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 […]
RT @GoodFunerals
This is the time of year when the Reaper takes a break and catches some rays, giving undertakers a chance to do housekeeping chores, and celebrants a chance to starve. There’s not a lot going on out there. I can’t begin to tell you what a quiet week it’s been. These are the best I could […]
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, […]
Timing your exit
Posted by Charles Cowling Extracted from an article in yesterday’s New York Times: I hope you had the chance to read and reread Dudley Clendinen’s splendid essay, “The Good Short Life”. Clendinen is dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S. If he uses all the available medical technology, it will leave him, in a few years’ […]
Colourful Funerals
Posted by Belinda Forbes As a secular funeral celebrant, I’ve noticed a growing trend for colour at funerals – this could be a general request to wear bright colours or a suggestion to wear something in a particular colour. At one young man’s funeral, the theme was yellow: as well as people wearing yellow ties […]
Home Death by Nell Dunn
Posted by Pippa Wilcox I wish I could tell you that the real-life stories portrayed in Nell Dunn’s play Home Death are over-dramatised. But they aren’t. It seems to be a terrifyingly random lottery out there in terms of whether or not you will stumble across the sort of care package which will result […]
Uncle Arthur
Posted by Ariadne For an altar there was the chest of drawers in the corner by the window. Flowers, candles, drawings and sea urchin shells collected from the beach. The bedroom had turquoise walls or perhaps they were white and it’s just memory doing the decorating. When everything was right and ready, I made my […]
Burial views from a faraway country
Posted by Kathryn Edwards Serbia’s been generating news of late, featuring the Old Carnivore and the Young Herbivore (as one local commentator has characterised the players). While Djokovic nibbles the Wimbledon lawn and Mladic huffs and postures in the Hague court, there’s been a lot of grave-digging taking place in a former meadow just outside […]
Monday brain gym
Posted by Charles Cowling Coming soon, A Giving Tribute — ‘the caring alternative to funeral flowers’ — a project I wholeheartedly endorse. Over in Canada, “Cartoonist Adrian Raeside once placed an obituary in the Times Colonist in which he asked mourners to send singlemalt scotch and Cuban cigars in lieu of flowers.” [Source] What’s your alternative […]
Good short life, short good death
Posted by Charles Cowling I HAVE wonderful friends … one, from Texas, put a hand on my thinning shoulder, and appeared to study the ground where we were standing. He had flown in to see me. “We need to go buy you a pistol, don’t we?” he asked quietly. He meant to shoot myself with. […]
