Lonely funerals
A beautiful story for you today – one you’ll have to listen to. It’s a BBC World Service programme about an Amsterdam civil servant, Ger ‘Gerry’ Frits, whose job it was, til his retirement, to arrange and hold funerals for people, all kinds of people, who have nobody. “You must like people, love people, and […]
Who cares?
A while back, Claire Callender talked about what it’s like, as an undertaker, to ‘remove’ (industry term) a dead body from a care home. It’s something I talked about a lot yesterday with a friend who has an especially beautiful mind. It’s something he frets about, often talks about, something we both mean to do […]
Facing the music
Another gangster funeral today. No apologies for this. Gangster funerals are such ticklish affairs: it’s so difficult to gild a gangster when he’s dead. Eamonn Dunne, special subject drugs, responsible for the murders of at least a dozen people including some of his own associates, was blown away while drinking in a Dublin pub. His […]
Death masks 2
Here’s the story condensed from a Guardian report, 27 September ’07: John Joe “Ash” Amador, a 30-year-old American, was executed for the 1994 murder of a San Antonio taxi driver. He went to his death, still protesting his innocence, with an armful of lethal sodium pentathol and the words, “God forgive them, for they know […]
Intro outro
I cannot, in all conscience, leave Louise at Sentiment Farewells lying around as a footnote in a yesterday’s blog. The four playlists she has put together, music for the soul, she calls them, constitute a brilliant resource for the bereaved and also for funeral celebrants. Do go over to her blog and see what she’s […]
One for the music buffs
This was played at the end of the funeral of Carl ‘Fat Boy’ Williams last Friday. I’ve not heard it used at a funeral before, but isn’t it rather good? Celebrants out there, you might like to add this to the songs you recommend to your clients. Just don’t necessarily tell em about Carl — […]
Yes, we can
A few weeks back I lazily asked whether a private entrepreneur could open a crematorium in this country. I say lazily because I hoped someone would know the answer and spare me research time. I supposed that only local authorities can get permission from the Secretary of State to build a crem. I was wrong, […]
The sun that bids us rest is waking
It’s going to be interesting to track the development of, both, the right to die and its concomitant, the responsibility to die. Old age doesn’t just become physically unendurable, it gets to be economically unaffordable, too. The darkness is increasingly going to fall at our behest. Choosing the moment will be straightforward enough. Humans live […]
Fatboy grim
Another gangster funeral story. Why another? Because gangster funerals are the other side of the coin of state or royal funerals. They offer spectacle. Freshly interred in Australia is Carl ‘Fat Boy’ Williams. The convicted drug smuggler and murderer was just six years into a minimum 35-year sentence when he was beaten to death with […]
Glarin’ or hollerin’?
Since most progressive developments in funerals are reinventions of or reversions to past practice, it’s always a good idea, now and then, to peer into the mists of history and see if there’s anything that can be plucked out, dusted down and dressed up for the 21st century. The funeral mute, for example. Men dressed […]
