Nice story
Very nice story of the heartwarmingest sort here.
Terms for conditions
The natural death movement in the UK was pioneered by the good old Natural Death Centre. Its philosophy grew out of the natural childbirth movement and its principles are broadly the same. It believes that by taking control and keeping interventions by strangers to a minimum, we improve the quality of dying for the dying […]
Immediate grief
This is a guest post from Jonathan Taylor, an independent funeral celebrant in Totnes and occasional funeral arranger and conductor for green fuse. He is a regular commenter on this blog. I’m in turmoil. My son’s girlfriend’s sister died this afternoon at 4.30. She was hit by a busabout ten days ago, and we were […]
Putting death where it belongs
Time was, when life was hard, death wasn’t so bad, especially if you believed, as so many did, that your recompense for a life of unrelieved misery and privation here below was the reward of unlimited bliss up there. The prospect of paradise makes a lot of sense when you inhabit a vale of tears. […]
Dignitas
Interesting series of photos from the Guardian taking you inside the Dignitas operation. See them here.
Real time and ritual time
I was interviewed the other day by Margaret Holloway of Hull University. She and her team are researching spirituality in modern funerals. Updates on their research were posted on their website, but they’ve mysteriously vanished. She raised what seems to her to be the curious practice of conducting the committal or farewell in the present […]
Home funeral stories
Some good and inspiring home funeral stories here.
Perpetua’s Garden – a great Idea
The really interesting thing about logic is what it makes people do–where it takes them. It starts with a Question which begets an Idea which resolves itself into a Certainty, fortifies itself with Conviction, draws up a Strategy, then acts with Singlemindedness. This is a human thing, it’s not the way the world works, nor […]
Post mortem photos
Is this custom going to make a comeback? Why not? More here.
Pugnacious priests and supine celebrants
A little while ago a United Reformed Church minister wrote this: I’ve had a bit of a narrow escape : I’m doing a funeral today and went to see the family three days ago. As I was leaving the house, something they said suggested that they had requested that “the curtain should not be closed”. […]
