The Fundamental Truth About Death
The Green Funeral Company’s Claire and Rupert Callender believe funerals should be more fundamental about the loss of a loved one. Ru reveals how he made it their business to bring a more fundamental truth to proceedings. It was anger and unresolved grief which led me to my vocation as an undertaker, and righteous fervour […]
An extract from Ru’s new book
I have slowly but steadily become this town’s undertaker. I am firmly stitched into the fabric of this community as surely as a corpse is sewn into its shroud. I live on my own now, in a first-floor flat above an ice cream parlour in an ancient house on its ancient high street, just above […]
There but for the grace…
The Green Funeral Company’s Claire and Rupert Callender offer an ecological alternative to traditional funerals, and here Ru recalls the community funeral they held for a homeless man whose life and death were on the streets. It has been nearly eight years since we buried Michael Gething. Michael was a homeless man, a Plymouthian who […]
Clifftop Ceremony
Part of our twenty year mission to deconstruct the bland funeral packages that the industry has forced us all into, is to literally deconstruct the funeral itself, to take the ceremonies out of the established venues that we have all thought of as being essential to their smooth running, and letting them fly free. All […]
Creation from the wreckage
May 26, 2021 And so after 21 years as my business partner, and 17 years as my wife, Claire has left The Green Funeral Company for new pastures. I wish her well in whatever she chooses, though there is a possibility it will still be as a funeral industry upsetter, but in a different area. […]
Our lowering straps
As human beings, we look for meaning everywhere, superimposing it over everything that comes into our lives. TheAustralian aborigines believe that the world was vocalised into existence, literally sung into creation, and that the song needs to be continued so that reality can flourish. We are no different, giving identities to our household objects, cursing […]
We need to stay connected
In this time of pandemic, of social distancing and national lockdowns, it’s easy to think of ritual as something slightly flippant that has no time or place in these difficult practical times. I think the opposite. I live in part of an ancient house in Totnes, one in which people will have sheltered from various […]
Children understand death
Our instinct to protect children from the hardness of life is an overwhelming if impossible drive. We tread a fine line between wanting them to experience the world in all it’s glory, and shield them from its brutality, and this dissonance is never more apparent than when someone in the family dies. The understanding of […]
Our young need love and hope
WHEN we first started as ceremonial undertakers over 16 years ago, we had assumed that death was the final stop for the elderly and unlucky, and our first two funerals were just that, old folk at their appointed hour, lives lived to their full span. But our third funeral was a violent suicide, and so […]
Each year on All Souls Day November 2nd Sharpham Natural Burial Ground holds a ceremony.
As human beings, we look for meaning everywhere, superimposing it over everything that comes into our lives. The Australian aborigines believe that the world was vocalised into existence, literally sung into creation, and that the song needs to be continued so that reality can flourish. We are no different, giving identities to our household objects, […]