A Serious Undertaking

Like David Fisher in the award-winning HBO series Six Feet Under, when my father died, I embalmed him. My brother Pat assisted. We dressed him, put him in a box and soon thereafter buried him. Tim did the obits and drove the hearse. Eddie called the priest and did the printing. Mary handled the florals…

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The Posthumous Mitford

In the darkly comedic and endearing style that was hers and hers only, Decca (as Jessica Mitford was known from childhood) once joked that an update of her classic, “The American Way of Death,” should be called “Death Warmed Over.” But it was not to be. Her sudden death from lung cancer two years ago…

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