How to maintain control from the afterlife...
Attending the funeral of a loved one or planning your own doesn't only have to be about grief and despair. There are those who have gone out in style, experiences that have provided a wonderful sense of release. Phil Baker looks at the brighter side of funerals, memorials, tributes and all that jazz
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Dead Cool
For me, the most impressive opening to any of the Bond movies is the start
to Live and Let Die. 006 pauses out of
respect for a grief-stricken widow as a New Orleans funeral procession
passes. The transformation of the widow's sombre cortège into a
full Mardi Gras street jazz festival is an enduring visual image that
I have never forgotten. Why?
The juxtaposition of fun and death is still shocking to our culture, ruled
as we are by the protocol of formal Victorian grief (happening today,
as I write this, a mile away from my flat, in the Queen Mother's procession).
Yet many cultures choose to celebrate the death of a loved one with a
tribute party that they would have enjoyed. The Irish wake is hardly a
time for long faces, and the reunion and libations in honour of the deceased
is invariably the way they would
have chosen to be remembered. The Mexican day of the dead honours the
