What Remains? by Rupert Callender

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

I always say that there are three things that are inevitable. Death, taxes and your computer crashing. Nowadays my computer rarely crashes and tory grandees seem to think that taxes don’t apply to them. However, none of us can avoid death, even those who have taken it upon themselves to rely on the pseudoscience of cryogenics.

Almost all of the funerals that take place in the UK are rooted in the rituals and habits of the Victorian era. And whilst this is fine for most people, it is not right for others. Robert Callender describes himself as the first punk undertaker. But rather than a leather-clad bloke with some suspicious piercings and a mohican, he is a ray of light in the stilted world of the British undertakers.

The funeral system that exists in this country is very much a one size fits all and Callander wants to show that there are many other ways of coming to terms with the loss of a loved one. He aims to de-mystify the fears around death and the way that we see it in society and help people discover their own grief for the person that they have lost. Each funeral is for that family and he will rarely say no to anything should a family request it.

Even though death walks these pages, it is not morbid in the slightest. There are a lot of dead bodies in here and there are some parts that may be uncomfortable reading for some, I won’t expand on them here though. I felt that I was being guided by someone who is very sensitive to people’s actual needs as they say goodbye. I thought that it was interesting that he wrote about those that are laying to rest family members that were not always liked and in certain instances detested. It is really sensitively written, too. He has a knack for being reassuring and quietly confident in what he is doing and most importantly why he is doing it.