This week we said goodbye to the two women who lost their lives in the Louisiana theater shooting. We also learned of a German woman who was declared dead but was very much alive. Much to everyone’s surprise, she awoke at the funeral home. Also in the news were the discovery that remains found in Jamestown are likely of its earliest settlers and we heard about what it’s like inside Japan’s “corpse hotels.”
Jul 31, 2015–theindependent.com: The last words of the dying to their loved ones are most often advice about relationships, according to a new poll. The survey of 2,198 people who had lost a relative in the last year found 83 percent had been given advice of some kind, The Daily Telegraph reported… Read the full story
Jul 31, 2015–thenewyorktimes.com: There is palpable heartbreak in the photos of Saul Martinez. On one level, it is evoked by the subject itself: The bodies of Guatemalan children have been put into mass graves after being removed from burial niches because their parents could not — or forgot — to pay the upkeep fee. But just as sad is the underlying reason: Guatemala’s mind-numbingly high levels of violence have created an unceasing demand for new burial spaces… Read the full story
Jul 29, 2015–theindependent.com: Prosecutors in Germany have charged a doctor with negligent bodily harm for declaring a 92-year-old woman dead – only for her to wake up in a refrigerated room at a funeral home. Essen prosecutor Birgit Juergens said the 53-year-old, whose name was not released in line with privacy regulations, could face anything from a fine to a prison sentence if convicted… Read the full story
Jul 28, 2015–Aljazeera.com: Tucked away in the backstreets of Osaka, the Hotel Relation building is nondescript and bland. It’s the kind of place you’d scroll past if you were looking for a room on a hotel booking site. But decor and ambiance are probably not a priority for the guests who use the six rooms at the Hotel Relation. That’s because it’s a “corpse hotel”, and the guests at this final resting place are all dead. No need for room service here… Read the full story
Jul 28, 2015–huffingtonpost.com: When Chelsea and Barry Lesnick tied the knot in March of this year, they did it in a funeral home — an unexpected location, certainly, but one that’s becoming more and more popular for weddings. The couple exchanged their vows at the Brunner Sanden Deitrick Funeral Home & Cremation Center in Mentor, Ohio, which has been run by Chelsea’s family for years. When her father suggested holding the wedding there, she and her husband-to-be loved the idea, but they did get some resistance, Chelsea told HuffPost Live on Monday… Read the full story
Jul 28, 2015–npr.org: Jamestown, Virginia — the first successful English colony in North America — was a difficult place, to say the least. Most of the colonists who arrived in 1607 died shortly thereafter. Now archaeologists have discovered the remains of some of the colony’s first leaders — Jamestown’s elite. These days, Jamestown is a historical site, where the emerald green grass rolls down to the James River and a steady breeze keeps the mosquitoes at bay. Preservation Virginia, a private nonprofit, runs the site, and Bill Kelso is the project’s top archaeologist, with thick white hair and the look of someone who works outdoors in the southern sun… Read the full story
Jul 27, 2015–usatoday.com: Hundreds of mourners turned out Monday to say goodbye to Mayci Breaux and Jillian Johnson, the two women killed in a shooting rampage inside a Lafayette movie theater four days ago. About 250 people — many unable to stop shedding tears — crowded into a wooden chapel with a vaulted ceiling at Delhomme Funeral Home’s Chapel of Flowers in Lafayette to celebrate Johnson’s life… Read the full story
Jul 26, 2015–cbsnews.com: To be heartbroken is nothing more than a figure of speech … or is it? Here’s Susan Spencer of “48 Hours”: In 10 years at the Tampa Bay Times, Andrew Meacham has written more than a thousand obituaries. If you drill down far enough, there’s always a story,” he said. “Everybody’s got one.” And sometimes two people share the same story. “It’s not mathematically probable that couples should die together,” said Meacham. “But when it does happen, there’s something beautiful about it.” Read the full story
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