“When I’m gone just cremate me,” Hughey MacSwiggan told his third and final wife as she stood at his bedside while the hospice nurse fiddled with the morphine drip that hadn’t kept his pain at bay. The operative word in his directive was just. He wasn’t especially fond of fire. He hadn’t picked out a [...]
Posts Tagged ‘death’
29 Mar
Largest Independent Cremation Company Launches an Ad Campaign in USA Today
It has happened…a funeral industry company is finally doing a nationwide advertising campaign directed at the public. For the first time ever, the country’s largest independent cremation company has launched an ad campaign in USA Today with the tagline: “Think outside the wooden box!”(Link to Full Print Ad) The Neptune Society, taking advantage of the [...]
19 Mar
Coffin Academy on Nightline, Simulate Your Own Death
I’m all good with pre-planning your own funeral, but this is going to the extreme: Remember Coffin Academy, the self-help retreat in South Korea that lets you simulate your own death to be born into a new life? Nightline reporter Clarissa Ward went through the controversial seminar, which has participants write their wills, imagine saying [...]
19 Mar
The Crowded Casket, More Than Dead Being Buried In Casket
We CAN take it with us? Since the beginning of burials, man has often gone to the grave with company. These days, funeral directors grant most requests: a shotgun … a case of beer … a bottle of Jack Daniels … some favorite cigars … golf clubs, usually putters … a clarinet … a tool [...]
18 Mar
New “Green” Laws Raise Price of Cremation in UK, Could US Be Next?
NEW “green” laws look set to push up the cost of a cremation in Scarborough to more than £500. The extra cost is needed to deal with the environmental pollution caused when a body is cremated, according to a new report. Scarborough Council bosses want to introduce the £50 charge for all adult cremations at [...]
9 Feb
Cat Predicts 50 Deaths in RI Nursing Home
A cat with an uncanny ability to detect when nursing home patients are about to die has proven itself in around 50 cases by curling up with them in their final hours, according to a new book. Dr David Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor at Brown University, said that five years of records showed [...]
12 Jan
Hearse Transporting Body Catches Fire on Freeway
HERCULES, CA — A hearse delivering a body to a funeral caught fire Friday afternoon when sparks from a front tire flattened in a collision sparked a blaze. The driver was later arrested on suspicion of driving drunk, the California Highway Patrol said. The hearse belonged to Mandel Funeral Services in Vallejo and the driver [...]
4 Dec
Jim Cramer of CNBC Show “Mad Money” Says No to SCI Stock
Tuesday Cramer received a rather macabre trading idea from one viewer: “In 2010, the estate tax will be completely eliminated. However in 2011, the estate tax will jump back up to 55%. With that much money on the line I am willing to bet that greed will be responsible for an abnormal number of deaths [...]
1 Dec
What Happens to Your Email After You Die?
IN a digital world your deepest secrets no longer die with you. Andrew Ramadge reports on what happens to your private emails when you pass away. REMEMBER that time you poured your heart out in an email to your best friend after one too many glasses of wine? Or that sexy message from an old [...]
23 Nov
Japan’s New Hi-Tech ‘Graveyards’
It is a problem faced by everyone in the end or by their relatives left behind – finding a place to spend eternity. And in Japan, a crowded mountainous country with a fast-ageing society, there is a shortage of final resting places, especially in the big cities. Burial plots in Tokyo can cost more than [...]
