Last-chance snap
Sweet story here from Georgia, USA recounted in the Monticello News: A cousin of mine, Larry Lynch, was in college with a young man from deep south Georgia in the “piney woods” section of our state. The young man told of the death of his grandfather several years back. When grandfather died the neighbors […]
What are we missing?!
The availability of personalization features that reflect and honor individual lifestyles … life symbols designs add a distinct touch to the casket … embroidered tribute panels … the Memory®Safe Drawer encourages family to participate … important for expressing your loved one’s individuality … many times a particular species of wood may evoke an important memory […]
Simon Smith’s way-out playlist
It’s got to be a baby boomer thing, has it, this new wave of funeral directors whose most distinguishing characteristic is that they are nothing like (old school) funeral directors? Not necessarily. I can think of some who have not come fresh to funeral directing in middle age. This is not exclusively a counter-culture thing. […]
Celebrancy opportunity
Here is a possibly inspiring tale from a celebrant in the south-east. She has asked me to withhold her name and email address because she simply won’t have time to correspond if lots of people want to contact her. Hi Charles You have quite often written about celebrants and recently people who do not want […]
No Service By Request
I am extremely grateful to Gordon Thurston for this thorough and thoughtful analysis of the growing rejection in parts of both the US and Canada of the traditional practice of holding a funeral with the body of the person who has died present, and the preference, instead, either for a memorial service or for no […]
Faith-lite?
The Movement for Reform Judaism has just published its new funeral service. It contains material – readings, poems – recommended by, among others, the devotedly atheist Claire Rayner. The purpose is, according to Rabbi Jonathan Magonet, to “allow more options to make it easier for rabbis taking the service to meet the needs of the […]
In the midst of death, let there be life
When someone asks, “Read any good books recently?” I often reply, “Yes. Read any good graveyards?” Graveyards comprise a compelling variety of distilled biography. The lives they describe may be humdrum, but that only makes them easier to relate to. Just to read the names on the headstones and monuments is, I feel, an act […]
Funeral minus ex
Here’s a situation familiar to all funeral directors and celebrants and to an increasing number of bereaved people. A reader writes to Virginia Ironside at the Independent: Dear Virginia, I had been married to my husband for 30 years when he suddenly seemed to have a brainstorm – he left me for an Italian woman, […]
A custom more honoured in the breach
There are those who make a distinction between traditional and alternative funerals and suppose alternative funeral directors to be, like their clients, boho, treehugger, oddball shroomers who live in La-La Land towns like Totnes or Stroud “where they’re all like that”. The label doesn’t fit. It’s not one they use. Theirs is not an exclusive […]
Thank you
I know this blog has around 3,000 readers (and rising). I have no idea who any but a tiny fraction actually are. Google Analytics tells me that most of them are in the UK, and around 500 live in the US. The rest are scattered around the globe, and it’s these who, when I check […]
