Cpl. Nathan Cirillo was shot and killed by Michael Zehaf-Bibeau on Oct. 22. His son, loved ones and fellow soldiers mourned him at his funeral on Tuesday.
Marcus Cirillo, 5 years old, at the funeral procession for his father, Cpl. Nathan Cirillo.
Mark Blinch / Reuters
Soldiers load Cirillo's coffin into a hearse.
Mark Blinch / Reuters
Soldiers stand in formation in Bayfront Park during the procession.
Mark Blinch / Reuters
“So rest in peace my little brother. I’ll see you out in the middle.”
Hughes, 25, died last week after being struck by a ball during a state match at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG).
"Is this what indigenous Australians believe about a person's spirit being connected with the land upon which they walk?" he asked during the service.
"If so, I know they are right about the SCG. His spirit has touched it and it will be forever be a sacred ground for me."
Reuters
Members of the current Australian cricket team, plus legends of the game from around the world, joined prominent officials such as prime minister Tony Abbott at the service.
Pool / Reuters
Large crowds have turned out for the funeral of Tugce Albayrak, who was killed after she defended two teenage girls from harassment.
Thomas Lohnes / Getty Images
AP Photo/dpa,Maurizio Gambarini
Sometimes love makes your do crazy things.
BuzzfeedVideo / Via youtube.com
Thousands of police officers from around the country attended the funeral of Officer Rafael Ramos on Saturday, but an old photo is being shared online.
AP Photo/Craig Ruttle
AP Photo/John Minchillo
Digging my grandfather's grave
Aaron Edwards
When someone dies in Accompong Town, in the hills of central Jamaica, neighbors dig the grave because there is no one else to do it.
If you ask someone for directions from the airport, you might hear heavily accented Jamaican Patois variations of “follow de sign dem” or “up de way dere, ‘round de back”; we are hours from Montego Bay or Negril. Here, black men in tattered hats and makeshift du-rags sift through weeds and heavy earth to make way for my grandfather’s exit into the ground. As they dig, swelling choruses of old spirituals waft through the air, graced with the salty scent of pimento seeds.
Mud and plaster is pulled to and from the graveyard atop the steep hill that’s overlooked the town for centuries. Goats find their way into the fray and follow along behind the hearse, the funeral band of schoolchildren playing drums, and the SUVs carting family to the final point.
It’s an uncomfortable procession — a disorienting mess of sweat, tears, and sun that somehow ends in solace.
Accompong Town is a rural village of around 2,000 people, tucked away up roads with no names, some roads with two names, and, for a mile-long stretch, what seems like no road at all. There’s a small internet café, some battered but charming stores where you can buy coconut milk, plantains, and SIM cards, a primary school, brightly painted houses scattered unevenly among bushes and unpaved dirt paths, and a few friendly dogs. Most things you eat, you grow.
For most of my life it was little more than a dream, somewhere my body had once been but my mind hadn’t quite settled on. From the children’s table at Thanksgiving every year, my family’s chatter about this place resembled that of a storybook narrator waxing poetic on a forgotten kingdom. My family has roots here going back generations — the children of Africans marooned on the Jamaican island during the slave trade who built their own communities in the hills and fought for their independence from the British.
I was 7 or 8 years old the last time I came to Accompong, and my only memories of the place were the bumpy car ride up and splashes of color on the walls of houses. The few times I remember dreaming about the town, I dreamed of reds and blues and bugs — some of the biggest mosquitoes I have ever seen.
For this trip, at 22 years old, I pack the best version of summer clothes I own: two pairs of barely worn light-brown khakis, and a few loose-fitting linen shirts that had gathered dust in the back of my closet in favor of preppy, Manhattan-friendly button-downs.
To make the journey up the hill to the graveyard in Accompong is to walk with pain emblazoned on your face, to march against the sun toward God and to trudge with swollen feet as thumps of resounding drums goad the spirit on.
Heat drapes in waves over our somber caravan and funeralgoers use the green-tinted funeral programs as fans to keep cool. A smiling portrait of my grandfather, an entrepreneurial businessman who would wear a three-piece tweed suit and loafers in any heat, is on the program’s cover page. A river of those green programs flap ahead of me as we inch up the path from the church.
Neighbors who see me walking alongside my American family but knew the man on the funeral programs would have little indication that I was his grandson. A familiar face in his life, I’m now a stranger to most of the people around me in his death.
I’m flanked by my mother and her sisters. We lock arms, as if saying to let go would mean falling back down the hill, or into a full realization of what we are about to do. The man who helped bring our family to New York City from Jamaica, the man whose affinity for spaghetti westerns, games of dominoes, and slightly scratched reggae records superseded most things in his life on Friday nights, is making his ceremonious departure.
If he were walking with us, he would deliberately trail about 20 paces behind the last person in the group. Alphonse Edwards, born on May 7, 1940, took his time in his suits and cufflinks and his gait was equal parts languid and present. In his youth, I was reminded, he was smooth with women. In his old age, he once reminded me, he never lost it. My mother wrote in his obituary that he “wasn’t perfect, but made perfect when our Lord called [him] home.”
My grandfather's home
Aaron Edwards
My grandparents were both born in Jamaica (the island) and moved to Jamaica (in Queens, New York) in 1967 to raise my mother and her siblings. After moving back to the island around 2008, my grandfather would take walks up and down this hill with my grandmother, Norma, for exercise until it was no longer healthy for him. Neighbors talked a lot about his rewarding smile and how “wherever Norma went, Mr. Edwards went with her.”
My grandparents’ house, which they began building shortly before moving back to Accompong Town, stands in a clearing at the foot of a steep winding path. It’s a modest, mid-construction home with a small garden and pig shed out front. There’s a large tarp draped high over the house’s entrance and held up by sturdy bamboo, the Accompong version of a garage.
Through the front door is a small staircase, each step adorned with stacks of portraits, magazines, books, and mementos with the titles peeping out from under the organized chaos: Chemical Principles, Evangelical Commentary, The Unique Woman, African-American Religious Studies.
Next to an old black-and-white photograph of my grandfather is a small wooden block with words painted on it in white:
“The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”
A few days before the funeral, it’s becoming more apparent that the father of this house is gone forever. There are no spaghetti westerns playing from the bedroom, and no happy clinking of dominoes. But he’s still alive in the air and in the trees and in the mud and in the books on the staircase.
The mother of this house, a short woman with warm brown eyes the color of her skin, is sitting in the living room, wrinkled fingertips rolling over one another in her lap, shiny with the remnants of tears.
She looks in my direction. “Come here, my son.”
I hear the weight of generations on that phrase. It plays over in my head. “Come here, my son.” I walk to the couch and sit next to her. I’m nearly twice her size, but she wraps her arms around me as I slouch into her shoulder. The air is muggy and the warmth of her arms feels like home against my crumpled linen shirt.
My eyelids start to sink, and I can feel the soft vibrations of her voice over my head. Finding words where there are none to say, my grandmother is whispering a prayer.
The center of town
Aaron Edwards
As our walk continues, I start to wonder if my grandparents saw things on the path the way I saw them. I notice my mind beginning to wander.
There’s something numbing about the drums beating as we approach the grave; hearing unfamiliar sounds in an unfamiliar place only makes everything feel more foreign. My eyes dart back and forth as the drums pick up in frequency, and I feel my knees buckle just a few steps from where we would soon place my grandfather’s casket.
I stop in place on a balding patch of grass as others continue to move on — paralyzed from what feels like an unrelenting sickness. Some might call it fear, some might call it sadness, but in that moment it is the chilling sensation of being alive in a graveyard preparing to accept the owner of its newest shrine — like a cube of melting ice hitting the center of a cavity.
Someone — maybe a relative, maybe a townsperson or even a stranger — grabs my shoulder and helps me move forward. Everyone on the hill seems overtaken with the equalizing force of grief. But somehow, crying here is more unusual than cathartic. In this town, surrounded by people who had never seen my face, I feel like I am betraying their space by crying onto their ground. In these moments before stepping up to the hilltop, tears are all I can muster.
Time, which before moved at the pace of thick air, speeds up once we are in place around the grave. Men begin to lower the casket and the town’s pastor gently touches the same shoulder someone nudged to keep me moving earlier. The only thing left to do, I thought to myself, is to walk back. After hugs and nods and a dinner of curry goat and rice in the nearby community center, the group makes its way back to where the procession began: the family home.
My family tells me that Accompong and that house in the clearing is my home away from home, a place where I could one day bring my future husband and children or a place I could choose to grow old. The time I spent saying good-bye to my grandfather there made that seem like more of a reality.
I put him to rest in the mountains, and I left a piece of my soul there. One day, I’ll come back for it.
The only way to get flushed with style.
Via youtube.com
Via youtube.com
Updated: Andrea Gada’s local paper reports the government has backed down on its decision to stop her relatives entering Britain.
Original story below.
Christopher Ison
Christopher Ison
Jaiya Smith carries a sign down the aisle during a service honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached, Monday, Jan. 19, in Atlanta, Georgia.
David Goldman / AP
Protesters embrace outside the Ferguson Police Department, Monday, Jan. 19, in Ferguson, Missouri. Protesters marched several miles to the police department from the site where Michael Brown was killed last summer.
Jeff Roberson / AP
Members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews hold up signs reading "I am Charlie," "I am Jewish," and "I am Ahmed," referring to Ahmed Merabet, the Muslim policeman shot trying to defend the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, during an event in London, England, Jan. 18.
Stefan Wermuth / Reuters
Kids do their homework inside the courtyard of an apartment building in Havana, Cuba, Monday, Jan. 19.
Ramon Espinosa / AP
A Russian-backed separatist rebel takes cover in a shelter from shelling in the Kievsky district, 3 km from the airport, in Donetsk, Ukraine, Thursday, Jan. 22.
Manu Brabo / AP
Vladimir Bovrichev, 30, cries next to the body of his son Artiam, 4, killed in a Ukrainian army artillery strike, during his funeral in Kuivisevsky district on the outskirts of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan. 20.
Manu Brabo / AP
Firefighters stand on a ladder while hosing water onto an apartment complex, Wednesday, Jan. 21, in Edgewater, New Jersey.
Julio Cortez / AP
A protester shouts at police guarding the government house after the death of special prosecutor Alberto Nisman in Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Monday, Jan. 19.
Rodrigo Abd / AP
Indian soldiers march down Rajpath, a ceremonial boulevard, during full dress rehearsal ahead of the Republic Day parade in New Delhi, India, Friday, Jan. 23.
Saurabh Das / AP
The sister of Hezbollah member Mohammad Issa who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Syria on Sunday, holds his son Ahmed as she mourns over his coffin during his funeral procession, in the southern village of Arab Salim, Lebanon, Tuesday, Jan. 20.
Mohammed Zaatari / AP
A general view of clouds above Brazil's National Congress headquarters before heavy rains in Brasilia, Jan. 22.
Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters
Members of the armed forces of the separatist self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic drive a tank on the outskirts of Donetsk, Ukraine, Jan. 22.
Stringer / Reuters
An injured riot policeman is seen during a protest by students of Langata Primary School and activists against a perimeter wall erected by a private developer around their school playground in Kenya's capital Nairobi, Jan. 19.
Thomas Mukoya / Reuters
Demonstrators destroy a police patrol vehicle during a protest by relatives of the 43 missing students from the Ayotzinapa Teacher Training College outside the federal court in Chilpancingo, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, Jan. 19.
Jorge Lopez / Reuters
Five-year-old Nasreen rests with her family's belongings as she plays under a flyover in Mumbai, India, Jan. 19.
Danish Siddiqui / Reuters
A model presents a makeup creation during a show by Maybelline New York at Berlin Fashion Week in Berlin, Germany, Jan. 19.
Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters
Devotees take a holy bath during the Swasthani Brata Katha festival in Kathmandu, Nepal, Jan. 20. During the month-long festival, devotees recite one chapter of a Hindu tale daily from the 31-chapter sacred Swasthani Brata Katha book that is dedicated to God Madhavnarayan and Goddess Swasthani, alongside various other gods and goddesses and the miraculous feats performed by them.
Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters
A constitution assembly member of an opposition party throws a chair during a meeting inside the Constitution Assembly building in Kathmandu, Nepal, Jan. 20.
Bikash Dware / Reuters
A member of the Libyan pro-government forces, backed by the locals, holds a weapon as he stands on debris from a building damaged during clashes in the streets with the Shura Council of Libyan Revolutionaries, an alliance of former anti-Gaddafi rebels who have joined forces with Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia, in Benghazi, Jan. 21.
Esam Al-Fetori / Reuters
Supporters gather to listen the speech of opposition leader and head of the radical left Syriza party Alexis Tsipras during a campaign rally in central Athens, Greece, Jan. 22.
Marko Djurica / Reuters
Black rights protesters gather near illuminated letters spelling "DREAM" outside a house which they identified as the residence of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, in Oakland, California, Jan. 19.
Noah Berger / Reuters
Tears stream down the face of a woman during a candlelight vigil at the site where Eric Garner died in July last year after being put in a chokehold, during a Martin Luther King Day service in the Staten Island borough of New York, Jan. 19.
Carlo Allegri / Reuters
“I feel really awful,” said the actor Saturday, who had charity work commitments. On Sunday, Shatner took to Twitter to defend his absence at Leonard Nimoy’s funeral.
Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, pictured on Aug. 19, 2006.
Ethan Miller / Getty Images
"I loved him like a brother. We will all miss his humor, his talent, and his capacity to love," Shatner said on Twitter.
Nimoy, famous for playing the Vulcan Mr. Spock, died Friday from end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at the age of 83.
"I am so humbled by the worldwide outpouring of love that has been displayed; words cannot express my feelings," Shatner wrote.
William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, and Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek.
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
“They used to cry a lot if they ever had to spend time apart,” explained their daughter.
Ross Parry / Rossparry.co.uk
Victor, 82, died of cancer on 8 February, after being diagnosed in 2009. Elsie, 80, had been in hospital with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She died on 17 February, from, her family said, a "broken heart".
Ross Parry / Rossparry.co.uk
"They were always together. They used to cry a lot if they ever had to spend time apart," their daughter Sharon Bower, 54, told The Star in Sheffield ahead of the service at Grenoside Crematorium.
She added: "They lived together and died together, so it was only right they went together too."
Ross Parry / rossparry.co.uk
He added: "I thought, 'What can I do ... to support a couple that even death couldn't keep apart?'"
Andrew Mccaren / Rossparry.co.uk
Exploding caskets, human taxidermy, and poop, oh my.
She's could say she's pretty into death. You know, professionally.
There will be skulls. And also jokes.
It's a heavy-ass topic, but she handles it with sensitivity, empathy, and very practical advice. And also floating props.
While Caitlin admits that she feared talking about her Siamese cat's death and funeral could have a "forever alone vibe" to it, she felt it was important to discuss because "animals are part of your family." Which is THE GODDAMN TRUTH.
Anthony Chiappetta / Thinkstock / BuzzFeed
Whether you want to know if you can compost a dead body (yes), if you can send your friend off in a Viking funeral (illegal but fun), or if caskets explode from a build-up of putrefaction gas (oh, sure), you can just send your questions to Caitlin and she’ll answer them straight up, no bullshit.
I wanted to know about dying and the internet, DIY funerals, and how we do death differently now that we’re in the future.
Thinkstock / BuzzFeed
Are we doing death differently now in 2015 than we were 20 years ago?
Caitlin Doughty: Death is different in many ways. People tend to only recognise their immediate surroundings as in, like, “Oh, this is the way death has always been done so we have to do it this way.” But nothing about death now is what death was like before.
Jeff Minton / Thinkstock / BuzzFeed
“Before,” like, two decades ago?
CD: Before as in two decades ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago. In every country, death culture and death ritual is constantly evolving. So when you think about what’s happening in the US and the UK in the last 20 years, there’s been a huge rise in cremation. In the US it was actually partly due to the AIDS epidemic, and Jessica Mitford in the '60s who came in and said that funeral directors were crooks, they’re taking you for a ride, you don’t need any of these things.
I love her book.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
CD: Yeah, it’s very sassy. And it really brought about a huge rise in not only direct cremation — cheaper, no pomp, no ceremony — but also body donation, because people wanted to get around the funeral industry in some way. And people have now done that. They know that they can choose not to view the embalmed body and they don’t need to pay for any of the things the funeral directors provide — the fancy cortege, the fancy plumes down the street — they can just cremate the body, have a memorial service if they want, and that’s it.
So now we’ve got to peak industry avoidance, or peak ways-to-get-around-the-industry. And where the “natural death” or “death acceptance” movement comes in is saying: But do you feel like you’re missing something? Don’t you feel like you’re missing something about the rituals, or you’re missing something by the body disappearing and you never seeing it again? And a lot of people do feel that way.
So more people are choosing DIY funerals?
CD: It’s not like people are rushing out to take care of the dead body themselves, or they’re rushing out for natural burial, or they’re rushing out for alkaline hydrolysis machines. There’s not a flood, just because you don’t think about it until somebody dies. It’s not in the popular consciousness.
What the hell is alkaline hydrolysis?
CD: I definitely think it’s the next death technology. They’re billing it as water cremation, which is not really accurate because cremation is inherently flames, but they’re billing it as that because it’s a similar system. There’s a big metal receptacle that the body goes in, and really high-pressure, high-heat water — 160 degrees Celsius — and the base chemical lye go in together, and it’s almost like a flash decomposition. It breaks the body down to its basic elements, and what you get at the end is really similar to cremated remains: a white powdery substance.
Bio-Response Solutions / bioresponsefuneral.com
Is it better for the environment?
CD: Yes, because you’re not releasing carbon emissions, you’re not using a ton of natural gas to make it happen, and it’s certainly better than burial, where you’re sometimes chemically treating the body, and you have the wood for the casket, or the metal for the casket, and the concrete for the vaults, and you’re using up land. It’s only legal in eight states in the US, and not at all in the UK, which is bullshit and stupid.
Thinkstock / BuzzFeed
There’s a guy in Minnesota with an alkaline hydrolysis machine who asks people, “Which cremation do you want: Do you want it by flame or do you want it by water?” – and something like 80% choose water. I think it’s going to do well in the death landscape.
When is a natural burial (the kind where you go straight into a hole in the ground, not a cement box above ground) or a DIY funeral going to become our default setting?
CD: We’re playing the long game. In 20 years, people our age and people slightly older than us will have heard this discourse in culture and they’re gonna say, “But I’ve always just thought I wanted a green burial” or “I’ve always thought that I want my family to take care of my body” and it will seem a lot more natural to them because they’ve heard it for so long. That’s what I think the future is, but that might just be my own bias.
Thinkstock / BuzzFeed
What’s the process of DIY funeral? What do the family go through?
CD: You have the body at home for two days, three days, however long it takes for the family to sit with it and for it to feel done. You wash and dress the person yourself, and you observe the little changes in their body. Their eyes start to sink, you can feel them go to room temperature, you can feel the stiffening up and then the loosening, and you just know that the person you love isn’t there anymore. Then you take that shell of the person and you go ideally to a natural burial cemetery, or you go to a crematorium and you actually load the body into the machine.
What kind of feedback have you got from people who’ve done it?
CD: They’re not cool with the death – they’re not like, “Y’know, and then I just grieved over those three days and I never missed Jimmy again.” That’s not what happens. But I’ve never heard someone say, “Yeah, I took care of my own mother and it was really gross and uncomfortable and I wish I hadn’t done it.”
How do you even start to do a DIY funeral?
CD: The death midwife will come to the house and help figure out the logistical things like the best place to keep the body and how you’re going to move the body. They make sure they have all the things they need, like dry ice or diapers. They ask questions like how do they want the eyes and mouth closed — totally naturally, or do they want a little help?
What’s a death midwife?
CD: They’re women who come in, who are not in the funeral industry, and they help you take care of the dead body in your home outside of the funeral industry.
Why is it always women?
CD: It’s a much more interactive-with-the-body kind of funeral work. My personal theory is that it has to do with wanting control of the body, whether it’s control of your sexuality, whether it’s control of childbearing, or control of the dead body, we’ve had control wrested away from us of our own physical selves, and it’s almost like a feminist act to say, “No, I want control of all parts of life and death that have to do with the body,” so that’s where I think it comes from.
Thinkstock / BuzzFeed
This natural death movement isn’t a new idea; there was one in the ’70s. Was it very different to now? And why did it go away?
CD: It is a strangely largely forgotten phenomenon. I think it wasn’t so much the actual dead body as it was the process of dying — the power to die, the power to make health care decisions, the power to end life-saving medical intervention or food or whatever it was. To die on your own terms. But it was a period of what they called “death awareness” in the UK and US. Medically, people are back around it again, and they’re asking how far have we really come, and how good are we at dying the way we want to. Most people would say we aren’t good at dying the way we want to.
Mara Zehler / Thinkstock / BuzzFeed
Where does assisted suicide fit into this?
CD: I work with a group called Compassion & Choices in California. It’s attempting to get death with dignity legalised in California, the idea being that so goes California, so goes the rest of the US at least. That’s one of the most fascinating things to me — is how important control is to people and how few people actually take the pills or the liquid or whatever they are prescribed by the doctor, but they feel much better, they feel, just to have the option. So if you’re dying of stage 4 cancer but you have that stuff in your fridge, you know it’s there and you know that if this pain ever becomes blindingly unbearable you have a dignified out to take. When you have that kind of control and that security, you live longer. Mentally it’s so important for people to have that.
That’s another future death thing, in where we’re going with death in general, is towards more control. Taking control of our lives and death back from the government, from industries — from the medical industry, the food industry, the funeral industry — and taking it back to the family and the individual.
Thinkstock / BuzzFeed
Since we both live on it, I want to know how you think we should die on the internet. I worry about this a lot.
CD: I think it’s important that, just like you tell people you want done with your body, you tell people what you want done with your online life. Maybe you just want all your accounts deleted. That may not be the nicest thing to do, but you’re allowed to be an asshole.
Burn mine to the ground, please.
CD: I really love Terry Pratchett’s last tweets. I haven’t done it yet but I really do need to tell somebody who has my Twitter password, “If I die unexpectedly, here are three epic bons mots.”
Exactly. Otherwise it’s just going to be whatever you last said. Leonard Nimoy had a great last poetic tweet, but if it’s me, it’s probably going to be raging at Sainsbury's because they’re out of avocados or whatever.
CD: Right. They’re the kind of things that go viral if it was an interesting death or you’re an interesting person of some sort. If I were to die unexpectedly, I need something in place like, “She died doing what she loved: death” or, y’know, “All she needed to do to die doing what she loved was just die.” Something like that. I think it’s a good idea to have people ready for it. I have two people who have all of my passwords.
Already?
CD: Oh yeah, never too early. Treat your online affairs as part of your affairs that need to be in order — your bank, your internet bill — you need to have people who know what you want.
A recent statement confirmed a “joint authorities crackdown”.
One villager told the Wall Street Journal it was "to save face... Otherwise no one would come."
Because only basic bitches get buried.
Mark Sturkenboom / Via marksturkenboom.com
Mark Sturkenboom / Via marksturkenboom.com
Mark Sturkenboom / Via marksturkenboom.com
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FC Barcelona players celebrate with La Liga, Copa del Rey and Champions League trophies during their victory parade after winning the UEFA Champions League Final at the Camp Nou Stadium in Barcelona, Spain.
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A young Koala named Phantom is seen clinging to his mother Lizzy while she undergoes lung surgery. Lizzy was injured after she was hit by a car, although vets say that she is recovering well.
Ben Beaden / Australia Zoo
People participate in the ninth annual tomato fight festival, known as "tomatina", in Sutamarchan, Colombia.
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Victor Espinoza reacts after crossing the finish line with American Pharoah to win the 147th running of the Belmont Stakes horse race at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y. American Pharoah is the first horse to win the Triple Crown since Affirmed won it in 1978.
Julio Cortez / AP
Bon-chan, a 19 year old male African spurred tortoise, is seen causing a stir while walking with his owner Hisao Mitani on a street in the town of Tsukishima in Tokyo. Bon-chan loves fruit and vegetables and is often offered carrot and cabbage pieces by cheering neighbors when he is out.
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Babies cry as they lie on a mattress in a street during 'El Colacho', the 'baby jumping festival' in the village of Castrillo de Murcia. Baby jumping (El Colacho) is a traditional Spanish practice dating back to 1620 that takes place annually to celebrate the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi. During the act - known as El Salto del Colacho (the devil's jump) or simply El Colacho - men dressed as the Devil jump over babies born in the last twelve months of the year who lie on mattresses in the street.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks with U.S. President Barack Obama at Schloss Elmau hotel near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, during the G-7 summit.
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Pope Francis meets Russian President Vladimir Putin on the occasion of a private audience at the Vatican.
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Young supporters of pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party hold Kurdish flags as they celebrate the results of the legislative election, in Diyarbakir, Turkey.
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Hani Mohammed / AP
A Ukrainian firefighter works to extinguish a fire at a fuel depot in the village of Kryachki, some 30 km southwest from Kiev. Ukraine urgently evacuated hundreds of residents from the site of a series of fuel depot blasts near Kiev that set off a ferocious fire and left several people missing and at least one confirmed dead.
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Buffalos escape a fire, which is spreading on a patch of land by the Yamuna river, on a hot summer day in New Delhi, India.
Anindito Mukherjee / Reuters
A protester throws a petrol bomb towards the police during a march, demanding more participation in the education reform discussions, in Santiago, Chile. Teachers began on June 1 an indefinite strike in protest against the newest education reforms that are being discussed in Congress and promoted by Chile's President Michelle Bachelet's government.
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A policeman lies on the ground during a clash with students demonstrating to demand changes in the education system, in Santiago, Chile.
Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters
A Lebanese army vehicle fires a TOW-II missile in the village of Taybeh, near Baalbek, eastern Lebanon. The Lebanese army has conducted a live-fire demonstration of advanced missiles supplied by the United States to help combat Islamic extremists along the country's volatile border with Syria.
Bilal Hussein / AP
Vice President Joe Biden, accompanied by his family, holds his hand over his heart as he watches an honor guard carry a casket containing the remains of his son, former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden.
Patrick Semansky / AP
Zahra Mahmoud, age 11, grieves on her father's coffin during the funeral procession of 15 militia members of a Shiite group, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, who were killed in Beiji from fighting with Islamic State militants south of Baghdad, Iraq.
Jaber Al-helo / AP
A seagull is silhouetted on the shoreline at sunset in La Serena, Coquimbo, Chile.
Juan Mabromata / AFP / Getty Images
The president stunned the nation by singing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of slain Charleston pastor Rev. Clementa Pinckney.
He began with a speech at the White House, applauding the #SCOTUS decision to legalize same-sex marriage.
White House
The funeral, held at TD Arena, drew thousands of mourners, and was broadcast live by several news outlets. The other victims were: Cynthia Hurd; Susie Jackson; Ethel Lance; Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor; Tywanza Sanders; Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr.; Rev. Sharonda Singleton; Myra Thompson. In reverence, Obama made sure to say their names.
Carolyn Kaster / AP
There was... a pause. A pregnant, heavy pause. And then President Barack Obama began to sing the hymn "Amazing Grace."
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RIP Tama.
Via Facebook: Super-Station-Master-Tama
Prior to her employment, Tama lived near Kishi Station as a stray cat, and got to know and was eventually adopted by neighbourhood grocer Toshiko Koyama.
In 2006, Koyama was named stationmaster after the Wakayama Electric Railway selected employees from nearby businesses to run its stations in a cost-cutting measure. The next year, Tama usurped her owner to take on the position.
As stationmaster, Tama greeted passengers and established a successful cafe and souvenir store in her name. She is credited with bringing in a significant amount of revenue for the railway after visitors flocked to see her.
She was paid in cat food.
Toru Yamanaka / AFP
Tama pictured with Mitsunobu Kojima in 2010.
Via Facebook: Super-Station-Master-Tama
Let’s talk about your death.
BuzzFeed Blue / Via youtu.be
They’ll probably like me much better if I come up with some vague plan before I go. So I decided to spend a weekend in the perfect place to do that: Britain's leading event for the funeral industry, an hour away from London by train.
It's called the Ideal Death Show.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
Within minutes of arriving at the Ideal Death Show welcome drinks, people started telling me death-based statistics. A lot of death-based statistics. I was told that we personally organise 2.4 funerals per our own lifetime, but that they happen decades apart so each time we go in knowing nothing; the landscape of death is always changing. I was told there is no other consumer experience on earth like buying a funeral: 93% of people will drop £5,000 in the first funeral directors’ joint they walk into because no one thinks about this stuff until a time when they don’t want to think about this stuff.
I was told that within three years of being buried in a cemetery you will have – at most – two visitors a year. Within 70 years you will be forgotten, just another slab of concrete in a forest of swiftly dilapidating concrete. I was told that 100% of undertakers hate both spiral staircases and Andrea Bocelli. I was told that fat women over the age of 40 decompose faster than any other demographic. I was told that one in 300 bodies putrefies early, and that morgue fridges aren’t made to last forever.
And neither are we.
Everyone at the Ideal Death Show has accepted this – and yet you would struggle to find a happier group of people than this one, standing around in a repurposed Winchester student union wondering if the line-cleaner that we can all taste in the beer is going to kill us all.
The Ideal Death Show initially started out in 2011, not as an industry shindig, but as a Six Feet Under fan convention in Bournemouth. It was run by a guy called Brian Jenner, who is a professional speechwriter and not remotely connected to the funeral industry except for this one weird thing. That first weekend four years ago, the flyer – using the Series 2 DVD cover image of the single tree against a blue sky – boasted talks from Andrew McKie, former obituary editor of the Daily Telegraph; Charles Cowling, founder of the Good Funeral Guide; and an embalmer called Sheila Dicks.
When everyone turned up for the Friday night welcome wake, it was clear that what Jenner had accidentally organised was an industry meeting for people who worked with the dead; undertakers on a busman’s holiday, stood around a cardboard coffin in a room full of lilies.
The next year he stripped away the HBO pretext and just made it that: a bunch of people talking about death, once a year, with other people who know about death. They needed it – death can literally be a lonely business.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
One thing I found: It’s hard to pack for the Ideal Death Show when all of your outfits are appropriate. Funerals are the only invitation I’m ever sartorially equipped for and this was a whole conference about funerals and dying. My bag was massive. And full of black.
Gathered in the bar were undertakers, celebrants, shroud manufacturers, coffin-makers (coffin-makers and shroud manufacturers will all comment on how tall and wide you are, I learned), embalmers, mortuary workers, palliative care nurses (one nurse tells me we’re all going to die of dementia, according to the current trend among the old and the number of Do Not Resuscitate forms she fills out on a daily basis), death midwives, gravediggers, stonemasons, crematory assistants, and natural burial ground owners. If the line-cleaner in the beer did kill us all, there would be no one left to deal with the bodies or, more pressingly, complain about the beer on BuzzFeed.com.
It was one of the weirder times a man has told me to “smile, it might never happen.”
The Curve bespoke coffins.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
If you’re single and treating a weekend with a bunch of morticians as a niche IRL Tinder, the thing you notice at the Ideal Death Show is that almost everyone here is female. The funeral industry is changing; there are no gaunt cartoon undertakers here for you (OK, me) to date, which is disappointing because everyone was smiling while talking about corpse disposal and where flies lay their eggs on dead people. A+ date chat imo.
(FYI, flies go straight up the nose, so keep your windows shut if you plan on keeping the body at home for a week.)
A nurse/former mortuary worker whose job it was to check the fridges every morning to see if the 1 in 300 bodies that putrefies early has putrefied early told me this female majority is part of the “vanguard of death”; the more progressive areas of the funeral industry are 95% women.
Traditionally, pre-death was a female domain – the hospices, the nurses, the physical and emotional care – while post-death was a man’s trade, with all the carpentry, digging, burning, hauling, slicing, and pumping of heinous chemicals into arteries and veins that a traditional funeral entailed. If you die now, it’s likely a woman is going to direct your funeral, and there are far more options than just coffin plus burial or cremation.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
Here’s another thing I was told at dinner, which is a pizza from Zizzi that we had to walk through an actual graveyard in the dark to get to: Networking in the funeral industry is not like networking in the media. To a journalist, schmoozing means talking to editors and publishers when they’re drunk enough to offer you work, while in the funeral industry schmoozing means talking to hospices and care homes, circling the old and dying like vultures. Sounds crass, sure – but someone has to think about it, and frankly you probably won’t until someone dies.
On the way back from Zizzi we almost got trapped in the graveyard.
In the morning, after a full English breakfast and a chat about what code words to use when you’re burying someone everyone thought was twat (“make use of silence and pauses for thought,” says a celebrant) and how to mask a squeaky crematorium curtain with “ashes to ashes chat”, I got a lift to the show with Charles from the Good Funeral Guide and the nurse who gave me a good reason not to become obese in the next 10 years. She was just excited to get a lift in a car that wasn't not a hearse for once.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
At the show were hand-woven willow coffins and miniature Viking boats to put ashes in and push out to sea, bespoke wooden coffins with the rough bark edges still on, societies of celebrants, funeral singers standing beside CD players playing their own CDs, interfaith ministers who would later argue about faith by a yurt and have to be separated, and startup companies who deal with the various aspects of death on the internet — online memorials, funeral planning, wills, and encrypted instructions for what to do with your terrible internet history when you die.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
There were novelty hearses in the style of New York taxis or Triumph motorcycles with a side-car coffin compartment, humanists handing out pens saying there is no God, and various containers to put your ashes in including glass candleholders that make a centrepiece out of the bone grit.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
There was even a spin-off ice bucket challenge – the "kicking the bucket challenge" with all donations going to the Natural Death Centre charity.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
All throughout the Death Show was the sound of funereal wailing on a tinny CD player, punctuated by the metallic thud of punters kicking a bucket against a blackboard list of things people want to do before they die. My favourite was “spread the banter”.
Like, what does that mean?
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
In the back corner of the room with a bunch of mannequins wrapped in fabric was shroudmaker Gordon Tulley and his bowl of Bereave Mints. He told me that some shrouds are only fit for burial, not cremation, and glossed over this so fast that I had to know why. He said it’s to do with the flashback: The cremation machine is set to 750-800°C, and as you push the shrouded body in, any lingering vapour from a treated material is likely to throw flames out the door and burn the crematorium worker’s eyebrows off.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
He showed me the plank of wood that gets inserted into a pocket in the back of every shroud to give the body some rigidity, “so nobody gets a saggy bum feeling and looks unsightly”. He said it makes it easier to lower the body into a grave, which is something that’s quite hard to do neatly. Basically, all that separates your shrouded loved one from a body in a bag thrown in a hole is a 80cm x 15cm bit of wood that comes with the shroud of your choosing.
As an afterthought, Gordon suggested shrouding the body immediately before burial, instead of doing it two weeks beforehand like some people would like to. “That way there’s no leakage,” he said, and very seriously added, “You might not know what their last meal was.”
This body was in the way of someone's coffin stall and had to be moved:
Anyone not connected to the Ideal Death Show thought it was a real funeral and that Dawn, the shroud volunteer, was dead.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
The trophies were Anubis statues in cardboard coffins sponsored by an eco-friendly coffin company called Ecoffins. I asked Brian, the organiser, how you judge who the Gravedigger of the Year is but he said it’s a trade secret.
I asked if they had a special shovel.
That is also classified information.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
Each year the celebrity host is someone tenuously linked to dead people. Pam St. Clement hosted one year on the basis that her character, Pat Butcher, died of pancreatic cancer on EastEnders. This year it’s Ian Lavender, Private Pike from Dad’s Army, chosen by virtue of being one of the last cast members who’s not dead yet, and being a regular at funerals what with all of his friends on the show dying. Also because “someone like Julian Clary costs £14,000.”
Given everyone in the park thought this was a real funeral procession...
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
Here’s the thing I learned about people who have been to a lot of funerals: Funeral people have practised at hundreds of wakes and know how to drink. I was fucked. I was so drunk that when the fire alarm sounded at 2:30am and I stood around outside the student accommodation with all the undertakers and funereal florists and embalmers in pajamas, I lost my bra.
Shut up.
The best photo of a BuzzFeed writer on a motorcycle hearse ever taken by a vicar.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed
Breakfast was like Cluedo. Everyone had a theory about who pressed the alarm, but no one knew for sure. “It was probably a vicar,” said a celebrant. “It’s always a vicar.” A coffin-maker made some ham sandwiches for the road and wrapped them in a napkin. “Look, I’m shrouding my ham sandwiches,” he said. He thought it was a vicar too.
I came home with a pocket full of undertakers’ business cards and a souvenir mug. After three days of hanging out with people in the death industry I still don’t know what I want to do with my corpse – but I do know that if these are the people who are going to be looking after me, it’s a far less terrifying thing to die.
Hayley Campbell / BuzzFeed