What to wear to a funeral
Recent photographs of the former President Trump and his family solemnly lining the steps of the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in New York City, watching Ivana Trump’s $125,000 ‘golden hued casket’ as it was carried to the waiting hearse offer us absolute visual confirmation of what the Western world deems to be appropriate ‘attire’ […]
Our role in their wishes
We noted The Sun newspaper’s report on a floral tribute this week, pointing a mild gosh-look-at-this finger at a family’s ambition to let funeral wishes be carried out – to the perfumed, petalled letter. However, it was the throwaway inclusion of another story, further down the page, that caught our eye. Moving on past the […]
Wise words
Ru’s opening words to the assembled guests struck a chord with many who were there, so we thought we’d put them on the blog for the whole world to read. Over to you Rupert. “Welcome everyone to the Good Funeral Awards 2016! It started off, as so many good things do, in a sweaty basement […]
Lifting the spirits
Posted by Kitty Perry When I was a child in the 60s, not a lot happened on 31st October. Casting my mind back and thinking really hard, the only thing I can remember doing is bobbing for apples. Which I did once at a friend’s birthday party. Come to think of it, I’m not even […]
De mortuis nil nisi bonum
Pace the spirit of the age, a celebration-of-life funeral does not fit everybody. Nasty, bad, horrible people die, too. We refrain from holding celebration-of-death funerals for them, preferring instead to curtail, allude and acknowledge, to a degree, often disguising our meaning between the lines. Difficult people die, too. They often mean different things to different […]
I hated my brother. When he died, all I felt was happiness…
Liz Hodgkinson writing in The Daily Mail 31 July 2012 The news came as a shock, yes, but it didn’t provoke tears, or even any sense of grief. I’d just heard from my niece that my brother Richard had died of a heart attack, aged 62, following an apparently minor operation. And all I felt […]
Brahn Boots – Stanley Holloway
Our Aunt Hanna’s passed away, We ‘ad her funeral today, And it was a posh affair, Had to have two p’licemen there! The ‘earse was luv’ly, all plate glass, And wot a corfin!… oak and brass! We’d fah-sands weepin’, flahers galore, But Jim, our cousin… what d’yer fink ‘e wore? Why, brahn boots! I ask […]
Mourning glory
By our funeral historian, Richard Rawlinson Ashes into Glass is a jewellery company that inserts cremation ashes into crystal glass rings, pendants, earring and cufflinks. See the results here “It has helped me feel a little calmer about losing my dear Mum by knowing that a little part of her is always with me,” says Teresa Evans […]
Muffle the Bell, Our Nellie’s Dying
Muffle the bell, our ‘Nellie’s dying, soon she’ll close her soft blue eyes; Kiss her pale lips now sweetly parted, kiss our darling e’er she dies; How we’ll miss her little footsteps, and her voice we loved so dear. Kiss our sweet darling, kiss her gently, e’er the angel forms draw near. Chorus. Muffle […]
Muffle the bell, put crèpe on the door
Bouquet of Violets by Edouard Manet Posted by Kathryn Edwards AT no time does solemnity so possess our souls as when we stand deserted at the brink of darkness into which our loved one has gone. And the last place in the world where we would look for comfort at such a time […]
