On August 24, 2021, 98-year-old David Saunders died from COVID-19 at a hospital near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Nearly two months […]
Bodies in the Way: Delhi’s Dead and the Pressures of Space
In 1930, Delhi’s residents were sorely in need of a new hospital. The city’s population had ballooned by more than […]
Burying the Dead, and Then Digging Them Up
About a week after my partner Clayton was murdered in 2015, I went back to his gravesite with one of […]
Death, Distance, and the Digital World
My neighbor died as I was finishing this essay. We were two weeks into the stay-at-home order during the COVID-19 […]
Weaving Wool into Death: Burial in 17th-Century England
The rituals we use to honor someone in death often reflect the way that they lived, from their religion to […]
Miscarriage and Memory-Making: An Uneasy Relationship
When the Guardian journalist Hadley Freeman wrote about her miscarriage in early 2017, many readers praised the fact that this […]
