The Home Death Movement
I’ve been reading an interesting research report published last month in Australia. Its title: Bringing our Dying Home: Creating community at the end of life. It examines how networks of unpaid carers can supplement the services of professional carers and enable dying people to die at home. It shows that the lot of unpaid […]
Dissolution
Bill Jordan is on a quest to have (when the time comes) his corpse laid out on the surface where it will be able to give most back to the ecosystem. He wants “to know I’ll be going back into the air, the soil, the rain, the mist, the snow–back to the ecstasy I […]
RT @GoodFunerals
Latest in crematorium design, one in the shape of a foetus –http://bit.ly/jZNxyQ MakingAnExit Sarah Murray RT by GoodFunerals Remarkable pictures of a Tibetan sky burial: bit.ly/lll4hP “The funeral industry itself is heading for a crisis of relevance” Read and digest the wise, enlightened Pat McNally – http://bit.ly/lhS8yF Like me! Follow me! Are […]
The right way to carry a coffin
Family and friends carry the coffin of Rex ‘The Moose’ Mossop, rugby league legend, at his funeral. In his eulogy, his son said this of him: “He was an insufferable pain in the arse sometimes but I loved him to death.” Respected voices don’t much like this arm’s length carrying, but I do. We don’t disagree, […]
Things we can’t get enough of…
Breathe Me Help, I have done it again I have been here many times before Hurt myself again today And, the worst part is there’s no-one else to blame Be my friend Hold me, wrap me up Unfold me I am small I’m needy Warm me up And breathe me Ouch I have lost myself […]
What hospitals advise the bereaved
If dying really is “an awfully big adventure” an NHS hospital seems an unpropitious point of departure. Most of us don’t want to die in one; most of us (58 per cent) will. Most of us think home is the best place. What’s not so well known is that many of those who have cared […]
The Importance of Being Urnest
That Brits are born with an acute and possibly pathological sensitivity to absurdity is well known. The Great American Funeral has engendered great and gloriously funny books by Jessica Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, neither of which had more than minimal success in laughing Americans out of their (perceived) absurdity. There is method in the funerary lunacies of […]
Companioning Uncle Bob
Companioning Uncle Bob I gave myself the job, the privilege it turned out, of enabling my Uncle Bob to spend his last few months at home. Death was not new to me, but dying was. I was no nurse, just a woman thankful to this dear old man for giving me family when I needed […]
Dead ordinary
Redditch, where I live, is a town most people would only visit by mistake. It is a 1964 new town, a dreamy planner’s dud. We have Britain’s only cloverleaf roundabout. It’s not something I’ve ever heard anyone brag about. Yet we boast our eminent citizens. John Bonham and Charles Dance were born here; Rik Mayall […]
Last goodbye
Briefly, homeless man Kevin McClain falls ill with lung cancer and is taken to hospital, thence to a hospice. His dog, Yurt, is taken to a shelter and rehomed. Close to death, Mr McClain asks to see his dog one last time. Yurt is brought to him. Two days later Mr McClain died. There’s a damp-eyed start […]
