The Modern Mourner
I wonder if you spent any time over at The Modern Mourner yesterday? If you didn’t, think again and have a gander. It is the creation of Shirley Tatum, a generous spirit who signposts her readers to all manner of more or less wonderful designers. Okay, there’s nothing quite so divisive as taste, but I’m going […]
Site I like
There’s interesting work going on over in Boston, Massachusetts. Two women, Ruth Faas and Sue Cross, offer a range of services to the bereaved. They have a reading room where people can sit in comfort and find out about death and dying. They offer advice and contacts to those wanting a green or self-managed funeral. […]
Great ringtone for grievers and dismalistas
Chirpiness and high-jinking are, I think we agree, out of place in a mourning scenario and/or environment. If you are freshly bereaved, that screamingly funny but in the circs totally unfunny ringtone on your phone is definitely going to jar if not shatter decorous, contemplative gloom. The same with undertakers. Yes yes, you need to […]
Memento mori
An interesting thread here in a US forum about the custom of stopping to show respect for a hearse passing. I don’t suppose it’s a custom to be found anywhere in Britain any more. Pity. Any reminder that the bell tolls for every single one of us can’t be a bad thing. “We slowly drove, […]
Helpers fail, comforts flee
I enjoyed this piece by David Nobbs, creator of Reginald Perrin, in yesterday’s Observer. Here are some extracts. My mother died on 7 August 1995. I didn’t realise, that day, my life had changed … My mother died, as she had lived, unselfishly. After she’d died, my wife Susan and I were just in time […]
The undertaker’s understrapper
When my friend PoshUndertaker first opened to the public, business was slow. When he went on holiday he’d ask me to mind the shop for him. I’d say yes like a shot, confident that nothing more would come in than a lot of importunate calls from people flogging stuff. There was always the possibility, of […]
MEMO’s fossil bell
Have I written about the MEMO project before? I can’t remember. Here’s what it does: MEMO is an educational charity dedicated to building an ongoing memorial to extinct species. The memorial will be a stone monument bearing the images of all the species of plants and animals known to have gone extinct in modern times … […]
Better dead than alive
Going through my stats, researching for a blog post, I saw that someone had clicked through a link I did not recognise. So I clicked through myself and found this wonderful account of embalming excellence at Harlem-based Owens Funeral Home “where beauty softens grief” . I used it in a blog post so long ago […]
Better read than dead
When Eulogy magazine came out in June there was excitement and chatter and speculation. Would it catch on? How long would it last? The lowest estimate I was aware of was a curmudgeonly six issues, volunteered by a funeral director in the west country. In the event, it seems to have underperformed more grievously. There […]
The difference between you and it
Jonathan Taylor, the mercurial genius who from time to time gilds this dull little blog with his inspired intelligence, glorious whimsy and beauty of spirit, once observed that the time between death and the funeral gives people the time to get the heads around the difference between ‘you and it’ – between a living person […]
