Dec 19, 2017 | Facilitation, Having a vigil and laying out the body, Home funeral, Ritual
My close-up on 2017 is coloured by Kinship Ritual. So I’m taking up a viewpoint that I frequently see in the media and beginning with the words: ‘We live in an era of …’ We live in an era of awakening to the reality that Death is part of Life. Those I’ve worked...
Sep 8, 2017 | Funeral options, Having a vigil and laying out the body, Home funeral
This weekend I’ll be presenting at the first Melbourne Festival of Death and Dying. My topic is Rituals of Laying Out and Vigil. I wonder how you respond to this idea, and if you would come? You might think of laying out as being something that Catholics do, or...
Feb 17, 2017 | Children, Facilitation, Funeral options, Having a vigil and laying out the body
Recently I had a note in an email saying, ‘I loved the gentle, conscious and beautiful way that my friend showed me passing can be. Thank you for your role in it’. Yet for many people I meet, the idea she speaks of is hard to imagine. The idea that a family would...
Sep 6, 2016 | Having a vigil and laying out the body, Memorial, Remembering
by Jennifer Downs I spent a week with Jennifer Downs in Baltimore, Maryland in 2012. I was attending ‘home funeral’ training with Final Passages. An acupuncturist, Steiner educator and political activist, Jennifer’s tagline is ‘Wake up to your...
Mar 5, 2015 | Funeral options, Green funeral, Having a vigil and laying out the body
The Funeral event in the 2015 Sustainable Living Festival (SLF). Can I say it was like a party? You don’t know who’s going to make it. Low grade anxiety. It’s a hot night. You’ve done your best with watermelon and snacks and cold bubbly water....
Feb 13, 2015 | Green funeral, Having a vigil and laying out the body, Home funeral, Remembering
In this post I use the word vigil, but not in a religious sense. I’ve made vigil the topic for the Sustainable Funeral event at this year’s Sustainable Living Festival (SLF) event. I think of a vigil as a continuous, intimate thread of care. Some want to...
