Death
The heart bleeds
‘CERTIFICATE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF IDENTITY,’ the freshly issued death certificate read. In the craziness and shock of grief for…
God’s first draft
Readers familiar with Sheila Heti’s work, most notably How Should a Person Be? and Motherhood, in which she examines both…
Ill gotten gains
I have heartburn. I probably have heartburn simply because both my parents also had a lot of heartburn, and I…
To die for
If there’s any form of entertainment that I will reliably find time for, no matter how big the to-read pile…
It’s hard not to pity Ghislaine Maxwell
It’s hard not to feel a batsqueak of pity for Ghislaine Maxwell — 500 days and counting in solitary confinement.…
A dead cert
Covid or no Covid, we’re all going to snuff it
Bad blood
In 2016, Arifa Akbar’s elder sister, Fauzia, died suddenly in the Royal Free Hospital, London at the age of 45.…
Covid deaths in context
What would have been your overall chances of dying in the first 19 weeks of 2021 compared with recent years?…
Mourning sickness
Why are we so scared of other people’s grief?
High life
Gstaad I was very sad to read of Rupert Hambro’s death. I didn’t know him well, but first met him…
Wild life
Malindi, Kenya I’ve learned that mourning must be tackled ever so gently. As a younger man, when friends were killed…
Wild life
Indian Ocean coast ‘I love you’ became just ‘love’, and that was the last word Mum was able to say…
High life
Gstaad Lord Belhaven and Stenton, a wonderful man and the quintessential English gentleman, died at 93 just before the end…
Sex and corpses
A great temple of the goddess Tara can be found at Tarapith in West Bengal. But her true abode, in…
Wild life
Bexhill-on-Sea My Aunt Beryl taught me to love books and paintings. When I’m at a loose end in London, lonely,…
The pagan rites of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
When Ruth Bader Ginsburg succumbed to cancer, #RestInPower immediately trended. The ACLU, New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, actress Reese Witherspoon and the ostensibly…
Dear Mary
Q. Almost a year ago I attended the funeral of my godfather — a bachelor and distant relation whom I…
La petite mort
The oldest churchyard in Torquay is being used by people openly having sex and sunbathing nude in broad daylight. This…
Europe’s ‘second wave’ has fizzled out
Has the Covid ‘second wave’ already run out of steam? On 9 July, just when Britain was reopening the hospitality…
High life
The enforced boredom of lockdown has been replaced by a feeling of loss. My nephew by marriage, Hansie Schoenburg, died…
Letters
Hong Kong’s success Sir: Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson are right to compare the UK’s Covid-19 response with Hong Kong’s…
Lessons from the dying
A nurse friend recently finished six weeks in a Covid intensive care unit where she witnessed many deaths and always…
The pain of forgetting
‘Grief is the price we pay for love,’ the Queen once wrote. This memoir is steeped in the pain of…
And end to decent dying
From 22 March 1986: They used to say that war is the ruin of serious soldiering. Too much disorder, too…
Dying art
There’s nothing morbid about writing obituaries
