8 March 2013 – The Good Funeral Guide

A glass of Grim Reaper?

Posted by Vale

The Urban Dictionary (strapline: The Dictionary you wrote) is great place for the gross, the ghastly and the newly minted.

It’s for people who speak ‘urban’ and the definitions reflect their preferences and predilections. For example there is no definition of the word morning because:

the type of people who speak ‘urban’ do not know what morning is.

“Now that I’ve got a job I’ve got to get up in THE MORNING.”
“Morning? What the hell’s that?”

Dead is defined very simply:

1. dead
Britney Spear’s career – Wow britney spears sucks Dead images: These dudes are dead.

2. dead
Something that is no longer living and can now be kicked – Yep it’s dead! *Kicks it*

And did you know the Grim Reaper was also a cocktail? Me neither:

5. Grim Reaper
The Grim Reaper is a cocktail made with equal parts vodka, gin, tequila and cask wine. The mix is traditionally made with Mishka, Gordon’s, 125 and Fruity Lexia respectively. The ingredients are known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The spirits are meant to be the cheapest possible in order to replicate the authenticity of the Grim Reaper. Variations upon this formula include the Fancy Reaper (expensive spirits and wine), the Bloody Reaper (substitute white goon with red) and the Grim Suicide (3 full bottles in a cask of wine).

The side effects are not well documented, with reports of dizziness, memory loss, feelings of grimness, random acts of extreme violence, unwitting transportation across state borders, death, irate messages and grand larceny.

It is believed that these ingredients are the basis for the drug PCP, weed killer and embalming fluid.

The controversy associated with the Grim is the inability to refuse once the beverage is suggested. Despite the danger, this can lead to a Double Grim and in rare cases a Triple Grim: some claim that Sid Vicious did 7 Grim Reapers before his death, however the evidence is unsubstantiated.

They should certainly be serving Grim Reapers in the bar at this years National Funeral Exhibition at Stoneleigh in June, don’t you think?

Weighing the End of Life

ONE weekend last year, we asked our vet how we would know when it was time to put down Byron, our elderly dog. Byron was 14, half blind, partly deaf, with dementia, arthritis and an enlarged prostate. He often walked into walls, stood staring vacantly with his tail down, and had begun wandering and whining for reasons we could not always decipher.

Our vet said he used the 50 percent rule: Were at least half of Byron’s days good days? Or was it two bad days for every good? When you get to the latter, he explained, it’s time.

This conversation gave me pause for two reasons. First, what did Byron want? Was 50 percent good enough for him? How about 70? Or 20? There was, of course, no way to know.

Which brings me to my second reason for pause. When not serving as faithful servant to our tiny dog, I am a geriatrician. Because older adults have a greater range of needs and abilities than any other age group, and because there is a national shortage of geriatricians, I care for the frailest and sickest among them.

To many people’s surprise, most of my patients are as satisfied with their lives as they were when they were less debilitated. But this isn’t true for everyone, and some are eager to say they’ve had enough.

Read the whole article in the New York Times here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/weighing-the-end-of-life.html?pagewanted=2