Services meet final needs of emigrants

Also on a funereal theme, the Galway Independent is carrying a story on "a mysterious Galway man", now a New York resident, who has made a most unusual purchase - he has spent $100,000 so that he can be buried under Irish soil in America, where he has spent most of his life.

The Independent reports that Pat Burke from Tipperary and Alan Jenkins from Cork decided to start their website, www.officialirishdirt.com, when they realised that there were many Irish emigrants who wanted Irish soil as part of their funeral commemorations.

While most are contented with a three-quarter-pound bag of the specially-treated soil, which costs $15, the Galway-born businessman had a different idea. Mr Burke says the weathly New Yorker was "in two minds as to where he wanted to be buried (either in his native Ireland or his adopted USA), so he contacted us and got the best of both worlds".

Pat added, "People living abroad get very sentimental about things and the idea of buying the soil or shamrock seed lets them feel a bit closer to home".

Visit www.officialirishdirt.com.
Read the whole story at the Galway Independent.

There's also another company that aims to meet the needs of emigrants contemplating what should happen to their remains - Ashes is a family-run service that will scatter cremated remains in Ireland.

See www.ashes.ie.

Online funerals aimed at far-flung relations

A Belfast firm of undertakers has launched what is reportedly the first online service to allow mourners to view funeral services from abroad, the AP has reported. Clarke & Son say their service came out of requests that tapes of services be sent abroad to far-off relations.

"We have one camera to give you the perspective of the minister looking out to the congregation, one showing the hearse and cortege of mourners outside, and one that looks like you're sitting in amidst the mourners," said Jim Clarke of Clarke & Son undertakers in Newtownards, an eastern suburb of Belfast.

The report added,

He said the service last year proved invaluable for two brothers - one living in New Zealand, the other in the United States - who had traveled back to Northern Ireland to visit an ill relative who then died.

"They said, 'There's no way we can get our wives and families here at such short notice,' and we had the solution to hand. It really removes a burden for some families," Clarke said.

Read the full report.

Visit S. Clarke & Son's website.