A t a recent funeral for a film-maker in New York, conducted by Erica Hill of the Brooklyn funeral parlour Sparrow ( sparrowny.com ), the deceased’s family didn’t want her confined by a casket. “So we laid her out on a silken table, in a beautiful silk dress, put two huge cherry blossom trees either side and yoga mats around so family and friends could meditate beside her,” says Hill.
“Then the drummers came in.” The funeral is changing, with life’s inevitable conclusion marked in ever-more extraordinary ways to match the personality of the dead. They can be cosmic — blasting remains into space or plunging them to oceanic depths — or merely ostentatious, like that of Joan Rivers, who requested a “huge showbiz funeral.
.. with Meryl Streep crying” (but got the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus singing Big Spender ).
They can be uproarious, like that of the designer Malcolm McLaren, whose casket was drawn by horses in a noisy Camden cortege that observed a “minute of mayhem”, or ironic — the Soho artist Sebastian Horsley went in a casket made up like a Christmas present. Our ways to depart are multifarious and magnificent, with prices to match..
