Reading Time: 4 minutes I watched my friend’s five-year-old son peer down into the tiny grave. Surrounded by a group of somber people in the small churchyard, the cold wind whipping around their ankles, the sound of sobbing and noses being blown, he was just curious to see what was in the bottom of this hole in the ground. […]
Reading Time: 7 minutes Advantages of Age hears from Kate Tym and Kate Dyer, the founders of the UK’s first Coffin Club. It’s a sunny morning in September in a room above an art gallery in Hastings. There are laughter, chat and a feeling of warmth and camaraderie which seems slightly odd considering each of the five people involved […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes The lighting of candles plays a significant part in my daily life. Each morning I stumble out of bed and fire up a tea-light. I’ve been doing it for so long that it has become a reflex, though none-the-less potent because of that. I have places in each room where candles sit and get lit. […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes There comes a point in life and I’m sure it’s different for everyone when one becomes aware of one’s mortality. I can’t pinpoint when, exactly, it was for me but one day I became scared of climbing up or down steep staircases, thinking I might fall. I stopped driving about 10 years ago when my […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes There’s a gathering buzz around the Death Café phenomenon – there have been 3859 in 40 countries including Iceland and South Korea – and so when one was announced in my ‘hood and in the perfect location, Kensal Green Cemetery’s Dissenter’s Chapel*, I knew I had to go. After all, I have said on numerous […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes I’ve just turned 49. I can hardly believe it. I feel young, often mischievous (close friends call me that) and alert in spirit, and yet, 49 is not considered young in body anymore and the evidence of age is becoming ever more apparent in my skin and around my eyes. I’ve also noticed that as […]
