A question of death
May 8, 2008 by revruth
In Church we keep registers of baptisms, marriages and deaths. It occurred to me today that they don’t really ask the right questions.
For example, in the Burial Register (which includes Cremation now) they don’t ask for the date of death (or birth for that matter). All they require is the date you fill it in and the date of the Burial or Cremation. So when it comes to your Book of Remembrance for your Years Mind you can’t back check whether the dates are correct or not.
In St Mark’s we have two Books of Remembrance - one on the Requiem Altar and a little one that I keep at home for the pew sheets. There have been a few discrepancies noted and we don’t know which dates are correct. So it may be that our Years Mind is actually the date of the ceremony rather than the actual death.
It also means that we can’t put the details on the internet for those interested in doing family trees because we don’t have the info needed.
Personally, I always write the dates in any space I can find.
Getting a decent book of remembrance (not our current 99p diary) has been on our vestry agenda for more meetings than I can remember.
I was wondering if any church has found something appropriate recently that doesn’t cost hundreds of pounds?
At St Mark’s it looks like they have bought a big blank book - you know the sort you used to be able to buy, like something from Florence - and taken it somewhere to get ‘St Mark’s Book of Remembrance’ embossed on the cover. Then someone calligraphied the date on each page.
Mind you, we did have a complaint from one member last week who shall remain nameless. She said, ‘Oh look at this! There are people in here who aren’t even members of St Mark’s. They shouldn’t even be in here. It should just be OUR people.’ I won’t repeat my reply!