4 March 2013 – The Good Funeral Guide

Oscar’s

4 March 2013

Charles

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Categories: memorialisation

“Oscar Wilde’s grave vies with that of Jim Morrison as the biggest tourist attraction in this graveyard of the great and good (Balzac, Chopin, Delacroix, Ingres, Molière, Piaf, and the lovers Abélard and Héloïse among others). It is regularly covered in red lipstick kisses and is both a lovers’ rendezvous and a rallying point against homophobia. The memorial – a naked birdman made by the sculptor, Jacob Epstein – has proved controversial. Unveiled in 1914, it had to be covered up because of complaints about the figure’s exposed genitals. A fig leaf was added but in the 1920s a group of anti-censorship protestors tried to chisel it off and ended up inadvertently carrying out a castration. The detached lump of stone was said to have ended up as a paperweight on the cemetery superintendent’s desk.”

How to Read a Graveyard: Journeys in the Company of the Dead by Peter Stanford — author of Heaven: A Traveller’s Guide — is published by Bloomsbury on 28 March at £16.99

Find Peter Stanford’s ten best here.

Cancer pain is uncontrolled in most of the world

4 March 2013

Charles

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Categories: End-of-life issues

To state the obvious: 1) most advanced cancer patients have pain, and 2) we have excellent pain medications which can effectively treat more than 90% of cancer pain. Therefore, most patients with cancer receive proper prescriptions for pain. Obvious, yes? True? No.

In Europe, Australia and North America narcotic analgesics are widely available, and frequently prescribed. While there is access, many patients, particularly those in certain groups such as seniors and those with limited financial means, often receive insufficient doses and amounts, which only superficially address pain needs. Nonetheless, this partial success means that high income Countries use up to 95% of the world supply of morphine.

Tragically, the remaining world population has its pain treated with the remaining 5%.

India is the world’s largest manufacturer of morphine, but the drug is almost unavailable in that country. In much of the world archaic poorly designed laws designed to limit abuse fail to achieve that goal but instead limit access for patients in critical need.

The vast majority of narcotics prescribed to treat pain are not diverted from their therapeutic goal and do not contribute to dependence or addiction. On the other hand, ineffective, poorly designed efforts in global drug trafficking wars markedly reduce access for most patients, with cancer patients collateral victims of friendly fire. This is a global problem and will require a world effort to stop the agony.

Read the whole article here.

I was smiling so long as I was next to you

4 March 2013

Charles

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Categories: Poetry

In case you missed it, there was one of those stunning, magical moments on the radio on Sunday.

On Broadcasting House, Emilie Blachère, a reporter for Paris Match, read a love letter/poem to her partner Rémi Ochlik, who died in Syria alongside Marie Colvin last year.

Hear her read it on the BBC iPlayer. Go to 54 mins 20 secs… and then listen to the response of the presenter, Paddy O’Connell. Click here.

The poem begins:

Ochlik,

I’ve never found it so difficult to write. My dictionaries are useless. I can already hear you saying, “Sweet Blachère.” So instead I made a list of everything I loved about you.

My angel, my love:

I loved it when you made lists of things you wanted, and you wanted a Harley Davidson, a loft, a 22,000-euro titanium Leica, and you would say to me, “What? You work at Paris Match, don’t you?”

I loved it when you called me Blachère, or Blacherounette, when you had something you wanted to ask me.

I loved it that you wanted to find a country just for the two of us where we could go every year together on assignment.

Read the rest of it here.