Lauren Bacall has died.

Did you see Brian Blessed on the 'Who do you think your are' programme nellie.He found the paupers grave where his great [?]grandparents were buried together and said how peaceful he found it. Then went to his grand [?] fathers grave and cried for the first time in his life. Ok; he's an 'aktor', but I didn't feel he was playing to the cameras. I went to great lengths to get my mums ashes interred within the family grave, and my dads were scattered on the top [he'd died12 weeks later]. I was relatively young when it happened but it was very important to me where they were buried and who they were buried with I and felt a great sense of peace and closure by it. My in laws were buried in 'the wrong place' and it bothers me to this day.

I feel that it does help at a funeral or whenever to think of someone being reunited with a much loved partner, or whoever, and to be able to picture them being reunited. After my mother died, my father was SO bereft, like a ship that had lost it's anchor, (my mother would have been the same the other way round,) and when he died some 8 months later, I did feel that they were reunited somewhere and at peace together. I had worried so much during those 8 months (my parents were buried) that my poor mother was so cold and lonely in that grave, that I simply had to visit her as often as I could, (daft I know!!) Once my father was buried with her, (they had a double grave) I felt that they were together and content. I don't visit their grave very often any more, but they have each other, and don't need me.

I'm very ambivalent about the existence or not of an afterlife feetle but I just feel that some people are such strong characters that they must be going on somewhere.

I'm not religious so therefore can't really believe in any sort of afterlife, but I have always felt that, when someone dies, they are reunited with people they have loved. Can't explain why I feel it, though [but I do].

The whimsy would have been in imagining those two partying away somewhere in the ether, having been reunited at long last.

Nothing to do with mitigating loss as I doubt whether any GNetters feel that strongly about Ms Bacall's death!

@Ana - Hmmm - Death doesn't strike me as particularly whimsical. But there is always somebody at a funeral who'll talk about how 'old Fred' will be 'up there now' possibly with 'old Bert'... as though that's supposed to mitigate people's feelings of loss!

It seems to me that death is the new obscenity, now that people feel free to talk sensibly about sex and kindred matters, we still have to pussy-foot around our somewhat unpalatable end and disposal.

Anyway, I was tired when I wrote my earlier post!

Katharine Hepburn was another hero of mine. The Lauren Bacall interviews with Parkinson were stand out ones [along with Mohammed Ali and that lady from the Salvation Army].

Yes, I hope her films will be shown to commemorate Lauren Bacall. She was an inspiration to me, during my early teens when over exposure to Doris Day type movies made me despair about female role models. I didn't know that's what women I admired would be called of course, I just knew I didn't want to be the kind of fluffy 50's house wife the tv/cinema seemed to portray as how women should behave, and look.

Oh I so agree whenim ! Looking forward to curling up watching all her films.

I listened to part of a witty interview with Michael Parkinson at teatime - one of several he did with her over the years. She was charismatic and funny, and the way he interviewed her brought out the best in her. I hope to see much more over the next few weeks. She was a fantastic woman.

They sure don't make them like that anymore.

Oh, get in touch with your whimsical side, feetle

But... they're both dead...

Such a stylish woman. So elegant and witty. I bet she and Bogie will be partying tonight

I did like Lauren Bacall. Loved watching her sending Michael Parkinson into a tizzy - he clearly adored her. A great, feisty woman.