Legacy Matters
The Wild West send-off for husband and wife killed in historic American outlaw town
For a Wild West-loving couple who died near the setting of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, it was a fitting tribute.
Scores of mourners attending the funeral of Country and Western fans Arthur Wilkinson, 81, and his wife Winifred, 75, dressed as Indians and 19th century American soldiers.
The pair were killed during an annual pilgrimage to Tombstone, Arizona, where they were hit by a pick-up truck as they tried to cross a road.
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Speaking after the funeral, the Rev Michael Dolan, said: 'I have done hundreds of funerals but have never seen anything to match this.
'Although the circumstances were quite tragic it really was a celebration of a good life well lived.'
President at Ft Hood Memorial Service Hails the Fallen
Standing in front of 13 sets of boots, rifles, helmets and photographs, Mr. Obama vowed that the memory of those slain in a rampage here last week would “endure through the life of our nation.” One by one, he listed the names of those killed and described their hopes and dreams and the families they left behind.
“It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy,” the president told thousands of soldiers and relatives gathered here at the nation’s largest Army post. “But this much we do know: No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts. No just and loving God looks upon them with favor. For what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice, in this world and the next.”
Bricklayer 'killed' in car crash stuns grieving family... by turning up at his own funeral
Relatives of Ademir Jorge Goncalves, 59, had identified him as the victim of a Sunday night car crash in Parana state in southern Brazil.
As is customary in Brazil, the funeral was held the following day, which happened to be the holiday of Finados, when Brazilians visit cemeteries to honour the dead.
What family members didn't know was that Goncalves had spent the night at a truck stop talking with friends over drinks of a sugarcane liquor known as cachaca, his niece Rosa Sampaio told the O Globo newspaper.
He did not get word about his own funeral until it was already happening on Monday morning.
The funeral director who met his wife at a funeral and other stories as the funeral directors convene in Boston.
They came to the Boston Convention and Exposition Center to talk shop, trade ideas, and marvel at how one of the world’s most somber professions has been changed by technology and the growing demand for funerals that go beyond hearse-and-casket basics.
Designer caskets, green burials, and funeral webcasts for family members who cannot make it are just some of the innovative solutions to the world’s oldest problem: what kind of send-off to give the departed.
Kurt L. Soffe, denizen of a 95-year-old funeral home in Utah, recalled what he dubbed “the Harley funeral.’’ A pack of bikers wanted to bury their Harley-Davidson-loving loved one in a way he would have appreciated: with a procession of Hogs instead of black limos, led by a Corvette instead of a hearse. Oh, and could the funeral staff wear casual clothes instead of suits?
“We do not say no,’’ Soffe said.
Psychedelic hearse for the Woodstock generation.
The financial downturn has any number of people, pressed to pay bulls, selling their burial plots.
Where Real Estate Is Still Hot
Cemeteries and funeral-property Web sites report a burgeoning marketplace for the sale of burial plots by individuals, many of which have been in families for years. As times get tough, they are now being liquidated to make ends meet.
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Web sites such as Grave Solutions and Plot Brokers, which advertise spaces and broker sales of cemetery properties, have also seen an uptick in postings. Caskets-N-More, a Glendora, Calif.-based business that sells funeral products and brokers sales of cemetery properties, reports a doubling of people wanting to sell their plots, to about 20 new postings a month from 10 a year ago.
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The apparent increase in sellers of cemetery plots has to do with more than just economic necessity. Changes in how people live and wish to be buried also play a role. Increased mobility means individuals may no longer live near a family plot and would rather sell off unused spaces. And growing acceptance of cremation as an alternative to burial means people realize they may have no need for previously purchased in-ground plots.
When I turned 50 and my mother 80, I decided it was time to fetch Grandma Leah’s ashes from the garage. She had been stored in a rusted Maxwell House can for 37 years, an unworthy purgatory that I felt called for resolution. My mother was perfectly happy to let Grandma’s remains stay there, but hitting the half-century mark made me think about my roots and my own mortality. I knew that I wouldn’t want to end up in the garage, and so I resolved to return my grandmother to her native Ukraine.
Stirring Up the Past
The woman suggested that I visit one last place for a trace of my putative past — the old Jewish burial ground. When she explained to the driver how to get there, he glanced nervously in my direction. We drove up to a housing project with a dirty courtyard that seemed to be a favored spot to walk dogs and drink alcohol.
“Ask someone for directions,” I suggested, thinking we were lost. “It’s here,” he said, avoiding my eyes. “The Soviets built apartments on top of the Jews.”
Right then a babushka approached and pointed to the ground. “The dead are coming up,” she said. “I was walking here a few months ago when it rained, and my foot got stuck. The police came and dug up the bones.”
John Burns on Britain's Oldest Warrior
He was a 19-year-old private when he was struck by the burst of a German shell over the British trenches in September 1917 and sent home to recover from his wounds. Working as a plumber in Wells until his retirement, he lived to the age of 111 before he died on July 25, when he was listed by Britain’s Defense Ministry as the last survivor among the millions of British soldiers who fought in the trenches on the Western Front. The last French and German veterans of the trenches died earlier this decade.
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In his last years, he became a national celebrity, memorialized in a poem written by Andrew Motion, then the poet laureate, and in a song fashioned from Mr. Patch’s own words about the fighting in the trenches that was recorded by the pop group Radiohead (“I’ve seen devils coming up from the ground/I’ve seen hell upon this earth.”) He met it all with the same modesty, saying that it was not he who should be honored but the men who fell at the battlefront, “the ones who didn’t come home.”
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When Mr. Patch finally broke 80 years of silence, it was in the final decade of a life that was honored by thousands of mourners who gathered at his funeral on Thursday in this quiet cathedral town set in rolling green hills 140 miles west of London. But his message was not the traditional story of valor and patriotism under fire. Rather, he took as his themes the futility of war and the common humanity of soldiers who meet as enemies on the battlefield.
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the feature that would have been likely to please Mr. Patch more than any other was the presence, as honorary pallbearers, of two German soldiers in full dress uniform, part of a six-man contingent that also included soldiers from Belgium and France. A German diplomat, Eckhard Lübkemeier, offered a New Testament reading from Corinthians that spoke of Christ’s “message of reconciliation.”
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A Belgian diplomat read an excerpt from Mr. Patch’s 2007 autobiography, “The Last Fighting Tommy,” in which he described an offensive during the battle at Passchendaele, the bloodiest chapter in the Ypres fighting, when he came across a fellow soldier “ripped from his shoulder to his waist by shrapnel” during a British assault on German lines.
The episode reinforced in Mr. Patch, a devout Christian, the belief that there is a life after death. “When we got to him, he looked at us and said, ‘Shoot me,’ ” he recalled. “He was beyond all human help, and before we could draw a revolver he was dead. And the final word he uttered was ‘Mother!’ It wasn’t a cry of despair, it was a cry of surprise and joy.”
He added, “I’m positive that when he left this world, wherever he went, his mother was there, and from that day, I’ve always remembered that cry, and that death is not the end.”
In the southern part of Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri, lies 2200 acres with 120 earthen mounds that's been designated a National Historic Site and a World Heritage Site. Cahokia Mounds is the largest prehistoric earthen construction in the Americas, the last remnants of an American Indian people called the Mississippians.
The focus of ongoing archaeological study, Cahokia was once the largest city in America with about 20-40,000 people at its peak. Nobody knows what the original name of the ancient great city on the MIssissippi because the people left no written records.
Andrew O'Hehir brings us up to date with what's been learned from the archaeological studies including the evidence of human sacrifice on a large scale. Sacrificial virgins of the MIssissippi.
At its peak in the 12th century, this settlement along the Mississippi River bottomland of western Illinois, a few miles east of modern-day St. Louis, was probably larger than London, and held economic, cultural and religious sway over a vast swath of the American heartland. Featuring a man-made central plaza covering 50 acres and the third-largest pyramid in the New World (the 100-foot-tall "Monks Mound"), Cahokia was home to at least 20,000 people. If that doesn't sound impressive from a 21st-century perspective, consider that the next city on United States territory to attain that size would be Philadelphia, some 600 years later.
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Cahokians performed human sacrifice, as part of some kind of theatrical, community-wide ceremony, on a startlingly large scale unknown in North America above the valley of Mexico. Simultaneous burials of as many as 53 young women (quite possibly selected for their beauty) have been uncovered beneath Cahokia's mounds, and in some cases victims were evidently clubbed to death on the edge of a burial pit, and then fell into it. A few of them weren't dead yet when they went into the pit -- skeletons have been found with their phalanges, or finger bones, digging into the layer of sand beneath them.
What they found at Mound 72.
This mound contained a high-status burial of two nearly identical male bodies, one of them wrapped in a beaded cape or cloak in the shape of a thunderbird, an ancient and mystical Native American symbol. Surrounding this "beaded burial" the diggers gradually uncovered more and more accompanying corpses, an apparent mixture of honorific burials and human sacrifices evidently related to the two important men. It appeared that 53 lower-status women were sacrificed specifically to be buried with the men -- perhaps a harem or a group of slaves from a nearby subject village, Pauketat thinks -- and that a group of 39 men and women had been executed on the spot, possibly a few years later. In all, more than 250 people were interred in and around Mound 72.
From Richard Fernandez
The city ground to a halt. Ships sounded their mournful horns at harbor. Bells rang and millions stood in the rain along the 14 mile route to the cemetery. Former Philippine Ambassador to the Vatican Howard Dee said:
“I was in Magsaysay’s and Ninoy’s funeral. This is the greatest outpouring of love the nation has ever witnessed.” Dee, … was referring to the funerals of President Ramon Magsaysay in 1957 and of Aquino’s murdered husband, opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., in 1983.
Like those events, this funeral was also political. The Aquino family had pointedly refused a state funeral and mourned her instead as an honored daughter of the Church, laying her in the coffin with a rosary in her hand. It was a pointed slap at the current President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who had been accused of trying to extend her term of office past its constitutional limit, a la the Honduran Zelaya. Her carefully staged trip to Washington had been wholly eclipsed by Aquino’s death, from which she returned in haste. She was clearly unwelcome and made a brief, almost furtive appearance at the wake. Her reception was correct. No one would have called it warm. Even in death Cory would bar authoritarianism.
That procession in the rain was Cory’s last duty of state; the final act in the public drama. It was also, to those who understood it, the concluding chapter in a love story. At the end of the cortege was a relatively modest grave, no grander than that which a successful small businessman might have, dug beside the spot where Ninoy lay. It was where she wanted to go. When she first learned she had colon cancer more than a year ago, Aquino told her family she would refuse aggressive treatment. Her time, she said, had come. Her daughter Kris related how, when end was near, she was called back into the room by a nurse from the corridor, where she had stepped out to drink some coffee. Cory bade her daughter bend and said, “I can see him now. Your father is holding out his hand to me.” Dylan Thomas wrote of grave men “near death, who see with blinding sight”; of those on their deathbeds who, perhaps from the effects medication, their last delirium or that blinding sight see before them those to whom they would come. Underneath the story of the People Power revolution was also a story of a woman who avenged her husband and reached out to him at the last across the gulf of death with the frail hand of love.
Bodies stack up as California counts cost of funerals
Bodies left unclaimed, cadavers stacked high in morgues and burial rates tumbling as loved ones cut funeral costs: the crippling recession is even haunting the dead across the United States.
In Los Angeles, the local coroner's office has witnessed an unprecedented spike in the number of corpses unclaimed by families who cannot afford the costs of a burial or cremation.
"The reason we are hearing from the families is the economic downturn," Los Angeles County Coroner's chief investigator Craig Harvey told AFP. "They tell us they don't have the means to afford funerals."
In the past 12 months, the coroner's office, which is responsible for handling bodies from homicides and suspicious deaths, carried out 36 percent more cremations than the previous year, jumping to 712 from 525. At the Los Angeles County morgue meanwhile, the cremation figure rose by 25 percent.
Advocates say the number of home funerals, where everything from caring for the dead to the visiting hours to the building of the coffin is done at home, has soared in the last five years, putting the funerals “where home births were 30 years ago,” according to Chuck Lakin, a home funeral proponent and coffin builder in Waterville, Me.
Home Burials Offer an Intimate Alternative
When Nathaniel Roe, 92, died at his 18th-century farmhouse here the morning of June 6, his family did not call a funeral home to handle the arrangements.
Instead, Mr. Roe’s children, like a growing number of people nationwide, decided to care for their father in death as they had in the last months of his life. They washed Mr. Roe’s body, dressed him in his favorite Harrods tweed jacket and red Brooks Brothers tie and laid him on a bed so family members could privately say their last goodbyes.
The next day, Mr. Roe was placed in a pine coffin made by his son, along with a tuft of wool from the sheep he once kept. He was buried on his farm in a grove off a walking path he traversed each day.
Photo by Sebastian Hinds in the New York Times
“It just seemed like the natural, loving way to do things,” said Jennifer Roe-Ward, Mr. Roe’s granddaughter. “It let him have his dignity.”
Said another woman whose experience with providing a home burial for her mother surprised her.
“There’s something about touching, watching, sitting with a body that lets you know the person is no longer there,” Nancy Manahan said. “We didn’t even realize how emotionally meaningful those rituals are, doing it ourselves, until we did it.”
Continuing on my Michael Jackson-free theme, here's some oddities you may have missed.
Two Mexican Midget Wrestlers Killed by Fake Prostitutes
Mexican authorities say two professional wrestlers found dead in a low-rent hotel in the capital may have been drugged to death by female robbers.
Autopsies are being performed on the two midget wrestlers, one of whom went by the name "La Parkita" — or "Little Death" — and wore a skeleton costume in the ring. The other was known as "Espectrito Jr."
Authorities say two women were seen leaving the men's hotel room before the bodies were discovered.
Prosecutor Miguel Angel Mancera said Wednesday that gangs of female robbers are experienced at using drugs to knock men out and rob them, but they may have used too strong a dose.
That may have been because of the wrestlers' small stature, although larger men have also died in similar crimes.
via Gateway Pundit
Woman lay dead in her flat for 5 years before anyone noticed.
It is thought nobody noticed Miss Purves was missing as her pension was paid directly into a bank account and bills were paid by direct debit.
Funeral descends into violence as family members brawl with snooker cues in row over dead man's property
Only hours earlier they had stood alongside one other at the local church to pay their respects.
But no sooner had Harry Gaughan, 69, been cremated than his relatives began fighting over who owned what.
It ended in a brawl involving a snooker cue as one family member attempted to measure the size of the back garden.
German cemetery nixes sexualized tombstone for sex worker/advocate's grave.
The 77-year-old artist Tomi Ungerer's parting gift to his friend Domenica Niehoff was to be a gravestone featuring two ample pink marble boulders in homage to her famously top-heavy figure. But those responsible for the Garden of Women cemetery, resting place of Hamburg's most famous women, turned his design down, the paper reported...
Colorful Tombstones in Chichicastenango, Guatemala
photo by Susan Hardman
What chutzpah
Iran charges slain man's family $3,000 for bullets that killed him
The family of an Iranian man killed in a demonstration against the country's contested presidential election has been ordered to pay the equivalent of $3,000 for the bullets that took his life, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Kaveh Alipour, 19, was shot in the head in downtown Tehran on Saturday during one of the most violent clashes between protesters and security forces since the riots began last week.
Iranian authorities later told the family they would not turn over the slain man's body for burial until they received compensation for the bullets security forces used to shoot him.
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All mosques in Tehran have been prohibited from holding memorials or publicly mourning the deaths of the riot victims, it emerged on Monday. According to official count in Tehran, 17 people have been killed in more than a week of demonstrations.
Nevertheless, Iran's defeated moderate candidate Mehdi Karoubi has called on Iranians to hold mourning ceremonies on Thursday for killed protesters, an aide told Reuters on Tuesday.
Neda Agha Soltan, a 27-year-old student of philosophy, became known around the world in a matter of hours through Twitter, Facebook and YouTube because a video captured her death on a street in Tehran
Neda falls in the street, shot in the heart by a Basiji sniper. She is laid down by her companions when blood begins pouring from her mouth then across her face and it becomes clear that, in a matter of moments, she is dead The very graphic YouTube video is here.
Some 19 people were killed on June 20, but Neda is the one who has come to symbolize the crisis in Iran. One university student describes the difference between the generations, How Neda Divided My Family.
Neda’s name means “voice” in Farsi. Even though she has been silenced by a Basiji bullet, her death has given new voice to our generation’s demand for reform. Our parents may not understand it yet, but soon they will have to come to terms with the fact that our voices are the future. They can no longer make decisions for their children—or for the Iranian nation yet to come.
photos from LA Times
In an interview with the BBC, her fiancee said (scroll down to 1:03 pm)
Neda was not a firm backer of either Mousavi or Ahmadinejad -- she simply "wanted freedom and freedom for all."
From the LA Times, an a obituary for the young woman as Family, friends mourn Iranian woman whose death was caught on video
Her friends say Panahi, Neda and two others were stuck in traffic on Karegar Street, east of Tehran's Azadi Square, on their way to the demonstration sometime after 6:30 p.m. After stepping out of the car to get some fresh air and crane their necks over the jumble of cars, Panahi heard a crack from the distance. Within a blink of the eye, he realized Neda had collapsed to the ground.
"We were stuck in traffic and we got out and stood to watch, and without her throwing a rock or anything they shot her," he said. "It was just one bullet."
Blood poured out of the right side of her chest and began bubbling out of her mouth and nose as her lungs filled up.
"I'm burning, I'm burning!" he recalled her saying, her final words.
Neda in an undated photo
"She was a person full of joy," said her music teacher and close friend Hamid Panahi, who was among the mourners at her family home on Sunday, awaiting word of her burial. "She was a beam of light. I'm so sorry. I was so hopeful for this woman."
Security forces urged Neda's friends and family not to hold memorial services for her at a mosque and asked them not to speak publicly about her, associates of the family said. Authorities even asked the family to take down the black mourning banners in front of their house, aware of the potent symbol she has become.
But some insisted on speaking out anyway, hoping to make sure the world would not forget her.Neda Agha-Soltan was born in Tehran, they said, to a father who worked for the government and a mother who was a housewife. They were a family of modest means, part of the country's emerging middle class who built their lives in rapidly developing neighborhoods on the eastern and western outskirts of the city.
Like many in her neighborhood, Neda was loyal to the country's Islamic roots and traditional values, friends say, but also curious about the outside world, which is easily accessed through satellite television, the Internet and occasional trips abroad.
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"All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted."
Private William Long, newly out of basic training was on a short-term assignment as a military recruiter, was shot three times and killed outside the Army-Navy Career Center in Little Rock Arkansas by a domestic jihadist who also wounded another soldier.
The alleged killer Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, 23, was born in Tennessee as Carlos Leon Bledsoe and converted to Islam as a teen-ager. He just opened fire on the soldiers with an SKS assault rifle and he said he fully intended to kill them, in fact, he would have killed more if he could, he told police.
From Maggie's Notebook
He had been under FBI investigation - - the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force - since he returned from a trip to Yemen.
He was carrying a false Somali passport and was arrested at that time. The same report says Muhammad had "ties to a number of global locations linked to extremists, including Yemen, Somalia and Columbus, OH..
Atlas Shrugs reports that he was arrested for serious weapons possession and gun running, but prosecutors filed only a single charge that was dismissed four months later.
In an interview with the Associated Press, the suspect said he didn't think the shooting was murder because U.S. military action in the MIddle East made the killing justified- "Islamic justified".
"I do feel I'm not guilty," Abdulhakim Muhammad told The Associated Press in a collect call from the Pulaski County jail. "I don't think it was murder, because murder is when a person kills another person without justified reason...what I did is Islamic justified"
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"Yes, I did tell the police upon my arrest that this was an act of retaliation, and not a reaction on the soldiers personally," Muhammad said. He called it "a act, for the sake of God, for the sake of Allah, the Lord of all the world, and also a retaliation on U.S. military."
Private Long was laid to rest as a Soldier, Hero
The day before he died, U.S. Army Pvt. William Andrew "Andy" Long floated the Buffalo River with his sister, Vanessa Rice. If he had his way, she said, the pair would have gone skydiving.
"I'm so blessed to have had that day with Andy," Rice tearfully told guests at her brother's funeral Monday at Harlan Park Baptist Church in Conway. "My brother meant the world to me. Andy loved to be outdoors, to travel, and he couldn't wait to get to Korea to serve his country."
The service was followed by a burial with full military honors Monday at the Arkansas State Veterans Cemetery in North Little Rock.
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Pastor Johnny Harrington of Long's church, Sunny Gap Baptist Church in Conway, praised Long's commitment to the Army and recent appointment to the Army's Hometown Recruiter Assistance Program in Little Rock. He said Long is a fourth-generation armed services member. Long's father, Daris Long, is retired from the U.S. Marine Corps.
"No one is more military, no one is more patriotic than this family right here," Harrington said. "Military runs through their hearts and their blood. No one is more dedicated to it than they, and I know that they couldn't be prouder of Andy and his desire to serve his country.
"I asked Daris what's the one word he'd use to describe Andy, and he said two: soldier and hero."
Private Long's father was at work when he got the call; his mother was in the center's parking lot waiting to give their son a ride home. She heard the shots.
Most moving of all is the interview of Darius Long, father of the slain soldier, gracious and grateful in his grief. (HT Ace). My condolences to all his family.
It was one of her dying wishes - to be taken to her final resting place in a classic Rolls Royce.
But, as the Phantom VI sat in solemn silence to carry Patricia Thorburn's coffin to the cemetery, it became clear someone had sabotaged her send-off in the most callous way
Funeral turns to farce as rival undertaker snatches hearse keys on way to burial
The University of Georgia marketing professor who was accused of fatally shooting his wife and two other people outside a community theater in Georgia was found dead by cadaver dogs.
He was found deep in the woods, beneath the earth, naked except for two guns.
The only good part to the bizarre story is that he left his two children, 8 and 10, with a neighbor.
Father Longenecker reminds us what funerals are all about in Eulogies at Funerals
A funeral Mass is not primarily a memorial service. A funeral Mass is not first and foremost an opportunity to comfort the bereaved. A funeral Mass does something. In it the Church offers the sacrifice of Calvary for the repose of the soul of one of her departed sons or daughters. The funeral Mass is an action of the church which applies the benefits of Christ's atoning death to the soul of the deceased. The funeral Mass is a solemn rite of passage in which the Holy Church hands on to God the soul of the departed and commends his body to the ground or to the flames.
This is what a priest should be doing at the Mass. At the wake, by all means, get Uncle Harry to tell a few ripe stories about the old rogue. At the reception have a few drinks and get everyone to reminisce about the good times and the bad times, but not at the funeral
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And another thing: funerals are meant to be sad. Black should be worn. Dignified grief should be encouraged. A funeral is not a 'celebration of Stanley's life'. A funeral is not 'a time of joy because Mildred is in heaven now.' How tacky and trite is that? No. A funeral should be sad. Someone had died for goodness sake. Furthermore, people need to grieve. They need to work through the terror of death. They need to face reality. A solemn, sad, sober and serious funeral helps them to do that. A silly, shallow, superficial and stupid memorial service or 'celebration of Pat's life' only encourages them to look the other way and take a feel good cop out from reality.
No. Give me the funeral march. Give me solemn young men in black with serious faces to mourn my passing. Give me widows and women in black veils and gloves wiping away tears. Give me the smoke of incense to purify my bones. Give me the water of life to remind me of my baptism. Give me a requiem Mass and may all who are there--whether a multitude or the faithful few--grieve me with the dignity in death that I once hoped for in life.
Nathaniel Grimsby, born in 1811 in Kansas, though old when it broke out, fought in the Civil War becoming a second lieutenant and a "picturesque figure".
From When Kansas Was Young by Thomas Allen McNeal
He was a Republican without variableness or shadow of turning. To his mind, politically speaking, the Republican party was summum bonum, while the Democratic party was malum in se. Whatever there was of good in the political acts of the past third of a century, he attributed to the Republican party, and whatever there was of evil to the malign influence of the Democratic organization. With most men political activity stops with the grave, but old Nathaniel Grigsby, as the weight of years bowed his back and the frosts of time, silvered his hair, knowing that his years were nearly numbered, devised a plan by which his political opinions might be transmitted to coming generations, carved in imperishable granite, to be read long after his mortal body had returned to the earth from which it came and his spirit had joined the immortals. He carefully prepared the inscription for his tombstone and exacted the promise it should be graven on the shaft which marked his grave
Hat tip to Paul, Thoughts of a Regular Guy
'The appeal of My Way lies in the way it offers not just absolution but glorification to the perpetrator of all the most dastardly deeds, reassuring the selfish that they are courageous and the thuggish that they are noble.'
What could be less fitting for a funeral? How can so many of us wish to be despatched to our Maker with this hymn to our bloody-minded selfishness echoing around our coffins?
Tom Utley on why hymns are better than pop songs at funerals
According to this week's survey by Co-Operative Funeralcare, the number of send-offs accompanied by pop music has increased from 55 per cent to 58 per cent over the past four years, while hymns are sung at only 35 per cent of funerals, down from 41 per cent in 1995.
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But in my old-fashioned way, I can't help feeling it cheapens the value of a human life to mark its end with music chosen exclusively from the popular culture of the moment, here today and gone tomorrow, without giving eternity a look-in.
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Another advantage of the sacred over the secular is that we can all sing along to a well-known hymn without embarrassment.
But when a pop-song is played in a church or a crematorium chapel, nobody joins in.
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That's because it's impossible for a congregation to sing along with My Way without sounding like one of Craig's nightmare karaoke evenings, just as mourners can't join in with You'll Never Walk Alone (number nine in the Co-Operative's top ten) without sounding like a crowd of Liverpool football fans. So everyone just has to listen in gloomy silence.
It may sound an odd thing to say, but a good funeral should be a joyful occasion, as well as a sad one - and nothing lifts the heart higher than to hear a entire congregation belting out with one voice a rousing favourite from Hymns Ancient and Modern: Rock Of Ages, Fight The Good Fight, Dear Lord And Father Of Mankind. . .
One way to defraud insurance companies is to hold Phony Funerals for Fake People
Two women, 60 and 67, who purchased life insurance for non-existent people and then staged their funerals are now charged with five counts of mail and wire fraud.
Shilling, a phlebotomist, and Crump, an employee at a now-defunct Long Beach mortuary, allegedly filled caskets with various materials to make it appear they contained actual corpses, documents show.
After the funerals, the women and their associates filed bogus documents with the county saying the remains had been cremated and scattered at sea, prosecutors said.
The dome of the cathedral at L'Aquila after the earthquake
Italy Mourns Earthquake Victims
The funeral for about 200 the earthquake victims in L'Aquila took place outside because none of the region's churches were stable enough for the ceremony.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and other key government officials were among the 10,000 people attending the outdoor ceremony beneath Abruzzo's snowcapped mountains.
Mr. Berlusconi comforted mourners, shaking hands and giving hugs before the ceremony began. "Today will be a moment of great emotion. How can one not be moved by so much pain?" Mr. Berlusconi said, shortly before departing for L'Aquila for the funeral. "These are our dead today, they are the dead of the whole nation," said the prime minister.
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The Vatican granted a special dispensation for the Mass. Good Friday, which marks Jesus' death by crucifixion, is the only day in the year on which Mass in not normally celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, presided over the Good Friday funeral Mass for about 200 of the dead.
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Sobbing mourners gazed on coffins adorned with mementos of the dead -- a boy's toy motorcycle, a baby's blue T-shirt -- comforting each other as they said farewell at a funeral mass for Italy's quake victims.
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"This is the time to work together," the pope said in a message read by his secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein. "Only solidarity will allow us to overcome this painful trial."
Hindu elder in legal bid so he can be cremated on open-fire pyre
A devout Hindu grandfather made a heartfelt plea yesterday to be allowed to be cremated 'with dignity' on an open-air funeral pyre when he dies.
Davender Ghai, 70, believes that the ancient Hindu tradition of open-air cremation is essential to the liberation of his soul after death.
The Newcastle City Council says no, it contravenes the 1902 Cremation Act.
Standarized cremation says Ghai is a 'mechanized humiliation of dignity'" and the council's cremation facilities were a "waste disposal process devoid of spiritual significance."
By contrast, he compared the liberation of the soul in consecrated fire to a sacramental rebirth, 'like the mythical phoenix arising from the flames anew'.
He added: 'Being bundled into a box and incinerated in a furnace is not my idea of dignity, much less performance of an ancient sacrament.
Ghai is appealing for judicial review with the support of a number of Hindu organizations.
Thousands attend funeral of the 4 Oakland police officers slain last week
...some 19,000 law-enforcement officers from coast to coast gathered along with grateful community members at the Oracle Arena in Oakland for a final send-off for their brothers in blue.
All four veteran officers died Saturday when a wanted parolee, 26-year-old Lovelle Mixon, opened fire in separate incidents just hours apart in East Oakland.
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A rumbling cortege of motorcycle officers escorted each hearse to the arena, keeping a tight and sharp formation just as Dunakin would have liked it, his colleagues said. They passed underneath a giant American flag hanging between the extended ladders of two Oakland fire trucks. Hundreds of police vehicles, from bomb-squad trucks, motorcycles, Ford Crown Victoria and Dodge Charger cruisers, filled the parking lot.
There were police cars from Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston and New York and a rainbow of uniforms that filled the arena and the adjacent Oakland Coliseum, where an overflow crowd watched the service on two big screens.
Their badges wrapped with black bands of mourning, hundreds of officers in dress uniforms lined the steps outside the arena and saluted as one by one, honor guards escorted four flag-draped caskets inside, followed by the officers' families. A sign at the complex read, "Forever Heroes."
Many officers dabbed at their eyes with white gloves as the caskets were placed in front of a flower-adorned stage beside their pictures. The police motorcycles of Dunakin and Hege and two pairs of empty boots sat nearby.
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After the funeral, the officers were to be honored with a 21-gun salute from a military cannon, and 20 helicopters from across the nation were to fly in a "missing man" formation. Miles-long formations of police cars, their emergency lights whirling,
The four slain
Oakland police Sgt. Mark Dunakin, or "Dunny," as everybody called him, was a big teddy bear and die-hard Ohio State Buckeyes and Pittsburgh Steelers fan who proudly patrolled the streets on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
Traffic Officer John Hege was a "beer and brownie man" who combined his love for the department and the Oakland Raiders by working overtime at the Coliseum during home games.
SWAT Sgt. Ervin Romans was a former Marine Corps drill sergeant, a "tactical guru" and expert marksman who instilled the importance of safety on the hundreds of officers he trained.
Sgt. Daniel Sakai juggled the duties of being a patrol sergeant and a SWAT entry team leader, yet still insisted on working out and running with officers preparing to take a grueling physical test.
8 hour caravan from Orange County.
Last Saturday, 26-year-old Lovelle Mixon shot and killed officers Erv Romans, 43, Mark Dunakin, 40, and Dan Sakai, 35. A fourth officer, John Hege, 41, was taken off live support after being declared brain dead.
Mixon was wanted for a parole violation, and opened fire during a traffic stop before heading home and opening fire on SWAT officers who were pursuing him with an AK-47, officials said.
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When the caravan arrived, the cars and motorcycles drove past Oracle Arena in a singe-file line and shone their lights in a display of respect.
The Bookworm said some 80 police officers from Boston and even representatives from Scotland Yard were expected. The Bookworm is a new blog for me that I discovered via links from the Anchoress and American Digest . She said something at the end of her post that warmed my heart.
I always view tragedies like this as reminders — reminders not to wait until it’s too late to say how you value someone. No matter the heart-felt outpouring at today’s memorial service, friends, family, colleagues and politicos will be saying things that Sgts. Mark Dunakin, 40, Erv Romans, 43, Daniel Sakai, 35, and Officer John Hege, 41, won’t be around to hear.
When my Mom turned 80, I temporarily stole her address book and wrote to every living person in it asking them to send a letter with a personal message and a remembrance about her. Photos would be welcome too. My sister, who is artistic, then assembled the dozens of responses in a beautiful album. My mother almost cried when she got the album and (this is true) carried it with her everywhere she went for almost a year. To know, not only that her friends loved and valued her, but why they did so, meant everything to her.
Don’t wait until those near you die before you open your mouth and say the things you should have said before. Tell your family members you love them — and tell them why. Give your friend a true compliment — a deep one, about his or her personality, not just the usual “great shirt,” or “nice hair” kind of thing. Praise a colleague’s work. These things matter, and one of the greatest regrets we always have when people die is all the things we should have said before.
Burial in parts
BEIJING (Reuters) - Only two memories brought tears to Sun Yaoting's eyes in old age -- the day his father cut off his genitals, and the day his family threw away the pickled remains that should have made him a whole man again at death.
China's last eunuch was tormented and impoverished in youth, punished in revolutionary China for his role as the "Emperor's slave" but finally feted and valued, largely for outlasting his peers to become a unique relic, a piece of "living history."
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For centuries in China, the only men from outside the imperial family who were allowed into the Forbidden City's private quarters were castrated ones. They effectively swapped their reproductive organs for a hope of exclusive access to the emperor that made some into rich and influential politicians.
Sun's impoverished family set him on this painful, risky path in hopes that he might one day be able to crush a bullying village landlord who stole their fields and burned their house.
His desperate father performed the castration on the bed of their mud-walled home, with no anesthetic and only oil-soaked paper as a bandage. A goose quill was inserted in Sun's urethra to prevent it getting blocked as the wound healed.
He was unconscious for three days and could barely move for two months. When he finally rose from his bed, history played the first of a series of cruel tricks on him -- he discovered the emperor he hoped to serve had abdicated several weeks earlier.
I wrote about Taking Chance Home back in 2004. I was immensely moved then and again when I watched Taking Chance last month on HBO. I meant to write about it, but I got distracted and didn't. What is most impressive is the respect, even reverence, the Army takes every step of the way and the manner in which Americans meet that respect with their own.
But I must say I was surprised at the size of the audience. Today in the Wall St Journal on 'Taking Chance'.
It's been widely observed that movies about the Iraq war have tended to bomb at the box office. One newspaper report speculated that films like "Home of the Brave" and "Stop-Loss" failed because "the audience might prefer a longer interval before viewing events as troubling as war."
"Taking Chance" refutes this notion. When it debuted February 21 on HBO, it became the network's most-watched original movie in five years, drawing two million viewers -- especially impressive given that it aired on Saturday, traditionally not a big TV-watching night. An HBO spokesman estimates that another 5.5 million have watched subsequent airings of the film, and that doesn't count DVR viewers.
What makes "Taking Chance" different from the other Iraq movies is that it is all realism and no cynicism. It dramatizes the 2004 journey of Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl, played by Kevin Bacon, as he escorts the remains of a 19-year-old Marine private, Chance Phelps, from Dover Air Force Base to Phelps's Wyoming hometown, where Strobl meets the family and attends the funeral.
"Taking Chance" does not glorify the war. It takes no discernable position on whether America should be in Iraq, although a few people Colonel Strobl meets along the way express their view, pro and con. But almost without exception, the Americans he encounters are respectful, patriotic, grateful for his service and for Private Phelps's. If Hollywood wants to make war movies that appeal to a broad audience, it could do worse than to take in "Taking Chance." The Americans who show Colonel Strobl such reverence as he makes his way west are the very audience Hollywood wishes it could reach.
A Romanian man staged his own funeral while he was still alive to make sure everything went to plan.
Marin Voinicu, 73, from Vadastra in Olt county, invited fellow villagers, relatives and friends to his home to mark his "future passing".
The village priest even accepted an invitation to officiate a funeral sermon at the man's home.
Mr Voinicu said: "I did everything by the book. I even dug my own grave in the cemetery and laid down in it to see how it feels.
"I asked my relatives to wail at my headstone for a test run. I was fully satisfied with my funeral."
He explained he decided to organise his own funeral because he didn't want to leave the task on his family's shoulders.
And his family agreed to go along with it because they felt it would be easier to organise the event when they were not distracted by grieving.
Mr Voinicu's daughter-in-law Oncica said: "If we had done this after his death it would have been harder.
"Everybody would have cried a lot but this way nobody shed a tear. We had such a good time one could have said it was more like a wedding than a funeral."
From the Daily Undertaker comes a story of Parachutes and Lawn Chairs
The ashes of two unlikely friends dropped from the sky Saturday to be buried at the Center of the World. One man belonged to the Hitler Youth as a child. The other survived a concentration camp. However unlikely, Wolfgang Lieschke and Herbert Loebel did become friends as adults living in America. In accordance with their families' wishes, the West Point Parachute Team delivered the men's ashes to their novel and final resting place Saturday.
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The ashes were dropped by parachute and buried at the Center of the World. The popular tourist attraction is located west of Yuma, along Interstate 8, in Felicity, Calif.
"Both were eminent men in their era who became close friends and who will rest together in consecrated ground," said Jacques-Andre Istel, the mayor of Felicity and friend of both men. "Both had close links to parachuting and both served humanity."
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Often called "the father of American skydiving," Istel trained the Army's first free-fall parachute team, which led to the creation of the Golden Knights.
Istel organized a sizable celebration Saturday, full of ceremony and military pageantry. The U.S. Marine Corps Drum and Bugle Corps played taps, and the Golden Knights Army Parachute Team performed an air-to-ground salute. The U.S. Marine Corps Color Guard also made an appearance.
While excavating mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages, an archeologist found the skeleton of a woman with a brick in her mouth.
"Vampire' skeleton unearthed in Venice.
At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by "vampires" which, rather than drinking people's blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.
The belief in vampires probably arose because blood is sometimes expelled from the mouths of the dead, causing the shroud to sink inwards and tear. Borrini, who presented his findings at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver, Colorado, last week, claims this might be the first such vampire to have been forensically examined. The skeleton was removed from a mass grave of victims of the Venetian plague of 1576.
Two women from my home town of Arlington preach environmentalism after death.
Ruth Faas and Sue Cross, co-founders of Mourning Dove Studio where they sell ecopods and other biodegradable caskets, are "local groundbreakers in the natural burial movement."
Faas, 48, an occupational therapist, who opened Mourning Dove Studio in December, wants it to be "a resource space for people thinking about death and dying.
"I feel like we've been indoctrinated to do death care in a certain way in this country, and I'd like people to consider the environmental impact of their choices and whether or not these rituals hold meaning for us," she said.
The studio includes a casket display - with options that range from an $80 cardboard box to a $3,500 wicker coffin - and a spacious area for bereavement groups, workshops, art-making and coffin decorating. (For $15 per hour, customers can decorate a cardboard or pine box that they buy.) In Mourning Dove's reading room, people can browse through books about alternative death-care practices.
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Faas and Cross are betting that a generation of aging baby boomers will start requesting green burials as awareness slowly dawns.
"We've been afraid to look at death, plan for it, and talk about it," said Cross, who came to this work by studying death rituals of her own Hungarian heritage. "We also end up spending a lot of money on things like concrete vaults and metal caskets that keep us from returning to the cycle of life."
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While running a booth last May at the Down to Earth Expo, which drew 8,000 visitors to the Hynes Veterans Convention Center in Boston, Faas was not surprised by the number of environmentalists who, like herself a few years earlier, had never considered the impact of their final carbon footprint.
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Still, Harris thinks green funerals will start moving into the mainstream in leaps and bounds. "There is something appealing about returning to the earth as your final act on earth, and using your remains to push up a tree."
I think I'm going to call on them.
Rocco Palmo over at Whispers in the Loggia has the story of the funeral of Seoul's Cardinal Stephen Kim.
The first Korean cardinal, Kim -- who led the Seoul church for three decades, watching it grow sixfold in the process -- died Monday at 86. Including the country's current and former presidents, some 400,000 mourners of all faiths were said to have filed past his coffin over its four-day lying in state in the city's Myeongdong Cathedral.
Hailed as a "true guiding light" and the last "reliable leader in Korean society" despite the church's minority status -- around 15% of South Korea's 38 million citizens are Catholic -- the outpouring of reaction at the cardinal's death moved one newspaper to lead its coverage with a headline asking "Have We Mourned Like This Before?"
Religious leaders from Protestantism, Buddhism, Won-Buddhism and Cheondoism took up the first-row at the funeral Mass.
As one editorial said
The mourning transcended age, social status and political ideology.
People gathered at the cathedral from 2 to 3 a.m., and by 6 a.m., when people were allowed in to pay their condolences, a line stretching for 3 km had already formed, while people continued to pour in until midnight when the cathedral closed its doors. Mourners had to wait three to four hours in the freezing cold, but there was no jostling, shouting or cutting in line. Rather, people yielded their spots to let the elderly go first.
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A wise society uses the deaths of great people to mark the era that preceded that event and to prepare for the next one. The 58 years that transpired from 1951, when Cardinal Kim was ordained as a priest, until his death in 2009, were a microcosm of Korea’s history of trials and accomplishments, ranging from war and devastation, the division of a nation, dictatorship, industrialization and democratization to social polarization. Cardinal Kim embraced all Koreans living in such difficult times, consistently urging us to be patient. He told us that there is an end to pain. And in doing so, he gave us both courage and hope.
To understand his Great Legacy, read Called Home from Korea
Amy Wellborn on the death of her husband Michael Dubriel.
There are stages, there are layers, there are bridges. There is a void, my best friend in the world is just - gone. But in this moment I am confronted with the question, most brutally asked, of whether I really do believe all that I say I believe. Into this time of strange, awful loss, Jesus stepped in. He wasted no time. He came immediately. His presence was real and vivid and in him the present and future, bound in love, moved close. The gratitude I felt for life now and forever and what had prepared us for this surged, I was tempted to push it away for the sake of propriety, for what is expected, for what was supposed to be normal - I was tempted to say, “Leave me” instead of accepting the Hand extended to me and to immediately allow him to define my life.
But I did not give into that temptation, and a few hours later I was able to do what I dreaded, what I thought was undoable, to be in a mystery that was both presence and absence and to not be afraid. To not be afraid for him, and for the first time ever in my entire life - to not be afraid for myself , either.
At last.
From the Boston Herald comes news that Funerals going to the dogs
A funeral home has run an obituary for a dearly departed dog and is holding a wake next week for the 9-year-old German shepherd in what appears to be a Massachusetts first.
“He had a lot of friends,” said Kris Giles through sobs as she talked about the loss of her family pet, Kross Monsta Giles, who died of cancer Feb. 3.
For Giles, a pet memorial in the newspaper and somber ceremony in the backyard was not enough to celebrate Kross’ life.
An obituary and photo, where Kross is featured next to a tennis ball, is on the Gately Funeral Home Web site alongside remembrances and photos of humans.
Although an apparent first for Massachusetts, funeral homes across the country are increasingly servicing grieving “pet families” and holding funerals and wakes for animals.
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Dogs, however, are not allowed.
Millions of tourists have walked through the tombstones of the Old Granary Burying Ground in Boston where lie the remains of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, Crispus Attucks and Mother Goose.
Only one, fell through the ground.
In January, a woman on a self-guided tour of the hallowed cemetery in downtown Boston took a fateful step. The ground gave way, and the woman fell hip-deep into a hidden granite stairwell leading down into an unmarked brick crypt.
The woman, who was not injured, accidentally discovered a long-forgotten entrance to a tomb in the city's most famous graveyard, less than 10 yards from the stone marking the resting place of Paul Revere. It served as a reminder that in Boston, the nation's revolutionary roots are literally underfoot.
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The techniques used to fix the problems can be as old as the cemeteries. Heavy machinery cannot be lugged onto the fragile earth, so excavating must be done with shovels. That means frozen ground can delay repairs.
Contractors who specialize in historic masonry do their best to shore up the structures from the outside so they do not disturb the graves.
"You end up really caring for the people," Thomas said. "It's really strange. You don't know them, they've been dead for hundreds of years, but still."
Would you believe a whole gallery of cemeteries in parking lots?
Via Mark Frauenfelder at Boing Boing
KHOJA GHAR, Afghanistan — Ordered to bury 16 bodies in the dead of night in 1978, a wary young army officer did his best to remember the location, quietly counting the paces from the unmarked mass grave to the roadside.
He gathered from his fellow soldiers that they had just buried Afghanistan’s first president, Sardar Mohammad Daoud Khan, and his family. His assassination, during a Communist coup in those tumultuous days, precipitated three decades of war in Afghanistan, a succession of conflicts that are still not spent and that have since touched every Afghan family.
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It took 30 years and the relative stability and freedom under President Hamid Karzai for the former officer, Pacha Mir, to reveal his secret. With his help and that of another witness, the government has at long last identified the remains of the former president and his family and announced preparations to reinter the bodies with a state funeral in coming weeks.
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“If you ask any Afghan when did it all start, they will say it is because of that, the assassination of Mr. Daoud, this was the turning point,” said Nadir Naeem, 43, a member of Afghanistan’s royal family and a grandson of Mr. Daoud. “The last day that Afghanistan was independent was 27th April, 1978.”
Opening a Secret Grave Lets Afghans Close a Chapter of a Brutal Era
“We have not come back for revenge,” said Mr. Ghazi, whose father, Mohammed Nizam, a son-in-law of the president and a Foreign Ministry official, was killed along with his grandfather. “The truth has to be discovered and put at the disposal of the Afghan people.”
For the family, the discovery has come as a relief.
“As Muslims,” Mr. Ghazi said, “we have to have a grave and somewhere to pray. If we can have that then we can rest.”
National Geographic travels to Sicily Where the Dead Don't Sleep in the catacombs beneath the Capuchin monastery in Palermo.
In Europe the desiccation and preservation of corpses is a particularly Sicilian affair. There are other examples in Italy, but the great majority are in Sicily, where the relationship between the living and the dead is especially strong. Nobody knows how many there really are, or how many have since been removed from catacombs and buried in cemeteries by priests uneasy with the theology of keeping votive corpses. The phenomenon provokes an instant question: Why would anyone do this? Why would you exhibit decaying bodies?
In later years some of the bodies were more elaborately preserved by means of chemical injections, taking the responsibility out of the hands of God and leaving it to undertakers and science. In one of the chapels a little girl, Rosalia Lombardo, lies in her coffin. She appears to be sleeping under a filthy brown sheet. Unlike many of the other strained and dried mummies, she has her own hair, which hangs in doll-like curls over her yellow forehead, tied up with a big yellow silk bow. Her eyes are closed, the eyelashes perfectly preserved. If she weren't surrounded by the grinning skulls and rot of this place, she could be just a child dozing on the way home from a party. The naturalism and the beauty are arresting; the implication that life is a mere breath away, disturbing and spooky. Rosalia was two when she got pneumonia and died. Crazy with grief, her father asked Alfredo Salafia, a noted embalmer, to preserve her. The effect is dreadfully, tragically vital, and the grief still seems to hang over this little blond head.
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An enormous amount can be gleaned from dead bodies about the day-to-day lives of the past—diet, illnesses, and life expectancy. Knowing more about diseases like syphilis, malaria, cholera, and tuberculosis centuries ago can help us get the better of them today. The scientists move methodically, checking the corpses' heights and ages, examining skulls and teeth, looking for the ridges interrupting enamel that signify years of malnutrition. Two mummies are gouty. Five show signs of degenerative arthritis. Almost all these people suffered horribly from dental conditions—tartar buildup, receding gums, caries, and abscesses.
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The scientists are respectful of the bodies, never losing touch with the fact that they were human—they were like us—but still they refer to each one as "it," to keep a distance, a dispassion, when they're pulling a molar out.
That would be Majel Roddenberry, widow of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Treck, who saved some of her husband's ashes so that she could join him on a 'memorial spaceflight' after her death, a specialty of the company Celestis.
Their tagline, A Step into the Universe, doesn't make much sense if you ask where are we now?
Gene Roddenberry wife to spend eternity in space.
A Boston Globe photo of the week shows two funeral directors throwing wreaths into the sea at the Gloucester waterfront as part of the funeral procession of two fishermen lost at sea, Matteo Russo and Giovanni Orlando.
What do you do when the funeral director brings the wrong coffin to the church?
'I noticed it was a Catholic-style coffin, and my eyes dropped to the nameplate, and I thought: "Oh my goodness!"' he said.
'I went straight to the sexton and said: "There's been a terrible mistake". But I was told that Mr Kilkelly was known by the other name as well.'
Rev Mannings said he felt he had no choice but to assume the professionals knew what they were doing. 'One has to trust that the funeral director has brought the right coffin,' he added.
He went ahead with the service, on December 12, but a few days later he was horrified to be informed by the undertakers, Co-operative Funeralcare, that they had buried the wrong man after all.
Blundering funeral firm buries wrong man despite vicar's protests ...then secretly digs up and replaces coffin
The refusal by Muslim clerics to bury the Mumbai terrorists is an "original and bold protest against Islamist violence by religious authorities who would normally make sure any Muslim got a proper burial" writes Tom Heneghan of Faithworld, a Reuters blog.
This is symbolically very important,” Mustafa Akyol, a columnist for the Hürriyet Daily News in Istanbul and an active Muslim blogger. “I’ve heard of imams declining to lead a prayer for the deceased because he was an outright atheist, but never of people being denied burial.”
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Given the way Muslim protests against Islamist violence do not seem to attract much attention, is this a proper way for the religious authorities to dramatise their stand? And, as asked above, did you see this in your local newspaper? If not, do you think it should have been there?
By the way, this decision did not come out of the blue. Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, one of India’s leading Islamic groups, endorsed a fatwa against terrorism in early November. More than 6,000 clerics signed the edict, which follows a similar one issued in February by India’s top Islamic seminary, Darul Uloom Deoband.
via Mindful Hack
Little Moshe Holtzberg cries for his mother during a memorial service in Mumbai for his parents, Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, who were taken hostage, tortured and killed by the terrorists during the Mumbai terror attack.
Even the little two-year-old did not avoid a beating as bruises were found on his back. He was rescued by his Indian nanny Sandra Samuel who, when the terrorist attack began, locked herself in a room with another staff member. The following morning, she heard little Moshe crying for her and went to look for him. She found him, his pants covered in blood, crying beside the motionless bodies of his parents. She grabbed the baby and ran outside even as the terror attacks on Nairman house continued.
The state of Israel sent a plan to Mumbai to carry back the bodies of the Jewish victims along with little Moshe and his nanny who was the only person the traumatized toddler responded to.
At the funeral in Israel, Rivka's father revealed was six months pregnant.
The rabbi who delivered the eulogy said,
'You don't have a mother who will hug you and kiss you,' Rabbi Kotlarsky cried out during a eulogy that switched back and forth between Hebrew and English. But the community will take care of the boy, he vowed: 'You are the child of all of Israel.'
"If it enriched the soil we wouldn't mind so much but the ashes have no nutrients at all,"
said Mrs West , collections manager of the Jane Austen museum, in an open letter to the Jane Austen society.
'While we understand many admirers of Jane Austen would love to have ashes laid here, it is something we do not allow.
'It is distressing for visitors to see mounds of human ash, particularly so for our gardener. Also, it is of no benefit to the garden!'
While Jane Austen expert, Professor Kathryn Sutherland, of Oxford University, thought
'I think she would think it's hilarious and be thrilled she inspired such devotion'.
Jane Austen museum forced to ban fans from scattering human ashes in her garden.
When the Red Sox finally won the world series, there were stories of people who laminated the front page of the Boston Globe and brought to the graves of their parents to plant instead of flowers.
Now, you can be buried in a Red Sox casket and prove your undying eternal loyalty.
Yes, the officially licensed Red Sox casket has arrived. The team logo is embroidered on the soft velvet of the lining and pillow, each of which is as white as a home uniform on Opening Day. The logo also appears on the exterior of the casket, which is made of high-gloss 18-gauge steel accented with baseball bat-style wood, tassels, and polished chrome - more Cadillac than bullpen car, headed for the hereafter.
"It's really a beautiful thing," said Dan Biggins, 28, co-director of Magoun-Biggins Funeral Home in Rockland, which recently took delivery of the first Sox casket, serial number 0001. "It's really neat."
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The casket is manufactured by Eternal Image, a Michigan company started about five years ago on the notion that branded funeral products could make money and fill an overlooked need. The founder, who hatched the idea after looking unsuccessfully on the Internet for a 1967 Ford Mustang casket for himself, spent the next few years persuading well-known brands - including the Vatican Library, the American Kennel Club, and Star Trek - to enter licensing agreements.
From coast to coast, San Diego to Long Island, there's a new twist to hearses.
Harley Davidson Drawn Hearse, Anyone?
Harley-Davidson enthusiasts who take the motto "Live to Ride, Ride to Live" to heart now have a proper conveyance to hog heaven.
A Long Island funeral home chain invested $100,000 in a three-wheeled Harley and carriage-style hearse for bikers who want to go out in style.
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For $795, a driver will take the dearly departed from the funeral home to the house of worship, then on to the cemetery _ compared to $475 to $575 for a lift in a traditional hearse, they said.
Moloney said his family hoped to capitalize on a high concentration of military veterans and bike fanatics on Long Island.
"It's not morbid, it's cool," he said. "It's a way for people to always remember your funeral."
It's Never to Late to Go out in Style
Jose Santana hadn't ridden a motorcycle in years, but when the 67-year-old Jamul man died of a stroke last week, his four children wanted his funeral to reflect his free-wheeling side.
They agreed their father's idea of heaven would be a final ride in a Harley-Davidson hearse.
“They said it was a Harley, and I said, 'Yeah, he'd like that,' ” son Jorge Santana said. “My dad liked his freedom.”
How not to conduct a funeral mass for a priest.
Father Harry Meyer tried to imagine God’s reaction when St. Susanna pastor Dan Schuh appeared in heaven.
Probably, he said, it was the same as the teenaged skier who witnessed the 50-something priest tumble head over skis down the slopes one winter night at Perfect North Slopes.
"Awesome, dude!" Meyer told the 1,500-plus parishioners and priests who gathered for Schuh’s funeral Mass Wednesday morning.
Father Z comments sadly:
We can’t avoid death. We cannot control death. We don’t understand death and we fear what we don’t understand. Fear, at its root, is a result of the Fall. Death and fear are inseparable, as cause to its effect.
This is why, I think, so many funerals today are as described above.
Death’s mystery is supremely confronted in Holy Mass, and in its deepest way during the Requiem. Perhaps this is why funerals tend to reveal the worst of our tendencies toward illicit liturgical creativity and bad taste. Corruptio optimi pessima.
Holy Mass must be celebrated in such a way that it leads us into the mystery of Christ’s death, and our death. Mass is therefore like the Cross. It is a mystery. It thus will allure and repel, reveal that things are hidden and demand faith in what is unseen, or rather seen only darkly as if through a glass.
We mustn’t dodge the reality of death. We shove death aside, or paint it over with bright colors and candy music, at our peril. So many funerals are arrange so that people can get through another hour or so without having confronted anything either frightening or meaningful. We avert our gaze from what Christ did for us and from what we must yet experience.
If Holy Mass is reduced to the banal it becomes merely another worldly distraction. It becomes a show.
But Mass is a sacrament, in the sense of its being a mystery. It prepares us for death, Christ’s and our own.
Discovered in a tender embrace, the first known nuclear family
A Stone Age burial ground, where the bodies of adults and children lay together for thousands of years entwined in tender embraces, has provided the earliest evidence for the existence of the nuclear family.
DNA tests on four skeletons from one of the graves have shown that the family unit of mother, father and their biological children goes back at least 4,600 years, when these bodies were carefully interred after a violent death.
The Stone Age site near Eulau in Germany contains the skeletons of several groups of adults and children buried facing one another in an arrangement that may mirror their relationships in life, scientists said yesterday.
In one grave, a mother is embracing her son, while crouching next to her in the same grave is the father with his arms around their elder son. "A direct child-parent relationship was detected in one burial, providing the oldest molecular genetic evidence of a nuclear family," the scientists said in the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Grandmother's funeral brings her 172 grandchildren together for the first time ever.
As a grandmother of 172, Maggie Ward had plenty of family to dote on. And when it came to her funeral, they were determined to repay the favour.
Although they have never all been together in one place before, every single one made sure they were at the ceremony to give the 87-year-old a good send-off.
More amazingly:
Daughter Anne Hudson paid tribute to her mother and told how she never forgot a birthday and every member of her family got a gift at Christmas.
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'She would never forget a birthday and got everyone a present at Christmas. She bought presents all year round - she would go to markets to get gifts so she could afford something for everyone.
More room on top - lack of space brings in doubledecker grave.
The disturbance of human remains in burial grounds is to be allowed for the first time since the early Victorian era to deal with a shortage of graves, The Times has learnt.
Under a test scheme to begin in the new year, local authorities across the country will be allowed to exhume remains and rebury them deeper to create space for further burials on top.
A Muslim Imam leads mourners in prayer during a service for Mohsin Naqvi, a Muslim and native of Pakistan, who emigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was 8 years old and became a citizen at 16 and later an officer in the U.S. Army. He was killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol last week in Afghanistan.
This and other striking photographs from Afghanistan at The Big Picture
Mohsin Naqvi, R.I.P.
If traditional coffins are too boring for you, consider The coffins that carry you off in a riot of color
They are the perfect final tribute for anyone who wouldn’t be seen dead in a traditional coffin.
Increasing numbers of families are choosing colourful ‘designer’ caskets for their loved ones, injecting a bold personal touch to funeral services.
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Mary Tomes, 63, set up the company in Oxford after she retired from the printing industry. ‘I think our coffins can make people smile and lift the occasion,’ she said. ‘It makes it easier for people to deal with because it becomes a talking point.’
She added: ‘The clergy have been absolutely wonderful with this. Sometimes when you lose somebody it can be so hard to look at coffins. People who have been to a funeral and seen one of ours can smile and say, “Oh yes, he really loved golf.”
This is too much - a coffin as a talking point at a funeral? Give me grief and lamentations, I don't need no talking points.
In 1239, Gilbert de Moravia, Bishop of Caithness, invoked a solemn curse “upon those who destroy and injure" the fabric of Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland. When he died he was interred beneath the floor of the Cathedral.
In 1570, the Cathedral was burnt down during local feuding.
St Gilbert’s curse was said to have struck down landowner William Sutherland, of Evelix, near Dornoch. During the sacking of the cathedral by the Mackays of Strathnaver and retainers of the Earl of Caithness, Sutherland had joined in and kicked over St Gilbert's bones. According to local tradition, the very foot that perpetrated the deed rotted away, creating such a stench that no one would go near Sutherland as he died a slow, agonising death
In October, 2008, a 19-year-old was arrested for vandalizing and stealing money from the ancient building. Put in a jail cell over the weekend before he appeared in court, young Daryl Shearer died mysteriously. A post-mortem investigation is underway.
Bishop's Hex to Anyone Who Damaged Cathedral.
Painting by Emile Friant, La Toussaint.
Via Tea at Trianon comes Chrysanthemums and All Souls' Day
Halloween is barely noticeable in France. The same cannot be said of All Saints' Day, La Toussaint (November 1st) and All Souls' Day, the Day of the Dead, the Jour des Morts (November 2.) La Toussaint is a national holiday.
This is a time for families to bring fresh flowers, mostly chrysanthemums, to the tombs of their departed loved ones, much as in the 19th century painting below. Cheerful mum blossoms are everywhere in Paris now.
I remember how surprised I was when I moved to California to note that these flowers have no funeral connotation in the United States. They grew to amazing masses of pink, red and gold in my Los Angeles garden (indeed chrysanthemum means "gold blossom" in Greek). But in France they are the flowers of the dead.
The night of a thousand shining lights
Poland grinds to a standstill on All Saints' Day, says Jonathan Luxmoore, as even ardent atheists head to cemeteries to honour the dead
In the sullen, damp air of an autumn evening, flower-strewn crosses and marble tombstones are illuminated by the glow of candles, flickering in their thousands against a dark backdrop of gently rustling pines and birches. On the narrow walkways between groups of people, young and old, huddle silently over the grave surfaces, carefully weeding and clearing. Over a distant loudspeaker the voice of a priest intones prayers and meditations.
That scene will be repeated at hundreds of locations throughout Poland this weekend as the traditional All Saints' Day observances reach their poignant climax. Anyone who has not witnessed this national festival has missed a phenomenon that has survived essentially unchanged through centuries of war and occupation.
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According to surveys 97 per cent of the country's 38 million inhabitants, irrespective of class or creed, converge on the cemeteries for All Saints' Day. A quarter take extra days off work to pay homage to dead relatives, often travelling hundreds of miles, while a similar proportion also places candles and flowers at military cemeteries and national monuments.
Stanis_awa Grabska, a veteran Catholic theologian, explains: "The grave's existence has greatest importance for the living, as a symbol of their faith in the resurrection. We believe the dead are the same people that we knew - with the one difference that they have reached their goal, while we are still on the way."
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Strikingly, the most popular Christian feasts in Poland are marked as much by declared atheists as by believers. This suggests that non-Catholics also wish to maintain some link with Church and religion, and to ensure that, when the times comes, their mortal remains will also be treated with fitting reverence.
It also confirms that the survival of the Christian faith is linked to the durability of social bonds and cultural traditions. Come what may, the candles of All Saints' Day will go on shining amid the night breezes of a material world.
I've just subscribed to a fine blog by the Daily Undertaker which is well worthy of your perusal for the insights of a funeral director and some fine photographs.
I quite liked "I wish I'd spoken at my father's funeral", the undertaker who tries to save a young man from a life of violence, Irish wakes online, and Behind the Collar, Funerals from the Vicar's perspective
Take some time and look around. You'll be glad you did.
Kelly Gillespie is the undertaker and licensed funeral director at Need Ideas for a Funeral and boy does she have a lot.
If you're curious about alternative funeral or burial arrangements, you may want to check out what she has to say about a traditional service done your way pagan rites, a Buddhist ceremony or a Japanese Odon Festival
If you want a savvy death care consultant to help you plan a memorable funeral, call Kelly.
Sister Emmanuelle, France's "Mother Teresa," dies aged 99.
Sister Emmanuelle, France's answer to Mother Teresa, who has died aged 99 was an unorthodox nun who spent 20 years helping the poor in a Cairo slum before returning to France to defend the homeless.
The diminutive Roman Catholic nun, whose real name was Madeleine Cinquin, was best known in France for her frequent appearances on television to campaign passionately for the poor and homeless.
She came to media attention with her work with some of the world's poorest people, the residents of the Ezbet El-Nakhl slum in Cairo who eke out their living by scavenging in the garbage produced in the giant city.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Sister Emmanuelle was a woman who "touched our hearts," a "woman of action for whom charity meant concrete actions of solidarity and fraternity."
The Vatican said her work, like that of Nobel peace laureate Mother Teresa, "showed how Christian charity was able to go beyond differences of nationality, race, religion."
Rocco Palmo writes about her funeral in "Life Does Not End For Those Who Know to Love"
Sent off by her expressed request from the small-town convent where she spent her last years, Paris came to a halt yesterday to commemorate Soeur Emmanuelle -- the "French Mother Teresa" who died Monday at 99.
Following her private funeral liturgy and burial at Callian in the country's southeast, the capital's Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois celebrated a nationally-televised memorial Mass in Notre-Dame, its high-watt congregation led by President Nicolas Sarkozy, his predecessor Jacques Chirac and -- in a tribute to the two decades the self-described "rag woman with the rag pickers" spent working among the poor in Cairo -- Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak, as a crowd of thousands packed the square outside.
She left a message with her publishers.
"When you hear this message, I will no longer be there. In telling of my life -- all of my life -- I wanted to bear witness that love is more powerful than death," she said, according to the text.
"I have confessed everything, the good and the less good, and I can tell you about it. Where I am now, life does not end for those who know how to love."...
Rome workers uncover city of dead.
Workers renovating a rugby stadium have uncovered a vast complex of tombs beneath Rome that mimic the houses, blocks and streets of a real city, according to officials, who have unveiled a series of new finds.
Culture Ministry officials said Thursday that medieval pottery shards in the city of the dead, or necropolis, show the area may have been inhabited by the living during the Dark Ages after being used for centuries for burials during the Roman period.
It is not yet clear who was buried in the ancient cemetery, but archaeologists at the still partially excavated site believe at least some of the dead were freed slaves of Greek origin.
It's a matter of a few weeks to discover what is down there," said archaeologist Marina Piranomonte. "But it's something big; it looks like a neighborhood."
Red tassels are the only remains of saintly cardinal
The bones of the Victorian cardinal who is in line to become Britain’s first saint for almost 40 years have disintegrated, hampering plans to turn his final resting place into a centre of Christian pilgrimage.
Church officials exhuming the body of Cardinal John Henry Newman were surprised to discover that his grave was almost empty when it was opened on Thursday. All that remained were a brass plate and handles from Newman’s coffin, along with a few red tassels from his cardinal’s hat.
The discovery will not affect Newman’s case for sainthood. But officials have had to abandon plans to transfer his bones from a rural cemetery in Rednal, Worcestershire, to a marble sarcophagus at Birmingham Oratory, which Newman founded after converting to Catholicism from the Church of England.
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“I have been visiting that grave since I was a very young boy,” said Peter Jennings, a spokesman for the Oratory. “I will never forget how I felt, standing there last Thursday, looking at this deep hole which had been dug out. This was the greatest churchman of the 19th century and there was nothing there, only dust.”
There is no conspiracy theory over what has become of Newman’s remains: experts believe that damp conditions led to their complete decomposition.
Family barred from burying their dead stepfather on a Saturday...because he isn't a Muslim
Harold 'Charlie' Lemaire died last week from pneumonia and his family wanted the burial service to be held on Saturday to make it easier for relatives living across the country to attend.
But plans for a memorial service followed by a burial in the City Road cemetery in Sheffield had to be changed because the local authority has a policy only to allow Muslim and Jewish funerals at weekends and bank holidays.
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the 'two-tier' system has been slammed as discriminatory and Islamic groups have also backed calls for all faiths to be treated in the same way.
2000 people packed the pews for the funeral of Thomas S. Vander Woude, the Father who died saving his son
Among the attendees were his wife of 43 years, Mary Ellen, more than 70 priests, including the bishop of Arlington, and the friends accrued over decades who came to pay respects to a man who inspired them, right up until his final breath.
If Vander Woude saw the throng, he'd say, "Are you kidding me? . . . Don't waste your gas," said one of his sons, Steve Vander Woude of Nokesville, after the service. But "this guy did something saintly, and they wanted to come be a part of it."
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Another of Thomas S. Vander Woude's sons, Tom Vander Woude, pastor at Queen of Apostles Catholic Church in Alexandria, gave the homily. In it, he likened his father to Saint Joseph, a man who patiently and quietly supported his family, did odd jobs for those in need and was content to worship God and not seek the limelight, Tom Vander Woude said.
At a reception at Seton School in Manassas, where six of Thomas S. Vander Woude's sons went to school, friends and neighbors traded stories about how Vander Woude had gone out of his way to help them. Fittingly, Tom Vander Woude observed, they were standing on the gym floor that his father had installed.
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His dying act was, "truly saintly" and "the crown of a whole life of self-giving," Bishop Paul S. Loverde said at the Mass. "May we find in his life inspiration and strength."
He was one of the unknown saints among us.
HORROR: American Airlines Sued Over Missing Body
It was Miguel Olaya's worst nightmare.
Not only had his wife of 26 years died of cancer, but he says American Airlines lost her body when it was time to bury her in their native Ecuador.
Olaya is a proud man. But when we was asked what he told his 16-year-old daughter, Laura, about how for several days American Airlines apparently could not tell them what happened to his wife Teresa's body while they waited to bury her in Ecuador, after flying in from New York, well, he struggled to maintain his composure. He didn't want to break down in front of a camera, but clearly he was torn up inside.
He managed to get out "Que estamos sufriendo. Translation: "We are suffering."
His wife of 26 years died of cancer, and after a viewing at De Riso funeral home in Brooklyn, the funeral home arranged with American Airlines to fly the body to Ecuador.
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Attorney Christopher Robles: "It appears from what we know about the state of the body when it arrives in Ecuador, that the body was not refrigerated. It was not kept the way a body would need to be kept."
In Louisiana, Search Goes On for Lost Coffins.
Displacements of more than 1,500 bodies occurred in Louisiana from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Some were also displaced in Texas and Mississippi. Hundreds remain unidentified, officials say. Louisiana estimates the cost of retrieving lost coffins will be about $4 million.
Mr. Mudge, a retired councilman and former deputy, inherited recovery duty in his parish three days after Katrina. He was traveling through flood waters by airboat when he noticed coffins floating in the streets. "The storm broke apart everything," Mr. Mudge says. "Everything came out."
Over the last three years, his wife, Barbara, a 62-year-old parish government secretary, has compiled meticulous notes of the clues in each find. They quickly discovered many people are buried without any notation in the coffins of who they were.
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Some coffins were sent to a temporary morgue an hour away, where experts looked for medical identification bracelets, name tags, dental records and performed X-rays. They kept records of mementos placed with the bodies, such as Budweiser and banana-liquor bottles, fishing poles, letters, baseball caps, jewelry and in one case an Aretha Franklin cassette tape.
In February 2006, all the bodies were sent back to Plaquemines Parish with reports of the findings in each coffin. Mrs. Mudge went to work. She conducted dozens of interviews with people who had lost relatives, as well as funeral-home directors and grave diggers -- compiling descriptions and combing through reports for clues.
Mr. Mudge retrieved two identical coffins adorned with a pink rose design, one on top of a levee and another in the woods. The local mortician opened the first coffin, and spotted a hot pink bingo marker in the exact spot described by Ms. St. Ann. "They asked me if I wanted to keep it," Ms. St. Ann says. "I told them to leave that marker with her just in case something like this happens again." Her brother's body hasn't been found.
Via Tea at Trianon comes the Strange Custom of Dining with the Dead
François I died of illness on March 31, 1547, but that didn't prevent his courtiers from dining with him ever again. His meals were served to his effigy, as if he were still alive, for eleven days as part of an elaborate funeral ceremony rife with symbolic meaning.
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François was not buried until May 22, as his successor, Henri II, wanted to combine his father's funeral with those of the king's two sons who had predeceased him and whose bodies had to be transported to Paris. This gap allowed for an elaborate ceremony to unfold.
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Along the walls were benches for nobles and clerics, who attended the religious services and meals served to the effigy. These were the strangest parts of the ceremonial. For eleven days the king's meals were served as if he were still alive. His table was laid and the courses brought in and tasted. The napkin, used to wipe his hands, was presented by the steward to the most eminent person in attendance, and wine was served twice during each meal. At the end, grace was said by a cardinal.
Who gets final say over a funeral - the funeral director or a parish priest?
The blog getreligion reports in The Business of Death on a story in the Louisville Courier-Journal
A Nelson County funeral home director is suing the Archdiocese of Louisville and a Roman Catholic priest, whom he accuses of undercutting his business by implementing new rules on conducting funerals at his parish.
The Rev. Jeffrey Leger, pastor of St. Catherine Church in New Haven, put a new policy into effect last month, stipulating that funeral directors can no longer solely plan funerals. Instead, they must now plan them with Leger, who has final say.
Says Mollie, author of the blog post
It’s the dirty little secret of church life that some funeral directors are responsible for exerting a great deal of power over funeral services. Sometimes that’s a net blessing for the parties involved. Grieving family members don’t always make the best decisions about funerals. But for churches, such as mine, that approach funerals as worship services in which the Word of God is proclaimed in order to comfort those who grieve with hope in the resurrected Christ — meddling from non-members can wreak havoc. I say all this as a descendant of successful funeral home directors on one side of the family and the daughter of a pastor on the other side of the family. I really like the way Smith just laid the facts out in order to quickly get into the meat of the story:
Sculptures stolen from cemeteries
Thieves have looted several sculptures, including the work of a famed South End artist, from the Forest Hills Cemetery, possibly to sell as scrap metal, in a sign that the theft of bronze and copper has spread to the serenity of cemeteries.
The work of Kahlil Gibran, "Seated Ceres," and two sculptures by other artists were taken over the past week from the Contemporary Sculpture Path, a nationally renowned walking trail of more than 30 works, cemetery officials said.
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Milley, who is also president of the Massachusetts Cemetery Association, said cemeteries throughout the state have reported thefts of copper or bronze materials, but he has never heard of renowned artwork being taken.
Miller said that the Forest Hills Cemetery was unique in that it risked displaying artwork that was fitting for a museum. She said the cemetery will have to decide whether to keep bronze as part of the display.
"One of the wonderful things about this environment was that people normally treated it with respect because it is a cemetery," she said. "It just seems particularly terrible that thieves would violate that space and destroy something that has much larger value."
The National Geographic announced the discovery of an ancient cemetery in the once-green Sahara
A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert.
The slender arms of the youngsters were still extended to the woman in perpetual embrace when researchers discovered their skeletons in a remarkable cemetery that is providing clues to two civilizations who lived there, a thousand years apart, when the region was moist and green.
Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and colleagues were searching for the remains of dinosaurs in the African country of Niger when they came across the startling find, detailed at a news conference Thursday at the National Geographic Society.
"Part of discovery is finding things that you least expect," he said. "When you come across something like that in the middle of the desert it sends a tingle down your spine."
Some 200 graves of humans were found during fieldwork at the site in 2005 and 2006, as well as remains of animals, large fish and crocodiles.
Even though my personal preference is for real flowers and long-living plants, this is ridiculous.
Plastic flowers banned from cemetery for posing a 'health and safety risk'
'We also have heath-and-safety reasons to consider: if the flowers get caught up in the lawnmower the bits of plastic flying around could be very dangerous.'
In June Croydon Council banned plastic flowers from an elderly accommodation block because they were also deemed to be a health-and-safety risk.
Michael Totten visits Macedonia and is shocked to see
A huge number of people in Tetovo, though, looked like they had been airlifted in from the Middle East,
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It seems the Wahhabis have successfully transformed this portion of Macedonia into what former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky calls a fear society.
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“How long have you had problems with the Wahhabis here?” I said.
“Serious trouble started three years ago when they broke gravestones,” he said. “They didn’t respect our saints. They also broke pictures of Imam Ali on the walls, and of the world head of the Bektashis. They cut the pictures with knives. They think we are too close to Christianity, in part because of the pictures and candles.” The Wahhabis hate candles. “Then the Sunnis came in and occupied the tekke. They said This is Muslim territory.”
All Bektashis believe in the same graves. We keep them and pray to them. We believe that if we damage a grave God will punish us, so we are very afraid to do this, we would never do this. We keep the saint graves. The Muslims know this, they are trying to provoke us and claim that we have done it to ourselves. But no, really they did it. Plus, I see these Wahhabis around. Usually at night the Wahhabis are coming, sometimes in trousers, sometimes in their clothes, sometimes with the things on their heads and with beards.”
The "wedding-funeral" of the first-ever female suicide bomber turns into sectarian brawl.
Excerpts from a report on a Lebanese celebration of the "wedding-funeral" of the first ever female suicide bomber, Sana Mehaidli, known as "The Bride of the South," who detonated a car bomb near an Israeli military convoy in southern Lebanon in 1985. The report aired on Al-Jadid/New TV on July 26, 2008.
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In Maghdouche, the town of the martyr Milad Saliba, Sana was wedded in a great ceremony. The band was playing in her honor, and the crowd was dancing. A bride, in her wedding dress, raised her gun above her head. The procession was showered with rice and roses, and sprayed with rose water. The church bells chimed in her honor.
In 'Anqoun, there was a crowded reception from balconies, from the rooftops, in the streets, and in cars. The Shiite seminary was packed when Sana arrived. The party chairman could not complete his address, because somebody decided to raise a flag of the Amal party from the podium, and a group of vandals began to destroy the place, leading some fo the participants to leave the premises. SSNP members protected Sana's coffin and the guests, whlie gunfire could be heard outside the seminary. After things calmed down, the SSNP members accompanied their heroic martyr to the village cemetery, where she was buried, amid continuous disturbances by the village youth, who were the only ones who did not appreciate the honor that Sana bestowed upon the village from which she came.
via Solomonia
via Brits at Their Animal-Loving Best.
In London, a new exhibition reveals the hidden secrets of 26 disinterred skeletons.
A new exhibition, Skeletons: London's Buried Bones, looks at the secrets etched into 26 disinterred skeletons, from that of a gout-ridden man who clearly loved his pipe, to a bon viveur who died at the ripe old age of 84, to a pregnant young woman.
Here, we tell their extraordinary, and often disturbing, stories.
UPS driver gets special funeral delivery
A United Parcel Service driver in Crystal Lake, Ill., was delivered to his grave following his death by one of the company's vehicles, his wife says.
Judy Hornagold said the fact her husband Jeff's body was taken to the cemetery Saturday in his friend's UPS truck was a great tribute for a man who worked for the shipping company for 20 years, the Crystal Lake (Ill.) Northwest Herald reported.
UPS driver Michael McGowan was in charge of the very special delivery, which included moving his former co-worker's casket from a funeral home to St. Thomas the Apostle Church.
The homily of Fr. David O'Connell, president of Catholic University.
What is the measure of a man? This question has been asked over and again from the beginning of time, throughout history, by all of those who share our human mortality. What is the measure of a man? It is a good question; it is an important question; it is an enduring question; it is an ultimate question when we face the death of someone we know and love. Someone like Tony Snow.
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No one of us among his family or friends believes that Tony’s life was long enough. And, yet — in the face of its brevity — we respond in faith, we who are believers, that the measure of a man is not found, as the Book of Wisdom comforts us today, “in terms of years (Wisdom 4:8).” It is, indeed, our faith that reminds us: “the just man, though he die early, shall be at rest. For the age that is honorable comes not with the passing of time. He who pleased God, Wisdom writes, was loved (and) … having become perfect in a short while, he reached the fullness of a long career; for his soul was pleasing to the Lord (Wisdom 4: 7-14).” For the believer, for people of faith, the true measure of a man lies in his efforts to please God.
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The passing of anyone we love moves us to question: what is the measure of a man? And whatever your answer may be, whatever our answer may be, we can be sure that the measure of a man is not found in words or titles or length of days but, rather, in deeds done, in a life lived, in a love shared and in the beliefs that made it so. The Gospel of St. Matthew tells us today: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the merciful, clean of heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, the just" (Matthew 5: 1-12) … these are the measure of a Christian man. For Tony Snow, these were the ways he embraced his own advice to “live boldly” and to “live a whole life.”
When he spoke to our graduates last spring, Tony shared an especially poignant moment and profound thought about his latest battle with cancer. He reflected that “while God doesn’t promise tomorrow, he does promise eternity.”
For Tony Snow, that promise has been fulfilled.
Remarks of President Bush with special attention to his children.
For Robbie, Kendall, and Kristi, you are in our thoughts and prayers, as well. We thank you for sharing your dad with us. He talked about you all the time. He wanted nothing more than your happiness and success. You know, I used to call Tony on the weekends to get his advice. And invariably, I found him with you on the soccer field, or at a swim meet, or helping with your homework. He loved you a lot. Today I hope you know that we loved him a lot, too.
When a former Wall Street analyst from Greenwich, Conn., set his sights on a lush parcel of 150 acres here, he knew he wanted to live atop its highest peak, surrounded by panoramic views and rippling meadows studded with red clover, Vermont's state flower.
There was only this hitch: A short distance from the site where J. Michel Guite envisioned building a house was a white picket-fenced burial ground with the graves of a War of 1812 veteran, Noah Aldrich, his two granddaughters, and several stones presumed to be grave markers of other family members. Guite was concerned that the cemetery would trouble his children when they played in the tall-grass fields.
The cemetery, he decided, had to go. He gave notice that he intended to move three of the marked grave sites.
The move has inflamed this rural town, prompting a lawsuit, criticism in a local paper, a resolution at Town Meeting denouncing Guite's plans, and a protest banner in the July Fourth parade that said, "Let Noah Aldrich continue to lie in peace." In many ways, the bitterness and anger vented on Guite are about more than one man and reflects a mounting wave of resentment against outsiders seen as snapping up valuable Vermont land with little respect for its heritage.
'Let Noah Aldrich...lie in peace'
A classic from Mary Tyler Moore
"Those cups of tea with dad were special and when he died I really missed them."
John Lowndes has no problem stirring up happy memories of his dad after putting his ashes in an urn with a difference.
He found that when Ian died 10 years ago aged 75, one of the things he missed most was their tradition of putting the world to rights over a nice cuppa.
So he brewed up the idea of giving him leaf eternal by having his ashes mixed with clay to make a teapot.
He approached local potter Neil Richardson who made two teapots - in case one breaks.
From Newsweek, The Russert Miracles
The first "Russert miracle," as attendees called it, happened at the private funeral service held at Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown; the family of the late Meet the Press host Tim Russert had requested that Senators Obama and McCain to sit together, and the two presidential combatants obliged. CNN Washington Bureau chief David Bohrman, a former NBC producer, describes the scene to NEWSWEEK: "They sat side-by-side and spoke for twenty minutes. The body language was total friendship. They were warm and friendly and truly engaged in a conversation.... I kept thinking here we are at the funeral at the son of a sanitation worker and the presidential candidates are having their first one on one conversation here."
After the memorial service, the crowd moved to the rooftop where they saw the sky open up to a rainbow.
"After the magical experience of this service, to come out and see the rainbow and Luke at the bottom of it made the last dry eye weep," said NBC News executive Phil Griffin. The last song in the memorial service was, fittingly, "Somewhere over the Rainbow."
When asked his reaction to explain the sudden appearance of the rainbow at the exact moment, Luke Russert, his sparkly smile so reminiscent of his father's, said: "Is anyone still an atheist now?"
Howard Kurtz reports on the memorial service for Tim Russert,
From the three network anchors to a former governor to the Buffalo nun who taught him in seventh grade, Tim Russert's extended family bid farewell yesterday to "an unmade bed of a man, with an armful of newspapers and a cellphone to his ear," as Tom Brokaw described his colleague
But it was Peggy Noonan who grasped the essential point in A Life's Lesson.
When somebody dies, we tell his story and try to define and isolate what was special about it—what it was he brought to the party, how he enhanced life by showing up. In this way we educate ourselves about what really matters. Or, often, re-educate ourselves, for "man needs more to be reminded than instructed."
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The beautiful thing about the coverage was that it offered extremely important information to those age 15 or 25 or 30 who may not have been told how to operate in the world beyond "Go succeed." I'm not sure we tell the young as much as we ought, as clearly as we ought, what it is the world admires, and what it is they want to emulate.
In a way, the world is a great liar. It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn't. It says it adores fame and celebrity, but it doesn't, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better. That's what it really admires. That's what we talk about in eulogies, because that's what's important. We don't say, "The thing about Joe was he was rich." We say, if we can, "The thing about Joe was he took care of people."
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After Tim's death, the entire television media for four days told you the keys to a life well lived, the things you actually need to live life well, and without which it won't be good. Among them: taking care of those you love and letting them know they're loved, which involves self-sacrifice; holding firm to God, to your religious faith, no matter how high you rise or low you fall. This involves guts, and self-discipline, and active attention to developing and refining a conscience to whose promptings you can respond. Honoring your calling or profession by trying to do within it honorable work, which takes hard effort, and a willingness to master the ethics of your field. And enjoying life. This can be hard in America, where sometimes people are rather grim in their determination to get and to have. "Enjoy life, it's ungrateful not to," said Ronald Reagan.
Tim had these virtues. They were great to see. By defining them and celebrating them the past few days, the media encouraged them. This was a public service, and also what you might call Tim's parting gift.
Hi-tech tombstones in Japan let mourners link to videos of the deceased.
mobile phone QR codes on tombstones that link to photographs and video clips of the deceased.
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In addition to images of the deceased, people can view a greeting from the chief mourner at the funeral and browse through the guest book. They can also make entries using their cell phones.
Bo Diddley's funeral rocked and rolled Saturday with as much energy as his music.
For four hours, friends and relatives sang, danced and celebrated the life of the man who helped give birth to rock and roll with a signature beat that influenced Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones and many others.
As family members passed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's casket, a gospel band played his namesake song. Within moments, the crowd of several hundred began clapping in time and shouting, "Hey, Bo Diddley!"
A Rocking Sendoff for Bo Diddley
The funeral of Yves Saint Laurent at the Saint-Roch church in Paris
If anyone was going to have a designer funeral, it was Yves Saint Laurent.
Scores of the world's most beautiful women gathered yesterday in Paris to pay tribute to one of the most iconic couturiers of the last 50 years.
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Miss Bruni noted how Saint Laurent had put women into masculine tailoring.
And her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy, said: 'One of the greatest names of fashion has disappeared, the first to elevate haute couture to the rank of art. He was convinced that beauty was a luxury that every man and woman needed.'
Tributes to the 71-year-old 'fashion prince', who died on Sunday from a brain tumour, highlighted how he modernised female fashion in the Sixties and had empowered women by putting them in leather biker jackets and army uniforms.
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He was cremated and his ashes flown to a botanical garden in Marrakech, Morocco, where he spent much of his life.
The inventor of Pringles, Fredic Baur who died this month in Cincinnati at 89, was cremated with his ashes buried in a Pringles can.
Via Kottke who remarked he was a clever marketer to the very end.
Cincinnati Enquirer story on Baur's career as an organic chemist and food storage technician at Procter & Gamble.
An alert reader in the U.K. pointed me to this article to show how webcasting a funeral service has made ceremonies more accessible.
You may wonder how a crematorium in Essex can help bereaved people abroad, including soldiers in Iraq. But we can, thanks to new webcasting equipment.
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The system was installed in March last year and is simple and discreet. In the chapel is a fixed camera and two microphones. The webcast is available online live and for a week afterwards. It is password protected, so the family has control of who watches it. The camera also takes a recording, which is sent overnight to Wesley Music, the company that provides the service. They tidy up the sound before offering it as a DVD to mourners.
The benefits of webcasting were clear when we started arranging a funeral last August for a serviceman who died in Iraq. The family and the Ministry of Defence were grateful for the opportunity to broadcast the event to his colleagues in Basra. Wesley Music also worked with the family to make a DVD that included footage of the full military band and ceremonials outside the chapel.
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As well as taking the pressure off mourners, it frees up funeral directors to focus on the family’s needs, which is our first priority. For such a small outlay, we feel the system will be of lasting benefit for us as we evolve our services and for mourners in the grieving process
Mysterious, enigmatic Stonehenge was a burial ground for centuries new research suggests.
"Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid third millennium B.C. The cremation burial dating to Stonehenge's sarsen stones phase is likely just one of many from this later period of the monument's use and demonstrates that it was still very much a domain of the dead," Parker Pearson said in a statement,
Nearby homes were excavated at Durlington Walls
"It's a quite extraordinary settlement, we've never seen anything like it before," Parker Pearson said. The village appeared to be a land of the living and Stonehenge a land of the ancestors, he said.
There were at least 300 and perhaps as many as 1,000 homes in the village, he said. The small homes were occupied in midwinter and midsummer.
The village also included a circle of wooden pillars, which they have named the Southern Circle. It is oriented toward the midwinter sunrise, the opposite of Stonehenge, which is oriented to the midsummer sunrise.
National Geographic will feature the new study this coming Sunday.
The highest ranking African prelate Cardinal Bernardin Gantin died last week in Paris at 86. His body was taken back to his native Benin where he was given A Hero's Sendoff. Rocco Palmo tells the story.
Earlier, a Memorial Mass was held at St. Peter's where Pope Benedict gave the homily.
A railway worker's son, Benedict said that "his personality, human and priestly, made for a magnificent synthesis of the qualities of the African soul with those of the Christian spirit, of the culture and identity of Africa and the values of the Gospel." Despite being, at age 38, the first native-born African archbishop and the continent's first son to assume a top role in the Roman Curia, the Pope said that Gantin never let the accolades get to his head, adding that the "secret" to his humility likely lay in "the wise words that his mother repeated when he became a cardinal... 'Never forget the little faraway village from which you came.'"
Fury as museum bosses cover up naked Egyptian mummies to protect 'sensitivities' of visitors
The last time they had the chance to offend anyone was 2,700 years ago when they were wandering around ancient Egypt.
Since then the mummies have led a blameless existence, spending the last 120 years in a museum where countless thousands of visitors have managed to see them without anyone becoming in the least bit upset.
So museum officials in Manchester covered them with shrouds to protect their modesty and, following government policy, began a process of public consultation.
Josh Lennon, a museum visitor, said: "This is preposterous. Surely people realise that if they go to see Egyptian remains some of them may not be dressed in their best bib and tucker.
"The museum response to complaints is pure Monty Python - they have now covered them from head to foot rendering the exhibition a non-exhibition. It is hilarious."
The body of Padre Pio who died forty years ago and was declared a saint in 2002 is now on display in San Giovanni Rotondo. While not totally incorrupt, his body was still remarkably well-preserved. No sign of his famous stigmata was present.
There are more than 250 incorrupt bodies of Catholic saints whose bodies did not decompose in the normal way.
Would you pay $150 for a user name and password to people who live far away or are housebound so that they can watch the funeral service online?
One crematorium in England is betting that offering a better service to people who are bereaved will be profitable.
Pay-Per-View Funerals bring Mourners Online.
If you are gay and live in Copenhagen, you now can choose to be buried in a gay graveyard.
"We have our own places where we can meet and have fun, gay bars and such. That is why we wanted our own graveyard," Larsen, a priest, told public broadcaster DR.
After they buried their 30-year-old son, they stopped at a store for soda and the father bought $10 worth of lottery tickets.
Grieving father wins $9-million lottery
"I know you're supposed to be happy when you win it, but I'll tell you it's not no big thing," he said.
"I'd rather have my son than my money."
Terry Teachout on the William F Buckley memorial service held yesterday at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Home from the Sea
All I can tell you was that today’s service seemed as splendid as it could possibly have been. The cathedral was full of mourners, the choir loft full of singers, and the music was mostly appropriate to the occasion. Bill was a serious amateur musician who loved Bach above all things–he actually performed the F Minor Harpsichord Concerto in public on more than one occasion–so the organist played “Sheep May Safely Graze” and the slow movement of the Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C Major. No less suitable were the sung portions of the Mass, drawn from Victoria’s sweetly austere Missa “O magnum mysterium,” and the closing hymn, the noble tune from Gustav Holst’s The Planets to which the following words were later set: I vow to thee, my country–all earthly things above–/Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love.
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Bill was the least weltschmerzy person imaginable. Henry Kissinger, who eulogized him this morning, alluded to that side of Bill’s personality when he remarked that Bill “was vouchsafed a little miracle: to enjoy so much what was compelled by inner necessity.” I couldn’t have put it better.
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Christopher Buckley, Bill’s son, followed Henry Kissinger, and gave just the sort of eulogy I’d expected from him, funny and light-fingered, putting much-needed smiles on our faces. Only at the end did he sound a darker note, quoting the lines from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Requiem” that he chose as the epitaph for a man who loved sailing as much as he loved Bach: Here he lies where he long’d to be;/Home is the sailor, home from the sea,/And the hunter home from the hill.
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Somehow you never imagine outliving the people who show you through the doors that lead to the rest of your life
In Colorado a man crashed a memorial service, groping the deceased woman's sister and showing her mother pornographic pictures.
A physical confrontation ensued, police were called and the man arrested.
via Ace
Benjamin LaFlamme didn't. He just buried his father alongside his mother in Bennington, Vermont.
Now two of his siblings are petitioning the court to exhume their father because they weren't given the chance to offer their last respects.
I suppose it was only a matter of time. Company offers moon as final resting place.
Personally, I prefer the stars.
"Shoot for the moon and if you miss it you will still be among the stars" wrote Les Brown.
The three directors of black funeral parlors here have been assaulted at services and each has had gunshots fired during burials. Concealed-weapons, pre-funeral intelligence briefings, cameras, panic buttons and armed security guards are becoming as much a part of services as the eulogy.
"I've been in this business 42 years and I'm jittery now," Mr. Glover says.
Across the country, black morticians are changing the way they operate. The reason: a spike in African-American murders -- and the violence that sometimes follows victims to the grave
Violence Roils Black Funeral Parlors
The mastermind of the odious scheme to plunder corpses from funeral homes in the Northeast and sell them for millions of dollars has pleaded guilty in a deal that will put him away in prison for decades.
Ex-doctor confesses to stealing body parts.
Michael Mastromarino, a 44-year-old former oral surgeon, confessed to the judge that he carried out the scheme from 2001 to 2005. He will face 18 to 54 years and will have to forfeit $4.68 million. He pleaded guilty to 14 counts that include enterprise corruption, body stealing, and reckless endangerment.
The plea was made more than two years after the gruesome scandal broke, with evidence that corpses were being hacked up without permission or proper screening for diseases and sold for dental implants, knee and hip replacements, and other procedures around the country.
The looted bodies included that of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke.
Authorities released photos of exhumed corpses that were boned below the waist. Prosecutors said the defendants had made a crude attempt to cover their tracks by sewing PVC pipe into the bodies in time for open-casket wakes.
The New York Times reports that the archbishop, just after he was kidnapped and while in the trunk of his own car
In the darkness, he managed to pull out his cellphone and call the church, telling officials not to pay a ransom for his release, they said.
“He believed that this money would not be paid for good works and would be used for killing and more evil actions,” the officials said.
The Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho, was buried Friday, two weeks after he was kidnapped in the troubled northern city of Mosul, two days after he was found dead.
The body was found buried in the ground in Al Intessar, a residential area near the city known as a haven for gangs and criminal activity. Iraqi officials in Mosul said that the church had received a phone call telling them where to find the body, and church officials dug up the body with the help of the local police.
It was not immediately clear how the archbishop died. However, Shlemon Warduni, the auxiliary bishop of Baghdad, ..said that the body showed no sign of gunshot wounds or other violence. He said the archbishop was in precarious health and his kidnapping could have aggravated his condition. He said the kidnappers had called on Wednesday to say that the archbishop was ill and later that he had died.
A morgue official in Mosul also said the body showed no signs of violence and that the archbishop had apparently died from natural causes. The archbishop had suffered from high blood pressure and had a heart condition.
Hundreds of Iraqi Christians mourn archbishop throwing flowers on his wooden coffin while women wailed.
Rahho's body was found a day earlier in Mosul, where his religious community has faced attacks from Sunni Arab extremists and criminal gangs.
Gunmen grabbed Rahho Feb. 29 outside his church after he had finished celebrating a prayer service. His driver and two guards were shot dead in the abduction.
According to police and church officials, the archbishop, who suffered from heart disease and diabetes, died because his captors failed to provide him his regular medications. Initially, Nineveh province police chief Gen. Wathiq Hamdani said he believed Rahho had been shot when kidnapped and died of his injuries.
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Another martyr for the faith and one who will be deeply missed,
Christians remembered Rahho, who was in his 60s, for having continued to give hope to their dwindling numbers. In June, the archbishop's confidant, Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni, was shot dead along with three deacons outside the Church of the Holy Spirit, where Rahho was kidnapped last month. On one occasion, Rahho was accosted by gunmen, but he walked on, daring them to shoot him, said Nabil Kashat, an advisor to the Chaldean Charity Assn.
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He was encouraging Christians to stay in Mosul. He was pushing for tolerance among all factions. His loss is a big loss for all the Christians and Muslims of Mosul. It is a real shock for everyone. The Christians of Mosul will not be in a good position to believe that the city is safe for them," Kashat said.
A woman from Mosul, who identified herself as Rayat, said by phone that Rahho's death was the last straw for her. "After our holy man was killed, I don't want to stay in Mosul. Our good men are gone. When there are holy days, where will we go now?" she said.
In a dispute over how to bury the body, in a Maori rite as her some of her family wanted or as she expressed in her will "with some sort of Anglican involvement, the Family steals dead woman's body from hearse and fled in a four-wheel drive.
If you are an environmentalist and are thinking about cremation consider this.
Cremation ignites global-warming, atmospheric conflagration
Since it takes two to four hours at temperatures ranging from 1,400 and 2,100 F, or 760 and 1,150 C, the estimated energy required to cremate one body is roughly equal to the amount of fuel required to drive 4,800 miles, or 7,725 kilometers.
Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide are spewed in large volume, along with carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride, particulate matter, heavy metals, dioxins and furans.
There is also release of cadmium and lead from pacemakers and mercury from dental amalgams. Total mercury emissions from cremation in Canada for 2004 were between 240 and 907 pounds, or 109 and 411.6 kilograms.
Read the comments to her post for hilariously gross solutions to this burning environmental problem.
They cost thousands of dollars but what's money when it comes to immortalizing the thugs who were part of the Russian mafia. They were ruthless and you just know they thought they were cool.
The photo above is from a cemetery in the city of Yekaterinburg, the city where the Tsar and his family were executed in 1918, known in the 90s as the crime capital of Russia, otherwise the main industrial and cultural center in the eastern Urals section of Russia.
Two thousand miles away lies Dnipropetrovsk, third largest city in the Ukraine, but the sensibility of mob culture are very much the same. Everyone wanted what the others had.
Photos from English Russia with a hat tip to Scribal Terror.
In the Washington Post, Dan Zak reminds us that you don't have to be at death's door to do a little planning for your final farewell.
But what about a handbook on this side of the mortality line? What about a guide for the not-yet-deceased-but-could-go-at-any-minute-without-warning? And we can go any minute. Choking on our roast beef, driving to or from work or simply dropping dead. Unlike the Baldwin and Davis characters, we can't haunt or communicate with our friends and families. So they are left to deal with a mess of personal effects and life's half-completed projects, e-mail and bank accounts with unknown passwords, and doubts about what to do with our bodies and legacies. In the wake of our deaths, we leave an incomplete puzzle whose pieces may be forever missing.
If you find that scenario less than appealing, there are simple things you can do to get things in order just in case. But many people don't know where to start -- or don't even want to start.
The Post then asked readers to send in their plans for a final farewell party. Here's a selection of their responses.
Feeding the Flowers
Nice as it might be, I don't believe in life hereafter. When I die, I will be cremated. My ashes will be mixed with wildflower seeds and packaged in little envelopes. This way, each person can sprinkle them wherever they want. It's a comfort to imagine myself of some usefulness after my death.
One Last Laugh
I have given strict instructions: a wry smile on my face if the embalmers can manage it and a prominent card on my chest to be viewed as any mourners gaze down upon my remains, reading "Smile . . . I'm dead and you're not."
Nothing but Blue Skies
My choice is to have a pilot friend scatter my leftovers over an unpopulated area of the Blue Ridge Mountains. No fuss, no crowds, no weeping/wailing. Just a final flight for this old aviator.
One Final Party
My plans are outlined in my documents folder under "Open Casket, Open Bar." The instructions include "take my remains to Demaine's" (a nearby funeral home). One week after my graduation into the Lord's presence, schedule a one-day viewing with open casket and open bar (wine, champagne, beer -- no mixed drinks) and '60s music: Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Three Dog Night, the Who, the Doors, etc., as background.
An ethnic Chinese battling Malaysian authorities who snatched the body of his father after saying he had embraced Islam before he died, said on Wednesday that non-Muslims were getting a raw deal in the country.
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In the latest case, the elder Gan had been buried as Muslim after an Islamic sharia court in Negeri Sembilan ruled that the man converted to Islam last year. But his family insisted otherwise, arguing that Gan could not have converted because he was senile and paralyzed after suffering two strokes.
They said Gan was also unable to speak after a stroke in 2006, challenging a claim that Gan made an oral declaration in Arabic to accept Islam. His conversion papers were also flawed because they were not signed, they said.His family suffered a legal setback on Tuesday when a civil court rejected their bid to declare Gan a Buddhist, saying it had no jurisdiction over Islamic cases, a lawyer said.
"We are not Muslims, why should we go to sharia court?"
Seventeen days after Ledger was found dead, a memorial service was held in Perth, Australia for 750 friends and family.
After such an extended period of intense shock and grief following his death, I was not all surprised that the day ended with many rollicking in the warm waters of Perth, fully clothed in an exuberant expression of joy in being alive.
Heath's family and fiancee mourn him in bizarre beach party.
Funeral horses stampede, overturn hearse
A hearse overturned when the horses pulling it to a south London cemetery stampeded, dragging the carriage and coffin past appalled relatives and sending floral tributes flying.
"It was dreadful," a mourner told the South London Press. "The horses dragged the carriage to the cemetery on its side, tossing the coffin all over the place and destroying all the flowers inside.
A moving tribute to an ordinary man who was much loved and who will be missed.
Eddie Treacy lived in the shadows and died in his bed, the covers pulled up, his lungs full of fluid.
He was 33 years old, and there is no other way to say this: He died too young.
He came to Dorchester eight years ago from Athenry, in County Galway, part of what could be the last great wave of the young Irish to come here.
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After Mass, about 200 people posed on the front steps of the church for a photo to send back to Eddie's mother, Ann, so she would know that Eddie mattered here. Many of the young men standing there had given up a day's wages to pay their respects.
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Once, he told Muldoon he would be happy if he died in his own bed and they played "The Fields of Athenry" at his funeral.
He did and they did.
R.I.P. Eddie Treacy and condolences to his family.
In a small town in Hungary, a Dominican church was being restored when workers came upon a secret crypt that been bricked up for over 200 years.
Inside the crypt were 265 hand painted coffins, the corpses perfectly mummified.
Painted Death from Curious Expeditions.
Everything from the rosaries to the handmade stockings on their feet were equally intact, offering a gold mine for ethnographers on the funerary customs and everyday life of 18th century Hungarian villages. There was something there for doctors as well; traces of ancient tuberculosis. An Australian surgeon, Dr. Mark Spigelman, has devoted the past 6 years to studying the bacteria found in one mummy in particular, and the information gleaned from this ancient DNA could provide information that will help fight tuberculosis.
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Each coffin had been lovingly hand-painted with crucifixes, flowers, quotations, bible verses, angles, skull and crossbones, hourglasses, and Memento Mori inscriptions. No coffin is a repeat of another; the variety of color, decoration, motif and even language (some in German, some Hungarian, some Latin) is simply incredible. These coffins seem to be painted with an almost joyous hand, as a celebration of the life, not a mourning of the death. One coffin, belonging to a miner, is painted with bones, skulls and a miner’s pick and shovel. Each coffin had been personalized with great thought and care.
Many thanks to Miss Kelly.
From First Things On Being a Pallbearer by Paul Gregory Alms
The tradition carries codes and ways of acting. You step into a role and do what has been outlined for you. You realize that countless other Christians before you have carried the same burden, walked the same aisle. The task itself and many of its components are archaic, fast losing significance for those who witness them. The pall itself, for many a puzzling custom with little if any meaning, proclaims a tie to centuries long silent. That a simple white garment decorated only with a cross could be a final statement seems remarkable these days. A pall is wildly out of touch with the individualism and ostentation so in vogue. However, that is what pall bearers do; they bear the pall. They carry the dead, covered only with a baptismal emblem. That is what has been done for centuries.
To be part of it, to march in two tidy rows down the long aisle of a church with casket and family and clergy is to find oneself in a line, not just the line walking in and out of the church, but a procession of the living and the dead. From time immemorial mankind has gathered to mark death. All have had to deal with the fact of a corpse. In such times there is something sacred about we do. How we treat the dead says an awful lot about how we live. For the strong and able to serve the helpless dead, to honor frail remains, reaches deep inside us to something basic to humanity. To carry a heavy box filled with a father or mother or brother connects us to countless ancestors who have carried the mute dead. We are unlike them in so many ways, yet the experience of death unites us, the desire to honor the dead ties us together.
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A custom such as pallbearing is like a great tidal wave that rolls through the centuries.
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Pallbearing involves all of this. It is an ancient custom no longer necessary but one that remembers the dead and the dead before them. I walked in the same way, carrying my grandfather as he had walked, carrying his brothers as those before him had done. To do this same thing, to walk the same path as they, meant I was more than a solitary individual grieving alone. I was a part of a human community stretching back centuries, all of us facing death together.
I never knew that Dapper O'Neil was a hall of fame member of the Ring Four Veteran Boxers' Association. At his funeral he got his final count.
Literally. A bell clanged 10 times as a veteran boxer stood in front of the casket and counted aloud.
"That's it," said Mickey Finn, president of the Ring Four Veteran Boxers' Association. "The fight is over."
The bustling New Lucky Restaurant is famous for its buttery rolls and the graves between the tables.
Graveyard Seating at Restaurant in India
Krishan Kutti Nair has helped run the restaurant built over a centuries-old Muslim cemetery for close to four decades, but he doesn't know who is buried in the cafe floor. Customers seem to like the graves, which resemble small cement coffins, and that's enough for him.
"The graveyard is good luck," Nair said one recent afternoon after the lunch rush. "Our business is better because of the graveyard."
Most customers said they don't mind sitting next to graves.
"We spend all day here," Mohammed Tafir said between cups of tea. "The graves are holy, they're good luck. They bring us good luck too."
Some, though, say the restaurant is disrespectful.
"They should maintain the decorum of the graveyard," said a history professor who asked that his name be withheld. When asked why he didn't want to be identified, he smiled and said, "Because I have tea there."
via Book of Joe
Xeni Jarden at Boing-Boing reports on India's human skeleton black market and the work of investigative journalist Scott Carney who writes at Wired magazine.
There are grave robbers in Calcutta who steal skeletons and sell them to medical supply companies in the U.S. and Europe.
Scott tells more of the story on his blog, India's Underground Trade in Human Remains.
It is pitch black and raining when I first meet Manoj Pal: a man who makes his living defleshing rotting cadavers. I am a hundred kilometers outside of Calcutta in a small village called Purbasthali where police confiscated more than 100 bright white human skeletons. The bones they found were on their way along a two hundred year old pipeline for human remains that begins on the banks of Indian rivers and ends in the sacred halls of medicine in Westerncountries. The skeletons Pal prepared could have fetch as much as $70,000 on the black market.
Manoj Pal is the grunt labor for the industry. Part of the dom, or grave tending, caste his job is the most grim. When bodies are brought to him or recovered from a nearby cremation ghat he binds them in mosquito netting and lets them soak in the river for a week. When the bodies were waterlogged and mostly consumed by fish and stray dogs he scrubs off the remaining flesh, dumps the bodies in a boiling solution of caustic chemicals and lets them dry in the sun.
So many people wanted their ashes scattered at Disney World and Disneyland, that it's become a real problem as workers have to close down attractions to clean up cremated remains.
Cleaning up the ashes at Walt Disney world
If you have been charged to scatter a loved one ashes on Space Mountain, just scatter a tiny bit, saving the rest to scatter in the ocean or lake or woods.
Otherwise, your loved one will end up in a vacuum cleaner and then the trash.
When a drug dealer was killed in a helicopter crash in Mexico and his body sent to a morgue some 65 miles south of the US border, twenty heavily armed gunmen killed two policemen as they snatched the body from the morgue.
Drug hitmen snatch buddy's body from morgue.
The dead man was thought by police to be a member of the Arellano Felix drug cartel. His fellow traffickers were believed to have wanted his body to take it away for burial without having to identify themselves when claiming the corpse.
He died earlier this week in a helicopter crash along with another suspected trafficker, but the gunmen failed to get the second man's body from the morgue.
His fiery death as the helicopter hit electricity lines while watching a car race through the desert had already been shown on television.
A Less Than Honorable Discharge From the Wrong Plot
The story of how Mr. Hayes, who died with no money or family in a Bronx nursing home, wound up in an unfinished basement after resting in peace for four years in the dignified setting of Calverton National Cemetery involves a case of mistaken identity. Federal officials say it seems to be the first time in the history of the national cemetery system, which was created during the Civil War, that a veteran buried in the wrong grave has been disinterred. That’s 3.3 million burials in 125 cemeteries.
Was it a case of Identity theft or just a case of mistaken identity?
Koreen Hayes, a niece of the Harlem Willie Hayes, said she suspected that her uncle had been the victim of identity theft.
Some of his military benefits had stopped coming several years back, she said, but he did not make a big fuss because “he thought maybe they just ran out.” She said he finally contacted Social Security officials, “and they told him he had to prove he was still alive, because they had death records that said he had been dead for years.”
The nun who felt a call to be a funeral director
From the Deacon, She sees dead people.
"I was reading St. Mark's account of the resurrection and the words seemed to jump off the page: 'When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.' It hit me that those three women were the first ones to witness the resurrection because they were going to minister to Jesus in death as they did in life. Now it's called embalming. I just couldn't get it out of my head.
She closed her eyes for a moment before continuing. "Consoling the sorrowing and burying the dead are directions in the Rule of St. Benedict, the way of life we as Benedictines follow," Sister Chris said. "And, I knew that the best gift I had been given in my lifetime was the gift of compassion, along with the ability to listen. I realized I should use that gift; I didn't have the right to ignore it. So I went to Sister Mary Agnes Patterson, who was the prioress at the time. She looked at me and asked, 'Where would you go to study?' There was a program offered at Kansas City Kansas Community College, so I wouldn't have to travel very far. With my community's blessing I took the first steps toward this ministry."
More
"Funerals are for the living, not the dead. A funeral is a time for family and friends to express their love and gratitude for what that person has done for them."
In Egypt, King Tut's face is unveiled for the first time in 3000 years where he is now on display in a glass box for tourists who visit his tomb in Luxor.
Fragile Mummy
The mystery surrounding King Tutankhamen -- who ruled during the 18th dynasty and ascended to the throne at age 8 -- and his glittering gold tomb has entranced fans of ancient Egypt since Carter's discovery, which revealed a trove of fabulous gold and precious stone treasures and propelled the once-forgotten pharaoh to global stardom.
Tut wasn't Egypt's most powerful or important king, but his staggering treasures, rumors of a mysterious curse that plagued Carter and his team -- debunked by experts long ago -- and several books and TV documentaries dedicated to him have added to his mystique.
Above is a "reconstruction" of his face, built after 1700 CT scans by a team of forensic artists and scientists. He doesn't look at all like Steve Martin.
I am very happy with the results of this law suit and pleased that the jury found an invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Jury Awards Father Nearly $11 Million in Funeral Protestors Case
The father of a fallen Marine was awarded nearly $11 million Wednesday in damages by a jury that found leaders of a fundamentalist church had invaded the family's privacy and inflicted emotional distress when they picketed the Marine's funeral.
The jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned later in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress to the Marine's father, Albert Snyder of York, Pa.
The defendants are the hateful people from the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas who go around the country protesting at soldiers' funerals with signs saying "Thank Go for dead soldiers" and "Thank God for IEDs because they think the US war dead are punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.
I wrote about this suit last year Funeral Protesters Sued
We think it's a case we can win because anyone's funeral is private," Snyder lawyer Sean Summers said. "You don't have a right to interrupt someone's private funeral."
In A Soldier They Called "Pipes, I wrote about the dozens of uniformed and plain clothes cops who stood baring the sight of the protesters from the family and gathered throng of several thousand including the Governor in an outpouring of sympathy and patriotism in Marblehead, MA.
For the Patriot Guard Riders, every funeral of an American soldier became a mission to show respect and to shield the mourning family from the protesters.
Glitch Hits Burial of Man with Mobile Phone
A man whose dying wish was to be buried along with his mobile phone has to be dug up again after his family discovered they had forgotten to insert his SIM card.
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... after his funeral, his family discovered that his grandson, who was playing with the device, had taken out the SIM card.
"We put the phone in the coffin as he wanted, but my 10-year-old son had been playing with it and had taken the card out without my knowledge," Brano said. "So now we have got to dig him up again to put it in the phone."
More than 1000 people turned out in Liberty for the funeral of Jeremy Burris, a 22-year-old Marine lance corporal who, after rescuing two of his wounded buddies, was killed by an explosive device in Iraq.
He was buried in the Cooke Memorial Cemetery and within hours the grave was desecrated.
About 30 sprays of flowers were ripped apart, petals strewn over the loose earth. Flags decorating the gravesite were also torn down and sentimental notes and posters shredded.
"It looked like a big debris field about 40 feet square," said Liberty Police Chief Mike Cummings. "This wasn't done by the wind or animals. It was obviously intentional. We don't know if someone did this for a stupid prank or they were anti-war or what."
Liberty outraged over grave desecration
Let's hope the police quickly find the perpetrators. Freedom of speech and opinion does not include the desecration of graves.
UPDATE: Arrest made of Wallace DeBlanc, 41, who ripped the 25 floral arrangements apart so he could get to the wire stands, pewter cross and other decorations that could be resold to floral shops.
He was a thief.
Writing in Encounter magazine in 1955, the British anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer argued that death had become the great unmentionable. The Victorians were prudish about sex and candid about death, he said, whereas Westerners of the mid-20th century were garrulous about sex and, well, stiff about stiffs. Death be not loud.
The New Death by Stephen Bates in the Wall St Journal.
But we shouldn't be too hasty in congratulating ourselves and deriding earlier generations as uptight and self-deluded. We can chatter and chortle about death without honestly confronting it. In fundamental ways, our culture is reinventing death rites and, in the process, growing further apart from death itself.
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What's wrong with all this? At the individual level, funerary frivolity trivializes both the death and the life that preceded it. At the social level, tradition and ritual, passed from generation to generation, create a common framework for discussing life's ultimate questions. When we choose customized, individualized, let-it-be-me funerals, we start slipping from lingua franca to tabula rasa. Soon, we're talking only to ourselves.
Next week, October 30 at 9 pm, Frontline will present a documentary featuring the poet and undertaker Thomas Lynch about whom I've written a number of posts.
The Calling of a Funeral Director
Going the Distance
Death Lite
The Gorer quote brings to mind a favorite quote, Money has replaced sex as a driving force, death has replaced sex as a taboo, and sex has replaced bridge as a social event for mixed foursomes, Reginald Perrin.
A woman who was not invited to her boyfriend's funeral, snuck into the cemetery, dug up his grave and stole an urn containing his ashes.
Woman Accused of Stealing Ex-Boyfriend's Ashes.
Athens County Prosecutor David Warren said it is the first case of body snatching he has had to investigate,...
"I have crimes that I like to refer to as aggravated stupid," Warren said. "I have been doing this for almost 30 years now and I have never had anyone steal someone's ashes."
For a look at funeral customs in Japan, sushiwalker, a 25-year-old Japanese man who lives in America most of the time happened to be in Japan when his grandfather died. He describes the death, the wake and funeral and the cremation in Chronicles of a Japanese Funeral.
(the type is very small, I had to bump it up twice for ease in reading.) via BoingBoing
After 53 years, a family can bury US Army Air Force Technical Sergeant Hyman Stiglitz, who was lost in a mission to bomb a German aircraft factory
...last month, the military told Stiglitz's nephews that it had positively identified his remains and those of his eight crewmates.
"It's just incredible that [military officials] have the respect for doing this."
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The recovery and identification of the remains of the airmen was part of an effort by the Defense Department to locate 78,000 American troops still missing after World War II,
Tower Hamlets Cemetery, an historic graveyard that now serves as a nature preserve, is the focus of a big controversy in London.
Anger over plan to dig up 350,000 bodies in historic London cemetery for Muslim burial site
The local newspaper has been bombarded with letters from historians and nature lovers declaring: "There is no way we'll allow them to dig up our ancestors."
But the Labour-controlled council's environment spokesman Abdal Ullah appeared to be in no doubt about the feasibility of the plan when he said: "To preserve the respect and dignity for everyone, I think most of the graves would have to be cleared out and we'd start afresh."
He said a corner of the cemetery would be reserved for Muslims who are buried in shrouds at a depth of 6ft and on their side facing Mecca.
By law, any graves more than 75 years old can be removed.
At the cemetery yesterday, liaison officer Ken Greenway - the only paid member of staff tending the 33-acre site - said he was astonished that anyone would even contemplate such a move.
Whenever I see a piece by Thomas Lynch, I know it's going to be great and I know I will to do a post about it.
I already have in Going the Distance and Death Lite. A funeral director for 40 years, Lynch is also a poet, a writer whose work appears frequently in various publications. He is the author of The Undertaking, a slim, wonderfully written book about the 'dismal trade' that I heartedly recommend.
"The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade" (Thomas Lynch)
Now, in a piece about the calling of funeral directors, Lynch talks about his own, Faith 'profession' - Catholic funeral directors see role as bringing God to the grieving, honoring deceased.
..his calling was not to the priesthood, but to follow his father into funeral service. That calling came for his father when he was 12 and saw “two men in shirtsleeves” lift the body of an uncle – a young priest – from a table and place him into a casket The symbolism of his father’s calling stayed with Lynch. “You have to understand, that for most Catholics, the elevation of the dead body is the central metaphor of our liturgy,” he said.
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he is outspoken about the need for the bereaved to experience grief. The generation today bringing loved ones to funeral homes is the first generation, he said, that tries to get past grieving by not having a body at a funeral. He believes this carries the risk of spiritual and emotional peril.
Hat tip to The Deacon, a new blog I quite enjoy.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more
than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
George Bernard Shaw
Rawlins Gilliland writes in Dying Laughing about the time his next door
neighbor Chuck died.
At the funeral home, his widow was hurt to see so few flowers in his viewing room. So, spotting a sea of unattended flora next door, I decided to briefly borrow a triumphant standing easel spray and placed it next to Chuck. Unfortunately, the family of the intended recipient began arriving. There was no discreet way to return their show-stopper from Chuck's room since the entire family was admiring his splashy arrangement, although confounded; who were "Denise and Tony", the names on the card? Feeling guilty, I impulsively entered a third room and purloined a carnation showpiece and delivered IT to the original man's congregation. However, when someone read this card aloud, inscribed, "We'll make love in heaven. Love, Marla", the dead man's significant someone became bellicose, bellowing, "Who the hell is Marla?"
China's First Emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi searched obsessively for eternal life writes John Wilson in the New Statesman, Mortal Combat.
He prepared to rule in a parallel universe underground with 7000 soldiers and press-ganged some 750,000 workers to build his his burial chambers.
Somewhere deep beneath my feet, in a vast subterranean palace, lies the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi. According to legend, he is interred in a gold casket sitting in a lake of liquid mercury. Snaking out across the 80-metre-long floor are streams of mercury that map the routes of those great waterways, the Yangtze and the Yellow River. The 15-metre-high ceiling is encrusted with pearls depicting the starry constellations. Antechambers reportedly contain the bodies of wives, concubines and advisers (not that their deaths coincided naturally; when it was Qin Shi Huangdi's time to go, friends and family were forced to follow him into the earth).
Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, who is here in the name of cultural diplomacy. His mission is to secure the biggest ever loan of treasures from the tomb of the First Emperor, including members of the fabled, 7,000-strong Terracotta Army, guardians of the imperial afterlife.
"The First Emperor was able to dream on a scale that no one else has ever dreamt," he says with a boyish breathlessness. "No one else in history has tried to create a life-sized parallel universe in which he will rule for ever. So much of what modern China is can be seen as a direct consequence of what that man did. There are very few historical figures who changed the world in such a way that we are still living with the consequences."
New York Times obituary by Richard Severo
Jane Wyman, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of a victimized deaf woman in the 1948 movie “Johnny Belinda,” played a fierce matriarch in the 1980s television series “Falcon Crest” and was the first wife of President Ronald Reagan, died Monday at her home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. She was 90.
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Their daughter, Maureen, was born in 1941. She died of cancer in 2001. They adopted Michael in 1945. Another daughter, Christine, died the day after she was born premature, in 1947. The marriage ended in divorce in 1949, and afterward neither Mr. Reagan nor Ms. Wyman spoke publicly at any length about their years together.
But she broke her silence about him after he died in 2004, saying “America has lost a great president and a great, kind and gentle man.”
A son's farewell to 'a great heart'. Michael Reagan's eulogy for his mother Jane Wyman who died Monday at age 90.
"A lot of people talk about my father," the syndicated radio talk show host said of the late President Ronald Reagan, "but I am who I am today because of my mother. She told me at the age of 10, she built men, not boys."
A Resurrection Mass was held for the devout convert to Catholicism who was interred in a modest wooden casket in a Third Order Dominican habit.
Wyman won an Oscar and Golden Globes and was nominated for two Emmys, but her friend Mary Farrell said her proudest achievement was being named to the Dominican Third Order, a Catholic fellowship of preachers and nuns said to "live in, but are not of the world."
Every week, two sisters visit their mother to sit with her and make sure she's looking her best even though she's dead and been in cold storage for ten years.
For £20 a week, G. Saville and Sons of Wembley, have kept the sisters’ mother refrigerated. Phillip Saville, a funeral director, told The Sun: “We are simply acting on the family’s wishes and keeping Annie ‘alive’ in this way, for visiting seems to be what they want to do.
“No health and safety violations have been breached and the corpse does not smell. There are no laws saying people can’t keep a corpse for years after registering the death, though it is normal to bury the body after just two weeks.”
When contacted by The Times last night, a spokesman for the funeral parlour refused to comment. In addition to the cost of storing their mother’s body, the sisters are said to have spent £2,000 on five wooden coffins, four of which have rotted while they and their contents were awaiting burial.
South African men steal hearse for a pub crawl
Worse still. When they ran out of gas, they asked three women they had met while at a bar to get out and help push the hearse
She took a few too many before she left for the cemetery to pay respects to a dead relative. When she got to the cemetery, she veered off the road, careened into one tombstone after another and eventually got stuck in a grave until the police pulled her out.
Before the doors of Notre Dame in Paris, the funeral for the man who described himself as a Jew, a Cardinal and the son of immigrants was begun with the reading of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead said in Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
Another family relation, Jonas Moses-Lustiger, read Psalm 113 in Hebrew and French, a psalm of special significance to both Jews and Catholics.
For the full flavor of the funeral, read Rocco Palma at Whispers in the Loggia who posts You Were a Manner of Miracle
Recalling the Jewish origins of Jean-Marie Lustiger, convert to Catholicism, Maurice Druon addressed himself to his fellow "immortal": "you were, Jean-Marie, for a quarter century, a manner of miracle: incredible to behold, the inconceivable expressed, the impossible existent; you were the Jewish cardinal". "In a world in crisis, you took up, renewed and reconciled in yourself the bases of our civilization and helped it to withstand the blows not of modernism but of religion", insisted Maurice Druon at the solemn funeral.
Lustiqer was buried in the crypt of Notre Dame Cathedral. A commerorative plaque will be installed, a message from Lustiger
I was born Jewish.
I received the name
Of my paternal grandfather, Aaron
Having become Christian
By faith and by Baptism,
I have remained Jewish
As did the Apostles.
I have as my patron saints
Aaron the High Priest,
Saint John the Apostle,
Holy Mary full of grace.
Named 139th archbishop of Paris
by His Holiness Pope John-Paul II,
I was enthroned in this Cathedral
on 27 February 1981,
And here I exercised my entire ministry.
Passers by, pray for me.
† Aaron Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger
Archevêque de Paris
The downside of too cute urns.
Woman sells ceramic turtle with ashes of husband's previous wife at yard sale
She didn't mean too. Now she's desperately searching for the woman who said she planned to use the urn as a cookie jar.
Her husband's previous wife collected turtles.
UPDATE: The new wife found the ceramic turtle at a nearby Salvation Army Thrift Shop. Her husband only told her about the ashes after she sold the container.
In New York, a 2000-year-old Egyptian mummy was scanned by a "64 slice" CT scanner while curators, conservators and medical specialists looked on, "riveted by the macabre spectacle."
Mummy's Log: Visited Scan God in Land of the Dead
Demetrios died in his 50s, a quiet, natural death it seems. There was no indication of foul play though his heart was missing and a scarab was found in its place.
From the shape his bones were in, Demetrios enjoyed a high-status life in ancient Egypt.
“Either he had an easy life or was carried around a lot,” Dr. Boxt said. “He certainly didn’t do much heavy lifting during his lifetime.”
Now his portrait will join his mummy, along with 122 other objects for a traveling exhibition by the Brooklyn Museum to tell the story of Egyptian funerary practices.
Hong Kong, one of the most crowded cities on the planet, is running out of space for the dead and causing all sorts of problems for those who want to follow the Chinese tradition of visiting ancestors' graves.
The Dead, Too, Find Hong Kong Really Overcrowded
Even the Southern Chinese custom of a double burial in which the remains are dug up after 7 to 10 years, then cleaned of all hair and skin, reassembled in an urn and buried in a horseshoe-shaped grave, takes up too much room.
A permanent burial can cost as much as $36,000, so more and more, the dead are cremated and the ashes tucked into a niche in multi-story columbaria, where incense can be burned in a trough at the base of the wall.
But the columbaria are running out of room as well. Some families must wait 2 years for a niche. People object to building new columbaria because they don't want the ghosts of the dead near their neighborhoods.
By 2012 half of the people who die each year may not get a final resting place. So now, the government is subsidizing scatterings at sea for about $40.
Unless you want to start a bomb scare, when you use air transport for the ashes of a loved one, don't put other items like a watch in the package.
I never knew that cemeteries in San Francisco have been banned since 1900 and already existing cemeteries were declared in 1914 a "public nuisance and a menace and detriment to the health and the welfare of city dwellers" and had to remove all burial sites.
Joseph Bottum on Death & Politics at First Things, a fascinating but quite long article that will make several posts, argues that it's the dead, not the living, who give us communities, who tie us to a particular place.
Still, even the most ardent modernist might feel some misgivings about a rejection of the dead as complete as San Francisco’s. And such misgivings reflect, however dimly, a deep political insight—for a city without cemeteries has failed at one of the first reasons for having cities at all. Somewhere in those banished graveyards was a metaphysical ground for politics, and buried in them was a truth that too much of modern political theory seems to have forgotten: The living give us crowds. The dead give us communities.
He quotes Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr who once said, "Society rests on the death of men."
Think of this, too, in terms of the family. In all Western cultures, a person was once “gathered to his fathers.” But constant relocation and the urban distaste for cemeteries have made care of graves difficult. Why shouldn’t we expect family tradition to weaken at the same time as family graves begin to disappear?
Indeed, the logic loops back on itself to spiral downward: The failure to maintain the family graves increasingly leaves the family name without meaning, and the emptiness of the family name increasingly becomes a reason not to have family graves.
The modern failure of funerals serves as both a cause and a symptom of the shattering of culture, first into the nuclear family, then into atomized individuals, and at last into nothingness—with, for instance, the increasing use of “anonymous death,” a European innovation now beginning to appear in America, where the dead are abandoned without ceremony in deliberately unmarked graves, or their corpses are cremated with the ashes spread across large and indifferent spaces.
Weeks after those implicated in atrocities during the Communist regime were granted amnesty by the Afghan government, there are discoveries of underground prisons with hundreds of bodies, still gagged and blindfolded having been buried alive by the Soviets.
Hundreds of blindfolded bodies found in underground prison.
Nearly 70 years after his death in 1938, Frank L. White, the smiling chef on Cream of White boxes, finally got his headstone engraved with his name and an etching taken from the cereal box.
Hats off to Jesse Lasorda, a family researcher who started the campaign saying, "Everybody deserves a headstone."
Father Ganni, a Catholic priest and three subdeacons were driving away from their church after celebrating Mass when a group of armed militants blocked the car and shot and killed all four men.
Iraqi Bishop pauses due to weeping at funeral of priest, subdeacons
Many people want to have their ashes shot into space after their deaths. James Doohan, better know as Scotty on Star Trek did.
In Aye, Aye Sir, I posted how he wanted to be beamed up to the final frontier. And so he was.
But only for four minutes at the edge of space when the rocket which propelled his ashes and those of 200 others fell back to earth in New Mexico.
Wende Doohan, James Doohan's widow, told the Associated Press news agency her late husband "probably wished he could have stayed".
There's a new day of remembrance set by the Iraqi government. May 16 has been declared Mass Graves Day .
The International Herald Tribune
Traffic stopped in Baghdad's main streets and squares Wednesday as Iraqis observed a moment of silence to mark a new national day of remembrance for the victim's of Saddam Hussein's regime who were buried in mass graves.
The Iraqi government declared May 16 as Mass Grave Day to commemorate the day when the first such grave was uncovered near the Shiite town of Mahaweel, about 56 kilometers (35 miles) south of Baghdad.
Gateway Pundit has many more details.
I never knew there was a plot to steal Lincoln's body and hold it for ransom back in 1876.
Stealing Lincoln's Body is a new book by Thomas Craughwell published by the Harvard University Press
On the night of the presidential election in 1876, a gang of counterfeiters out of Chicago attempted to steal the entombed embalmed body of Abraham Lincoln and hold it for ransom. The custodian of the tomb was so shaken by the incident that he willingly dedicated the rest of his life to protecting the president's corpse.
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This rousing story of hapless con men, intrepid federal agents, and ordinary Springfield citizens who honored their native son by keeping a valuable, burdensome secret for decades offers a riveting glimpse into late-nineteenth-century America, and underscores that truth really is sometimes stranger than fiction.
Gladiators' graveyard discovered in Ephesus in Turkey.
Two pathologists at the Medical University of Vienna - Professor Karl Grossschmidt and Professor Fabian Kanz - have spent much of the past five years painstakingly cataloguing and forensically analysing every single bone for age, injury and cause of death.
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And the lack of multiple wounds found on the bones, according to the pathologists, suggests that they had not been involved in chaotic mass brawls. Instead, it points to organised duels under strict rules of combat, probably with referees monitoring the bouts.
But there was also evidence of mortal wounds. Written records tell us that if the defeated gladiator had not shown enough skill or even cowardice, the cry of "iugula" (lance him through) would be heard throughout the arena, demanding he be killed.
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"But this (new find) is extremely significant; there's nothing been found in the world at all like it. They've really dispelled quite a lot of myths about gladiators and how they fought."
Gladiators were prisoners of war, slaves or condemned offenders.
If a gladiator survived three years of fighting in the arena, he would win his freedom. Those who did often became teachers in the gladiator school; and one of the skeletons found at Ephesus appears to be that of a retired fighter.
Three weeks ago in Turkey, five young Muslims burst into a Christian publishing office, bound three Christians hands and feet to chairs, stabbed them repeatedly, then slit their throats.
"We did this for our country," an identical note in the pockets of all five young men read, Channel D television station reported. "They are attacking our religion."
According to the newspaper Hurriyet, one of the suspects declared during police questioning, "We didn't do this for ourselves. We did it for our religion. May this be a lesson to the enemies of religion."
The deaths mark the first known martyrdom of Turkish converts since the founding of the republic.
Two of the victims were Turkish converts from Islam; the third was a German citizen. Christians make up less than 1% of the Turkey's 71 million people.
Ben Witherington posts a report by Dr. Mark Wilson of the funeral of one of the martyrs.
Recently Dindy [Mark's wife] and I attended a funeral here in Izmir. I have attended many funerals, but this was my first in Turkey. And it was also the first time I attended the funeral of a martyr. I have been teaching and writing about martyrs and martyrdom for many years. ... But such martyrdoms are personally and historically distant.
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On Saturday, April 21, Necati's funeral took place on the grounds of an historic Protestant church in Buca, a suburb of Izmir. Necati had lived and fellowshipped in this city for many years, and was well known and loved. (He had portrayed Jesus in a Passion play in the past.) The sanctuary was too small to contain the crowd of around 500 persons who came from throughout the country to attend. So the service was held outdoors on a balmy spring afternoon.
As we entered the church grounds, people were given a picture of Necati to pin on their clothing. Therefore throughout the crowd Necat'is smiling face radiated forth.
Theodore Dalrymple on The Eternal Present
What was most striking about the tombstones of the last 15 years, however, was the complete absence of any religious sentiment or reference in their inscriptions, apart from an occasional “God bless,” the kind of thing some people say on a casual parting, as they hurry on to their next destination. Religion, it seems, is dead, even on consecrated ground.
Such information about the dear departed as appeared on the tombstones was wholly secular, a projection of the daily preoccupations of the living, as if no other life concerned or could concern them.
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What kind of people are they whose friends or relatives deem their “support” for a football team so important that it is the only aspect of their life worthy of memorial after death? In what kind of culture does this reduced and childish notion of a human life not produce a sense of embarrassment or shame? That culture is certainly not the product of poverty, at least in the economic sense: the parish is exceptionally rich, .... Economic poverty and poverty of spirit are not the same thing. Meaning and transcendence now seem as thoroughly interred in the cemetery as the people who died.
Professor Liviu Librescu was buried today, A Hero Laid to Rest.
Alison Kaplan Sommer was there
It was also the first time anyone buried in my local cemetery had been praised two days earlier by the president of the United States. In a Holocaust Memorial ceremony Wednesday, President Bush praised Librescu’s heroism in the shooting that took place on the day set aside to remember Hitler’s victims, “On the Day of Remembrance, this Holocaust survivor gave his own life so that others may live. And this morning we honor his memory and we take strength from his example.”
Said his elder son Joe
I walked through the streets today with my head held high because I have such a father.
Scientist says cremation should meet a timely death
An Australian scientist called Wednesday for an end to the age-old tradition of cremation, saying the practice contributed to global warming.
Professor Roger Short said people could instead choose to help the environment after death by being buried in a cardboard box under a tree.
The decomposing bodies would provide the tree with nutrients, and the tree would convert carbon dioxide into life-giving oxygen for decades, he said.
"The important thing is, what a shame to be cremated when you go up in a big bubble of carbon dioxide," Short told AFP.
"Why waste all that carbon dioxide on your death?"
I laughed when I first read this, but then again, I prefer burial to cremation for the same reasons.
Why Bigger Furnaces for Crematoriums are necessary.
The spread of obesity is causing a problem for funeral directors and crematorium managers, it has been disclosed. Their clients are now often so large that their coffins will not fit into the furnaces, town hall chiefs said.
He loved his Morris Minor car so much, that when he died he was buried in it after a huge grave was dug with an excavator
Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones acknowledged 'I Snorted My Father.'
The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,
He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared," he said. "... It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."
His father died in 2002 at 84.
UPDATE: His manager said in an email to MTV that the comments were "said in jest." "Can't believe anyone took it seriously." Sounds like serious damage control considering how many people and news outlets could believe that Richards would do such a thing.
If you want to scatter the ashes of a loved one in a national forest, do it on your own. The Forest Service has its own version of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to individuals.
However, they have a firm policy against commercial ventures doing the same, even "three ladies in white."
the Forest Service has long had a firm policy against commercial scattering, said Gordon Schofield, the group leader for land use here in Region I. If ashes are scattered “the land takes on a sacredness, and people want to put up a marker or a plaque,” Mr. Schofield said, then they oppose activities they do not see as compatible with the site as a resting place.
Good policy.
In this new media world of ours, we have to deal with cyber-squatters and bootleg videos of funerals and those without any moral compass who have no respect for the dead.
Cathy Seipp's friend Sandra Tsing Toh writes about it in
It's a blogged world, we just live in it
On the one hand, it would be hard to confuse cathyseipp.com with her actual site. On the other hand, when the cyber-squatter last week reverted to his earlier ways, posting a "last blog entry" signed "Cathy Seipp" in which Cathy supposedly begged final forgiveness for her politics, her friends and her parenting … this seemed to cross a new line.
By week's end, Cathy's family and friends were debating whether to take legal action. Everyone was offended, exhausted and still staggered with grief. The public expression of which — Cathy's funeral — was, of course, recorded without our knowledge and posted by another blogger. Yep, it's all out there on the Web, just start Googling — you'll see snot pouring out of my nose as I wail helplessly through my eulogy, which, along with everything else involving the ceremony, has all already been critiqued online.
"It's like Cathy was the only thing that kept these people civilized!" was the horrified comment of friend Andrew Breitbart who, one should note, edits the Drudge Report. Even he!
Elliott Stein, a journalist advisor, was upset about the way Maia, Cathy's daughter, complained to her school about something the Elliott said or did. What he did was buy the domain name cathyseipp.com and write disparaging things about Cathy, her daughter and her friends up to the day of her funeral.
The unfortunate lesson, learned or not, as her friend Luke Ford, a strange and bizarre character himself, writes
If you are old enough to blog, then you are old enough to learn that whenever you blog something negative about somebody, that person may devote the rest of his life trying to make you miserable. Even when you are right in hurting someone (exposing their bad behavior to protect the innocent) through your speech, you are usually going to be hurt in return.
She did get a New York Times obit with this delicious quote
“In Medialand,...people often look at you uncomprehendingly if you explain that not everyone in America agrees with the received media wisdom. She added, “People with different ideas are not necessarily evil bigots, even if some of them do go to church.”
Available only at funeral homes, beginning on opening day, for only $699, official major league baseball funerary urns.
Each urn sits upon a home plate-shaped base and comes with a baseball which can be replaced by a special ball from your own collection.
Caskets coming soon.
The firm designing brand name funerary products: Eternal Image
The full story at Book of Joe.
A Bosnian man has written to all his friends to complain after only his elderly mum turned up for his funeral.
Amir Vehabovic, 45, faked his own death just to see how many people would attend.
He then watched from the bushes as only his elderly mum turned up for the burial in the north Bosnian town of Gradiska.
In the letter to the 45 people he invited to the burial he said: "I paid a lot of money to get a fake death certificate and bribe undertakers to deliver an empty coffin.
"I really thought a lot more of you, my so-called friends, would turn up to pay their last respects. It just goes to show who you can really count on."
I don't think his letter will have the effect he wants unless they turn out, like the mourners at Harry Cohn's funeral did to make sure that the SOB was really dead and as Red Skelton quipped, "It proves what they always say: give the public what they want and they'll come out for it.".
For the shut-ins and those far away, online streaming of funeral services are a welcome use of new technology.
For everyone else, Always Go the the Funeral.
Rites come and go, but they cannot be manufactured; you cannot make up a rite. At least, this is what I always thought. But human remains are nowadays subjected to a number of outlandish procedures which the performers most certainly do experience as ritual. A little while ago I attended a funeral where the relatives had decided on homemade gestures for their final goodbye. I was standing with the other mourners near the entrance of the cemetery, and we commiserated in mute despair about the suicide of the young colleague we were going to bury that day: he was forty-two, the father of a boy of three and a girl of six. As I was waiting for the sound of the black hearse rolling slowly past us with its characteristic sound of crunching pebbles under the tires, my eye was caught by a woman riding a bicycle, to which had been attached a two-wheeled cart carrying a brightly colored coffin. I was taken aback at first, not realizing what I was looking at, and then when it slowly got to me, I was in for a further shock: on top of the coffin, the dead man's little boy sat playing at "driving a car."
The whole scene struck me as a desperate attempt at saying "Howdy!" to Death, whom I happen to know as a gentleman of the Old School, who likes to keep his distance. I'm afraid this type of familiarity can breed contempt, this time the other way round, and Fate might even be tempted to exact a measure of vengeance as a compensation for such gross behavior. We're merely humans, after all, and should know our place.
..... People act in the most bizarre ways when faced with an embarrassing situation, and is there anything more embarrassing than a corpse?
Rites of Departure by Bert Keizer in The Threepenny Review
An Indian woman, despairing over her lover's accidental death when he fell down a well soon after their engagement, insisted on ceremonially marrying his corpse just minutes before the cremation.
Woman Marries Corpse
This must have been a case of true love, because her parents opposed the marriage.
When funerals occur on the same day as a person dies, mix-ups can happen.
An Indian man's family almost cremated a dead body that resembled Deepak Bhattacharya, until he happened to call home.
He wrote his family that he had the best job in the world - transporting wounded marines and that's what 25-year-old Jared Landaker was doing when his CH-46 was hit by a surface to air missile in Iraq.
Blackfive tells the story of The Last Flight of Lieutenant Landaker
Chief Warrant Officer Frank Kovacs writes about one of the most emotional moments of his life.
On board, 0600: "Good morning folks this is the Captain. ...This morning it is my sad pleasure to announce that 1st LT Jared Landaker USMC will be flying with us to his Big Bear home in Southern California . Jared lost his life over the sky's of Iraq earlier this month and today we have the honor of returning him home along with his Mother, Father, Brother and uncles.
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On roll out, I notice red lights, emergency vehicles everywhere. We are being escorted directly to our gate, no waiting anywhere, not even a pause. Out the left window, a dozen Marines in full dress blues. Highway Patrol, Police, Fire crews all in full dress with lights on. A true class act by everyone, down to a person from coast to coast. Way to go United Airlines for doing the little things RIGHT, because they are the big things; Air Traffic Control for getting the message, to all law enforcement for your display of brotherhood.
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I have finally seen the silent majority. It is deep within us all. Black, Brown, White, Yellow, Red, Purple, we are all children, parents, brothers, sisters, etc. We are an American family.
R.I. P. with our grateful thanks to Lt. Landaker.
How do you feel about cemeteries that glow in the dark?
In Indiana, solar-powered electric crosses and angels cause the nighttime glow at Fairview Cemetery in Linton.
I found the source for all your solar memorial needs: Solarlightcross
You can't beat their tag line - "Powered by God's light."
What to make of the claim by moviemaker James Cameron that he found the lost tomb of Jesus and his provocative claims that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and together they had a child named Judah - DNA testing proves it.
Hogwash.
Who would publish such claims? No scholarly peer-reviewed journal for Cameron, he choose the Discovery channel for his 'documentary".
John Miller says it falls into the genre of conspiratorial advocacy.
The Anchoress says We must be getting close to Easter, same time last year we were treated to the Gospel of Judas and the opening of the DaVinci Code.
Ben Witherington in Tomb of the Still Unknown Ancients writes
Many people, though, are simply beguiled by the "obsolescence factor" in our technologically driven society--the "newer" must be "truer" and "better." This outlook, when applied to a subject like the historical Jesus, attracts all sorts of unbridled speculation, and worse.
He scoffs at Cameron's claim that we now have proof that Jesus existed.
Actually, no serious historian of biblical antiquity has ever doubted that there was a historical Jesus. Yet it tells us a lot about the state of our culture that Mr. Cameron's remark, backed by pseudo-science, could be seriously made on national television ...We are a Jesus-haunted culture that is so historically illiterate that anything can now pass for knowledge of Jesus.
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Any good scientific theory must account for all the evidence--in this case, all the names we find in the Talpiot tomb and not just the ones that match the holy-family theory.
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We actually know that James was buried within sight of the Temple Mount, and Talpiot is miles from there. Eusebius, the fourth-century church historian, saw the tomb and the standing inscribed slab in front of it.
You also have to ask yourself: Why would most of the holy family from Galilee be buried in a middle-class tomb several miles outside of Jerusalem in some sheep pasture? They were, in fact, poor and could not afford an ornamental tomb like this one. This family was from Nazareth, too, with connections in Bethlehem. Why wouldn't its members be buried in one of those places?
We also know that crucifixion was considered the most shameful and hideous way to die, a blow from which one's family honor did not soon recover, if ever. So shamefully did Jesus die that his first followers and even most of his family abandoned him: He was not buried by family members or by the Galilean disciples. He was put in a tomb near the old city that did not belong to any of them.
The central claim of Christianity is the Jesus was the Son of God, the Incarnation and after his crucifixion rose from the dead. Without the Resurrection, there would be no Christianity and certainly no Church that has lasted 2000 years,
Why didn't the Romans who were afraid of the cult surrounding the followers of Jesus come forward with any evidence? The Captain thinks along the same lines in Jesus Buried in Plain Sight.
The archeologists who worked on the dig and discovered the tomb of 10 ancient ossuaries- small caskets used to store bones in 1980 called Cameron's claims "dishonest", "bunk" and "nonsense" but admit it's a great story for TV.
The DNA proof? It doesn't identify Jesus or Mary Magdalene but only that one male and one female in the tomb were unrelated and probably married.
The cross next to the name? Use of the cross during the first two centuries was rare. Christians used the fish symbol to covertly identify each other says Texas Rainmaker in Tales from the Crypt.
Mark Shea has gathered together under the title Shocking Revelation that Shakes Christianity to its Very Foundations. Again.links to other shocking revelations. The ones I never heard include Jesus was a woman, a Mormon, a magician, a space alien buried in Japan, never existed, was never executed, survived his execution and is buried in Kashmir.
I like the take these high school researchers who claim that James Cameron is Actually Un-Dead and Buried in Biloxi. Tombstone rubbings by the class at a local cemetery revealed that James Cameron lived from 1830-1907. Said the coroner of the find,
I mean, the guy's got the same name and the bones have human DNA. What more do you need?
I don't know what to make of the ancient cemetery, three thousand years old, found in Vanuatu, a Melanesian nation of 83 islands in the South Pacific.
Ancient remains unearthed in Vanuatu.
In this earliest cemetery ever found in the Pacific Islands, the skeletons are all headless.
Professor Matthew Spriggs of the Australian National University led the dig. He speculated that the Lapita people followed the common practice, common that it is until about 100 years ago, of letting the flesh rot away from the head of a dead person and then placing the skull in a shrine or a house. He said
The head was seen as the seat of the soul, so it's the most important part.
"When you die and you don't have any relatives, they just kick you to the side," Fouty said. "And now she's frozen. That just makes me cringe. That's not what she wanted at all. I'm just scared to death they're going to cremate her and stick her in a cemetery where she doesn't know anyone."
Deceased woman's last wish can't be granted.
Williams-Martin did not have the proper paperwork or the relatives to claim her, so her body could not be donated to science. Now, Fouty hopes her ashes can be placed on her father's grave, but first a relative must come forward.
People living alone need wills too.
On Tremont St in Boston is the Granary Burying Ground, the final resting place of many Revolutionary War patriots and signers of the Declaration of Independence like Sam Adams, Paul Revere, John Hancock. Also buried there are victims of the Boston Massacre killed by British troops, including Crispus Attucks, an African-American sailor.
On this hallowed ground, part of The Freedom Trail, Dr. Pepper hid a coin, as part of a nation-wide treasure hunt, which would have been redeemable for up to $1 million in a promotion for the soft drink.
Fortunately, the Parks Department closed the burial ground due to icy paths last week when it learned of the ill-considered promotion. Fearing damage from scores of treasure hunters, the burying ground remained closed.
Dr Pepper apologized, "The coin should never have been place in such a hallowed site."
Guerilla marketing is not going well in Boston. Last month, bomb scares closed down much of the city when another ill-conceived promotion by the Cartoon network placed devices containing magnetic lights and dangling wires under bridges to advertise a cartoon show.
That cost Turner Broadcasting $2 million and the resignation of the head of the Cartoon network.
Donald Trump is eyeing N.J golf course for his grave site.
First though, he has to get approval to build a wedding chapel on the golf course he built on the former estate of the late automaker John DeLorean.
Then, he plans to convert it to a mausoleum for himself and his family.
I guess he plans to see his children married and hear wedding bells first.
What's the difference you ask?
Coffins are wide to accommodate the shoulders, while small at the foot end. Modern day caskets aren't anywhere near the shape of a coffin.
Thanks to the law professor who first thought caskets were fancy and coffins were plain until he heard from a funeral home.
This is a coffin.
In Indonesia comes plans for an upscale cemetery with a country club attached and they've already sold 1000 plots.
Death Takes a Holiday (WSJ, subscription only)
"We wanted to create something pleasant," says Viven Sitiabudi, president director of P.T. Lippo Karawaci, the Lippo Group unit developing the project. "Families should look at visiting their loved ones as a happy occasion rather than with dread."
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The Lippo Group, run by 77-year-old banking tycoon Mochtar Riady, saw Indonesia's middle class balking at putting loved ones to rest in overcrowded government-managed cemeteries, and sensed a business opportunity.
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San Diego Hills, which is promising never to disturb a body once buried, is already attracting interest. "It's beautiful," says Elsye Phaais, who works for the Tabita Foundation, a company that arranges burials in Jakarta for its 23,000 members. "It's different from existing cemeteries which are something frightening."
via Scribal Terror comes this Romanian gravestone
Burn in Hell you damned Taxi
That came from Sibiu
As large as Romania is
You couldn’t find any other place to stop
Only in front of my house
To kill me?"
She got it from The Spirit of Romania featuring the Merry Cemetery
The Merry Cemetery, an original folkloric art museum was founded in 1935 by a craftsman named Ioan Stan Patras and owes its fame to the vivid colors of the headboards on which are naively painted scenes narrating the biography of the deceased. The accompanying simple-rhyming stanzas are sometimes lyrical, sometimes ironic, but always sincere and never indulgent. The cemetery has become a chronicle of the local community.
....as a reward for its unicity and originality, Sapanta was declared the second memorial monument of the world, right after the Egyptian Valley Of The Kings.
For more then 5000 years, this couple has been locked in loving embrace. Dubbed the Lovers of Valdero, the couple's bones have been excavated in Mantua where Shakespeare's Romeo was exiled.
Elena Menotti, leader of the dig said
"I am so thrilled at this find. I have been involved in lots of digs all over Italy but nothing has excited me as much as this."
"I've been doing this job for 25 years. I've done digs at Pompeii, all the famous sites.
"But I've never been so moved because this is the discovery of something special."
In the end, it's all about love, isn't it.
What do you think about medical staff at a school of anatomy who mishandle body parts, fondle the breasts and genitals of cadavers, even use a skull for degrading purposes?
It all happened at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
Four staff members are under investigation and the Deputy Vice Chancellor apologized for the distress the families of body donors are experiencing.
"The difficulty is we are still trying to fully understand what happened.
It's a far cry from these students who paid homage to their cadavers. with
humble observations and boundless gratitude spilled from students who'd learned much about the human body through six months of dissection
in a memorial service organized by Linda Walters, the director of anatomy at Glendale medical university.
It makes me believe this statement by Ed Brenegar I came across yesterday.
At the heart of sin is the corruption of intimacy
Recent excavations near Stonehenge strongly suggest it was a burial site
That finding, said Parker Pearson, is supported by the earlier discovery of cremated remains at Stonehenge and new work indicating that as many as 250 cremated bodies are there.
"My guess is that they were throwing ashes, human bones and perhaps even whole bodies into the water, a practice seen in other river settings," Parker Pearson said.
Of Stonehenge, he said "it was our biggest cemetery of that time."
Herzlinde Eissler didn't understand why her family didn't visit her in the hospital over Christmas. When she was discharged, she went home only to discover her family organizing her funeral.
Her son Leopold Eissler, 39, said he had gone to visit his mother shortly before Christmas only to be told she was dead and had then spent the festive period organising her funeral.
He said: "I'm not sure whether to be delighted because my mother is alive or furious that they could have made such a mistake at the hospital.
"At least it explains why they could not find the body when we wanted to pay our last respects.
"I could not believe it when she walked in through the front door and the whole family were all sitting around dressed in black and planning the funeral."
First Catholic Crematorium will be built in New Jersey
Despite the Catholic Church's preference for burial, the Metuchen Diocese will break ground today on the first crematory in the United States to be built by a diocese.
After forbidding cremation for centuries, the church began allowing it for Catholics in 1963, while maintaining a strong preference for burial.
The imposing burial mounds of Japan's ancient emperors, the Imperial tombs, have lain virtually untouched for 1700 years.
Today, several academic organizations - historians, archaeologists, zoologists - have been granted royal permission to visit and inspect.
Given that there are more than 200,000 ancient burial mounds, called kofun, and even if only the biggest were revered as the tombs of ancient emperors, many have been wrongly designated as such.
Did the Japanese imperial bloodline consist only of Japanese or were there intermarriages with Chinese and Korean ancestors?
Purity of bloodline was and still is a big deal in Japan even if it seems pretty silly to me.
Until now, the Imperial Household Agency refused all requests for inspections maintaining that "the tranquillity of the imperial souls should not be disturbed."
Maybe the burials are far enough past, the myth of racial purity increasingly heavy to continue to support that the findings of the new inspections - which should be extremely interesting no matter what they show = are more tantalizing and attracting than the continued adherence to the myth of blood purity.
It's like CSI examining the physical evidence of Japan's ancient history, an imperial myth and a long-buried secret known only to mother earth.
The Japanese royal family claims direct descent from Amaterasu, the Shinto celestial sun goddess who rules Takamagahara (“high celestial plain”)
She presented her grandson, Ninigi no Mikoto, with the Imperial Regalia, right — a mirror, a sword and a jewel — also known as the Three Sacred Treasures, representing courage, wisdom and benevolence
Ninigi no Mikoto in turn passed the regalia on to his descendants, and the three treasures are now considered the symbols of Imperial legitimacy
After the Second World War the Imperial’s Family claim to be deities was officially abolished.
via Pure Land Mountain, So Who is Buried in All Those Emperors' Tombs.
Three months ago, a farmer working high in the mountains at the edge of the Peruvian rainforest came across a hidden burial vault.
Archaeologists exploring the site have found Kuelap, a spectacular citadal of the Chachapoyas, the cloud people, consisting of more than 400 buildings and defensive towers.
Moment 600 years ago that terror came to Mummies of the Amazon.
Herman Crobera, leader of the archaeological team says, "This is a discovery of transcendental importance."
"It is the first time any kind of underground burial site this size has been found belonging to Chachapoyas or other cultures in the region."
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'The remote site for this cemetery tells us that the Chachapoyas had enormous respect for their ancestors because they hid them away for protection,' added Mr Crobera.
James Brown apparently didn't leave any directions about his burial.
James Brown's Body Has Not Been Buried
The body of soul singer James Brown has yet to be buried as attorneys and his children work to settle issues surrounding his estate, including where he will be laid to rest.
For now, his body lies in a sealed casket in his home on Beech Island,..The room where Brown's body lies is being kept at a controlled temperature, and security guards keep watch.
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The hope is that all parties can sit down and figure out what the problem is and what the challenges are," attorney Thornton Morris said. "And once we figure out what the challenges are we'll see if we can't resolve something that's a win for everybody."
A very good, short essay with slide show on the latest in green burial is Death Be Not Manicured in Slate.
Each year in the United States, coffins and vaults result in more metal being put in the ground than was used to make the Golden Gate Bridge, and enough concrete to build a two-lane highway from New York to Detroit.
Looks like the Green Burial Council will be approving death-care providers who meet newly-drafted professional standards so we all can easily identify the ethical and environmentally sound ones when the time comes.
Via Goodbye to the Godfather of Soul at Pajamas Media comes Farewell Tour to James Brown Ends.
The farewell tour for Brown _ loved in Augusta as much for his generosity and influence as for his music _ wound down with an afternoon funeral, two days after a boisterous viewing in the famed Apollo Theater in New York.
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More than 8,500 fans packed James Brown Arena, where Brown lay in front of the bandstand in his third outfit in three days _ a black jacket and gloves, red shirt and sequined shoes.
As the service began shortly after 1 p.m., dozens of friends and relatives filed slowly past the casket.
The procession was followed by a video of Brown's last performance in Augusta and his final concert in London _ where he performed a slow, soulful version of Ray Charles' "Georgia On My Mind."
For four years, detectives sought the identity of the young girl found dead in a duffel bag.
“We felt this was a good kid,” Dudek said. “We were doing everything we could.”
They rounded up specialists, who donated their time to examine her bones and her teeth. They had her DNA tested.
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The girl without a name was buried under a marker reading "Unknown Child of God" in a funeral paid for by nearly 100 people.
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Last week, they got their answer. The girl's mother was devastated.
“It's sad, but at least now she knows,” Dudek said.
Del Carmen was moved to learn how a community of strangers had come to care for her daughter, dedicating years to investigate her death and giving her a dignified burial, he said.
To understand better the nature of grief, it helps to understand that "death doesn't end a relationship, it ends a life".
Patti Digh begins her essay Forever hold your penguin dear with that quote which she attributes to Jack Lemmon.
Jack Lemmon? but I digress.
when people die, we move so quickly in the opposite direction, to have those bodies picked up and cleaned and sanitized. Pema Chodron has written that “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” To look away, not at; to dispose of quickly. Dead bodies are fearful things. We have lost sight, perhaps, of where we really are. When I try to locate myself in space and in place, why am I always confined to this space, this place? Am I my body, or is it merely a container for me? Why should I run at its disease, its death?
Death is mystery. It is awful and transformational and freeing and heartbreaking—it is also Truth and therefore fearful for many of us, for me. But this young woman has changed that—what a gift I have received from someone I never met, will never meet.
What follows is the most remarkable leave-taking I've ever read.
It is a story so beautiful and so raw and so very intensely real that it breaks my heart and heals it all at the same time. And there is more. Just as the penguin story kept coming, there is more.
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Don’t try telling me that life isn’t circular in some significant ways. We are tying bows around significances every day, I think. We just don’t know it, or not yet.
Billy Graham is torn between the wishes of his frail, sick 86-year-old wife Ruth and those of his son and heir Franklin Graham. Then crime novelist Patricia Cornwell gets into the picture.
A Family at Cross-Purposes and arguing over where Billy Graham will be buried, in Charlotte with a talking cow or at the Cove.
The burial issue threatens to tear asunder what some have called the royal family of American religion, and Billy is being asked to make a Solomon-like choice between the wishes of his heir and his wife of 63 years.
When a revered political columnist and food writer plans his own memorial service, it is sui generis, in the Kennedy Center, no less.
How many reporters became famous, really famous, for the immensity of their expense accounts?
Johnny Apple's Service, In the Best of Taste.
a post-service buffet to remember. Apple would have savored the spread laid on by 21 of the Washington area's best restaurants, and lubricated by the wines of 20 American vineyards. Apple apparently knew the proprietors of all 41 -- and of course had sampled their production, in all likelihood prodigiously. Had he been able to partake, Apple would have particularly liked the huge fresh oysters flavored with generous dollops of real Russian caviar provided by Patrick O'Connell of the Inn at Little Washington.
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Luckily for the 750 or so in the crowd, everyone knew Apple, so they could laugh at Apple stories told by 13 eulogists while images of the vast man himself danced in their imaginations
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Ward Just, the novelist and former Washington Post reporter whose eulogy was read by Purdum yesterday, put his finger on the essence of Apple's professional personality: "Johnny Apple was primarily interested in the demystification of things: the Iowa caucuses, Finnish architecture, the proper way to poach some wretched fish . . ."
Military honors were given to Staff Sgt Wendy, a decorated Belgium Malinois, who helped protect American forces in Afghanistan.
Military working dogs are provided honors at their burial service because the Army considers them soldiers.
A firing party shot off 21 rounds, a bugler played taps and the flag was unfolded and then folded over the spot where her cremated remains were placed.
Besides having a rank, always one grade higher than their handler, military working dogs have a service number and can receive decorations.
Wendy was awarded an Army Commendation Medal by the commander of the 10th Mountain Division for her work as an explosive detecting dog while serving in Afghanistan.
The bond between the military dogs and their handlers is very touching.
In Australia, the autopsy of the father of 4 jailed gang rapists, was fast-tracked so he could be buried quickly according to Muslim tradition.
The father was facing charges for lying to the police to protect his sons and had assailed his sons' victims in court, saying that the young girls should not have been alone at night.
The apparent attempt to give priority to the man, known to the public as Dr K, shocked morgue workers at Westmead Hospital in Sydney, who are so short-staffed they can take days to complete a post-mortem examination.
Deadbeat Dad Arrested at Mother's Wake
Stephen Burns walked into a Braintree funeral home Tuesday for his mother's wake. He walked out a short time later in handcuffs, escorted by two constables.
According to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, Burns is one of the state's worst deadbeat dads. He owes more than $160,000 in child support, dating back 20 years.
A warrant first went out for Burns arrest in 2001, when he skipped a court date. It was reissued Tuesday when the mother of Burns children discovered he was in town for his mother's funeral.
How will you be remembered when you're gone? Elliott Makin envisions a digital cemetery, one that networks traditional tombstones to the electronic records of the people who lie beneath.
Elliott Malkin Cemetery 2.0
Cemetery 2.0 is a concept for a set of networked devices that connect burial sites to online memorials for the deceased. The prototype, at left, links Hyman Victor's gravestone in Chicago, to his surviving Internet presence, including his:
• Flickr Genealogical Repository
• Facebook Memorial Profile
• Pedigree Resource File (GEDCOM)
• Family Tree of the Jewish People entry (GEDCOM)
The Cemetery 2.0 device maintains a live satellite Internet connection. Visitors to the physical memorial can view related memorials on the device display, while visitors paying their respects at any of the online memorials will recognize that their browsing is associated directly with the actual burial site.
He links to Digital Remains by Michele Gauler
via Boing Boing
A six-hundred pound man proved too much for one crematorium.
His body fluids seeped onto the floor and ignited a fire.
Fire breaks out at Salt Lake Crematorium.
Firefighters rarely see these kind of fires.
But they say a six-hundred-pound body can create problems during a cremation.
"It really does condense or breaks down that fat into a greasy product, just like a grease fire," said Freitag. "Only a little bit can cause a flame to go up."
In Manila it's so crowded, that some are converting mausoleums into living quarters as squatters have moved into cemeteries. As All Saints Day and All Souls Day, Catholic feasts on November 1 and 2,
approach and families plan picnics on the the graves of their ancestors, many squatters who find shelter among the graves will be asked to leave by cemetery caretakers.
Seems as if Castro is dying of stomach cancer, if not already dead.
Confirmation of the terminal illness comes from the usual sources but in a non-conventional manner. The Cuban government has been summoning to Havana representatives of the major international media to negotiate the best seats, camera angles, and interviews with the despot’s political survivors, and to inform them of the ground rules for coverage of the state funeral.
The foreign media are being told that the model for Castro’s funeral is that of Pope John Paul II a year ago. The Cubans actually believe — or pretend — that the death of a tyrant deserves the same attention as that of the world’s great men of peace.
This is one of Castro’s lasting legacies to his countrymen: moral disorientation.
Today we are mainly concerned whether people are still really alive when they are in a persistent vegetative state.
Music Stirred Her Damaged Brain
One Settlement, Another Judicial Homicide
A hundred years ago, the concern was whether a person was really dead. The fear of being buried alive was so great that all sorts of methods were used to determine whether a person was dead. The Athanasius Kircher Society writes about some of them in A Short History of Security Coffins.
In the gruesome case of the funeral directors who plundered corpses to sell body parts. seven funeral directors have secretly pleaded guilty to an indictment brought by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.
"It is clear that many more funeral home directors were involved in this enterprise," Hynes said.
The names of the funeral directors have not been disclosed because they have all agreed to cooperate in an ongoing investigation involving funeral homes in New York City and Rochester.
7 Plead Guilty in Stolen Body Parts Case.
Four original defendants in the case were to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon. Michael Mastromarino, a former oral surgeon, and three other men are accused of secretly removed skin, bone and other transplantable parts from hundreds of bodies without the permission of families.
Mastromarino, owner of Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., allegedly made millions of dollars by selling the stolen tissue to biomedical companies that supply material for procedures including dental implants and hip replacements, prosecutors said.
At the time, prosecutors said they had unearthed evidence that death certificates and other paperwork were falsified. In Cooke's case, his age was recorded as 85 rather than 95 and the cause of death was listed as heart attack instead of lung cancer that had spread to his bones.
When clearing a spot for the construction of a parking garage in Vatican city, a truck was spotted hauling tombstones with Latin inscriptions.
Today, as part of the Vatican Museum's 500th anniversary, the pagan Necropolis, called the "little Pompeii of cemeteries" will be open to the public, even as excavation and conservation is still on-going.
Vatican Necropolis, Almost a Garage.
What has been unveiled is a cemetery of the middle class in the first century.
Necropolis Unveiled. Below are some photographs which, if you click, you will see enlarged.
Sleeping Slave
Overview of necropolis
Mosaic
Baby's grave
A missing airman, First Lt Shannon Estill of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, lost in action in WWII, has been identified and will be returned to his family to be buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
After being struck by enemy anti-aircraft fire in 1945, his plane exploded and crashed in eastern Germany. U.S. military personnel could not recover his remains after the war since the crash site was in the Russian-occupied section of Germany.
Two German nationals found the crash site in 2003. Two military teams interviewed people who had witnessed the crash as children and excavated the site over two years before enough evidence was found to identify the body.
Missing WWII Airmen is Identified.
HT Solomania.
I wrote about the Promessa process over 2 years ago.
Now it seems more than a quarter of local authorities surveyed in Britain are actively considering the freeze-drying of corpses.
Many cemeteries will run out of space in 10 years so they are looking for solutions to the lack of space. They could have double-decker graves or have the graves "standing up" with coffins placed vertically.
Cremation has its own problems as dental fillings create mercury emissions. Many crematoria have to be completely rebuilt to comply with government regulations.
No wonder freeze-drying seems so attractive. After the body is dipped into liquid nitrogen, it's placed on a vibrating mat until it disintegrates into a fine powder. A magnetic field then removes metal objects like dental fillings and metal pins in the body.
Cremation to be replaced by eco-friendly freeze-drying of corpses.
The phrase "dust to dust" is not from the Bible, but from the burial rite in the Book of Common Prayer.
In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ,
we commend to Almighty God our brother <name>; and we commit his body to the ground;
earth to earth; ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
The Lord bless him and keep him,
the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him and give him peace. Amen.
In Madagascar, the tradition of partying with the dead, called the turning of the dead, is dividing some families who have become Christian.
In Madagascar, Digging Up the Dead Divides Families (Wall St Journal, subscribers only)
Seeing how much his father's body had decayed since his death nine years earlier was bad enough. But the whole custom of removing ancestors from their tombs, dressing them in fresh shrouds and dancing with their bodies suddenly struck the born-again Mr. Rabeatoandro as un-Christian.
So Mr. Rabeatoandro, a 48-year-old English teacher, told his family that never again would he participate in the "turning of the dead" ceremony.
His theological decision has carried a steep emotional price. Mr. Rabeatoandro's relatives were aghast. His brothers refused to discuss the matter with him. His mother worried that ignoring the dead could bring bad luck. "Someone who refuses to turn the ancestors denies his identity as a Malagasy," says Mr. Rabeatoandro's cousin, Joseph Rabefararano, a 66-year-old retired house painter. "He leaves the family."
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Today, 52% of Malagasy practice indigenous religions, while 41% are Christians, according to the CIA World Factbook. The reality, however, is far more complicated. Many families include both Christians and animists. And many individuals blend Christianity with a belief that the ancestors can intercede with the Creator to bless the living with wealth, health and happiness or, if mistreated, curse them with unemployment, disease and misery.
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In some famadihanas, the families take the bodies on a stroll through town, to show the ancestors what is new, and introduce them to children born since they last left the tomb. The thinking is that, to help the living, the dead must be familiar with their lives.
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Catholics are often accepting of the ceremony. Father Solofomampionona Razafindrakoto, a 29-year-old Carmelite priest, sees the ancestors as akin to Catholic saints and the corpses akin to the relics kept in many churches. He has even celebrated mass before a famadihana. "The saints were people like us," he says. "They knew our lives and our suffering. Now they are close to God, and that's why we pray to them."
The courage of the young Amish girls in facing death is astounding.
'Shoot Us, Not Them' Brave Girls Pleaded in Bid to Save Schoolmates
Staring down the barrel of Charles Carl Roberts' gun, 13-year-old Marian Fisher and her 11-year-old sister, Barbie, bravely pleaded with the madman to shoot them and spare the eight other girls he was holding hostage.
"Marian said, 'Shoot me first,' and Barbie said, 'Shoot me second,' " said midwife Rita Rhoads, who had helped deliver several of the victims.
"They were really trying to save the younger girls. It is a real reflection of their faith."
"They all knew they were going to be shot. They just stood there with courage," Rhoads said. "There was no atmosphere of panic there. They were courageous."
I wrote yesterday about Plain Evil and Plain Good and the amazing outreach and forgiveness of the Amish towards the gunman's family.
Yesterday was the first day of 4 funerals. The fifth will be held today.
Funerals were held in the homes of Marian Fisher, 12; Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7: and two sisters, Mary Liz Miller, 8 and Lena Miller, 7.
Three long processions of 34 dark buggies and carriages left each of the victim's homes to a hilltop cemetery shaded by two elm trees.
Pennsylvania state troopers on horseback and a funeral director's black car with flashing yellow lights cleared the way for the buggies and the black carriages carrying the hand-built wooden coffins.
Pennsylvania State Police troopers were intent on preserving the families' privacy. All roads were blocked off and airspace for 2 miles in all directions was closed.
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Earlier, hundreds of Amish men and women, wearing black hats, dresses and suits, had gathered at the homes of each of the victims' families to chant hymns and prayers in Amish German during funeral services closed to the public.
Then, starting at 11 a.m., they placed Naomi Rose's simple coffin in a buggy and drove her body to be laid to rest - followed four hours later by Marian's body, and two hours after that by the Miller sisters.
At the wind-swept cemetery, friends and relatives took one last look before placing the lids on the coffins and lowering them into their graves.
Relatives took turns throwing dirt atop the coffins.
It was a somber occasion, and, for the Amish, a profound one. Funerals are their most important religious event, for they believe they are sending a loved one into the arms of God.
Reported the Washington Post in A Plain and Profound Farewell, a neighbor who declined to give her name said, "You learn a lot from [the Amish], how they deal with things. It's just amazing. It's not just words."
Indeed.
In Britain, a survey of funeral homes reveals the top ten pop songs requested to be played at funerals.
1. Wind Beneath My Wings - Bette Midler
2. My Heart Will Go On - Celine Dion
3. I Will Always Love You - Whitney Houston
4. Simply The Best - Tina Turner
5. Angels - Robbie Williams
6. You'll Never Walk Alone - Gerry And The Pacemakers
7. Candle In The Wind - Elton John
8. Unchained Melody - Righteous Brothers
9. Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon And Garfunkel
10. Time To Say Goodbye - Sarah Brightman
It may take 20 years, but families will not rest until they can learn what happened to their loved ones, recover their bodies and bury their dead themselves.
Exhuming the Past in a Painful Quest
Spurred by a surge of requests from victims' families this year, dozens of forensic anthropologists have been fanning out across the countryside to search for remains of the 200,000 people -- most of them Mayan Indian civilians -- who were killed or abducted during the 36-year conflict.
Many were massacred by military forces and dumped into mass graves. Others were buried hurriedly in unmarked, secret locations by relatives anxious to avoid rampaging troops.
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The remains of fewer than 5,000 victims have been returned to their families.
The anguish of those still searching was palpable among the two dozen Mayan Indians who attended a recent exhumation near this town in the central Guatemalan department of Quiche.
Most were subsistence farmers and manual laborers who could speak only their native Mayan language and could ill afford to take time off from work. Yet day after day they hiked to the grave site atop a mist-shrouded mountain -- the women bearing small children strapped to their backs with colorful blankets, the men shouldering shovels to help the forensic team dig for bodies.
In Nottingham, England, a new cemetery is being built, the first in 85 years.
A multi-faith cemetery will have all its graves aligned with Mecca, despite Christian burials traditionally facing east......
In today's secular society you could be forgiven for not knowing which direction Christian graves face.
Ancient tradition shows they should look east in anticipation of the second coming of Jesus Christ.
But all headstones at the new £2.5m High Wood Cemetery in Bulwell will be plotted to face north-east, in line with Islamic faith.
Muslims believe the dead look over their shoulder towards Mecca, towards the south-east.
Despite there being separate sections at the cemetery in Low Wood Road for different faiths, the council wanted to give a tidy, linear appearance.
A Question of Faith...or Tidiness? via LGF.
Santera and voodoo practices in Florida are disturbing the locals.
Desecration of Grave Linked to Religious Ritual
A grieving widow who visited her husband's grave expected to find fresh sod and flowers, not a ritualistic slaughter of animals next to the headstone.
But atop the two-week-old grave was a dead chicken, a set of goat hoofs and four dead puppies. Worst of all, the puppies were headless.
"I was horrified," said the woman, who asked not to be identified because she wanted to shield her family from the desecration.
Grieving wife sliced off willy
A WIFE aged 65 chopped off her dead husband’s willy in hospital — so she could keep it in a pickling jar as a souvenir. Uta Schneider used a butcher’s knife to hack off the “treasured” manhood. She wrapped it in foil and put it in a lunchbox — next to gherkins.
But she was spotted by a nurse and arrested in Stuttgart, Germany. She is accused of mutilation.
Uta was wed to Heinrich, 68, for 35 years.
She told police: “It was his best asset and gave me so much pleasure.
“I wanted to pickle it for eternity — he would have wanted it. We called it his joystick. I wanted it to remember him by.”
Photojournalist Brian Denton whose work has appeared in the New York Times, alleges that some wire photographers were directing the unearthing of bodies in graves in order to compose more powerful and compelling photographs in what he later called "not an isolated incident".
i have been working in lebanon since all this started, and seeing the behavior of many of the lebanese wire service photographers has been a bit unsettling. while hajj has garnered a lot of attention for his doctoring of images digitally, whether guilty or not, i have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in peoples arms. these photographers have come away with powerful shots, that required no manipulation digitally, but instead, manipulation on a human level, and this itself is a bigger ethical problem.
The link to the original Denton posting no longer works as the Lightstalkers forum has removed the page. Charles Johnson has captured the original post and has many updates here.
Like many around the world, local villagers in the Donghai region of China believe that the more people who attend a funeral, the more the dead person is honored.
But never before have I heard of striptease send-offs to attract mourners.
Police crack down on striptease funerals.
Dead climber found after 17 years.
The body of a climber has been found 17 years after he died in a mountaineering accident in the French Alps
News of the find came as a big relief to his father who arranged to have his son's remains brought home.
A strange, comforting, human response, reflecting the obligation we feel to formally bury our dead.
In Tibet, a Mahayana country, the day of death is thought of as highly important. It is believed that as soon as the death of the body has taken place, the personality goes into a state of trance for four days. During this time the person does not know they are dead. This period is called the First Bardo and during it lamas (monks) saying special verses can reach the person to them.
It is believed that towards the end of this time the dead person will see a brilliant light. If the radiance of the Clear Light does not terrify them, and they can welcome it, then the person will not be reborn. But most flee from the Light, which then fades.
The person then becomes conscious that death has occurred. At this point the Second Bardo begins. The person sees all that they have ever done or thought passing in front of them. While they watch they feel they have a body but when they realize this is not so, they long to possess one again. Then comes the Third Bardo, which is the state of seeking another birth. All previous thoughts and actions direct the person to choose new parents, who will give them their next body.
Raised Lutheran, Pamela Waechter converted to Judaism of her own accord, a few years after marrying Bill Waechter.
A prominent and effective leader in the Jewish community, she was described as calm, balanced, positive, optimistic, a woman who believed in the basic goodness of people.
How ironic that in her death, she's become an American Jewish martyr, dying for and as a representative of her faith, at the hands of a crazed, Muslim loner Naveed Afzal Haq who told a 911 dispatcher : "These are Jews and I'm tired of getting pushed around and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East."
Navad Haq ambushed a 12-year-old girl and pointing a gun to her head, gained entrance through a door locked for security at the Jewish Federation building in Seattle. Once in he shot and seriously wounded 5 Jewish women and killed Pamela Waechter, 58.
One of the women wounded in Friday's shooting -- hit in the arm as she shielded her pregnant belly -- helped bring the crisis to an end by crawling into her office, calling 911, and convincing her assailant to talk to dispatchers, Kerlikowske said.
"She's a hero in my eyes," he said at a news conference.
I never knew that Jewish tradition believes that messianic redemption will enter the world through the good deeds of women converts to Judaism, beginning with Ruth, the ancestor of King David.
Obituary from the Seattle Times
Pamela Waechter was buried yesterday. R.I.P.
The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, a museum to the Sicilian dead, date back to 1599 when the monks first mummified one of their own. They had outgrown their cemetery and had begun excavating the crypts below which is where I suppose they got the idea of mummification.
Originally intended just for the monks, it soon became a status symbol to be entombed there. Some 8000 mummies line the walls, dressed in their best. It is rumored that Velasquez, the splendid Spanish painter, is among them. The halls are divided into categories: men, women, virgins, children, priests, monks and professionals.
via Athanaisus Kircher Society where you can find many more photographs.
The two sisters came from Russia about 17 years ago. Olga married Leonid Milkin and had two boys, Justin 6 and Andrew 4.
When Leonid, a member of the National Guard, went off to serve in Iraq, Olga's sister, Lyubov Botina, came to live with her and help take care of the little children.
Horror. Olga, her sister, and the two boys were stabbed to death and their house set ablaze to conceal the crime.
Leonid returned for their funeral, The City Church packed with 2500 mourners. No ordinary funeral for Kirkland family slain in home set ablaze.
At the service, the pastor urged mourners to remember their lives as mighty women of God and dynamic Christians rather than the horrific manner of their deaths.
A Kirkland neighbor was arrested for the murders.
A German football team is planning a cemetery for its die-hard fans.
In Hamburg, right next to the stadium will be a miniature stadium cemetery so fans can rest in peace alongside their favorite team.
Early on in Boomer Remains, I wondered how boomers were going to change the way we think about death, dying and funerals.
Ken Dyctwald, wrote in Age Power that
Boomers didn't just eat food -- they transformed the snack, restaurant and supermarket industries.
Boomers didn't just wear clothes -- they transformed the fashion industry.
Boomers didn't just date --they transformed sex roles and practices
Boomers didn't just go to work -- they transformed the workplace
Well, have you heard of funeral concierge before? I didn't until I read this piece in the New York Times.
It's My Funeral and I'll Serve Ice Cream if I Want to
As members of the baby boom generation plan final services for their parents or themselves, they bring new consumer expectations and fewer attachments to churches, traditions or organ music — forcing funeral directors to be more like party planners, and inviting some party planners to test the farewell waters.
Mark Duffy, who runs a funeral concierge service is interviewed.
What they want, he said, are services that reflect their lives and tastes. One family asked for a memorial service on the 18th green of their father’s favorite golf course, “because that’s where dad was instead of church on Sunday mornings, so why are we going to church,” Mr. Duffey said. “Line up his buddies, and hit balls.” Another wanted his friends to ride Harleys down his favorite road, scattering his ashes.
Apart from boomers wanting more services to reflect their lives, services can be more fun! if the icky dead body isn't around. Wouldn't want to cast a pall on the party.
The biggest change, Mr. Duffey said, is that as more families choose cremation — close to 70 percent in some parts of the West — services have become less somber because there is not a dead body present. “The body’s a downer, especially for boomers,” Mr. Duffey said. “If the body doesn’t have to be there, it frees us up to do what we want. They may want to have it in a country club or bar or their favorite restaurant. That’s where consumers want to go.”
Here's an interesting look at the "social architecture of death" or how people thought about and conceived of their own memorials
Forgotten Treasures in the Woodlawn Cemetery Archives
At Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, from the mid-19th century through much of the 20th, death inspired a creative outpouring of remarkable artistry, variety and even surprise.
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The record of this work — blueprints, booklets, drawings, ledgers, letters, maps, photographs, plans, receipts, sketches and trade catalogs — is so illuminating and important that Woodlawn’s trustees formally donated the cemetery archives last month to the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University.
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And the archives may greatly expand an intriguing line of art history: the social architecture of death — how people conceived their own distinctive monuments while respecting (or trumping) those of their neighbors. With 1,316 family mausoleums, Woodlawn is not just a city of the dead, but a densely populated one at that.
By chance, I did a round-up of creative sendoffs this week at Third Age.
She was murdered 100 years ago. Since then her story has been told in Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" and told again in movies, plays, songs and an opera.
But only now is her family unveiling a marker where she died.
"This is very meaningful, especially since so many people in our extended family don't ever talk about it," Robert Williams said of his great-aunt. "By memorializing Grace like this, it feels like we're bringing her back into the family."
100-Year-Old Murder Alive in Popular Culture
Funeral rites of the Toraja people of Indonesia by Patrick Blanche in Raw Vision
The Toraja way of death is a fascinating mix of ritual, custom and spectacle. For the Toraja, the dead are as much a part of society as the living. At Lemo, cliffs rise precipitously from the rice fields like stonework condominiums. Crypts, carved with prodigious manual labour, high into the solid rock, house the mortal remains of Toraja nobility. Set among the crypts, the striking tau tau, life-size wooden effigies representing the deceased, look impassively on the world below. Tau means ‘man’ and tau tau ‘men’ or ‘statue’.
The Toraja consider death the most important moment of their lives, the liberation of the soul from the material world. A festival makes it possible for the soul to leave for puya, the land of souls. Their funeral ritual is strictly separated from everything else concerning life and its spheres. .....Throughout their lives the Toraja save money to give their parents and other relatives an excellent funeral festival.
In Iraq, young men say goodbye to Specialist Ben Slaven, a brother they have come to love.
Through it all, most have kept their composure, but none are prepared for the final roll call.
Farewell
R.I.P.
I'm not surprised that Green burials are growing in popularity
At Greensprings, where a plot costs $500 plus a $350 fee to dig the grave, bodies cannot be embalmed or otherwise chemically preserved. They must be buried in biodegradable caskets without linings or metal ornamentation. The cemetery suggests locally harvested woods, wicker or cloth shrouds. Concrete or steel burial vaults are not allowed. Nor are standing monuments, upright tombstones or statues.
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"This is more than just dig a hole in the woods and roll them in. We see it as a natural return to the Earth, becoming part of the circle of life," said Mary Woodsen, a lifelong conservationist and the cemetery's president.
"Not everyone will find this appealing," she said. "But there are people who want that look and feel of nature."
Even though this sleek Cocoon is manufactured by hand using renewable resources -untreated jute and a natural resin - and won a coveted Silver Award in Businessweek's 2006 Idea Awards, it may not be green enough for Greensprings.
It's been a while since we visited fantasy coffins. In Ghana, rich funeral traditions continue.
Ghanaians say stylish goodbye with fantasy coffins.
Funerals are important social occasions in this West African country and elaborate, brightly colored coffins have become an art form.
Most customers give Mensah more time than Rockson but all want to give their loved ones a fitting send-off in a coffin that honors who they were and what they did.
Fantasy coffins shaped like Coca-Cola bottles, chickens, cars, cameras, birds and bibles are all on sale in Teshie.
First popularized in the 1950s, the coffins cost between $300 and $800 in a country where many live on barely $2 a day.
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Most weekends, funeral parties are held across the former British colony. In some towns, large billboards advertise the time and place of the "homecoming" or "farewell," usually accompanied by a picture of the deceased.
Other people take out full-page national newspaper adverts, inviting all to the funeral, but the most vivid expressions of this commitment to saying goodbye are the fantasy coffins.
30,000 aborted babies buried in Hue cemetery
The cemetery was born from the initiative of a group of volunteers who wanted to celebrate the “sacredness of life” by giving the little fetuses a burial at least. Every day, volunteers go to collect victims from hospitals, clinics and even from garbage dumps, and then they bury them.
The cemetery is not officially recognized by the government, but it closes an eye to the practice, well regarded by Christians, Buddhists and Animists. Even members of the Vietnamese Communist Party have described the cemetery as a “sacred work of love”. Similar cemeteries have emerged near many parishes in Pleiku and in Ho Chi Minh city.
Well, it looks now as if you can watch funerals on the web.
Dead Webcast
When a Long Island man died this week, some of his extended family, scattered across the country, were unable to fly in for the funeral, which under Jewish custom was held within 24 hours.
But they said they felt a part of it anyway because they were able to watch it LIVE via an Internet hookup.
There is a time frame when families want to bury someone. So instead of delaying the service, out-of-towners, or the very sick, can still take part even if they are not there physically," said Kevin Gray, co-owner of The Star of David Memorial Chapel in West Babylon
I believe that, if possible, you should Always Go to the Funeral.
Musician's ashes buried in clarinet
Roger Busdicker went out on a high note. When Busdicker, often seen playing his ebony-and-silver clarinet, died last week at the age of 88, his daughters thought it befitting to have his cremated remains buried in the instrument.
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"They just thought this was so proper, that their dad went into the clarinet," said Noreen Busdicker of Minneapolis, who's married to Roger's brother, Gordon. "What didn't fit in the clarinet went into the lining of the case."
Roger Busdicker toured with the Hal Leonard Orchestra in the 1930s and '40s before becoming a music teacher in Winona schools. He later co-founded and ran a sheet-music publishing company until retiring in 1985.
He never stopped playing though.
It's a solar-powered, multi-media tribute right on a tombstone, call it a
"The VIDSTONE Serenity Panel is the first personal memorial monument product of its kind. Utilizing solar-power technology and a weatherproof LCD panel it provides families the option of viewing a personalized video tribute right at their loved one’s final resting place. The VIDSTONE Serenity panel features a 5-10 minute multimedia memorial detailing the most precious memories of your loved one’s life. Their unique memories are no longer solely relived in your mind , but at your loved one’s place of rest. While nothing ever replaces the gift of life, memories can now come one step closer to forever being remembered and not forgotten with a Vidstone Serenity Panel.
It's been a while since we visited fantasy coffins. In Ghana, rich funeral traditions continue.
Ghanaians say stylish goodbye with fantasy coffins.
Funerals are important social occasions in this West African country and elaborate, brightly colored coffins have become an art form.
Most customers give Mensah more time than Rockson but all want to give their loved ones a fitting send-off in a coffin that honors who they were and what they did.
Fantasy coffins shaped like Coca-Cola bottles, chickens, cars, cameras, birds and bibles are all on sale in Teshie.
First popularized in the 1950s, the coffins cost between $300 and $800 in a country where many live on barely $2 a day.
---
Most weekends, funeral parties are held across the former British colony. In some towns, large billboards advertise the time and place of the "homecoming" or "farewell," usually accompanied by a picture of the deceased.
Other people take out full-page national newspaper adverts, inviting all to the funeral, but the most vivid expressions of this commitment to saying goodbye are the fantasy coffins.
It's been five years now, so where is the memorial to the fateful and tragic day asks Debra Burlinggame in Ground Zero.
They came and would not leave, an army of ironworkers and heavy-equipment operators, stopping only when the scent-trained dogs barked out a signal. They cut and moved twisted steel and steaming concrete, clearing an astonishing 1.8 million tons in a continuous convoy of trucks and a 20,000-barge armada. The last steel beam, covered from top to bottom with handwritten prayers and messages of hope from those who worked the site, was hauled away in a solemn site-closing ceremony that left grown men weeping quietly. "The Pile" was cleared in eight-and-a-half months. Only then did they go home, different men. Who will tell their story?
The answer depends on whether we believe we have a stake in a future we will not live to see. Today, a handful of people are considering how the history of 9/11 will be preserved for future generations. Will it be scattered all over the globe, eroded by small museums, cannibalized by private collectors, or simply lost forever?
Thankfully, it's not going to be housed in the lobby of a commercial office building like Mayor Bloomberg suggested, part of the Freedom Center and its exhibits on slavery around the world.
Thankfully, the New York Times editorial last fall that a 9/11 museum is not necessary because "most of us remember that day very clearly" has been ignored.
Thankfully, it will not be part of the Freedom Center with its exhibits on slavery.
The decision lies in one man's hands: New York Gov. George E. Pataki. It is that simple. Advisory councils, stakeholder meetings and a public comment period notwithstanding, if Gov. Pataki agrees with 87% of the respondents in last year's Zogby poll, stating that 9/11 was "the most historic event of their lifetime" that "changed the way Americans live and view the world," then he will step up and mark that history--or answer to those same people.
What Governor Pataki does will either be his Great Legacy or his great shame.
While the Anchoress has made plans for her wake, her husband has other plans.
What shocked me though was news that the E.U. has planned yet another edict to ban formaldehyde as an embalming agent which will kill off the Irish wake that's existed for hundreds of years.
Such a move would see the end of the age-old ritual of "laying out" the body while games are played and food and drink are consumed to the accompaniment of dancing and fiddle music.
Typically the body is bathed, dressed in a white garment and then laid on a bed or table. From that time on it is not to be left alone until the funeral, while relatives celebrate a life well lived.
Not to be missed is her Irish aunt's description of an Irish wake in Brooklyn about 1926
“For two days, every adult careened between tearful remembrances and roaring recollections. The children milled about, snatchin’ bits of food and playin’ games, stoppin’ by for swift kisses (or kicks) from their parents - two people took turns ‘watching’ each hour, in the livin’ room with the body, while the rest of us were in the kitchen or on the stoops, or in the street, sending him off in style. And didn’t everyone stop by! The policeman, the milkman - for the thing went on all day and all night - the knifesharpener, the ragman, the mailman! They would all stop in and pay their respects, and have a shot of the right stuff, in his memory!
The piano played, the songs were sung - I remember a donnybrook in the front, which seemed to include all the young men, poundin’ upon each other like mortal enemies, except they seemed to enjoy the bloody noses and raw knuckles - and when it was time for prayers, they’d come in, sweaty and respectful, they’d pray then have a drink, then head back out and fight some more! Wasn’t it lively - all that lovely life in the middle of all that death!
And the keening! The sound of the women howlin’ in grief…well, it didn’t seem sincere, but it had a lovely sort of sting to it - it reminded us that life is pain. And wasn’t I tired after a bit, so tired that I stood looking at the coffin and saw him move! It seemed to me his arm slid down and I went screamin’ into the kitchen telling them, ‘he’s movin’, he’s movin’, he’s not dead!’ And didn’t my uncle Francis say, ‘ah, he’s just wanting to join the party, child!’ and they all went in and apologized to himself for not spending more time with him, and brought a plate of food and laid it on his chest and put a glass in his hand.
It was mad. It was glorious. In the morning, we just stepped over the sleeping bodies on the floor or on the grass, and went out to play. When we returned, it was all on, again, until the funeral procession and the Holy Mass - at which everyone held their heads for fear they might fall off! And wasn’t it, after all, the sanest response to death I’d ever seen? When I die, I should have so grand a party!”
Father of dead marine sues funeral protesters
The father of a Marine whose funeral was picketed by anti-gay protesters from a fundamentalist Kansas church filed an invasion-of- privacy suit against the demonstrators Monday.
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"We think it's a case we can win because anyone's funeral is private," Snyder lawyer Sean Summers said. "You don't have a right to interrupt someone's private funeral."
As good as the Patriot Guard Riders are and they are very good, lawyers can hit them where it hurts and make them pay.
Protesters from the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church have gone around the nation disrupting military funerals even the soldier they called "Pipes." yelling "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "Fag body bags" and "Thank God for IEDs."
They believe that the military deaths in Iraq are God's punishment for America's tolerance of gays.
