Ukrainian art and resilience in Dundee

Recently I wrote about my Ukrainian guest who had lived in my flat since fleeing the war in 2022. He had given my mother a beautiful present of a painted box and I asked him who made it. I wanted to buy a new one to keep some decks of cards in.

Ukrainian art by Ness.ka

And that is how I came to meet Inesa at her Dundee studio. Inesa is a Ukrainian artist working under the creative name Ness.ka. After the start of the full-scale invasion, she moved to Scotland, where art became not only a form of self-expression but also a way to cope during a challenging time in her life.

Here in Dundee, she immersed herself ever more deeply in her practice, finding calm, strength, and a renewed sense of purpose through creativity. She works in the traditional Ukrainian Petrykivka painting style, combining her rich cultural heritage with a contemporary perspective.

Today, Inesa is аctively developing her artistic career: she has opened her Etsy shop, runs workshops, and participates in exhibitions and markets across the UK. Her work is more than decorative art — it tells a story of resilience, inner strength, and a lasting connection to her cultural roots, even though she now lives so far from home.

Thank you Inesa! For telling me your story, for the beautiful desk organizer that I bought, and for making Scotland your home.

If you are interested in Inesa’s work please look her up on Etsy or drop me a message and I will forward on.

Ukrainian art by Ness.ka
Ukrainian art by Ness.ka
Ukrainian art - desk organizer with card decks

Care time suspends the future…

I am a member of a book club run by Marian Krawczyk of the University of Glasgow End of Life Studies Group. For our last session Marian’s colleague, Naomi Richards, chose the book Intervals by Marianne Brooker.

Dr Richards, like me, takes an interest in the issue of legalized assisted dying, and this book charts the last weeks in the life of the author’s mother after her decision to end her life by voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED). Her mum was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis and suffered great pain and loss of mobility and physical independence. Had she lived in a country such as Canada or Spain, there is little doubt that she would have requested assisted dying. Indeed, as a political activist throughout her life, she was an advocate for the legalization of assisted dying in the countries of the UK.

Currently, such options do not exist. Scotland’s parliament has just rejected a Bill, and a Westminster initiative is now stalling in the House of Lords. Yet there are grey areas open to the British. The “Dignitas option” exists because Switzerland does not insist on Swiss nationality or residency. But you have to be able to travel and you have to have a lot of cash. One of the themes of Brooker’s book is how being in the economic margins (her mum eked out a living reading tarot cards online) renders everything about end of life so much harder.

Then there is VSED. You can legally choose to end your life by stopping eating and drinking. The people around you, family, carers, nurses, doctors, all have to respect such a decision taken by someone freely and of sound mind. They can help you make those last days, and in this case weeks, as comfortable and pain-free as possible. This, then, is not quite “legalized assisted dying” – though in my view, it comes very close. Perhaps we could call it “supported dying”.

Whichever way we describe it, this is no easy option, and Brooker unflinchingly describes the final days of her mum’s life as she starves and dehydrates herself to death. It is a difficult and challenging read.

Of course I took an interest in this insight into a little known route to ending one’s life legally and with a certain medical support. It is often cited by advocates of legalized assisted dying as a loophole that strengthens their case. “If someone can legally opt for VSED and receive support throughout a protracted period of suffering”, they argue, “isn’t it more humane to prescribe them something to end their life more quickly, and with greater control and dignity?”

But I found that the thing that really struck me about the book was the description of Brooker’s relationship with her mother during this intense and emotionally charged final phase. I recognized many parallels with my own situation. My mum has osteoporosis, a condition that leads to almost spontaneous “crumbling” of her bones. These cause great pain and can only be treated with time and painkillers. Following a fall in 2021, I moved in to support mum and I have been a carer ever since. Gradually my commitment has increased to the point where it is hard to leave the house for any great length of time without having to put in place some cover. And this despite having a package of care. Five times a day, two carers come in to help mum with personal care (she is unable to walk at all now) – these carers are extraordinarily professional and at the same time always good humoured and friendly. I am in awe of them and Mum looks forward to the visits of her “ladies” that punctuate her day.

The carers don’t administer drugs though. They don’t do the laundry and they don’t cook meals. And mum struggles now with anxiety and worries even when I go to the shops. So I have adapted my life to become her full-time carer. Not something I foresaw on my life plan when I was younger…

I know that mum finds life tedious now. She is confined to bed or her chair. She takes solace in the TV but seems to have given up on reading, something she once loved. She has a radio but seldom listens to it. We rarely go out now. Visitors come to the house but most of her friends are either dead or too infirm themselves to visit. It’s not a great life. However, although she is often in pain, it is less acute than the suffering of Brooker’s mum with her MS. And although mum is 91, I’m not yet sure I could say she is at “end of life”. There is a sense of limbo, a sort of indefinite finitude.

Brooker’s book is a highly personal memoir but it is also a scholarly work that deals with issues of class and gender and care. I found many of her references thought provoking. (In fact I ordered and read Simone de Beavoir’s essay, A Very Easy Death, which also deals with the care of a mother by her child at end of life – it was not, by the way, an “easy death” at all.)

One quote in particular by Professor Maria Puig de la Bellacasa of Warwick University resonated with me: “care time suspends the future and distends the present”. I have thought about this a lot, especially given that I find it is increasingly hard to plan for the future. Just taking a few days away in Glasgow becomes a complicated matter involving respite care and near-military preparation. Spontaneity becomes impossible. But I was intrigued by the reference to a “distended present”. This described something I have observed in myself – how the tasks of caring, often small in themselves, have grown to fill my days. This is not wholly negative. I find that I often lose myself in the acts of care and recognize that for my life at the moment: this is what I do.

What is more negative though is a feeling of guilt and Brooker herself defines one aspect of this in a way that hit home for me: “Grief-guilt is a creeping feeling mouldering away at the edges of reason: I did my best…. but did I really? What about that time, or this thing?”.

Thanks again to Marian and Naomi for suggesting this book. I wish I’d finished the book before the discussion – but I’m very glad I went on afterwards to read it.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Obviously as a gay, oat milk-drinking Scottish eco-celebrant I’m not qualified to speak on matters of state. I leave such things to the alpha male leaders who so skilfully guide our world. People like “Bibi”, the saintly ayatollahs… and of course the Drama Queen of Queens herself, Donald T.

But amid all the breathless excitement over the “blowing up of things”, I do sometimes think of the little people unlucky enough to have their things blown up. Some bewildered shopkeeper in Tehran or Haifa. Some hapless conscript waiting for the all-clear or the impact.

It’s hardly an original train of thought. Actually, every decent person in the whole world is thinking exactly the same. But I am the son of a seafarer, a tanker captain who in his day knew the Persian Gulf like the back of his hand. Not one to tell too many old sea yarns, he nevertheless did recall the time in some previous Gulf conflict (one forgets, doesn’t one….) when he called for help from the Royal Navy. It was refused.

So my eye was caught by this report on the stresses and fears that seafarers face on all those ships stuck in the gulf. A reminder that these huge ships that carry the oil and the gas and the fertilizer and everything else we take for granted are crewed by ordinary people just like the shopkeeper in Tehran or Dundee or Detroit.

When we write the eulogies for this particular struggle we will of course remember the noble and beloved statesmen selflessly carrying the world on their broad shoulders. But like any good celebrant would, can we also remember the “unsung heroes” sweeping up the mess after them? And a special plea for the men and women in the merchant ships, sitting targets marooned in a pointless war.

Flotsam and jetsam.

Assisted dying in Scotland and the UK

A Bill introduced to the Scottish Parliament by Liam McArthur MSP to legalize assisted dying for terminally ill people has been rejected by 69 votes to 57. This is the end of the line for this particular Bill. In England, similar proposed legislation is bogged down in the House of Lords.

However, legislation in the Isle of Man and in Jersey has been more successful. And there is an increasing number of countries and states around the world, mostly in Europe, Australasia and the Americas where some form of assisted dying is legal or decriminalized.

With elections in Scotland coming up and with polls consistently suggesting a large majority of the public in favour of assisted dying becoming legal, the issue is unlikely to go away. I’m interested in how legal assisted dying might have an impact on the work of funeral professionals such as celebrants. And I’ve conducted a couple of information workshops on the topic.

These are not debates and I try to keep my own views out of them. But they’re a chance to explore what assisted dying means in different countries and what impact it can have on funerals and grieving using some first hand experience and research from colleagues in Canada.

Now, I’ve been asked by Full Circle Funeral Directors who are based in Yorkshire, to re-run one of these sessions. Here’s a little video I made to introduce the workshop:

If you’re interested in attending the session you can find details on Eventbrite here.

Michael Hannah, Dundee, 27 March 2026

When a tree falls…

On 16 March, my friend Paul called to say that a close friend had died. He’d known her for many years and, through him, I’d met her many times.

Deborah Ballard. She was in truth something of a force of nature. Paul first met her when she was editor of the Gay Community News in Dublin. Later she moved with her partner, the musician Carole Nelson, to a house in the country in Co. Carlow. There they established a wonderful garden.

Deborah was an accomplished gardener – a real “plantswoman”. She was also a gifted writer, a poet. (In fact I have used some of her poetry in funeral services.) And together with Carole she built a place that was to become a sort of sanctuary for their many friends and contacts.

So it wasn’t surprising to me that Paul would use the phrase “a great tree has fallen…” in giving the news of her death. It’s an appropriate image. In life, a tree such as an oak is an entire ecosystem, giving food and shelter to innumerable birds and insects and spiders and fungi.

But what is also significant when we contemplate a fallen tree, is how it continues to provide food and shelter after its death. A tree doesn’t just disappear. In the lane where I live there used to be an elm. It was cut down over twenty years ago and even the stump was removed and covered with asphalt. Yet each autumn, fungi spring up through the cracks, evidence that the roots of the tree still give sustenance. I fully expect to see those traces of that great tree’s life to appear later this year. In fact, AI tells me (with suspicious precision) that a medium sized oak tree may continue to provide for between 46 and 71 years after it falls. It’d see me out!

A great tree falls but its influence and wisdom and inspiration live on.

The image I have chosen for this piece is a photograph taken by Paul himself. It is an arresting image of Deborah, the colour of her jumper merging with the leaves of a medlar tree in her garden. Deborah was already unwell when it was taken and the medlar’s leaves are ready to drop. Life and death and renewal all tangled up.

Deborah Ballard. A great tree has fallen.

for Paul Connell, March 2026.

Could it be a faded rose….?

This has been a time of anniversaries and reflection for me. I’ve been looking back over my seven years as a funeral celebrant.

Those years included the pandemic of course. It was a difficult time for bereaved families. Families were separated and in many cases, their loved ones died alone or isolated. Then on top of that, they had to decide who could attend the drastically reduced numbers allowed in a crematorium.

But other things emerged from that strange time. One of my closest friends is a photographer from Ireland. During the time of the pandemic he was living in Dublin. His closest green space, where he could escape to from the house and stretch his legs, was a cemetery.

Inevitably his photographer’s eye was drawn to the graves and the headstones and the tributes that people leave. In particular he noticed the often garish artificial flowers that people place on graves. Brightly coloured and made of plastic and fibre and wire. He began to send me photos of these. And I suppose we were both slightly mocking these tributes. Such trashy offerings!

And yet…

What Paul began to notice was that, over time, the colours began to fade. They became more subtle. Began to possess a strange beauty. And this transformation made us realize that there never was anything trashy about these flowers, however bright the colours and cheap the materials. They were placed with as much love and grief as any hothouse lily or silk paeony.

I have observed a similar transformation in funeral poetry. Of course it’s nice when a family asks me to read a classic and beautiful poem. But often they will choose something “from the internet”. And it’s not my role as a celebrant to sneer. But rather to invest those words with the emotional power that drew the family to choose them.

So they may be bad poetry and the flowers may be plastic. But they are chosen and offered with love and, just as the sunlight fades the colour into something strange, that love transforms these into something sacred.

Photos by Paul Connell, Derravaragh Studios

Water cremation is now legal in Scotland

It’s now legal in Scotland to offer aquamation funerals as an alternative to more traditional cremation or burial. Aquamation is also called water cremation, resomation or, more technically, alkaline hydrolysis. The process involves immersing the body in a strong alkaline solution in a pressurized container and heating to about 150C. So heat is still involved but it’s not burning in any real sense – it sounds a bit gruesome but the body is essentially dissolved apart from the bones, which can be pulverized (something that actually happens in ordinary cremations as well). Meaning that the family can still receive “ashes”.

This process is already legal in a number of countries including Ireland and famously South Africa. (Archbishop Tutu chose this method for his funeral.) But this is a new development for Scotland.

Proponents of aquamation say that it is more energy efficient, reduces emissions, and therefore offers an eco-friendly alternative to cremation. And of course, it doesn’t take up land in the way that cemeteries do.

But the fact of its now being legal doesn’t mean that it’s actually available here yet. Companies will have to invest in new equipment and premises. It will be interesting to see how this happens. Will existing crematoriums add this facility and offer it as an option? Will funeral directors install equipment at their premises? Will completely new “resomariums” spring up? And of course…. will it be cheaper?

These questions will have implications for funeral celebrants. If an existing crematorium adds a facility then as far as we’re concerned it may be business as usual with a funeral ceremony taking place in the chapel as always. But if new places are built to carry out these resomations, will they be modelled on crematoriums or might they be quite different and perhaps accelerate the trend to direct cremation? That trend means that any ceremony has to take place somewhere else – and this provides challenges and opportunities for celebrants.

I’m hoping to chat to some providers of resomation in other countries and I’d be really keen to hear from anyone who is thinking of developing it in Scotland – please do get in touch.

Seven years!

Today, 1 March 2026 (and St David’s Day), marks my seven-year anniversary of becoming a funeral celebrant! It’s been a most fascinating and rewarding period of my life. I’ve done a lot of different things in work down the years (never really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up….) but this has definitely been the best experience.

It has also been a time of change in the Scottish funeral. We’ve seen a huge rise in the number of celebrant-led services. A greater emphasis on the person’s life being the centre of the funeral. More imaginative approaches to ceremony. A rise in direct cremations.

Of course it was also a time of the pandemic, which affected funerals so profoundly. There were times when only six people were allowed into the crematorium – and they had to sit apart. I recall the surreal experience of driving from Dundee to Perth along a completely deserted dual carriageway to conduct a service with just two people in the chapel. I thank SICA (the Scottish Independent Celebrants’ Association) for their support during that time. (I didn’t know then that I would go on to become Chair of SICA!)

In the course of seven years you do meet a lot of families and conduct such varied services. Sometimes a eulogy practically writes itself when someone has led a full life – career, family, hobbies, travel. But there are also occasions when there seems on the surface so little to write about: “what did he do for work?”, “oh he never had a job”…. “and hobbies, pastimes?” … “no he wasn’t the hobby type”…. “lots of friends?”, “no, not really, bit of a loner”.

Of course a picture begins to emerge between those few lines. But those are both the hardest services to write and strangely perhaps, among the most rewarding from a professional and personal perspective. I’ve been dipping into the work of the poet WH Auden lately and there’s a lovely short poem called Who’s Who that captures something of that for me. The ordinary life of someone “who, say astonished critics, lived at home”.

But of all the funerals I’ve conducted over these years, the most meaningful for me was for my own friend Bryan Bale, a proud Welshman who with his usual immaculate timing, died on St David’s Day 2020. Sadly, that was just at the very start of the pandemic and we were unable to have a memorial service in person at the time as he’d requested. And as the pandemic wore on, it became clear that it might never happen so his partner and I decided to hold a zoom service on the anniversary of his death. I led that evening’s celebration of his life. As I had promised him I would. I doubt if all those assembled in that online space would have got all the (very bad!) jokes that I made. But Bryan would.

So a couple of anniversaries to reflect on today as I prepare myself to go out this afternoon and meet a family and prepare a service for the loved one they have just lost.

Michael Hannah, Dundee, St David’s Day 2026

In our time

Poetry has always played a powerful role in funerals. Celebrants will often choose or ask a family to choose a poem that captures a moment or a life perfectly, and in a few well crafted lines. Sometimes, as in the Lonely Funeral project, a poem is all that remains. Something beautiful created from a few fragments of a lonely life.

One poem that is often chosen is WH Auden’s Funeral Blues. “Stop all the clocks……He was my North, my South, my East and West”. It was read by John Hannah in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral, and no doubt that led to its being used at many farewell ceremonies. The final line capturing the anguish of grief: “I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.”

I’ve always admired the poetry of Auden and in thinking about adapting my work to addressing environmental grief, I have been reading some of his work. Not so much to “praise the mutilated world” but to explore the causes of where we are.

Auden lived through the 1930s, a time of dictators. Monsters who promised glory for their peoples and who delivered little more than ruin. Here is perhaps the most succinct description of the “strong” man, Epitaph on a Tyrant. The line about respectable senators busting with laughter at even the most pathetic attempts at humour by the great man rings especially sharply in our age of spectacle.

Epitaph on a tyrant by WH Auden - a poem on the London Underground

Epitaph on a Tyrant: written in 1939 and still sadly as relevant today.

(Poem courtesy of the Poems on the [London] Underground)

Слава Україні!

Flag of Ukraine with coat of arms

Today marks the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. It’s a strange co-incidence but it’s also the day that my Ukrainian guest, a refugee from the war, moves out of my flat and into more permanent accommodation in Dundee.

I’m sure everyone remembers those images of columns of implacable Russian forces, tanks, armoured vehicles. The crushing might of an empire bearing down with cohorts, not exactly purple and gold, but certainly like a wolf on the fold.

Of course it didn’t exactly go according to plan. Ukraine is still standing and may even be turning the tide. Russia’s military reputation is in tatters and some of its finest ships now lie safely at the bottom of the sea.

For my part, I reflect on how my guest, one of those “migrants” we are instructed to fear, has looked after my flat and left it impeccable. Has worked hard – not taken “handouts” but found work, often appallingly badly paid, and work that most Scottish people would turn down. Has contributed to our society in other ways, volunteering, generally being a good person, law abiding, caring, thoughtful….

I have my own personal anniversary coming up in a few days. On first of March it will be seven years since I first started working as a funeral celebrant. In that time I have listened to the life stories of many people. Met many families. And most of those people were basically decent good people. Flawed obviously. A few rogues of course.

A quick scan of the headlines reminds us that the people who run our world are mostly flawed rogues – all pretty shitty individuals, the Putins, the Trumps, the “princes“, the “priests”. But most of the ordinary people they rule .. basically good and decent.

Maybe not a very startling reflection after seven years of celebrancy. But it’ll do for me.

The D Word

I wanted to highlight the work of some celebrant colleagues of mine in the field of death education or death literacy in Scotland. My good friend Gillian Robertson set up the D Word with a mission:

….to increase knowledge and awareness, reduce anxiety and apprehension, and contribute to an increasingly compassionate society where talking about death is a more common and comfortable experience.

The D Word is a resource designed to be delivered by experienced celebrants to groups of any age and stage who would benefit from being supported to become familiar with what to expect when someone close dies. It is perhaps most valuable as a resource for schools. We often think that we have to protect children from the reality of death. Sadly, death is a reality and the D Word can help to build resilience through knowledge and by breaking down the fear of the unknown.

I’m delighted to see the D Word going from strength to strength and today Gillian told me that they have just launched a web site where you can find out more about their work. Gillian and I have worked together on a number of death literacy projects such as a series of staged funerals. I know this is important work and I know that the D Word will play an important role nationally in helping to create a more compassionate society in Scotland.

Very best wishes to Gillian and to Aileen Palmer, Laura Throssell, and Angela Maughan.

Michael Hannah, 23 February 2026

Reading Silent Spring

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was published in 1962. It was one of the most significant books of its time and it helped launch the environmental movement. I was very young when it first appeared but I did grow up in the 60s and 70s and I do remember the almost apocalyptic feeling of dread at what was happening to the natural world at that time.

I’m currently working on organizing climate and eco grief circles so I thought I would read the book. Does it still have a message for today’s environmental struggles and activists?

It’s a powerful read. Carson trained and worked as a scientist but she was also a fine writer and she succeeded in marshalling substantial and complex evidence and data, yet at the same time making it accessible to a wide audience. Her key theme was the indiscriminate use of chemicals during the post-war period, mainly in agriculture and forestry, and principally in the USA. These chemicals were designed to kill pests and weeds and maximize crop yields.

What struck me most forcefully in reading the accounts of one disaster after another was the sheer toxicity of the chemicals used. Today we quite understandably worry about the insidious nature of environmental pollution. How tiny amounts can accumulate over time in our bodies. And this certainly was happening back in the 50s as well. But the effects of crop spraying could be almost immediate. A plane would fly over, spraying the fields (and residential areas, towns, lakes, rivers – it was often “blanket” spraying of entire areas) and within hours, people would find their yards full of dead and dying birds. The chemicals killed the target insects…. and everything else, even pets and livestock. And since they killed all the things that ate the insects, sooner or later the pests would return, often in greater numbers than before.

Lots of people, ordinary people as well as scientists, were aware of these disasters. But Carson’s book seems to have acted as a channel or a catalyst for action. Much of the protest and action against pollution, as well as the legislation that was enacted to limit or ban the use of these chemical, stemmed from Carson’s book.

Reading it after all these years triggered a lot of thoughts. Memories of growing up in an industrial landscape scarred by mining and heavy industry. Becoming aware of the natural world – and of the threats that it faced from pollution. The struggle of the young environmental movement against well funded business interests. The slow but real progress that was made in banning the most toxic of the chemicals and of indiscriminate spraying.

But there was also a sense of weariness as we see today the same struggles having to be made. Legislation and norms to protect people are being rolled back.

And I was deeply struck by the Afterword in my edition. Written in 1998 by Linda Lear, it details how fiercely Carson was attacked at the time. The chemical lobby threatened to sue to prevent publication. They financed an expensive PR campaign to discredit Carson. It will come as no surprise that her gender was a focus for attack, she was, after all, a “hysterical woman”. One critic wrote that: “Silent Spring … kept reminding me of trying to win an argument with a woman. It cannot be done.” I suppose that’s a sort of compliment, though hardly intended as such. Tellingly, Carson was a “fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature” and (of course) she kept cats…. Some things, it seems, never change.

But despite those attacks, this important book did change minds and did usher in a new awareness and a willingness to act, even at the highest political levels. Things may look pretty bleak at the moment but I like to hope that the ultimate message of this book is that the hard difficult truth can, when presented with eloquent passion, change the world.