Category: funerals, cemeteries

Princess Diana’s Funeral, Played and Replayed

19 December 2023
death, mortality, the deadfilmfuneral, commemorationfunerals, cemeteriesmedia, technologymemoriesmetaphor, symbolpassageperformance, play, entertainmentpolitics
3 Comments

The year 2023 is about to turn into 2024. The Crown, a televisions series treatment of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, is currently playing on Netflix. The series includes two funerals, one for Princess Diana, the other for her deceased lover, Dodi Fayed. The funerals occur in season 6, episode 4. The current media…

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A Pack a Day

2 December 2022
aging, childhood, adolescencebodydeath, mortality, the deaddiseasefamilyfunerals, cemeterieshealingillnessmemoirreligion, spirituality
0 comment

I   In the beginning lush San Diego was the Garden of Eden. At the end, when the tall steel gates closed behind them, Nelda said, “Let the Great Serpent have that dreadful place.” She was a riveter. Her husband Miles was a welder. Consolidated Aircraft had terminated their jobs at the end of World…

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Death by the Book

13 September 2020
booksdeath, mortality, the deadfunerals, cemeteries
6 Comments

In 2013 I almost died. Same thing in 2016. I’m 77. My Dear Companion says, “Those events made me a widow twelve-times over.” During COVID I built a coffin that spooked my daughter. Fighting off fear, she built a mini-coffin, “My little coffin can checkmate your big coffin.” CBC, the Canadian public broadcaster, then commissioned…

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Intimacy and Exposure

27 July 2020
bodydeath, mortality, the deaddiseasefunerals, cemeterieshealinghumorillnessritual, festival
11 Comments

Friendship in the Covid Era Amigos por siempre The year is 1970. I’ve just finished a PhD. This is my first academic position. Hugo and I are teaching at the same university. He is teaching Spanish. I am teaching religious studies. One morning I hear an articulate stream of Spanish swearing echoing down the hall….

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Cápsula del Tiempo (Time Capsule)

19 May 2020
death, mortality, the deadfunerals, cemeteriesthings, objectstime, historyvideo & audio
5 Comments

Earlier I wrote a post about coffins: Before the pandemic arrived, I had begun building a coffin with my friend Ted not because I’m dying but because, as my daughter put it, Dad’s not afraid of dying. Truthfully, Dad is a bit afraid, but he displays his fear by defying death. Dad is self-inoculating, staving…

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Ritual in a Pandemic World: Coffins

8 April 2020
apocalypsecreativitydeath, mortality, the deaddiseasefunerals, cemeteriesillness

April 5, 2020, the U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams announced, “This is going to be the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans’ lives…. This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localized. It’s going to be happening all over the country.” What a…

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Holocaust remembrance

29 January 2018
death, mortality, the deadessays, articlesethnicity, racism, multiculturalismfunerals, cemeteriesjusticepeace, conflict, wartruth

  Remembrance is supposed to be good for a community, but much depends how those who remember actually remember. The Daily Beast reports on Mike Pence’s way of remembering the Holocaust: “Many Jews have pointed out that Pence, who is an evangelical Christian, imposes a Christian narrative on the Holocaust, comparing victims of the Holocaust to Jesus. His tweet…

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A daughter’s song

12 November 2017
ethnicity, racism, multiculturalismfunerals, cemeteriesritual, festivalvideo & audio

Everybody dies, and lots of people immigrate. But few Muslims marry Jews, and Mohawks rarely cross the river to conduct Condolence ceremonies among non-natives. Why? “A Daughter’s Song” doesn’t quite answer the question, but it captures what happens when such events coincide. Three months after the death of Myriam Azoulay, Mohawks, invited by artists affiliated…

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