What Remains?: Life, Death, Ritual and the Human Art of Undertaking

Death is not my friend, neither is it my enemy; it is my destiny.

"Part memoir, part rant against the traditional funeral business, part manifesto, part just musing on death and facing it with compassion and courage. It’s lovely and thoughtful and may make you rethink a few things."—The Guardian

"This book is a great work of craft and beauty."—Salena Godden, author of Mrs Death Misses Death

When he became an undertaker, Rupert Callender undertook to deal with the dead for the sake of the living. What Remains? is the brilliant, unforgettable story of the life and work of the world’s first punk undertaker—but it is also a book about ordinary, everyday humanity and our capacity to face death with courage and compassion. To say goodbye to the people we love in our own way.

In becoming the world’s first “punk undertaker” and establishing the Green Funeral Company in Devon, UK, Ru Callender and his partner Claire challenged the stilted, traditional, structured world of the funeral industry; fusing what he had learned from his own deeply personal experiences with death, with the surprising and profound answers and raw emotion he discovered in rave culture and ritual magick.

From his unresolved grief for his parents and his cultural ancestors to political and religious non-conformists, social outlaws, experimental pioneers, and acid house culture, Ru Callender has taken to an outsider “DIY” ethos to help people navigate grief and death. He has carried coffins across windswept beaches, sat in pubs with caskets on beer-stained tables, helped children fire flaming arrows into their father’s funeral pyre, turned modern occult rituals into performance art and, with the band members of KLF, is building the People’s Pyramid of bony bricks in Liverpool.

What Remains? is a profound, deeply moving, and politically charged book that will change the way readers think about life, death, and the all-important end-of-life experience.

“Rupert Callender hope[s] to redefine the funeral.”—The Telegraph

“Death has shown me unimaginable horror, the unbreakable core of love and courage that lies at the heart of what it means to be human.”—Rupert Callender, from What Remains?

Ru Callender was moved to become an undertaker through his experience of bereavement and its aftermath. He spent much of his childhood in the hospice where his mother worked, and the caring humanistic philosophy of the hospice movement is central to his work. He opened The Green Funeral Company with Claire in 2000 and the company is now among the country’s best-known eco-friendly funeral directors. In 2012, they won Joint Best Funeral Director at the first Good Funeral Awards and were described as ‘The best undertakers of all time, by a country mile’ by Good Funeral Guide author, Charles Cowling. Ru and Claire spoke at TEDx Totnes on death, grief, ritual and radical funerals. In 2021, Claire left the company and Ru continues with a new colleague.

Callender, Phillips, Cauty & Drummond: Undertakers to the Underworld was established as a partnership between The Green Funeral Company and The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (KLF) in 2017. Find out more at: www.thegreenfuneralcompany.co.uk and follow Ru on Twitter @wayswithweirds and RuCallender.com