TLC -- home of My Crazy Obsession and 19 Kids and Counting -- has a new reality show in the works, and this one is really, really strange. The net...
(This article is published in "The Louisiana Weekly" in the May 13, 2013 edition.) Ground breaking for Magnolia Marketplace--a two-story mall on nea...
By Steven P Johnson GAINESVILLE, Fla., May 11 (Reuters) - After a two-year battle with cancer, Joseph Fitzgerald was determined to lea...
In Harlem, 62-year-old Isaiah Owens is known as "Fix Em," for his ability to repair dead bodies ravaged by disease, mishap or violence; in the forthco...
The Natural Death Handbook is a volume that speaks with simple clarity and grace about the best practices for sitting with the dying, washing and cooling a loved one after passing, and preparing the body for a natural funeral.
In this week's issue, Jaweed Kaleem writes about the resurgence of home funerals, a tradition with deep roots in American life. And Ryan Reilly checks in on one of President Obama's original campaign promises: to close the Guantanamo Bay naval base and detention center in Cuba.
A recent ad in the local newspaper by a Denver mortuary and cemetery called Olinger Highland together with another company's offer of a freebie that arrived in the mail, makes the whole post mortem thing enticing.
(This article was published in "The Louisiana Weekly" in the Jan. 7, 2013 edition.) Former residents of Revilletown--an African American community to...
During the first week or so following the death of someone's child, we are pretty clear about how to help that parent. I am concerned, though, that in our culture, we are at a loss for how to help these parents once the first week or so has passed.
Nearly 2.5 million Americans die every year. With an increasingly diverse nation of the religious and nonreligious, each death is observed differently, but each life is remembered and celebrated with words and stories. The Huffington Post is collecting eulogies for the dead.
I revisit my seventeen-year-old son's death, and ponder what people said or did that seemed helpful and not so helpful.
Everything stopped. I froze where I was. I didn't want to move because moving meant that he was actually dead and that I would have to feel it. I would have to feel things that I never felt before because Quddus was "home" for me.
My father rallied, but he was decidedly diminished. My husband bought a black suit. I did the same. For a year, our suits lived in the empty closet in my grown son's room, zipped safely away in a garment bag. I called mine 'my funeral costume.'
The time is now to plan for a funeral -- in part because prices will continue to go up over a lifetime and also because the unexpected can happen anytime.
When someone says: 'He's in a better place.' What the widowed are thinking is: 'Better than here with me?'
I had never seen anyone die before. My dad went peacefully but still, it was awfully hard to watch. I had my hand on his forehead the whole time. My siblings each held a hand or rested their hand on his leg.
When is a person dead? This question has plagued us for thousands of years. Is there a central organ we can examine, and say that when it's nonfunctioning the person as a whole is dead? Or is there a behavior or set of behaviors that indicate with certainty that our bodies have called it quits?
It is important to prepare children for what they will encounter at each step of the funeral or memorial service. When they know what to expect, children will not be overwhelmed.
It may sound peculiar, but there are some very exciting things happening where death is concerned in America. The momentum of change in how we view and respond to death is building in many sectors of society as we transform our culture of death.
Meet Caitlin Doughty of Los Angeles, Calif. -- a feisty 27-year-old mortician and, thanks primarily to Jezebel, rapidly-rising Internet sensation.
The mother who tragically lost her three young daughters and parents from a horrifying Christmas Day fire in Connecticut reportedly attempted to commi...
From Mother Nature Network's Laura Moss: Burial and cremation are the most common ways we dispose of the dead, but while these methods are steeped...
In the song "Black Jesus," Tupac Shakur says: "My last wishes n**gas, smoke my ashes." Whether the line articulates the late rapper's final wishes...
Italian males feel a certain way about haircuts, which is to say they should be cheap at worst, free at best.
We of the Woodstock generation have long been interested in pushing the limits of self-expression, and our desire to noisily overturn convention is unlikely to stop just because we're facing the big chill.
