For most Americans, the options of what you can have done to your body after you die likely seem limited. Cremation, embalming your body and then burying it—there are variations on those themes, but the basics remain. But mortician Caitlin Doughty has spent her life trying to change how we consider death and educate…
On Saturday, April 23, an intimate group of Prince’s family, friends, and fellow musicians gathered to bid him farewell. The iconic musician’s remains were cremated at an unspecified time after his body was released to his family on April 22.
Bodies that received graveside services at Galilee Memorial Gardens near Memphis, Tennessee have been missing for years. And now the relatives of the deceased are suing its former owner.
This week’s issue of The New Yorker features a lengthy profile by Rebecca Mead on the rise of female morticians, with a special focus on Ask a Mortician’s Caitlin Doughty (whose work has been featured on Jezebel several times). The article—like much of Doughty’s work—got me thinking a lot about what I want to have…
Dearly beloved, we are gathered at this Pissing Contest today to share our stories of the strangest, funniest, and most fucked-up funerals that we’ve ever attended. (Thank you to Maxine Floeffler for the grim suggestion.) Please join me in bowing our heads for a moment of prayer and contemplation...of all the ways a…
Now you can save your loved ones the stress of planning your funeral by having your remains sent to the moon. A company called Elysium Space has created small metallic cubes that can hold cremated remains. They will launch clusters of these cubes into outer space, where they will soft land on the moon’s surface. So,…
Funeral parlors, places where actual dead bodies are sometimes haphazardly stacked on top of each other in a giant freezer, are branching out from the business of death and working on spending another very important occasion with families: weddings.
When we get caught up in the humdrum repetition of our day-to-days, it can be easy to forget how different the lives—or deaths—of people in other parts of the world are. In China, funerals appear to be far more interesting than the ones people attend in the U.S. because they have strippers. These exotic dancers—some…
Welcome to Grim Yelp Reviews, a new regular feature where we share people’s worst experiences at the worst places. This week: death, the ultimate one-star experience.
It's not quite poetic justice, but we'll take it: the Westboro Baptist Church, a group of litigious trolls with the barest ties to Jesus, were unable to picket Leonard Nimoy's funeral because they don't know where it is.
Estate planning is an adult responsibility that is generally not considered an enjoyable activity. Unless, perhaps, you're a goth with a very specific vision for your last rites, planned down to a level of detail rarely seen outside of a Pinterest board. According to Portlandia, anyway!
A Michigan funeral home has brought an innovative way to bring convenience to those in mourning, a real game changer for the funeral racket: drive-thru casket viewings.
Having your pet euthanized at home is more expensive, but for our favorite deathxpert, Caitlin Doughty, it was important, when her Siamese cat was sick with cancer: "If I had to do it again, a thousand times, I would choose this, every time."
Last week, the News Journal in Delaware ran an obituary on 70-year-old Johanna R. Scarpitti, the opening line of which read, "Ding dong the witch is dead." While at first glance it does seem a bit crude, but it was all Scarpitti's idea.
Fact: Funerals are the event second most likely to cause family drama. (Weddings take the top spot, of course.) Hence Tina Fey and Jason Bateman's upcoming "dramedy" This Is Where I Leave You, the trailer for which dropped today. They play siblings, and Tina Fey punches a guy!
80-year-old Georgina Chervony Lloren hung out at her own wake in San Juan, Puerto Rico this Monday after passing away over the weekend from natural causes. She received mourners not from a casket, but from a rocking chair where she — dressed in her wedding dress — had been propped into a sitting position.
A famed New Orleans socialite and philanthropist made one last appearance in public—at her very own funeral wake.
Caitlin Doughty, our favorite mortician, weighs in on Viking funerals. You might like boats, and you might like fire, and you might want your corpse to set sail in a boat that's on fire, but apparently, if you do so, you will be breaking a bunch of laws.
If you were alive and on the internet yesterday, you're already familiar with the very latest in Tumblr cringe porn:"Selfies at Funerals." Created by Brooklyn-based editor Jason Feifer, "Selfies at Funerals" combines two things Americans loathe (self absorbed teenagers & funerals) to brilliant effect.
Here's our favorite mortician, Caitlin Doughty, hanging out with the simply sickening Laganja Estranja and talking death, Bette Midler, hooker makeup and what music they'd like to have played at their funerals.
