This article was originally posted at Haute Macabre on October 3, 2018.

There is much speculation regarding Baroness Mathilde de Rothschild’s extravagant collection of skulls and macabre artifacts, bequeathed sans explanation to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris after her death in 1926. Was this French socialite’s fascination born of her time becoming intimately acquainted with death while training as a WWI nurse? Or perhaps a passion for hunting sparked an urge to collect such grisly trophies? One wonders if all of these experiences culminated in the Baroness unlocking for herself the inevitable recognition of the passage of time, that life is fleeting and transient, that pleasure and human activities are ultimately empty, and which led to collecting these tiny allegorical representations of death? Maybe it was a comfort for her to surround herself with reminders of her mortality.

Then again, maybe skulls just look really cool.

The late Baroness de Rothschild’s collection was available for viewing for the first time in a show called “Même Pas Peur!” — “Not Even Scared!”, or “Fearless!” — at the Fondation Bemberg in the southern French city of Toulouse. The exhibition ended September 30th 2018, so in lieu of time travel (even though seeing these beautiful pieces in person would be totally worth futzing with the space-time continuum), have a look at the selected works below and contemplate your own mortality.

Images: MAD, Paris; Felipe Ribon; via The New York Times

 

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Jeffrey Catherine Jones

 

A gathering of death-related links that I have encountered in the past few months or so. From heart-rending to humorous (sometimes you gotta laugh, you know?) from informative to insightful, to sometimes just downright weird and creepy, here’s a snippet of recent items that have been reported on or journaled about with regard to death, dying, and matters of mortality.

💀 After-Loss Tech Wants to Ease the Logistics of Death

💀 Inside the Rise of Green Composting and Other Burial Practices

💀 Good Enough: Chelsea Bieker on Grieving Her Complicated Father

💀 How do you explain death to children – and should they go to the funeral?

💀 How to Leave Your Photos to Someone When You Die

💀 What Impact Do End-of-Life Experiences Have on Grief?

💀  What Apple TV’s ‘Severance’ gets right about grief at work, and why employers should care

💀 What Impact Do End-of-Life Experiences Have on Grief?

💀 The Careless Display of Ill-Gotten Human Remains

💀 The Smell of Death: Interview with Nuri McBride

💀 ‘I imagined black-plumed horses’: Sarah Hughes on planning her own big, fat gothic funeral

💀 Don’t Say You ‘Can’t Imagine’ the Grief of Those Who Have Lost Loved Ones. Ask Them to Tell You Their Stories

💀 Death’s Garden Revisited: Relationships with Cemeteries. An anthology of personal essays about how the authors connect with cemeteries and graveyards.

If you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee

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Billelis, Relics of a Mortal Past

A gathering of death-related links that I have encountered in the past few months or so. From heart-rending to humorous (sometimes you gotta laugh, you know?) from informative to insightful, to sometimes just downright weird and creepy, here’s a snippet of recent items that have been reported on or journaled about with regard to death, dying, and matters of mortality.

💀 8 Tabletop Roleplaying Games to Help You Navigate the Afterlife

💀 Death Is No Laughing Matter. But on DeathTok It Is.

💀 Do Animals Understand What It Means to Die?

💀 Black Grief Practitioners Are Protecting Black Life In Death

💀 Can We Experience Death Through Psychedelics?

💀 The person who got me through 2021: Fleabag helped me survive my mother’s death

💀 Oscar the Therapy Cat: Omen of Death and Provider of Comfort

💀 How to Use Transitional Objects as a Way to Process Grief

💀 The Geometry of Grief: A Mathematician on How Fractals Can Help Us Fathom Loss and Reorient to the Ongoingness of Life

 

Billelis, Relics of a Mortal Past

If you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee

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Image: Kawanabe Kyōsa

A gathering of death-related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From heart-rending to humorous (sometimes you gotta laugh, you know?) from informative to insightful,  to sometimes just downright weird and creepy, here’s a snippet of recent items that have been reported on or journaled about with regard to death, dying, and matters of mortality.

Previously: August 2020 | August 2019 | August 2018 | August 2017 | August 2016

💀 The Oral History of “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper”
💀 Autism and Grief: What to Do and How to Prepare
💀 Your Pandemic Sadness Is Called ‘Ambiguous Loss’
💀 Refusal to Mourn: In lieu of flowers, send him back
💀 The Best Books to Help You Cope With Death and Dying
💀 In Malibu, a Large Hole Is Being Dug to Contain Your Grief
💀 “It’s Your Funeral!” So Throw Yourself the Best Going-Away Party Ever
💀 Traumatologist on coping with tragedy: Let children feel how they feel
💀 What Is Thanatophobia? Understanding prolonged, excessive fear of death
💀 We Need To Talk About The Starling With Melissa McCarthy On Netflix
💀 Unexpected Influences: Loren Rhoad talks about her new memoir, “This Morbid Life”

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Tino Rodriguez, Ecstatic Metamorphosis

A gathering of death-related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From heart-rending to gut-splitting (sometimes you gotta laugh, you know?) from informative to insightful to sometimes just downright weird and creepy, here’s a snippet of recent items that have been reported on or journaled about with regard to death, dying, and matters of mortality.

Previously: June 2020 | June 2019 | June 2018 | June 2017 | June 2016

💀Make your Own Memento Mori

💀Searching and Yearning in Grief

💀What to Expect When Death Comes

💀Growing Around Grief

💀Girl buried with finch in her mouth puzzles archaeologists

💀Why Did Early Medieval Europeans Reopen Graves?

💀Death is Both an Event and a Process

💀What Is It Like to Be Dying?

💀You Can’t Outrun Pandemic Grief

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Francesco Santo, Vanitas #02

A gathering of death-related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From heart-rending to gut-splitting (sometimes you gotta laugh, you know?) from informative to insightful to sometimes just downright weird and creepy, here’s a snippet of recent items that have been reported on or journaled about with regard to death, dying, and matters of mortality.

Previously: May 2020 | May 2019 | May 2018 | May 2017 | May 2016

💀 A Stone You Should Never Put Down: The Secret Language of Grief

💀 Why Is This Woman Dying All Over the World?

💀 What Are You Going Through By Sigrid Nunez: A literary journey into, through, and past loss

💀 The Secret to Happiness? Thinking About Death.

💀 India’s COVID-19 Disaster Has Changed Our Relationship With Death

💀 Meet the Nun Who Wants You to Remember You Will Die

💀 After a sudden loss, seeking serenity among old headstones

💀 Sarah Posey explores death in a more positive context with ‘One From Us Has Gone’ exhibit

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Still life, after Herman Henstenburgh No.02 , 2013 by Hiroyuki Masuyami

A gathering of death-related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From heart-rending to gut-splitting (sometimes you gotta laugh, you know?) from informative to insightful to sometimes just downright weird and creepy, here’s a snippet of recent items that have been reported on or journaled about with regard to death, dying, and matters of mortality.

Previously: March 2020 | March 2019 | March 2018 | March 2017 | March 2014

💀 A Very 90s Death: The Tamagotchi Cemetery

💀 Cooking with the Dead: A zine of tombstone recipes

💀 The Best Books to Teach Your Kid About Grief and Loss

💀 As death approaches, our dreams offer comfort, reconciliation

💀 Cemetery and Graveyard Trees: Folklore, Superstition and History

💀 How to Be Less Scared of Death, According to a ‘Deathfluencer’

💀 How a doctor tried to surgically save the human soul — after death

💀 Grief is the thing with guitars: How indie music is tackling death in the age of Covid

💀 Ashes in the mail: Dealing with the loss of a loved one has changed in the covid era

💀 Grieving People Are Looking Forward To “Different Things” Once The Pandemic Eases

 

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After Hendrick Andriessen, via Christies

A gathering of death-related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From heart-rending to gut-splitting (sometimes you gotta laugh, you know?) from informative to insightful to sometimes just downright weird and creepy, here’s a snippet of recent items that have been reported on or journaled about with regard to death, dying, and matters of mortality.

Previously: February 2020 | February 2019 | February 2018 | February 2017 | February 2016 

💀 Haute Grief: Empress Elisabeth of Austria’s Mourning Mask and Veil

💀 Closure Isn’t a Thing in Grief and That’s Okay

💀 Grief Journaling Tips & Writing Prompts

💀 The Stuff of Death and The Death of Stuff

💀 What a Death Doula Can Teach Us About Living More Compassionately

💀 Is End of Life Its Own Stage of Life?

💀 7 tips for thoughtfully dealing with grief in the workplace

💀 A Greek Photographer’s Ode to the Art of Mourning

💀 Video games revel in death, Spiritfarer focuses on what happens next

💀‘Buried by the Bernards’ Is a Different Kind of Netflix Reality Show 

💀7 Books About Death And Dying For Comfort During Tough Times

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https://youtu.be/kHkp5PyBYzU

[Edit] Looks like that video above was taken down due to copyright violations. Hope you were able to see it while it was up on YouTube! Otherwise, maybe it will show up somewhere else. I realize it’s more a less a broken link, but I am leaving it there as evidence that it once existed.]

When I was young, oh maybe about five or six years old or so, one of my very favorite television shows was Benson. Which…was kind of a weird pick for a little kid. Not a cartoon or a fairytale or kid’s variety show, or even anything that I might typically watch now, as an adult–I think it was what I might refer to as a “classy comedy”, which some critics and reviewers note as being on par with MAS*H and Barney Miller. Neither of which I have ever watched, but so I can’t really comment on that!

I’m not sure how this sitcom came across my radar or what my mom thought about me watching it (she didn’t let us watch The Flintstones because she thought Fred Flinstone was an asshole) but somehow I guess Benson was okay.

Running from 1979–1986, Benson was a spin-off of Soap, a show which apparently parodied the melodramatic antics of soap opera families. Witty, sharp-tongued Benson DuBois is a former butler from Soap who becomes the title character in his own show, and the “director of household affairs,” to a bumbling state governor. Benson moves up in the world, becoming the state’s budget director, then lieutenant governor and eventually candidate for the executive mansion. I am not sure what on earth drew me to this show, but I loved Benson’s character so very much and wanted us to be the very best of friends. I thought he was silly and smart, and that he would be an amazing person to have on my side.

Up until the season 4 opener episode, “Death in a Funny Position,” Benson was just a funny, light-hearted television program that I looked forward to watching once a week and which made me laugh. Everything changed when I first saw this particular storyline, and I mean EVERYTHING.

As a little girl at that age, I don’t think had encountered many references to death at all, let alone any instances of it. And on a lesser note, I certainly didn’t realize that television shows had episode titles, to even pick up on this particular episode’s theme. I don’t think I really even comprehended the idea of a season of television. It was just an ongoing story, as far as I was concerned.

There were a lot of things I didn’t pick up on. Either due to my immaturity or just being an oblivious little person, in general (maybe both, I am still pretty oblivious as an adult and there are many things I don’t pick up on!) Re-watching a snippet of this episode just now, it’s clear they are setting it up as some sort of mystery, whodunit episode, but I don’t recall that as keeping in tone with the typical plots on Benson. And so you must understand that child-me was totally blindsided and shocked by what happened next. I thought this guy was declaring his romantic love to Miss Kraus, but instead, he was pleading for help because HE HAD BEEN STABBED IN THE BACK. The visuals of which I have tried to capture for you, above, but it’s awfully fuzzy and grainy.

As an aside, it’s just been in the past few days that I have been thinking of all of this, and if you look to see when the video was uploaded to YouTube, it was February 4, 2021–just two days ago! How weird is that?! Must be a sign from the universe! Definitely time to write this blog post you’ve been sitting on, Sarah.

I screamed and hollered right alongside Miss Kraus. I was in such a state of profound panic and extreme terror that if my mother had some sort of sedative, I am quite sure she would have administered it. What WAS that? WHAT HAPPENED? The guy was alive and then…then…he just WASN’T ALIVE?! And not only that, someone stuck a KNIFE in him? What was the point of that? What was the point of someone witnessing that (both Miss Kraus and me)? If this is what happens to that guy, is that what happens to all of us? And if so, what was the point of…anything?

Hoo boy.

I don’t think I ever quite recovered from that betrayal and loss of innocence, and I certainly never watched another episode of Benson. As an adult many decades later, sometimes I still question the point of anything. Of everything. But you know what? I think I am ready to forgive my old friend Benson, and finish watching this episode.

If you want to watch it as well, it’s a two parter! Here’s “Death in a Funny Position” part 2, below.

https://youtu.be/KLGndC97YEw

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Artist: Anneke Wilder

A gathering of death-related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From heart-rending to gut-splitting (sometimes you gotta laugh, you know?) from informative to insightful to sometimes just downright weird and creepy, here’s a snippet of recent items that have been reported on or journaled about with regard to death, dying, and matters of mortality.

Previously: {January 2020}|{January 2019}| {January 2018} | {January 2017} | {January 2016}

💀 Claudia Crobatia Is Getting Ahead Of Death

💀 Maori Ancestors Are Coming Home

💀 What is ‘Toxic Positivity’ in Grief?

💀 How to Hold a Virtual Memorial Service

💀 Things I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You About Your Funeral

💀 Lost touch: how a year without hugs affects our mental health

💀 Deaths keep coming at one L.A. hospital as workers weep

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