A very Happy New Year to all our readers from the GFG Team. Here’s to all things funereal being fabulous in 2017.
We’ll begin the first blog post of this year with a small treat for you courtesy of our friends at West Seattle Death Café. They’ve been collecting many interesting euphemisms for death in the obituaries of local newspapers in Seattle for the last 13 years.
There’s the man who didn’t die but ‘decided it was time to reunite with his wife’; the man who didn’t die but ‘left his worries behind’; the lady who didn’t die but ‘passed away after enduring one flippin’ thing after another’ and George who also didn’t die but was ‘swept to heaven by the Lord’.
The collection is both fascinating and funny but we won’t spoil the surprise. Check it out for yourself on Instagram.
I recently found an exclusive section in Camberwell Old Cemetery for those who also didn’t die but were ‘called to higher service’. Personally I’ve decided not to die but to earn my angel wings and relocate to heaven although I’m also tempted by the idea of being promoted to glory.
What’s your favourite? Where are you headed?
I love these! Although I want a direct cremation, I would like a newspaper notice and after reading these, would like it to say….
“After years of riding motorbikes, she skidded into the afterlife in a blaze of glory suddenly at the age of 99.”
I always think it is amazing when I read that someone has “died suddenly” at a ripe old age.
My favourite was John Le Mesurier’s (Sgt Wilson, Dad’s Army.) His Times death notice said he wished it to be know that he’d conked out.
Suited his character perfectly I think.
[Insert Parrot Sketch reference here]
I think one would have to be something of a philistine not to find some of these quite depressing, especially those with the more naive euphemisms. The individual writers may have been well-intentioned but what point did the compiler of the anthology have in mind? It has the whiff of condescension I fear.