The opposite of death isn’t life; the opposite of death is birth
We’ve written about Chuck Lakin here before. He’s a retired librarian and active woodworker with a line in plain pine coffins. Above all, he’s a lovely guy. He recently held a make-your-own-coffin workshop in his home town of Waterville, Maine. No one came. Lakin, 67, said he had planned to walk people through the process […]
Suit ya?
There are six Rosedale funeral homes. Headquartered in Diss, they straddle the Norfolk-Suffolk border. This is a gentle, conservative part of the world. If you’ve not been for thirty years or so, you’ll find it exactly as it was. Rosedale is headed up by Anne-Beckett-Allen. She was brought up in the business and spent some years working […]
That bloody box
“This was a funeral that celebrated unity. Like all other funerals. That bloody box: the awful finality: the dreadful unduckable certainty that life has to come to an end. So of course it was the same today. We knew she was dead, and all of us, no matter how little interest we take in politics, […]
From the ashes of Winterwillow…
Sad news for all fans of Winterwillow, the social enterprise of the WinterComfort charity for homeless people which enabled service users to develop basketweaving skills by making wicker coffins. The trustees have discontinued the project. All is not lost. Roger Fowle, lead tutor on the project, has set up on his own. Roger has three […]
De mortuis nil nisi bonum
Pace the spirit of the age, a celebration-of-life funeral does not fit everybody. Nasty, bad, horrible people die, too. We refrain from holding celebration-of-death funerals for them, preferring instead to curtail, allude and acknowledge, to a degree, often disguising our meaning between the lines. Difficult people die, too. They often mean different things to different […]
The word ‘progressive’ is overused and overrated
Posted by Richard Rawlinson A follow-up to Charles Cowling’s thirst-quenching piece about the need for independent undertakers to blow their trumpets louder to steal market share from the corporate chains, here. It’s my hunch that some indies should stop perceiving themselves as niche, fringe and progressive, and instead project themselves as mainstream. Why? There’s an abundance […]
May we all unlearn our fear of death
There’s a good review of the Natural Death Handbook, fifth edition, in the Huffington post. Here are some extracts: The Natural Death Centre, the charity behind The Natural Death Handbook, exists to help re-open the dialogue about life’s end, offering a combination of practical advice, how-tos, go-tos, and reflections that inspire, comfort and challenge. At the heart of […]
Fight to the death
One of the things that’s changed is that ever so many people end up falling into the clutches of technology at the end of their lives. Something happens to them and the emergency response is to admit them to hospital – because the traditional view is that doctors are in a fight against death – […]
They’re not patients. they’re dead
We have this kind of conflict with doctors sometimes when coming ringing on doors and kind of going like, “Hello, I’m a doctor.” “That’s lovely, what do you want?” “I’ve come to see a body.” “Will mine do? What do you mean by that? Oh, have you come to see a patient?” “They’re not patients, […]
No place like home
Now that most funeral directors have a website it’s a good time to review the way they receive visitors on their home page. It’s a darn difficult one to get right and no mistaking. After all, no one wants to buy a funeral. So how do you allay fears, define and differentiate yourself, inspire warmth […]
