While you’re at it, why not lob another ancestor cult into the pot?
As you don your sad-rags, zombie gear, horror clobber, skeleton onesie or whatever it is that floats your boat at this season which sees the ungainly coupling of All Hallows Day, Samhain and the Mexican Dia de los Muertos enhanced/corrupted by commercialism and rendered incoherent by cheap thrills and facepainting, the team here at the […]
The scandal waiting to happen — again and again
Some of you will not be surprised that the following story involves Andrew Baker. It doesn’t end with him, guilty or not. When it comes to the mis-selling of pre-need funeral products, we ain’t seen nothing yet. From the Gloucestershire Echo: Andrew Baker, aged 50, who lives in Pebworth near Honeybourne in Worcestershire was arrested […]
Carpe diem
Posted by Richard Rawlinson Some of us enjoy our jobs; the social and creative buzz, and the income. Some of us also look forward to retirement; liberation from work routine, and time to pursue other interests, be it camper van touring or attempting a novel. But anecdotes about retirees reveal pros and cons. Retire too early […]
Longevity may not be all bad after all
An article in the New York Times reviews a new memoir about caring for an elderly relative in this age of protracted dying. It is“The Fifth Season: A Daughter-in-Law’s Memoir of Caregiving,” by Lisa Ohlen Harris. It’s about “the pressures of having Jeanne, the active mother-in-law who moved in to help with the kids and […]
A price worth paying for good value
How many shops do you know where the goods aren’t priced on the grounds that if you need to know the cost you can’t afford it? Outside a posh, celeb-prowled zone or two in London, my guess would be none. Would you use a shop that didn’t display price tickets? Or a restaurant that didn’t […]
You’ve been ad
How good to see three local family undertakers in Devon club together to advertise themselves. Really nice, professional piece of work — proper job as they say down there. (Click it to make it bigger.) (First one of you wins a cigar)
What to say when someone’s history?
The job of the life-centred funeral is clear enough. It serves two purposes: first, to meditate on the now-complete life lived; second, to spell out all that has not been lost. While the dead person will no longer be an active presence in the mourners’ lives, their example will continue to be influential, and memories […]
Can marriage between a creative and a control freak be a happy one?
The relationship between architects and project managers in the construction industry is always icky. The architect is the creative visionary; the project manager is the person tasked with co-ordinating suppliers and service providers so as to bring the vision in on time, in budget, to the client’s satisfaction. Architects tend to want more than they […]
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace…
An average 68 per cent of Canadians favour the legalisation of assisted suicide, but the Court of Appeal in British Columbia has just rejected it. Read more here. The arguments for and against assisted dying, assisted suicide, dying with dignity, call it want you will, will be with us for some time to come, but […]
Kingfisher Funerals get behind home funeralists
Kingfisher Funerals of St Neots have bought a Flexmort body-cooling system for people who want to care for their dead at home. Andrew Hickson, who founded the business in 2010, tells us: “We have seen a marked increase in requests from the family of someone who has died, who do not want the person removed […]
