with some of our dearly departed

02:59 Apr 14, 2019 

"Dear departed" was already used in the seventeenth century. "Dearly departed" doesn't seem to appear until the nineteenth.

02:54 Apr 14, 2019 

The beautiful passage I have quoted, which sounds old-fashioned, containing the phrase "dearly beloved", comes from the Book of Common Prayer, drafted by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and first published in 1549.

02:46 Apr 14, 2019 

This phrase, "our dearly departed", should really be "our dear departed": our deceased loved ones, those "who have departed" (i.e., "who have left us", a euphemism for "who have died") and who were/are dear to us. With "dearly", it literally means those who have departed in a manner dear to us (which, taken literally, might mean that we are glad they have died, the opposite of the intended meaning). The version with "dearly", though nonsensical, is very common, and is probably (I think) due to confusion with the very common phrase in the Anglican Christian liturgy "dearly beloved", used by the clergy when addressing the faithful, particularly in the marriage ceremony:

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation to join together this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony."

20:14 Apr 13, 2019 

In order to better understand the whole context, if you haven't already done so, you might like to search for "ouija board" to get an idea of what is going on here.

18:10 Apr 13, 2019 

A few years ago, I passed the night with friends around a Ouija board. Wine had been drunk beforehand. We spent several bewildering hours suspending disbelief while the planchette swung with gusto around the board’s alphabet, assiduously spelling out messages for us. It seemed that we could request an audience with some of our dearly departed just as efficiently as if we had called them on the phone, and each in turn appeared only too eager to communicate with us, one letter at a time.