Signing Off In Style
I suppose that when you’ve gone, it doesn’t really matter to you.
But surely this is the way to go. Especially with such a pair of beautiful and well-behaved horses.
The undertakers are called W. G. Miller, which I often pass on the Essex Road. My father was W. E. Miller and signed his articles and letters in technical journals as WEM.
The Anonymous Widower 
That’s not the way I want to go. A quiet cremation with my ashes scattered on the Yorkshire Dales and with no memorial for the family to feel guilty about not tending or visiting. I want no sadness.
We buried my mother in May this year in the same grave in which my father is buried. We had a funeral in Cookham, close to where she lived and then the committal in Maidenhead cemetery. All the children in the family came and they kept the whole affair very light and happy. We are obviously sad at her death at 93, but I feel sure she would have been happier with all the little ones looking on, than the rest of us with heads bowed in mourning. The children all asked the questions of the innocent and caused a few smiles. At the graveside, one of the little ones asked about the coffin and I told her that great grandma’s body was in it. She asked “what about her head”, and so I had to explain that “body” can actually refer to the whole person, especially when they are dead. Some of the family were concerned that bringing the children might be stressful and lead to nightmares. I explained that hang-ups about death are acquired only when we treat it as morbid and so they all came. There were no ill effects at all, in fact the very opposite. All the children now talk in a very healthy way about death.
Comment by John Wright | August 30, 2012 |
I don’t need a big funeral, but this one was obviously important. i passed t again this afternoon and there must have been nine cars with flowers following the horse-drawn hearse.
Comment by AnonW | August 30, 2012 |
When I go . . . I would like to lie there and listen to the clip clop, of a pair of horses, taking me away.
Travelling into the Sunset . . . going to Happy Hunting Ground, at a dignified gait . . .
Comment by Steam Lover | August 30, 2012 |