Herman Melville writes for Friends.
So, you know when you’re watching a fairly uninspired sitcom, or a middle of the road comedy film, there’s that scene where two straight guys end up having to share a bed for the night and, invariably, when they wake up the next day, one guy has his arm around the other and they are all cuddled up and then they both freak out and jump up and act masculine? Or one wakes up and the other is so completely out of it, he doesn’t, and the one who is awake has to try to get himself out of the situation somehow?
You know how you watch that scene and say: “Oh, yeah. This again.”
That scene? You know that scene, right?
Did you know Melville invented it?
The Daily Undertaker
Angel of Death
I am someone who wakes up every morning and touches my own face, shocked and in awe of my simple aliveness. Why me? Why do I get to be alive? The answer to that question doesn’t matter, the awe does. I am so happy for my short time on this planet and constantly aware that – poof- it will be over. So my gratitude and joy live side by side with death. I am, like most of us, death haunted.
Patrick McNally’s blog, The Daily Undertaker, presents all sorts of different ways of thinking and dealing with death. He takes things from his experience as a funeral director in Wisconsin, but also mixes it up with the personal and the literary. There are posts quoting Charles Bukowski (linked here) as well as fascinating discussions on new techniques of burial, the most notable to me being promession (linked here), in which the body of the deceased is prepared for the earth in a way that enables it to compost properly as opposed to just rot. There are some lighthearted moments as well, as in this post where he discusses some of the more eccentric ways in which people can handle the remains of loved ones: