Requiem: Music for Those Left Behind

Choral requiems are more than just moving pieces of classical music. Requiem Masses offer prayers for the dead, and give solace to the living. This article outlines the history of the requiem, and how it affects us today.

Submitted By Alison Braidwood

Stop All the Clocks: Victorian Superstitions Associated with Death

The ritual of stopping clocks when someone dies is said to have been introduced by the Victorians. This article looks at the origins of the practice and also at some other Victorian rituals associated with death.

Submitted By JD

The Trend Toward Home Funerals

The trend toward home funerals is rising, as more families choose to care for their loved ones after death for a more personal, private experience over an impersonal, institutionalized mortuary funeral.

Submitted By J. E. Davidson

Burial on Madeira

An article outlining the burial practices of the people of the island of Madeira, including the problems of overcrowding in graveyards and how they deal with that.

Submitted By sampriestley

Lost Lives
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This article reflects with both sorrow and optimism on the sadness of lives that have been lived and left, with no memorial to mark their passing. These issues are considered in the light of the seminal English poetic work which generated a whole new genre of poetry and a new class of writers, ‘The Graveyard Poets.’ Thomas Gray’s own views as expressed in his ‘Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard’ are examined and compared optimistically to the more high-tech memorial solutions we have open to us today.

Submitted By inspirangel

Cemetery Picnic

We children all looked forward to helping Mamma tend the family graves. We didn´t find it strange or morbid. In fact, those visits to weed and trim and scrub instilled in us a sense of family, of continuity of the past into the present and the future. Today most of us can´t pass a cemetery, especially an old southern cemetery, without being drawn to visit, even though we know none of our family lies among its graves.

Submitted By Lucy Brite