What Remains? by Rupert Callender

This is a truly superb and ground-breaking book. And very well-written - it's hard to believe that someone who isn't a many-times published writer could deliver such an immensely readable text. He throws us into the deep end right at the start, with an account of his creeping into a field in the dead of night to make a crop circle, part of his ritual process for dealing with the darkness of life he encounters on a daily basis. 

Callender writes about his own life, and the snags and traumas that led him into this unusual profession. He also writes of the cultural blankness surrounding our death rituals in 'Western' culture, the ways we try and purge the humanity out of the grieving process. It's 'undertaker, by the way, not 'funeral director'; the latter, as he shows, is another distancing phrase. 

He relates vividly many of the emotionally fraught situations his profession gets and got him into. Many of them emerge into deep connection with the bereaved. These are deeply moving and powerful accounts.

He discusses what we mean by ‘ancestors’, and how they relate to our grieving processes. He has some unconventional wisdom regarding social progress in this matter; because of the horrors of some aspects of modern life, people often default to ‘It was better back in the day’, but Callender writes:

‘…we, the people living through our time now, are the wise ones, that we have grown better and further from the deeds of our ancestors simply because history progresses and we are always wiser than our ancestors; in fact we are probably the ancestors, setting an example for those who went before us. …

‘It was both liberating and challenging to think of yourself as being the apex of progress within your bloodline. It frees you from the guilt of feeling that the modern world had in some ways become wrong, that humanity had become so far adrift from itself that you are missing crucial ways of being human that were effortless to your ancestors. 

‘It calls you to the seriousness of recognising the responsibilities that come with existence, that only we are still able to make an impact, only we are in complete possession of the full facts, there is no wiser person looking down on us from an afterlife. We are the wise ones gazing down into the grave of the past, offering forgiveness and understanding for the failings of our forefathers … We are the ancestors.’

And regarding cultural ancestors: ‘It is not a betrayal of flesh to discover your true family. It is a home-coming.’

He also reflects wisely on dark moods and depression: ‘People’s lives can change in a flash and without warning, and the past is revealed to be a paradise… So, I try to remind myself, when my baseless moods set in, that actually I am, before this possible moment, living in the rosy past that a future bereaved me would consider a literal heaven.’ 

Rather than rattle on, I shall simply and unreservedly recommend this book for all humans.