Death’s a bummer

I am indebted to Nurse Myra over at Gimcrack Hospital (where the nurses are pretty and the doctors are pissed) for telling me about JBS Haldane (1892-1964). Nurse Myra does a fine line in rare people, most of them bonkers, and JBS Haldane is an outstanding specimen. Find out more at the Usual Suspect.

In 1964 Haldane was found to have bowel cancer and, after surgery, wrote this plucky poem.

Cancer’s a Funny Thing

I wish I had the voice of Homer

To sing of rectal carcinoma,

Which kills a lot more chaps, in fact,

Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked.

Yet, thanks to modern surgeon’s skills,

It can be killed before it kills

Upon a scientific basis

In nineteen out of twenty cases.

I noticed I was passing blood

(Only a few drops, not a flood).

So pausing on my homeward way

From Tallahassee to Bombay

I asked a doctor, now my friend,

To peer into my hinder end,

To prove or to disprove the rumour

That I had a malignant tumour.

The microscope returned the answer

That I had certainly got cancer,

So I was wheeled into the theatre

Where holes were made to make me better.

A third much smaller hole is meant

To function as a ventral vent:

So now I am like two-faced Janus

The only god who sees his anus.

I’ll swear, without the risk of perjury,

It was a snappy bit of surgery.

My rectum is a serious loss to me,

But I’ve a very neat colostomy,

And hope, as soon as I am able,

To make it keep a fixed time-table.

So do not wait for aches and pains

To have a surgeon mend your drains;

If he says “cancer” you’re a dunce

Unless you have it out at once,

For if you wait it’s sure to swell,

And may have progeny as well.

My final word, before I’m done,

Is “Cancer can be rather fun”.

Thanks to the nurses and Nye Bevan

The NHS is quite like heaven

Provided one confronts the tumour

With a sufficient sense of humour.

Haldane died shortly after writing this.

Smashing news

Here’s how a recent piece in the Daily Mail began:

Being freeze dried and smashed into little pieces sounds like the stuff of sci-fi horror movies.

But it is one of two methods of dealing with our dearly departed that could soon be available from a funeral director near you.

And in keeping with sci-fi’s often chilling view of the future, the details are not for the squeamish.

It goes on to describe the cryomation process: bodies are placed in silk bags and submerged in an alkaline solution that has been heated to 160c. Flesh, organs and bones all dissolve under the onslaught, leaving behind a combination of green-brown fluid and white powder.

It’s the sort of piece designed to excite max indignation, I suppose. The Daily Mail specialises in fury porn. But, judging by the comments at the end, the readership of this vile newspaper refuses to be stirred. There’s a characteristic if off-the-wall comment by Donna of Croydon:  Shouldn’t we addressing WHY we have no burial space? Like close the borders? (bloody foreigners stealing our jobs, choking our graveyards) But for the most part commenters show a hilarious or unsentimental indifference to what happens to their bodies once they’re dead.

For all the trainspotterly debate about the relative merits of alkaline hydrolysis and freeze-drying there is, as natural burial guru Ken West likes patiently to point out, already a greener, simpler way of disposing of bodies. Yes… natural burial.

Mail article here

Ethical schmethical

Here’s a question sent to money-problem solver Margaret Dibben in the Guardian. It exemplifies the utter crapness of funeral plans and the business methods of the People’s Undertaker.

Two years ago, after the untimely death of a young friend, I took out a bronze cremation plan with The Co-operative Funeralcare. I discussed it on the phone, received papers to sign and started paying £19 a month by direct debit.

I have recently lost work and am trying to cut my outgoings. When I asked The Co-operative how much longer I have to keep paying, I was told until I am 90. This was not explained to me. I am now 57 and in excellent health. If I cancel the policy, the Co-op will keep the £456 I have paid in so far.

Here’s part of the reply:

You have 33 years until you are 90 which means, if you live that long, you have to pay another £7,524 in premiums. The average cost of a funeral today is £2,700. Your only choice is to waste the £456 or keep paying.

Read the entire piece here.

Somewhere between here and eternity

I enjoyed this piece over at Obit magazine:

It’s good to be a dead leader.

Not so for Ariel Sharon, the (arguably) most influential and the (certainly) most enduring politician in Israel. Sharon has never been memorialized, has never had a funeral, and is barely mentioned anymore in Israeli political conversations. He’s also not really dead.

Into this void recently stepped an Israeli installation artist, Noam Braslavsky, 49, who held a show at Kishon Gallery in Tel Aviv this winter that enjoyed international media attention. Braslavsky created a real-life Sharon, eyes open and mechanically breathing in a hospital bed, wearing his trademark button-down blue shirt.

“People didn’t have the opportunity to mourn,” Braslavsky said. So he decided to give them that chance.

Read the entire, very well written article, here.  Good pics here.

The Good Funeral Guide
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