bereavement and the new paths that can arise from loss

– Panels consider a range of subjects including organ donation, suicide and survival

–   Death Bites – Hear all about death including the rise of women funeral directors, memorial tattooing, celebrity death, and the lives of gangs and inner-city young people and their relationship to death

In addition to a packed daytime programme covered by the Festival Day Pass you can also enjoy evening concerts and performances which are ticketed separately.

GOODBYE MR MUFFIN

Friday 27 – Sunday 29 January

An uplifting children’s story about the last days in the life of much-loved guinea pig Mr Muffin, told through puppetry, animation and music.                    

MUSIC TO DIE FOR BBC CONCERT ORCHESTRA

Friday 27 January

A heavenly mix of devilishly popular classics from composers obsessed by death, including Saint-Saëns and Mahler, and excerpts from requiems by Verdi, Fauré and Mozart.

THE SANDI TOKSVIG MEMORIAL LECTURE

Saturday 28 January

Die Laughing: Bringing life back to the subject of death, Sandi Toksvig seeks out a mix of merriment and the macabre in morbidity.                          

AN INSTINCT FOR KINDNESS

Friday 27 – Sunday 29 January

Chris Larner explores the contentious issue of assisted dying through his candid, poignant and sometimes comic tale of visiting Switzerland’s Dignitas clinic with his chronically ill ex-wife.

SONG OF SUMMER: FREDERICK DELIUS

Sunday 29 January

A screening of the late Ken Russell’s classic film followed by a discussion with Julian Lloyd Webber, Delius expert Lyndon Jenkins, Barry Humphries and David Mellor (chair).                         

MARKUS BIRDMAN A STROKE OF LUCK

Sunday 29 January

Life begins at 40. Then you have a stroke. Oh goodie. Stand-up comedian Markus Birdman’s show is about life, love, death and laughing in the face of it all.                               

FREE EVENTS, INSTALLATIONS, HEART TO HEARTS AND SLICES OF CAKE

Come along to a variety of free events to get you thinking about death. See a vibrant collection of bespoke coffins, discover uncanny death-themed games, request made-to-order poetry and hear stimulating discussions at the Death Café and Paul Gambaccini’s Desert Island Death Discs. Join us to consider death through a wealth of thought-provoking, informative and amusing activities and displays.

southbankcentre.co.uk/death           Ticket Office: 0844 847 9910

Southbank Centre is a charity registered in England and Wales No.298909.

Registered office: Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX.

Paul Sinclair, he who begat Motorcycle Funerals, has a bicycle hearse for sale. 

It’s made to his own design, and it’s been thoroughly tested. Says Paul, “We put a coffin on it and 30 stones of sandbags then rode it with two, me being pillion. It went fine.”

Paul warns: “I won’t sell it to someone I think will just stick it on display somewhere as I want it to be used.” He adds: “The pillion rider needs shoe size ten or under! Riders MUST be trained in sidecar riding, it is difficult and disconcerting with almost no weight, but it can be done with the training we would provide and it is much easier with a coffin. If the buyer was using it a lot we’d advise fitting leading link forks and again we could explain all that. I don’t advise hacking it round bends as bicycle spokes have their limits with transverse forces, but on the half dozen plus funerals we’ve done sensibly it has never ever let us down. The coffin is tied down with straps to the handles rather than stoppered in, so it is very secure.”

It’s seen some lovely funerals. Says Paul: “Our most amazing one was where it was ridden into a church in Devon and sat at the front all through the service. It was then turned round and off back out straight down the aisle. How cool!”

Find out more, or put in a bid, by contacting Paul here. 

For more details, please contact us by email: charlescowling@blueyonder.co.uk

In death she left her body to science, thereby avoiding a funeral from which she would have wanted, her family knew from experience, to exclude so many enemies.

From Janey Buchan’s obituary, here. 

This day, one hundred years ago, Captain Scott and his team of plucky amateurs arrived at the South Pole – and saw that “the worst had happened”. Yes, the dashed pros, the cads, had beaten them to it by over a month. Amundsen got there on 14 December.

The memory lingers, and with it a grim and undimmed yen for revenge. It may yet happen. 

Starting today in Oslo, where the temperature is a balmy daytime -2C, a cricket match is beginning between the Captain Scott’s Invitational XI and an Amundsen XI. It is being played out in Oslo’s city centre, and will be followed by, appropriately, dog sledding and ski challenges. 

Scott would approve. As he observed at the time of his own demise in reputedly inclement climate of Antarctica, “We are showing that Englishmen can still die with a bold spirit, fighting it out to the end.”

A cricket sceptic here at the GFG Batesville Tower observes drily, also employing Scott’s words, “I can imagine few things more trying to the patience than the long wasted days of waiting.”

More here. 

We’ve not spent enough time on this blog talking about the value of psychoactive and psychedelic drugs in the treatment of the dying. Let’s start putting that right. We’re talking cannabis, here, and also LSD, MDMA (ecstacy, on the street), and  psilocybin, the fun ingredient in magic mushrooms. 

If you find yourself deeply sceptical and utterly disinclined, here are two tasters. 

Above is a talk by Marilyn Howell on how psychedelic therapy helped ease her daughter’s suffering at the end of her life.

Below is an extract from an article in the 420 Times about how a “60 something year old tea party type, a 2nd Amendment advocate, conservative, anti everything governmental, a war supporter” came around to feeding his dying wife cannabis-enhanced cookies.

If you want to delve deeper into academic research under way, go to the MAPS site. Highly recommended. Here. 

One day, this stuff may help you.  

I listened some months ago to Bob quietly lament his wife’s cancer to Ed in my office. While staring at the floor he sort of rambled unconnected ideas, randomly covering what he was thinking. “Can’t eat”, “always vomiting”, “losing weight”, “doctors know nothing”, “drugs don’t help”. He knew the end was coming and he just wanted her as comfortable as he could make her. It was one of those awkward moments where I saw in Bob a man who just needed to share his feelings and his fears. He wasn’t looking for an answer; he knew there aren’t any. It was one of those special moments when you know the man is letting you in for just a minute. Live long enough and you might be privileged to a few of these moments.

When Bob paused, Ed suggested she try marijuana. I instantly bristled. In a few words Ed espoused what benefits it might offer. Bob gave the look he always does when Ed says something he thinks is completely off the wall. I sort of
agreed with Ed’s reasoning and thought, “It couldn’t hurt”. Bob said she would never be able to smoke it. “Cookies, I’ll make her cookies,” Ed countered. “What kind does she like?”

“Toll House Chocolate Chip are her favorite” Bob said.

“I’ll make her a dozen tonight and bring them over. Where do you live?”

And so was born a 6 month long drug connection where dozens of marijuana laced cookies and brownies were purchased and delivered as part of an illicit NY drug trade between the most unlikely of partners. Every couple of weeks they would meet in the parking lot and I would watch the deal go down. It had none of the hurried nature of a typical street deal. To the uninformed all you would see is two older men greet with big grins and a hearty handshake. There was always some small talk before a few bills were held out and an oversized box of cookies under plastic wrap was handed over. Two men giving and taking and both being better for it. It was so natural.

Bob swore by them, “It’s all she will eat, I’ve had a few myself”, he said one afternoon with a cheshire grin. “It never completely eliminated the pain, it seemed to soften it”, he would later say. He did note her nausea all but stopped and she was able to maintain her weight till the end. His most telling comment was she stopped talking about her illness and impending demise. “The cookies relaxed her. She let it go and just let it come”, Bob said. “That was the biggest
blessing. It let us talk of other things; important things”.

Read the whole article here. 

Dog Funeral Celebrant as well as memorials tend to be fairly typical nowadays, as numerous individuals deal with their own domestic pets because members of the family, as well as because surrogate kids. Dog Funerals could be kept in exactly the same style because human being Funerals, such as the customer’s reminiscences from the dog, photo taking shows, dog poetry as well as dog hopes.

Even though it might appear just like a dark profession route, those who are in this particular business usually have satisfying as well as fulfilling work. Dog funerals are usually little matters, using the pet’s proprietor as well as members of the family and perhaps a few good friends existing.

The celebrant will often go the actual customers house to have an intro … The customer is actually after that permitted to spend some time using their dog prior to it’s come to their own office or even crematorium.

It is important for any Dog Funeral celebrant to get at understand a few background from the departed dog as well as regarding the kind of dog these were, as well as that they created a direct effect on the customer’s existence. The actual pet’s proprietor as well as loved ones will be able to supply these details. 

More bloggerel here. 

Here’s the beginning of a brilliant post by an American doctor, Jordan Grumet, who blogs over at  In My Humble Opinion. Do follow the link at the end and read the rest. 

Two weeks ago I told a man that he was dying. We sat together in the mid afternoon haze. Puffs of snow meandered by the hospital window and wended their way down to the ground. The sun was lost behind winter’s never ending clouds.

The tempo of my voice was steady, lacking variation in tenor and pitch. I clung to my lab coat as if I was floating outside the window and being blasted by the inclement conditions.

I waited coldly for a response. At first, he stared at me quizzically. His eyes asked so many questions but his lips remained still. He shook his head and sighed. I glanced above him at the ticking clock.

You’re wrong. It’s not my time yet!

Read the rest here.