Friday 7 November 2008

Death notices

As I was walking back from the Health Centre, on this wet and miserable day, I noticed someone reading these posters. They're the messages that Brits would put in the in the Births and Deaths section of the local newspaper. These two are pasted on a telephone pole in the street.

I've seen notices like them hundreds of times but I'd never looked at the detail. The name of the person who has died, the time and place of death, their age at death, rest in peace, details of the grieving family who ask for you to pray for the soul of the deceased, details of the chapel of rest and of the interment and an advert for the undertaker. I was also taken by the additional note that the dead persons had received the last rites.

Just in case you look closely at the notices one of them is about a memorial service for a person who died a year ago.

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