20 February 2012 – The Good Funeral Guide

Quote of the day

20 February 2012

Charles

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Categories: obituary; epitaph, Quotes

Posted by Vale

“I still use a manual typewriter (a 1953 Underwood portable, in a robin’s-egg blue) because the soft pip-pip-pip of the typing of keys on a computer keyboard doesn’t quite fit with my sense of what writing sounds like. I need the hard metal clack, and I need those keys to sometimes catch so I can reach in and untangle them, turning my fingertips inky. Without slapping the return or turning the cylinder to release the paper with a sharp whip, without all that minor havoc, I feel I’ve paid no respect to the dead. What good is an obituary if it can be written so peaceably, so undisturbingly, in the dark of night?” –From “The Coffins of Little Hope” by Timothy Schaffert

Thanks to Obituary Forum

Post mortem photography

20 February 2012

Charles

1 Comment

Categories: Art and death, Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death, bereavement, Children, Dead people's rights, funeral customs, funeral photography

Posted by Vale

We had quite a debate recently when we published some recent post mortem photgraphs.

They were respectful, intriguing and, some of them, quite lovely in their own way. But they made us – and some of you – uneasy. Did the photographer have permission to publish? Was it right to expose the dead – so vulnerable in their invulnerability – to public gaze in this way?

We weren’t always so squeamish. Back in the days when photography was still a new art, the idea of photographing the dead was seized on as something that, like embalming, preserved ‘the body for the gaze of the observer’. The quotation is from an interesting essay by an American, Don Meinwald, about Death and Photography in 19th Century America.

The photographs were for private consumption rather than public sharing and Meinwald links them to the Ars Moriendi tradition of funeral portraits. Photographs of children were especially treasured:

These photographs served less as a reminder of mortality than as a keepsake to remember the deceased. This was especially common with infants and young children; Victorian era childhood mortality rates were extremely high, and a post-mortem photograph might be the only image of the child the family ever had. The later invention of the carte de visite, which allowed multiple prints to be made from a single negative, meant that copies of the image could be mailed to relatives.

The quotation comes from a portal site over on Squidoo with lots of links. Fascinating. Macarbre. Unbearably poignant.

Drive thru’ funeral

20 February 2012

Charles

No comments

Categories: alternative funerals, death and funerals

Posted by Vale

They’ve been operating in Los Angeles (where else?) since 1974.

Lately though they’ve become especially popular with local gangs – many of whom are killed in drive by shootings and who feel safer behind the bullet proof glass.

Found on the web here.

What makes a good funeral?

20 February 2012

Charles

6 Comments

Categories: ceremony, funeral customs

Posted by Vale

Would a traditional religious ceremony with six lacklustre hymns, a perfunctory celebrant and no mention of the person in the coffin count as one? I expect most of us would say no – but, sometimes, I wonder.

We often talk about the grand and the personal, the expressive and moving as though that sort of funeral represented some sort of ideal. They can certainly be wonderful events and, if they are what you want, there is no doubt that they can provide that sense of release and transformation that both fulfils and allows people to move on in their grieving.

But what strikes me most about grief is its malleability. It will accommodate itself to every human tradition and style. Buried like the Muslim within 24 hours? Grief accommodates this. Held for weeks while the house is made ready as they do in Ghana? Grief accommodates this, as it does for burning, sky towers or ship burials.

So what makes a good funeral? There is no common factor that I can see, other than the conviction amongst the mourners that they are doing what is right – by society and by the person they have lost. If they have confidence there then grief will accommodate whatever arrangements need to be made.

In that sense, if a family goes away feeling that a ceremony was what someone wanted and, above all, was the right thing to do, even the most threadbare won’t have been without some comfort.

So, what makes a ‘good funeral’? Is it, in fact, a sense of duty fulfilled and not, as we sometimes seem to suggest here, the theatre or therapy of the memorable event? Discuss…