I bought the newspaper at auction two years ago, but I just couldn’t bring myself to write about its contents. The stories on the front page were too horrific, too graphic, too painful. Every headline…
Category: Death
Memorial cabinet cards in remembrance of a loved one
Posted in collectibles, Death, and Ephemera/Paper/Documents
I was flipping through some cabinet cards at auction recently when I came across an unusual one. Cabinet cards normally bore a photo of folks dressed in their finest with the name of the studio…
A forlorn coffin standing off to itself
Posted in Death
It wasn’t exactly a pine box but it was wooden. The auction house had positioned the coffin upright, as if it were a closet waiting to be stepped into instead of a box ready to…
Antique embalming machine that’s unnerving
Posted in collectibles, Death, and Medicine
The machine seemed to have a twin. I had seen a contraption like it two months earlier in another room during a special sale at the auction house. Is it possible that two of these…
A black church’s cemetery under a child’s playground
Posted in Black history, Culture, Death, and slavery
Amelia Brown was 26 years old when she died in Philadelphia in 1819. No one today knows who she was, how she lived, or whether she was married or had children. All we have is…
I came looking for the coffins, the shellac boxes that cost too much money but we all feel obligated to bury our loved ones in, anyway. These were supposed to be African coffins, so I didn’t…
G.A.R. grave markers of Union soldiers
Posted in Death, flea market, history, and Military
You can’t sell those on eBay, the man told the dealer, referring to two cast iron Civil War grave markers that she was selling at a flea market over the weekend. The two markers were…
My friend Ella knows how she wants to be buried. She’s put to writing the songs to be sung, the funeral home to prepare her body and the place to bury it. She’s even written…
First, let me tell you about a child who was apparently loved: I picked up at auction a small blue cardboard case covered in royal blue satin. I looked inside and saw a cute pair…
The pain of selling a relative’s estate
Posted in Death, Family, Home, and Personal items
The woman watched as the auctioneer directed bidders to a burgundy leather recliner on the porch of the man’s home. We were standing in the living room and a few of us glanced toward the…