21 November 2011 – The Good Funeral Guide

An Instinct for Kindness

21 November 2011

Charles

1 Comment

Categories: Assisted suicide, self-deliverance

From the review in the Guardian:

Last year Chris Larner took his ex-wife Allyson – with whom he had remained good friends – to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland where she ended her life. It was a life that had become unbearable because of the constant pain, indignities and limits imposed upon her by multiple sclerosis, a condition she had lived with for more than 25 years. Allyson decided that enough was enough.

It is its total lack of sentimentality that makes it so moving, and half the audience is in pieces long before the end. That, and because the redoubtable Allyson is so fully present in the show. Planning her own funeral, she declares: “I don’t want any stiff upper lip. I want weeping and wailing and inconsolable.” This was not a woman to go gently into that good night, and this is a show that reminds us that how we die is as important as how we live.

Useful advice for senior citizens

21 November 2011

Charles

1 Comment

Categories: Humour

Ever wondered about what to look for in a nursing home?

We know. It’s a pre-need question and just like funeral planning we all like to think we wont need it. Or maybe we’ll get lucky and die first.

But life expectancy is only another way to say hanging around. Street corners are too chilly (and there are no toilets) and the libraries are all closing so maybe the nursing home is all that’ll be left to us.

In which case it’s worth checking this site out. Packed with top tips it’s as indispensible as – dare we say it – the Good Funeral Guide itself.

For example here it is on what to look for when assessing amenities in the home:

Don’t be drawn in by fancy extras like craft rooms, massage pools, visitor parking or other amenities that are never likely to be used.

Focus on the basics and make sure that they have the small creature comforts like heat, running water and around the clock electricity.

Top advice. Read more here.

Plumbline and square – the Masonic funeral

21 November 2011

Charles

No comments

Categories: alternative funerals, Attitudes to death, death and funerals, funeral customs

Some Masons call their funeral ceremony an Orientation, but these days the service itself can be like a secular ceremony – apart, of course, from the Masonic ‘paraphernalia’.

Masons are a great deal more open about their ceremonies than they used to be, but much of what they do still seems esoteric and mysterious. Borderzine magazine has an interesting article about 93 year old Norman Miller, resident of El Paso, who bebelieves that since he began in 1964 he has carried out well over a thousand Masonic funerals.

In the interview he explains the process:

“We get word from the families of the the funeral director that the family desires to have a gravesite [sic] service. We don our Masonic aprons, our paraphernalia…some of the lodge officers have their jewels on. We form the group and I do the Masonic orientation.

The full article can be found here.

If you are interested Masons in Maryland have provided a video reenactment of the Masonic funeral:

Of course this is America. Is anyone prepared to say whether it is different here in Britain?