Ronnie wanted lots of music for his funeral but what he DIDN’T want was for me to talk about his life.
Archives
Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, soil to soil
It’s time to rewrite the Book of Common Prayer.
It’s Your Funeral…
Wullie’s story was a time capsule from an era that’s almost gone from our memories.
Let The People Sing!
People love humanist funerals for their compassion, their honesty and their humour: they choose them for what they include, not what they exclude.
How Apps are helping us celebrate life in the time of coronavirus
My role is to speak for the bereaved, and the more accurately I do that, the better the ceremony. Having multiple contributions from family and friends writing from wherever in the world they happen to be allows me to create a richly textured, multi-faceted portrait.
Love in the time of Coronavirus
How David Bowie and the coronavirus are changing the way we deal with death
In Memory of Bill Purves
What do we mean when we say someone’s a character? It’s a word with many nuances, but I can think of no-one about whom it is more appropriate than my neighbour of twenty years, Bill Purves. I live in a mews and when I first moved here twenty years ago, there were still two working … Continue Reading
A celebration of the life of Nan Donald 1933 – 2014
At Jewish funerals, the traditional greeting to mourners is “I wish you a long life”. I can see where they’re coming from, but a long life is not always a blessing.Here in Britain, one in five 80 year olds already suffers from dementia. The Alzheimer’s Society has just published a report which suggests that if current trends continue, we … Continue Reading
A celebration of the life of Bob Barclay, 1954 – 2014
It’s easy to forget that our lives are getting longer. The average life expectancy when I was born in the 1950’s was 65: now men can expect to live to 78 and women a further four years, to 82. And most deaths come at the end of a long life: they may be sad, they may come … Continue Reading