Today’s Ended Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The last words, scrawled in pen, of actor Richard Burton:
“Our revels are now ended.”
Culled from: The Big Sleep: True Tales and Twisted Trivia about Death
Morbid Mirth Du Jour!
I’m currently reading Death In Slow Motion, a fascinating book written by Eleanor Cooney about her complex and often-painful relationship with her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother. In addition to being a brilliant writer, Eleanor is also a patron of the MFDJ and has a devilishly morbid wit that I adore. I can see where she gets it from, after reading this particular passage last night (which I had to share for obvious reasons):
For a while after my mother and Tim Durant were married, and before he bought the tall gray house, we rented a house owned by a family prominent in town, the Clevengers. The house was a replacement for another house that had sat on the same foundation but had burned to the ground. The old house had been three stories, ancient wood, and it went up like a Molotov cocktail. There had been only one person in the house on the night it burned, old Harold Clevenger, or “Grandpa.” In the morning, when they searched the rubble, they found his body in the basement – headless. And they never found the head. This is absolutely true. I know it sounds like a rural urban legend, but it’s not. It became one of my mother’s favorites, and part of our own family lore when we lived in that house. Whenever my brother or I went down the basement stairs, my mother would call after us cheerfully: “Watch out for Grandpa Clevenger’s head!”
Wish I’d lived in a place like that!
I’ll write a full review when I finish the book, but it’s fast becoming a favorite.The Amazon 5-star review is no exaggeration.
Death In Slow Motion: A Memoir of a Daughter, Her Mother, and the Beast Called Alzheimer’s