Dead Good Legacies

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Dead Good Legacies

Arts-based, eco deathwork & death education sisters. Here for the big conversations: death, grief, funerals, ritual. Subscribe to The Mortal Portal on Substack.

We support people to confront & celebrate their mortality through imaginative & creative work. Dead Good was co-founded by sisters Katy Vigurs and Lindsey Vigurs in 2018. Dead Good provides a range of creative and imaginative ‘death positive’ services. ‘Death positive’ means talking openly and compassionately about life, death, dying, grief, and remembrance rituals. Dead Good's services include advance funeral planning, 'Get Mortal' parties, living funerals, memorial events, personal legacy projects, and wider death education (e.g. alternative funerals, eco-funerals, DIY acts of remembrance). Our aim is to support you to participate creatively, emotionally and physically in creating meaningful legacies, rituals and farewells. We will help you to work out how you want to be remembered and what personal legacies you want to leave behind. We work with the living, the dying and the dead; with individuals, families, groups of friends, and organisations. Dead Good is based in Sunderland (UK) and covers the North East England region for face-to-face work. We offer most of our services online too.

20/01/2026

Hello, pals. KV here. If you’ve looked at this online workshop that we're running next week and thought:

“I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“I’m not very creative.”

“I don’t know if I want to talk.”

Then you’re exactly who we designed this small group workshop for.

You can come quietly.

Camera off if you prefer.

There are 6 places left.

Booking ends at midnight on Friday.

You can find out more and book your place via the link in our bio.

Or email us if Eventbrite is being weird!

hello@deadgood.org

Love you bye

19/01/2026

'The Midnight Moth' is a book that will help children practise something most adults were never taught,
how to respond to death with calm and care.

Through interactive worksheets at the back of the book, children are invited to design a memorial ceremony for the Midnight Moth.

This immersive approach helps them learn that children can create goodbye rituals too, that grief can be expressed through action, and that loss can be held quietly and gently.

This small, symbolic experience builds grief literacy, ecological awareness, and confidence around death long before most children encounter bigger losses.

A lot of adults worry about talking to children about death. The Midnight Moth doesn’t rush that conversation. It softens it. It’s a book that can grow with them. It is designed to be read slowly and revisited often.

It's for families who want honest, gentle conversations about life and death.

Could it be for you and yours? Please share with someone who this will resonate with.

The book takes flight in February.

Stay close.

LOVE YOU FLY

[8/9]

17/01/2026

Have you ever tended to your grief and losses through memorial map making?

We're running an online workshop later this month on creative approaches to grief. The session will include making your very own memorial zine that stories the places and spaces connected to someone who has died, as well as a centrefold map of remembrance.

We'd love to help you create your zine!

Your map can be imaginary like LV's memorial map for artist & film director David Lynch. Or real like LV's living tribute map for her own life. Both types of map are powerful in the context of grief.

We'll also explore a range of other creative approaches to grief during the session.

You can book your place through the Linktr.ee in our bio:

27th January 2026
7-9pm UK timezone

Love you bye

16/01/2026

Rescheduled **free** GRIEF CAFE, next Thu at 10.30am Macclesfield. With me, LV.

Bring your grief. Come and talk, listen, share, doodle or collage.

We grieve all kinds of things: not just death, dying or bereavement. All grief is valid here.

Spaces are limited to keep the group small and intimate. Its free but booking is essential to reserve your space. Book via the eventbrite link in bio or stories.

Loveyoubye

16/01/2026

Can we talk first experiences of death and how they shape us?

One of ours was in the 1980s. It was the death of a friend's pet hamster.

We were young children and living in Wolverhampton. Our friend, Rachael, lived up the street and had lots of pets, including the enigmatic Hammy the hamster.

We loved watching Hammy roaming around the house in his plastic ball. One time, he disappeared under the floorboards. Only to return covered in cobwebs and rather thinner, but he soon perked up again.

Until he died.

Hammy was given a full burial in Rachael's back garden.

His coffin was a watch case and he was buried in a border near the shed at the bottom of the garden, by a line of tall, imposing conifer trees.

Me and LV weren't there for Hammy's send-off, but we got a full account from Rachael.

A few days later, she solemnly showed us the exact spot he was buried, marked by a small stick.

I'm not quite sure how things escalated the way they did, but soon, we were digging away with garden trowels at the shallow grave until we unearthed the plastic watch box.

At this point, it felt like a successful treasure hunt.

However, when the box was popped open, we all got a horrible shock.

I think we imagined Hammy would be fully intact as if sleeping. We imagined dead but cute.

Not so.

* stop reading if squeamish *

My main memory is tufts of fur within a writhing swarm of ants.

I think LV became distressed immediately (a reasonable response). And only at this point did me & Rachael get scared that we might have stepped over some invisible, unspoken moral line.

LV must have told our mum or Rachael's mum because we got absolutely b*ll*cked.

I felt this was unfair as if we'd known about decomposition there is NO WAY we'd have exhumed the hamster.

And anyway, the adults could have perhaps considered a compostable shroud rather than a miniature coffin from Elizabeth Duke (a reference for the Argos catalogue generation - you're welcome).

I'm now wondering if this experience fuelled my fear of burial for several years to come.

R.I.P. Hammy

Want to hear more of our early experiences of death? Seek out our Puny Mortal Podcast (see Linktr.ee).

LOVE YOU BYE

15/01/2026

If you try to live a sustainable life, do you know how to have a sustainable death?

Find out how to design a funeral that won't cost the earth.

Low-carbon funerals are beautiful and they don't have to be expensive.

Let us be your eco-funeral guides, pals.

We'll show you how to have a greener goodbye.

Join us online for a 2-hour workshop next month that will allow you to design your own eco-friendly funeral.

Find out more and book your place via the Linktr.ee in our bio.

Love you bye.

14/01/2026

If you knew the end was nigh, would you want your friends, family and colleagues to contribute memories and stories to a vessel that you can then empty, read and remember?

We created a memory jar for Dad when we knew he was dying.

Our friend Carole Glover made this huge ceramic jar.

We then wrote to all the contacts in Dad's address book and invited them to send something for the jar.

Dad received something through his letterbox every day for six months.

He was thrilled.

He'd lost contact with some of these people decades ago.

His last year was one of reconnection and remembering.

He said it was the best year of his life.

Love you bye

13/01/2026

Tonight, we're running an online introductory workshop that will be a peep behind the curtain of DEAD GOOD as a non-profit business.

Tonight's session is sold out, pals.

But fear not, we're running this online session again on 5th Feb at 7pm.

Five places left at the moment for 5th Feb.

We decided to put on such a workshop because we get several requests a month for conversations about our work and how we operate as DEAD GOOD CIC.

We've added a sneaky peek at some of tonight's topics for critical reflection and discussion in the images.

So if you're thinking about setting up a death or grief focused social enterprise (or if you're in the early stages or if you're simply interested to hear our story) and you'd like to hear about our experience, decision-making and lessons learned so far, then this session will be right up your street.

Maximum 10 places to ensure small group vibes.

You can book your place through the Linktr.ee in our bio. Or email us directly to book if Eventbrite is being weird. Just drop us a message to hello@deadgood.org.

* shakes fist at Eventbrite app *

Or comment CIC below and we'll send you the booking link.

Love You Bye

12/01/2026

It's Monday Moth Day, where we tell you a bit more about the book LV has written and illustrated about death, loss, and goodbyes. We'll be launching The Midnight Moth at the beginning of February. Not long now!

There are three main characters in The Midnight Moth: Luno, M***a and the giant moth itself.

Initially, LV experimented with drawing Luno and M***a as a human boy and girl. But these depictions felt awkward and constraining from the off.

Thus began conversations about non-human characters that might fit with DEAD GOOD's values more broadly. On the back of all our IT'S OKAY TO DECAY work, mushroom bodies were naturally top of the list. A few sketches later and mycelium versions of Luno and M***a were born.

We hope such depictions help remove stereotypes, expectations, and the “rules” readers sometimes feel when looking at human representations of bodies.

Non-human characters can also soften difficult conversations. Talking about death can be challenging for children (and their adults). A non-human character who dies (spoiler: the moth dies in this story) allows children to speak about death safely and indirectly, which is likely to be especially important in early death literacy work.

Young children can discuss the Midnight Moth's death long before they’re ready to talk about real loss.

We've also had positive feedback from neurodivergent families who love the mushroom versions of Luno and M***a because their children relate more easily and deeply to animals or fantastical creatures.

Next, we decided to make the gender of the characters ambiguous to keep the story as open, flexible, and unboxed as possible. This is important because even though grief isn’t innately gendered, society and culture often treat it as if it is, which is largely unhelpful and problematic.

The book's characters also aren’t tied to social categories of race, ethnicity, class, religion or disability, which we hope means the story will travel across cultures, identities, and different families.

We hope every young child might see themselves in these small, bright beings.

How do you feel about Luno and M***a being illustrated as wee mushroom folk?

Love you bye

[7/9]

11/01/2026

I audio recorded fifty conversations with Dad in his final year.

He chose the topics and drove the conversations. I listened, asked follow-up questions, and recorded the chat on my phone. I heard so many stories I’d not been told before. LV and our mum joined us for some of the recordings too.

This created an audio archive of PFV memories to share with his grandchildren in later years. And for me to listen to when I want to hear his voice.

Our final conversation was just 45 seconds long. It is not an easy one to share.

Just my dad downstairs in a hospital bed, in the darkened family living room, and me sitting next to him on a folding wooden chair.

It’s uncomfortable to me because Dad’s voice is weak and less recognisable as my dad, and of course, listening back, I now know he was close to death. You also hear the beep of the syringe driver as well as our voices.

So why share it?

Because four days before Dad died, he asked me to record a significant wish for his funeral ceremony. This had never been mentioned before in our earlier funeral planning conversations (also recorded, but for another time).

For me, this 45 second conversation reinforces the value of talking openly about death with your kith and kin.

And I also want to share that talking with or listening to someone who is dying an ordinary and expected death does not have to be scary.

This last recording with Dad can be found on our Mortal Portal (Substack). The post is called The End.

Please don’t feel you have to listen to it. But I promise it is tender, poignant, matter-of-fact, and not at all distressing.

On the back of this conversation, we were able to conclude Dad’s funeral with these chosen lines from a Beatles song.

We also put the words on pin badges to be worn at his funeral.

Have the conversations, pals.

Love

P.S. you can find The Mortal Portal through the Linktr.ee in our bio.

10/01/2026

Last week, I added three more secondhand picture books about death and dying to DEAD GOOD'S travelling community library.

Two are entwined with nature, the seasons, gardening, the sensory and tangible family rhythms.

I love how these two depict end of life care and natural death as gentle, slow and personal. The granddad moving his wife's bed near the window so she can see her garden in her last days. The family harvesting the grandmother's lavender and filling her room full of flowers and scent before she dies. The back garden memorial ceremony.

The third book is about handed down family craft practices as griefwork, mortality contemplation and heirloom creation. The cemetery quilt stirs up uncomfortable feelings in the young Josie, but it prompts important intergenerational conversations about death, grief and the role of symbolic craft rituals.

What else jumps out at you from these pages?

Would you read these books with your young ones?

LOVE YOU BYE

09/01/2026

This is a post about the weird and wonderful things that can sometimes transpire when a member of your family is dying.

Dad surprised us in his final weeks in 2022 by saying he wanted Adagio for Strings to be played during a period of quiet reflection at his funeral ceremony. It’s a popular piece of music for funerals - simultaneously haunting and stirring.

Dad then told us about a performance of Adagio for Strings in King’s College Chapel in the late 1960s, where he had played lead double bass in the orchestra. He said it was the only time he ever performed the piece, but the memory of this particular concert had stayed with him. And we were now hearing about it for the first time a few weeks before he died.

We duly added Adagio for Strings to his funeral playlist.

Fast forward one week and we receive a text message from our mum (pic 3), just 25 days before Dad’s death. She’d only happened upon a vinyl LP recording of the exact concert Dad had been telling us about!

Dad had said NOTHING about it being recorded or owning a copy! We had no idea it existed.

Our parents hadn’t had a record player for at least 30 years. The LP was found at the bottom of a dusty plastic box of vinyl albums in the garage. Unseen and unheard for decades.

We immediately digitised it and then played it to Dad.

It was an electric, emotional moment.

Dad listened intently, eyes shut.

Listening. Remembering. Feeling.

I mean, what were the chances?

Beautifully uncanny.

What deathbed weird and uncanny coincidences have you experienced?

Love you bye

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Sunderland

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http://www.deadgood.org/, https://linktr.ee/deadgoodlegacies

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