18 October 2010 – The Good Funeral Guide

The feminine touch

18 October 2010

Charles

No comments

Categories: funeral customs, funeral pyres, funerals in other cultures, open-air cremation

According to Hindu custom it has always been the duty of the eldest son or senior male relative to light a funeral pyre. Here in Britain, it is very rare indeed for a female to be one of the small group to witness a dead person being loaded into the cremator.

But, I was interested to read, the times they are a-changing.

Really getting real

18 October 2010

Charles

5 Comments

Categories: alternative funerals, Art and death, Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death, burial depth, funeral reformers, funerals in other cultures, home funerals, natural burial

When Americans decide to do things differently, it seems to me, they make a clean break. Brits, on the other hand, carry over a lot of familiar stuff from the past. I mean, how often does a natural burial ground witness a scene like this?

And which has the courage of its environmental convictions and buries at three feet?

Read the story in the Washington Post.

(Beautiful shrouds available from the UK here.)