Readings for Remembrance: A Collection for Funerals and Memorial Services

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Summary: What to Say at a Funeral
Review: This book offers the widest variety of all possible sentiments one would care to use at a memorial or funeral service, with quotes from Yeats, Joyce, Dante, St. Augustine, Lao-Tzu, Praxilla of Sicyon, Rilke, Ovid, Virgil, Tolstoy, the Papago, the Aztec, the Maya, the priest Fujiwara No Toshinari, a Buddhist aphorism, a Hindu teaching, Homer, Sophocles, Proust, to name but a few. The book is arranged in sections, each section addressing a different aspect of grief: Why We Gather; Raw Grief and Bitter Mourning; Mysteries: What is Death? What Are Time and Space?; Transformations; Heroes and Heroines, Great and Simple; Timeless Praise in Scripture and Verse; Meditations on Wisdom Coming Slowly; Healing, Changing, Moving On. In the back of the book is a list of music suggestions for the service. I found the book to be not only wonderful for its stated purpose but also as an ideal gift to give on the anniversary date of a loved one's death. Also, I have used quotes from the book in condolence letters. In times of grief we are asked to be our most eloquent, when really, we have been rendered incapacitated, the headless body, with "Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." (Wordsworth)