Articles & Columns - Thomas Lynch

Cremation: A practice in need of ritual

“When I’m gone just cremate me,” Hughey MacSwiggan told his third and final wife as she stood at his bedside while the hospice nurse fiddled with the morphine drip that hadn’t kept his pain at bay. The operative word in his directive was just. He wasn’t especially fond of fire. He hadn’t picked out a…

Preaching to Bishops AN UNDERTAKER’S VIEW

“Preaching to bishops,” a long-dead churchman told me years ago, “is like farting at skunks. You’ll win some battles, but lose the war.” All the more so, no doubt, the higher you go. His Holiness, Their Eminences and Excellencies—“Don’t cross ’em,” the curate cautioned; “those boyos aren’t to be tampered with.” Among the blessings of…

Faith Matters — Making for Home

When I was a child I spoke as a child, understood as a child, reasoned as a child. I knew my parents loved me best and assumed my several siblings all agreed. I mistook abundant love for especial favor and blessings for entitlements, and I took pride in things I ought to have been simply…

A Date With the Departed

The pumpkins, penny candy and neighborly hordes of goblins and ghosts shouting “Trick or treat!” remind us of the ancients and their belief that the souls of the dead must be appeased. But it’s the days that follow Halloween that most interest me. All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day are time set aside to…

Father Andrews

Jake, for the record, life does go on. Tuesday gives way to Wednesday unremarkably. The stars in their firmament behave like stars. The morning traffic makes its mindless way from one preoccupation to another. Little changes. You knew as much yourself: we have our day, and others after us into their sparkling moment and out…

Michigan’s Song of Itself

THE University of Michigan had a chance to shine at the end of February when our symphony orchestra toured by bus from Ann Arbor to Carnegie Hall. The musicians made stops at Oberlin and Cornell before getting to West 57th Street. Kenneth Kiesler, our maestro, selected Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and a new composition by a…

Return of the Prince

“DEMOCRACY is untidy,” said Donald Rumsfeld. “It sure is,” we Michiganders nod, watching our state legislators navigate fecklessly between tax increases and budget cuts trying to keep Lansing’s ship of state afloat. The autumn has been spent under the threat of a government shutdown over the state budget imbroglio. The big solution: a “service tax”…

The Dispirit of ’67

The men I have coffee with most mornings in town are all in what we never call the last trimester of our lives. We’re winding down, golfing more, worried that what’s ahead won’t be as good as what’s gone before. We are retiring or retirees. Our memories are more certain than our prospects. Some things,…

In Michigan, Not Even the Dead Are Safe

HE big cemetery with the name like a golf course out on the Interstate across from the mall was seized by a state conservator this winter. Seems someone took the money — $70 million in prepaid trust funds — and ran. It’s one of those theme park enterprises with lawn crypts and cheap statuary and…

When Latvian Eyes Are Smiling

Last year they opened a new Irish pub on Main Street here. O’Callaghan’s they call it, and it’s owned by two Palestinians who did it up in high Paddy style, with snugs and dark hardwoods, Guinness and designer lagers and a couple of imported boyos behind the bar. The décor came from Dublin in a…