Interesting, overlooked, and significant obituaries from around the world, as they happen, emphasizing the positive achievements of those who have died. Member, Society of Professional Obituary Writers.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
"Tommy" Talmadge Gough
Tommy is second from right. |
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Monday, August 25, 2014
WEEKLY READER: Our roundup of stories on death, dying, mourning and more
TOP STORIES
Photographer
makes series of before-and-after-death photos – reported by David Rosenberg
in Slate
Grief
shaming: judging others’ mourning by Caleb Wilde in Confessions of a
Funeral Director
Local
paper rejects man’s sarcastic self-penned obit – via Happy Place
DEATH
The
Death of Balzac, by Victor Hugo – from balzacbooks.wordpress.com
Is
death a path to political power? In Brazil, perhaps – via Dom Phillips in
the Washington Post
Dear
God, no: morgue worker admits having sex with corpses. A lot of corpses –
from Jerome Hudson of the Daily Surge
‘Before
I die’ bucket-list walls spreading – via Channel 3000
Death in the
digital age – an infographic from Robin Hyde-Chambers in SiteProNews
Arwa Salah Mahmoud talks about her
laissez-faire affair with death
MOURNING
From The Bowery Boys: Death
of Yiddish theater star triggered mass demonstration in 1914
In Medium’s Bereavement and Mourning category, talking
about the dead with Charles McCullagh
OBITS
Are
digital-age obits an improvement? – Mario Garcia of Garcia Media weighs in
Delightful
self-penned (if a bit lengthy) obit – from Ann Brenoff at the Huffington
Post
FUNERALS
Crowdfunding
funerals – by Jodi Helmer in Forbes
From Lynn Haney-Trowbridge in the Shoreline Times, how
to write a eulogy
A very
civil British funeral – from Judy Batalion in Modern Loss
‘Bad
dancing’ at funeral leads to fight, car crash, and attempted arson –
via Conor Byrne at NT News
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Richard Attenborough
Actor, director ,and producer -- via the BBC. An Oscar-winner for his direction of "Gandhi," he made a number of good films, inlcuding "Oh! What A Lovely War," "Young Winston," "A Bridge Too Far," "Magic," "Chaplin," and "Shadowlands." However, his work as an actor was incredible, spanning 60 years. He could play drama, comedy, and melodrama. Among his best roles: The young stoker in "In Which We Serve" (his name was mistakenly omitted from the credits), Pinkie Brown in "Brighton Rock," Roger Bartlett in "the Great Escape," Billy in "Seance on a Wet Afternoon," Frenchy in "The Sand Pebbles," and Christie in "10 Rillington Place." He is best known in America for his roles as John Hammond in "Jurassic Park" and Kris Kringle in the 1994 remake of "Miracle on 34th Street."
"In Which We Serve." |
Friday, August 22, 2014
Charles M. Young
Journalist -- via Rolling Stone. A very funny and vibrant writer! Here's a link to his classic story about the Sex Pistols, "Rock is Sick and Living in London," from Rolling Stone of Oct. 20, 1977.
FRIDAY BOOK REVIEW: 'The Long Goodbye'
The Long Goodbye: A Memoir
Meghan O’Rourke
2011
Riverhead Books
New York
“If the condition of grief is universal, its transactions
are exquisitely personal.” This statement, with its somewhat Tolstoyan echoes,
perfectly captures the spirit of the author’s narrative of her mother’s decline
and death, and the year following it, in “The Long Goodbye.” This painfully
honest and eloquent account is well worth reading on its own merits.
This is not expiation, or a dispassionate self-observation.
As O’Rourke observes, mourners enter a special kind of separate reality, one
that often makes others uncomfortable and awkward. Her prodigious and detailed
collection of memories, reactions, reflections – self-destructive, enlightened,
baffled, supportive, and combative – it’s all here.
Given that I lost my mother almost two years ago to a
debilitating cancer similar to that suffered by O’Rourke’s mother, the
parallels are striking. Hearing from a writer whose feelings echo mine
validates them immensely. The author’s clear and direct voice brings new
insights, explodes myths that make mourners feel inadequate (the Five Stages of
Grief? Real life is not so orderly), and makes human a process that is usually
conceptualized as elevated and somehow sacred.
It’s particularly interesting to be given access to the
unique challenges of losing a same-sex parent – the overlap and transmission of
identity. “The Long Goodbye” is no therapeutic exercise, but a patch of
biography, a passage that is endured but not conveniently completed by book’s
end. That O’Rourke has the sense not to impose an artificial sense of closure
is one of the book’s many virtues.
O’Rourke’s assessment of “Hamlet” in the book describes him
as “radically dislocated, stumbling through the days while the rest of the
world acts as if nothing important has changed.” Likewise, “The Long Goodbye”
gives us an unflinching look at the derangement that a family death imposes . .
. and how one person struggled through, back to the life of every day.
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