by Justin Nobel
When Bob Hickey first visited Jim Morrison's grave at Père Lachaise Cemetery in the early 1980s he encountered a strange man with a Band-Aid on his chin, smoking a joint. The grave is one of the most visited cites in Paris, according to several travel websites. (Photo by Bob Hickey)
Bob Hickey arrived in Paris and went straight to the cemetery.
“I had heard that there was a joint constantly burning at Jim Morrison’s grave,” said Hickey, a sound technician on tour with James Taylor. “I thought, ‘Great, I will go there and see if I can catch a buzz.’”
Attendants at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, the cities largest, handed Hickey a map written in French that he was unable to decipher. Fortunately, finding his way was easy. Spray painted arrows led him along and graves marked with mystical lyrics and messages like “Jim this way” confirmed the route. At Morrison’s headstone, he encountered a strange man with a Band-Aid on his chin, smoking a joint. “He was sharing it with Jim,” said Hickey. Read the rest of this entry »
by Justin Nobel
Pets have been buried in cemeteries for millennia but "Perpetual Pet" lets owners preserve pets in their favorite position on their favorite couch. (Photo by Michelle Enfield)
Naomi is a cat and has been curled in the same spot on her favorite couch for seven years.
“People will come in our house and say, ‘I don’t think your cat is breathing, she hasn’t moved for a whole hour,’” said Chris Calagan. “We will say, ‘you’re right, she’s dead.’”
Calagan and his wife Sandra run Perpetual Pet, a business operated out of their West Virginia home. Through a time-consuming and bizarre process they draw the moisture out of people’s pets, preserving the animals indefinitely in predetermined positions.
Read the rest of this entry »
by Justin Nobel
Joan Harvey has written over 10,000 obituaries. "Humans need to talk about the death," she said. "Sometimes they want to talk about the death a lot, with a lot of details." (Photo by Justin Nobel)
Joan Harvey has written over 10,000 obituaries for The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper. She now writes Life Stories for the paper, feature pieces about interesting and unknown Portland people who have just died. Digital Dying spoke with her about what it’s like to cover death for a living.
How did you begin writing obituaries?
I used to write a lot of travel and food stories. I ran into an old friend whose mother had been very nice to me as a child. I asked her how her mother was and she burst into tears. After that I started reading the obituaries. I realized their importance, not just as a source of information about a person, but as a history for the whole community.
Do you always include the cause of death?
Sometimes you don’t even know the cause of death. The death certificate says something but it isn’t always accurate. When AIDS first started, that was such a problem. People didn’t want that in, so we had a lot of 30 year-old men dying of pneumonia. But generally, when people lose somebody they want to talk, and sometimes they want to talk about the death a lot, with a lot of details. They have experienced these horrible things and no one else will listen. Other people will come over to comfort them and talk about movies. But humans need to talk about the death too. Read the rest of this entry »
by Justin Nobel
"Everything is a corpse," in a new Oscar winning Japanese film by director Yojiro Takita.
Outside, wind-whipped snow piles high but inside the trim room there are pineapples and candles on an altar, a family seated patiently on pillows on the floor and a stunning figure resting on immaculate bedding beside an ornate box. Two strangers in dark suits enter and the Japanese funerary rite known as encoffination begins. And this begins “Departures”, the Japanese film by director Yojiro Takita that won this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
The film follows a young man through a difficult time in his life. Daigo Kobayashi loses his job as a cellist with a Tokyo orchestra and returns to the bleak provincial town of his youth. Mika, his cheery wife, follows. The only work available is as an encoffineer, or nokanshi, the individual who prepares a dead body for viewing. Daigo vomits into his palm when he sees his first corpse and hides the details of the job from Mika. The boss, a staid man getting on in years, won’t let him quit, and through him Daigo learns that despite the public’s general lack of respect for the job—one man he meets on the street shields his child from Daigo and girls on a bus sneer at him—there is great honor in the profession. Read the rest of this entry »
