The Good Funeral Guide

The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition

A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, Maggi Hambling, Graham Harvey, Gary Lachman, Nick Reynolds, and Dignity in Dying.

It’s out in May 2012!

We’ve just read in the Guardian that today is reckoned to be the most depressing of the year. Gosh. If you are sitting in a puddle of seasonal misery and wretchedness, this may cheer you up:

I recently changed primary care physician. After a comprehensive history and physical exam and a bunch of lab tests, she said I was doing “fairly well for my age.”

I did not like that comment so I asked her: Do you think I will live to 85?

She asked: Do you smoke tobacco or drink alcohol? Oh no, I replied. And I don’t do other drugs either.

She said: Do you have many friends and entertain frequently? I answered: No, I usually stay at home and keep to myself.

She asked: Do you eat rib eye steaks and barbecued pork? I said: No, my other doctor told me all meat is unhealthy.

She asked: Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, sailing, hiking, or bicycling? No, I don’t, I said.

She persisted: Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lot of sex. I said, No, I don’t do any of those things.

So, she looked at me and said, then why do you give a (expletive deleted) whether you will make it to 85?

Source

“Death can only be profitable: there’s no need to eat, drink, pay taxes, offend people, and since a person lies in a grave for hundreds or thousands of years, if you count it up the profit turns out to be enormous.”

Anton Chekov, 1894

1 min. 

Hat tip to Mark Watson of the Coffin Company for this. 

We’ve had a request for what follows, and we don’t turn down requests here at the GFG, not on any grounds. If you’ve heard this one before, rejoice for all those who haven’t. 

An elderly Irishman lay dying in his bed. While suffering the agonies of impending death he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favourite cheese scones wafting up the stairs. He gathered his remaining strength and lifted himself from the bed…

Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort, gripping the bannister with both hands, he crawled downstairs. With laboured breath he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen.

Were it not for death’s agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven, for here, spread out upon waxed paper on the kitchen table, were dozens of his favourite cheese scones. Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of heroic love from his devoted Irish wife of sixty years, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?

Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself towards the table, landing on his knees in a rumpled posture. His lips parted, he could almost taste the cheese scone before it was in his mouth, seemingly bringing him back to life. The aged and withered hand trembled on its way to the nearest scone at the edge of the table, when his hand was suddenly smacked with a spatula by his beloved wife.

“Fuck off!!” she said, “they’re for the funeral!!”

I wonder what’s made him laugh so much?

Even here in the hushed and sepulchral atmosphere of the GFG-Batesville Tower the spirit of Christmas has seeped like moisture past a casket gasket. We customarily talk of nothing but death here, but at times of festivity we allow our minds to wander among peri-mortal matters. Here’s a bit of fun. The singers are all nurse-anaesthetists from Minnesota. 

Hat tip to Archa Robinson for this, via Not Totally Rad.