22 February 2012 – The Good Funeral Guide

Remembering Dory Previn

22 February 2012

Charles

4 Comments

Categories: music, obituary; epitaph

Posted by Vale

A week or so ago one of my heroines died – the musician, writer and singer Dory Previn.

She hasn’t recorded much, but for those who know her work she is unmatched in her musicality, wit, dark humour and willingness to explore the darker parts of the mind and a woman’s experience of the world.

My favorite album was Reflections in Mud Puddle. If I haven’t put you off, you can find it here.

In the meantime enjoy The New Enzyme Detergent Demise of Ali McGraw. Come on folks you must remember Love Story?

Mine was a Wednesday death,
One afternoon at approximately three-fifteen,
I gave up and died and nobody cried.

Mine was a bloodless death,
Not grim, not gory,
More like Ali Macgraw’s new enzyme detergent demise,
In Love Story.
Neat and tidy,
Unlike Christ’s on Friday.

Friends were fooled by the fact,
I still breathed, and I spoke, and I smiled, and I lied,
In my handy, dandy, imitation life disguise kit.
I sent away for it.

The styrofoam face fits so neatly in place,
With the pre-recorded voice of your choice,
And it almost sounds real – it’s a guaranteed deal
And you don’t feel a thing,
And you can teach it to sing,
And all your friends are deceived,
And nobody grieves.

Mine was a Wednesday death.
One afternoon at approximately three-fifteen,
I was quietly laid to rest,
And nobody guessed.

A handy disposable heart,
Marks time in a plastic breast,
And so it goes, and nobody knows,
I am non bio-degradable.

You can read more about her life here.

Cremnivores

22 February 2012

Charles

11 Comments

Categories: crematoria

Gloucester crematorium’s Arbor restaurant is now offering Sunday lunch. Observes one Gloucester resident wryly:

“It seems a bit odd – and perhaps even slightly macabre – for them to be offering roast meat to people, given that their main business is to cremate bodies. I’m not sure I’d like to eat my Sunday roast in that environment really. It could be awkward complaining that meat is too well cooked or even burnt in such a restaurant.”

Full story here.

Short cuts round the back

22 February 2012

Charles

No comments

Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, scandals

Chicago, Monday. Police receive a call about a suspicious person in a car outside Carter Funeral Chapels. They go, and find the back door off its hinges. There is no electricity in the building. It transpires, after investigation, that in winter corpses are left in the garage of this funeral home to keep cool; in summer they have frozen waterbottles placed underneath them. Some bodies are stacked on top of each other. Police and firefighters in protective clothing find bones on the roof and a rat problem.

We never get howling scandals like this in the UK.

Yet we can be sure that there’s really quite a lot of deplorable, corner-cutting mortuary practice going on out there.

Ash Wednesday – buy now!

22 February 2012

Charles

3 Comments

Categories: Death; Good death

Posted by Vale

Every age has a genius, a spirit, a particular character. The Victorians, for example, excelled at sentimentality and three volume novels, while, in ancient Greece, philosophers lounged on street corners making public nuisances of themselves.

But what of our own age? What do we do that defines us? There are lots of candidates of course, but one of them, surely, is our gift for making money out of our great days of ritual and celebration. Christmas of course; All Hallows, or Halloween, as it has become; but, to my mind, our greatest achievement is Easter. Who would have thought, even a few years ago, that you could start selling easter eggs not just before Lent, but before Christmas as well! No one could deny there is a sort of genius at work there.

You’d think that, by now, we’d have covered all the bases, but I think there are still some untapped opportunities. Take Ash Wednesday for example: it’s a quiet time of year (if you overlook the pre-Lenten easter eggs); it’s ancient, long pre-dating Christianity’s colonisation, and the fact that it involves death hasn’t hindered Halloween at all.

In fact it’s a fascinating day: if All Hallows reminds us about the spirits around us, Ash Wednesday challenges us to think about our own mortality. In the lovely words of the King James’ Bible, we are asked to:

‘Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return’ (Genesis 3/9)

And to reinforce the words our forehead’s are daubed with ash.

It’s a wise tradition. Stoics (those pesky Greeks again) said that thinking about our own ending made us less afraid of death. And wouldn’t we feel more keenly alive through the rest of the year if, on this one day, we stand alone on the shore of the wide world ‘and think – till love and fame to nothingness do sink’.

But, as the Hindus would say, this is Kali Yuga, the darkest of dark ages, and we have its spirit of to consider. So – wisdom aside – aren’t the commercial possibilities obvious? If we are thinking about our own death, isn’t Ash Wednesday the perfect day to think about pre-need funeral planning too?

Come on people, there’s a chance being missed here…