Best in show 1
I spent a joyous day on Friday at the National Funeral Exhibition, an expo dedicated wholly to the merchandise and service providers of death. How much fun can that be? A lot, let me tell you. A great occasion for dismal traders (any colour so long as it’s black or green). Surreal—and sublime. But you […]
Everything is only for a day
Immortality and eternity have meaning as concepts but they don’t translate into reality, not here on transient Earth. If you don’t believe that, go and visit a mature cemetery – or ask Ozymandias, poor, baffled chap. Time teaches us this lesson every fleeting minute, but we set our faces against it—heroically or idiotically, it’s sometimes […]
Gentilesse
The BBC has got a poetry season running. They’ve been dusting off dead rhymers from ages past and pushing them out in front of the cameras. But they’ve left the memory of Geoffrey Chaucer undisturbed and unsung, for all that he was the first poet to be buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner. When I […]
There’s no place like it
There’s an excellent series of photos on the Undertaken With Love Flickr site telling the story of a home funeral. It’s thought provoking in any number of ways. See how engaged the children are. And you can see from everyone’s faces how emotionally healthy the whole business is. Now, I know I bang on a […]
The public’s right to be right
Ask them and they’ll tell you. What do clients want? Choice. Funeral directors have got the message. They’re doing the lip-service. How do they stand on delivery? Not terribly well, most of them, and for sound business reasons. As soon as you start to unbundle funerals and let clients source their own merchandise and service […]
What does dying feel like? (4)
In late December 2007 blogger Carla Zilbersmith, actor, singer, director, was diagnosed with ALS, a fatal motor neurone disease. Here’s how she greeted the diagnosis: Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s bullshit that I have to go this way. I don’t like it one bit. But that’s the hand I’ve been dealt and all […]
Smiling damned villains
Did you read about that undertaker in Middlesbrough? The one who stole the keys from a rival undertaker’s hearse as it sat obedient and empty outside the Salvation Army citadel? It had to be hotwired to get it to the cemetery. It had to be seen to be believed. The story has been reported around […]
The fluffy myth of the good death
Farrah Fawcett, Charlie’s Angel star in the 70s, she of the much copied hairstyle, wants to die on camera. She was diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006. The camera has been rolling since then. It has captured highs, like when the tumour is briefly found to have disappeared, and lows, such as when doctors push […]
Exit strategy
This is not unusual these days: you see someone entranced by a song and when it’s done they say fervently, “I want that played at my funeral.” You’ve done it, too? When you’ve done it once it becomes a habit. Sometimes a new song displaces an old one. Sometimes you want it played as well. […]
Check out the Undertaken With Love flickr site
It was the Natural Death Centre (NDC) which first advocated a return to the ancient, not long lost practice of caring for our own dead, and it was John Bradfield who did the bulk of the research into what you can legally do and what you can’t*. This re-birth of ancient practice was branded the […]
