OH BITS, FROM OBITS

Dr Richard Soulsby, CEO of the Katharine House Hospice, explains the fundamentals of palliative care.

A qualified psycho-therapist tells us about how she helps those suffering bereavement.

Julie Levine talks with the founder of Soul Midwives, Felicity Warner, to find out more about a new approach to death

Funerals are an essential part of life and we attend more as we get older. About 500,000 funerals are held each year in Britain. And yet there is little reference to them in mainstream media. It is still very much the ‘elephant in the room’ and those euphemisms around death, wonderfully exemplified in the Monty Python Parrot sketch still apply.

I am still on a mission to get rid of the most over-used of them all - 'passed on' instead of died. As a Humanist celebrant I encounter it all the time and I just translate it back into plain English.
 
So, funerals are here to stay. I don't think they will go out of fashion. They are important social and community occasions. For Noel Coward they were the cocktail party of his set. To James Joyce they were funforals and another Irish man GB Shaw who was also used to the Irish way of funerals said: ‘ Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh’.
 
Humanist funerals are all about the person who has died and those attending should learn something new and interesting about them at the funeral and a funeral without some laughter along with the tears really would be woeful.

I have selected a few snippets to share with you. They are my 'Oh bits from obits' and hope that this will encourage readers to do likewise.
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My dad was working for the Maharajah in Gwalia. When war broke out, Mum and I joined the army! She went to Delhi first.

Mum wore a perfume called ‘Smart Party’

On his first visit to his local pub he was aware that people were awkward and to break the ice he took his leg off, put it on the bar and said, 'fill it up'... after that there was no problem.

Grace, Rose and Peggy (sisters) worked at the admiralty during the war, and ironically Grace and Peggy knew that Harry’s ship HMS Cornwall had been destroyed but could say nothing until Rose had been informed.

Frank worked in the newspaper industry until after the drama of the Wapping Protests. We have never been allowed to have any of the Murdoch's publications in the home.

He loved his motorcycles, leather jackets and milky coffee.
 
Civil service hours were an unbelievable, 10 to 3 in those days with half days on Wednesdays when she and her girlfriends would often go to the cinema.

He found some popularity and recognition through his skills in building homemade fireworks.

He was hospitalised in Naples and then moved to various convalescent homes (now mostly 5 * hotels) along the Amalfi coast.

Hilda moved to the Stamp Office, following in the footsteps of her great, great uncle, Sir Rowland Hill, who set up the first Penny Post Service.

I even recall him ironing his football laces.

Mark kept a snake whose home was in a tank upstairs on the landing.

I remembered going to visit her in hospital believing aunt Grace was trying to buy a baby.

He completed the London to Brighton walk in 1969 in 11hrs 53 mins.

Jim never married, though he had several what he called “lucky escapes!”.

On his first driving lesson when told to feel the pedals he knelt down and touched them!

Now show us yours!