The Good Funeral Guide

Posted by Gloria Mundi

Another opinionated passage from a sometimes-frustrated celebrant. Please remember – it’s only my opinion! So with apologies to some wonderful funeral directors I know, here goes.

I am not anti-funeral directors. I think their job is frequently stressful and demanding in ways the rest of us may hardly understand. Also, some of them (a small minority?) are open to change, and to new ideas. 

But here are a few practical suggestions and thoughts I’d like to offer to the others, because for as long as we continue to have separate funeral directors and celebrants/ministers, we really do need to get our act together.

1.     You are in a controlling situation. You phone me to tell me there is a family who might want me to work with them. That’s how it is, mostly. OK. But I want to work with you. I am not just an “additional disbursement.” In effect, I personify what the family wants for the ceremony, at this stage.

2.     If I work well, it reflects well on you. So if you care about the quality of a funeral service, you should very much care about how I do things and why. Don’t call on me because I’m convenient; work with me because I’m the right one for that family. If I’m not, then call on someone else. Please use your discretion and your judgement. You’re not just a handler of bodies and supplier of limousines. As we move towards the right, unique ceremony for these people, you’re my co-worker. Aren’t you?

3.      I know it’s a bit nerve-wracking getting the right “slot” at the crem, but will you do two things please? One – just check with me first, rather than saying “I’ve got one for you next Tuesday at 11:00.” My time may also be under pressure. Two – please get an idea about how many people might attend, and if they have any ideas about the nature of the funeral, so you can, at once, book a double time allocation if it’s needed. We can’t get 130 people in and out and have a satisfactory funeral with contributions from several people, plenty of music, a hymn and some poems in twenty rushed, anxiety-filled minutes.

4.      In fact (this should be number one) please talk to them as soon as possible about how they might approach the funeral, i.e. put the ceremony at the centre of your meeting. You see, and I’m sorry if this sounds patronising, but some of you don’t seem to get this – the sort of coffin, the announcement in the newspaper, how many cars (if any) are wanted, the flowers, the crem itself– ALL this is not the priority. It should come out of the kind of funeral they want, the sort of people they are, the sort of life that has just ended. And here’s a thought – even if there is a cremation to be carried out at some point, you can have a funeral somewhere other than a crem! Do you discuss that with them? No, I didn’t think so. Well, I can. Of course, if you’ve already booked the crem and they’ve told everyone the day and time before I can get near them, then we’re on rails again.

5.      Please don’t take a faith position as default mode for the family and the funeral. I know some of you do. “Would you like me to phone the vicar? No? Oh, well, I know this woman who can…” People without a lot of cultural confidence may well think they should fall back on the vicar, because it is somehow “proper.” Actually, that’s a bit tough on the vicar, I’d have thought. We all want to be wanted! I’m not default mode, nor is the vicar, wonderful though she may be. See number 4 above. Surely the question should be “And how much help would you like with the funeral? I’m in touch with secular celebrants, vicars, priests…” etc. And BTW, please be wary of the term “humanist.” It means little to most people, and can be confusing. If someone is or was really a Humanist, you’ll probably be told so.

6.      If, at the funeral, you sit there looking out of the window, or you are outside chatting too loudly about the football until it’s time to walk forward from the back, you won’t even know what anyone’s ceremonies are like, will you?

7.      This doesn’t often happen, but it has just happened to me, so: please don’t tell them what will happen in the ceremony, and then tell me what will happen in the ceremony, before I’ve even had a chance to meet the family and see what is emerging for them. God dammit, this thing is theirs, not ours! And I am responsible from the moment we start walking forwards at the beginning of the ceremony to the moment I leave. That bit belongs to the family, with me acting for them. I do ritual and ceremony. If you want to, fine, but let’s be clear about who does what, please!

8.      We’re getting to the crux, aren’t we? Please stop selling them a product. Find out about a ceremony, the one that is just beginning to form in their minds. Encourage that formation. Ask them to consider how much help they would like, if any, and from whom. Then phone me, or the minister, or the shaman or whoever you think fits. Then this funeral won’t be one product, with a few adjustable trimmings. We’ll have something unique that may help them for the rest of their lives.

9.      You think I’m exaggerating? Just try asking a family who has had a crap funeral ceremony. “It still haunts me.” And that’s a quote. About ten years after the event. “It was nothing. Meant nothing” Now, is that what you want to deliver?

No, because you are a compassionate human being, so let’s get working. Together. Please?

The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition

A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, Maggi Hambling, Graham Harvey, Gary Lachman, Nick Reynolds, and Dignity in Dying.

It’s out in May 2012!

Martin and Julie Chatfield run one of Britain’s loveliest natural burial grounds. 

Yesterday’s funeral featured this hand-painted cardboard coffin. 

It was sourced by David Albery, of Exeter and District Funeral Services (a GFG recommended funeral director), who was looking after Catherine. The family took it home and painted it, then handed it back to David, who did the needful. On  the day of the funeral he brought Catherine to Martin and Julie’s log cabin at the burial ground, and left. 

The family arrived and decorated the cabin. Martin showed them how to carry and lower the coffin, and pointed out the grave, which was bedded with lovely bright wheat straw. He then left them to it.

A little later,  humanist celebrant Alison Orchard arrived. There was a ceremony, then the coffin was borne by members of the family to the grave. A few last words were spoken and the coffin lowered. 

Alison left. The family had a cuppa and a bite to eat back at the log cabin before departing.

So ended a funeral owned by a self-empowered family, facilitated by sensitive, hands-off professionals.

The person who painted the coffin wants it to be an inspiration to others.

So do, please, leave a comment. He’ll be reading this and deserves to know how lovely it is. 

Click the pictures to bring them up to full size. 

Find Martin and Julie’s burial ground, Crossways, here. 

Find David Albery here. 

By Richard Rawlinson

Today’s elderly, even when not religious, are more likely to choose a funeral conducted by a priest (pastor/vicar depending on denomination) than a secular celebrant. Given the choice between a person in a robe or business suit, they opt for the former. Their decision seems as natural to them as taking the dog to the vet rather than the local homoeopath on yell.com, even if they were aware of the alternative choice.

This generational conventionalism is set to be eroded in the years to come as today’s middle aged – more strident in their secularism – plan their send-offs. Instead of feeling comforted by the involvement of those in holy orders, many see the religiosity of the ensuing services as more hindrance than help: they don’t feel the need for prayers for their immortal souls; the division of limelight between God and the deceased might bore their attendant family and friends; and, worse still, some priests seem to jump at the opportunity to proselytise to this captive audience of non-churchgoers. Rarely successfully.  

So the swords are crossed. Teams huddle to plan strategy. Neither opponent is in it for financial reward, although they’d both welcome a steadier stream of cheques from those who choose their service. At the moment, the priests have the virtual monopoly (about 465,000 of the 500,000 who die in the UK each year, according to the National Association of Funeral Directors). But for how long?

The motives on both sides are honourable by and large. They want to give the deceased and bereaved the funeral they deserve: smooth-running, comforting, memorable, moving, inspiring, beautiful, profound. If any professional pride comes into play, it’s because they’re aware of the inherent communication skills, charisma and hard graft required to pull off such a feat.

The clergy assess their situation. It’s important to remind ourselves here that priests come in all forms from the extremes of progressive and conservative to varying shades in the middle. To complicate human nature further, all types can seem loving, intelligent and charismatic to some, and annoying to others. A darling of liberals might seem muddled to the traditionalist. Muscular orthodoxy might seem intrusive and domineering to those who prefer TV’s amiable Rev. What’s more, whether woolly or forthright, both camps can be either good or bad communicators: some people literally exude star quality, others lead us to assume they must have had their heads shoved down the lavatory at school.

When addressing the slow but steady loss to civil celebrants of funerals within their parish community, it’s inevitable there’s disagreement among these men (and women) in holy orders about the best ways to keep death ritual in the religious sphere.

They may comfort themselves that funeral directors still tend to put most ‘business’ their way (more blogs on why this is, please). Clergy might also feel at an advantage as they don’t just deal professionally in death like some in the funeral industry: they’re the shepherds of living parishioners, who they see at church and during school and hospital visits; who they baptise, confirm, marry and counsel in times of need. Their churches are not linked only to dying and visited under duress like the crematoria.

But they’d be unwise to be complacent about the growing demand for good secular celebrants. Like the clergy, these celebrants come in various shapes and sizes. Some appeal to the more forthright atheist, others – believing in bespoke service – more readily tailor their service to audiences made of different faiths and none, perhaps going along with requests for prayers, hymns, and so forth.    

This in some ways places them head to head with the more liberal members of the clergy, those who are keen to adapt to mixed congregations, both atheist-lites and those simply without strong religious convictions. In ‘market’ terms, this is rich picking. Of the four in 10 Brits who claim membership of the Church of England, it’s clear many are secularists, who increasingly see hypocrisy in using their church simply for baptisms, weddings, funerals and the Christmas carol service. The NAFD has confirmed that most of those choosing non-religious funerals were ‘hatch, match, dispatch’ Protestants, whereas lapsed Catholics remain more likely to uphold the ceremonial traditions of their forefathers, hedging their bets, so to speak.

This leads to consideration of various ongoing debates here at GFG: the discussion about secular ritual, whether religion-inspired or not; the shared, non-denominational nature of crematoria, and the call for faith groups to adjust to mixed funeral audiences.

The latter discussion point, in particular, depends on personal taste. I’d happily pay respects at a secular or multi-faith funeral at a crematorium, but I’d choose for myself a requiem mass in a Catholic church followed by a graveside committal on consecrated ground. I’d want less emphasis on eulogy in the homily, and more on praying for my immortal soul in Purgatory. Loved ones can celebrate my life before and after the mass, if they so wish, but I’d hope, whether they’re secular or from a different faith group, they’d accept my wish to keep the sacred mass centred on (my) God.

It should not be a ‘duty’ to homogenise all funerals to make them inclusive of all. When the culture is strong, it trumps good manners. When the culture is not a heartfelt issue, then general consensus can take over. There’s a difference between multicultural society and pluralist society. In society, cultures do not all mix as one homogenous whole but they should be able to coexist peacefully with their different cultures respected by others.

A multifaith funeral may indeed be a good thing, perhaps for the majority today. But, for the minority of resolute religious or indeed militant atheists, there will always be some things too important to compromise.

This has been the case with decades of ecumenical conferences held by different Christian denominations striving unrealistically for unity on key issues. Ecumenism more often than not means disparate groups getting together to proselytise their own cause. I’d rather a smaller Church that’s not diluted than a bigger Church that’s lost its meaning. 

Ed’s note: If this has got you thinking, you may be interested in a Muslim view of traditional religious funeral culture vs the way we are today. Here’s a taster: “For the first time in my life, I really needed religion to give me solace, but here I was, listening to an unfamiliar language where the word “devil” kept popping up, alarming rather than comforting me.” Full article in the Guardian here. 

Image from the Purple Funeral Company

Though secular people are increasingly saying no to a religious funeral, we note that it’s taking them forever to do it. Why so?

Because, though they reject the theology, they like the ritual. Ritual is the antidote to chaos. It brings order. Everyone knows what to do. When death turns our life upside down, convention conquers confusion.

Which is why the Victorian funeral procession is still with us, too, albeit vestigially. Our modern grieving style does not go in for the same vulgar ostentation, and modern traffic has made stately procession mostly impossible, but we can still travel the first and the last twenty yards in reasonably good order just about, and people cling to that because, dammit, the way to do it is the way it’s always been done.

Once the undertaker and his or her bearers have bowed deeply and departed, that’s where, at a secular funeral, familiarity flies out of the window. Up steps the celebrant and no one knows what the heck to expect. And though the verdict of the audience afterwards may be that they liked the negative quality of the ceremony – it gave the dead person, not god, star billing – I think they often go home nursing a secret disappointment, a sense of something missing. 

They miss the familiar script. Because they feel a funeral should be a custom.

Which is why they like the traditional dressing-up, the undertaker, clad in the garb of a Victorian gentleperson, handing over to someone dressed in medieval vestments. Secular civvies just don’t cut it – too dowdy, too individuated.

People miss the heightened, numinous language.

They miss the non-verbal elements of a proper ceremony: symbolism, movement, the elements that make for a sense of occasion, a sense of theatre, the transfiguration of the ordinary.

Because at a time like this they need ritual.

Secular celebrants take upon themselves an intolerable burden. It takes disparate qualities to be a good celebrant: intelligence, empathy, writing skills, inexhaustible powers of origination, a feel for theatre and the ability to hold an audience. It’s too hard. In a secular ceremony the celebrant is often a solo performer. That’s not the case in a ritual. In a ritual, the celebrant is an actor uttering familiar words, and is merely pre-eminent in an ensemble performance which involves all present. In a ritual, the celebrant may not be an awfully good actor – but Hamlet is still Hamlet. Here’s the point: in a ritual, a superb celebrant is a bonus, not the be all and end all.

Unique funerals for unique people. It’s a lovely idea. But come on, no one to whom death has happened actually wants a celebrant sitting on their sofa, sipping tea, saying brightly, ‘You can do what you like – we start with a blank piece of paper!’ When your brain is in bits that’s one of the most unhelpful things anyone could say to you.

Can a celebrant really reinvent the wheel every time he or she creates a ceremony? Of course not. Unique funerals for unique people is a pipedream, and the time has come to declare the experiment a partial success but an overall failure because it meant chucking out the baby with the bathwater.

Which is why secularists need now to move on and devise their own liturgy – or, if you prefer, something generic, formulaic, recycled, polished and proud of it, because that’s what a liturgy is.

Is it really possible to achieve a good funeral without improvising every time someone dies? Can a secular liturgy be both personal and universal? Can it be prescriptive and adaptable?

Why not? Religious ceremonies do it all the time. And the eulogy will always be the centrepiece.

A good secular ritual will be well-plotted, of course, and like all good rituals it will be a purposeful, meaningful journey.

It will visit places along the way which participants may find difficult, but which they will be glad they did. This is the nature of ritual: in order to be therapeutic it must sometimes be medicinal.

It will unashamedly plagiarise other rituals.

It will be created by a team of sorts in the spirit of the creators of the King James Bible:

Neither did we disdain to revise that which we had done, and to bring back to the anvil that which we had hammered: but having and using as great helps as were needful, and fearing no reproach for slowness, nor coveting praise for expedition, we have at the length, through the good hand of the Lord upon us, brought the work to that pass that you see.

It will happen. Some people want to create their own funerals from scratch; most don’t. 

Presently serving the bereaved of Essex and Suffolk we have a new concept in funeral service, the professional mourner. They’re called Rent a Mourner, we wish them every possible success, and you can find them here.

Did we say new? There’s nothing new in Funeralworld. Every innovation is an act of necromancy. In our scholarly and vigilant way we have covered this business of rentasob before, here and here.

And because our curiosity, like yours, is global, you may be interested to know what the market looks like in China.

One can make a decent amount of money being a proxy mourner … Wailers actually belong to an ancient profession that now keeps a low profile thanks to its singular characteristics. InChongqingandChengdu, wailers and their special bands have, over the course of more than a decade, developed into a professional, competitive market … wailers are predominantly laid-off workers.

Wailing is an ancient funeral custom. Texts show that dirges began to be used in ceremonies during the time of Emperor Wu of Han and became commonplace during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Customs varied across ethnicities and regions. During the Cultural Revolution, wailing was viewed a pernicious feudal poison and went silent. In the reform era, it was revived in a number of areas.

Hu Xinglian’s hair is tied into pigtails pointing up in opposite directions. Her stage name means “Dragonfly” … and the two pigtails, which resemble dragonfly wings, are her trademark. She is fifty-two years old, and she is a professional wailer.

Before the ceremony begins, she asks the family of the deceased about the situation. She must do this every time. She says that wailers usually put on some makeup and wear white mourning clothes. Some of them are more elaborate, with white stage costumes and “jeweled” headdresses.

Hu calls the family of the deceased into the mourning hall and begins to read the eulogy. There is a formula to the eulogy that is adapted to the particular circumstances of the deceased. Most of these say how hard-working and beloved the deceased was, and how much they loved their children. The eulogy requires a sorrowful tone and a rhythmic cadence. As Hu reads, she sometimes howls “dad” or “mom.” And then the bereaved begin to cry as they kneel before the coffin.

Hu on the job

After the eulogy comes the wailing, a song sung in a crying voice to the accompaniment of mournful music. Hu says that the purpose of this part is mainly to create a melancholy atmosphere which will allow the family to release their sadness through tears.

Hu says that more time is devoted to wailing in the countryside. In video recordings, Hu can be seen howling, weeping with her eyes covered, and at times crawling on the ground in front of the coffin in an display of sorrow. At some funerals, she crawls for several meters as she weeps. This never fails to move the mourners. As she wails, the family of the deceased sob, and some of them weep uncontrollably.

After the wailing is done, the second part of the funeral performance begins. Hu says that a funeral performance is usually sad in the beginning and happy at the end. Once sorrow has been released through tears, then the bereaved can temporarily forget their sorrow through skits and songs.

She says that the performance is draining to both mind and body. When she wails, she says, “My hands and feed twitch, my heart aches, and my eyes go dim.” Wailing has more lasting effects, too: Hu says that her hands have gone numb from time to time over the past year.

Like many wailers, Hu also performs at weddings. She says that because of the transitions between such high-intensity work, wailers are liable to make mistakes. For example, if the line “Would the new couple please enter the mourning hall” is let slip at a wedding, that mistake would mean the forfeiture of the fee, and a beating as well. [Source]

Back to Rent a Mourner, we can’t help thinking that, in preference to bringing another separate specialism to the grief market, it might make more sense for secular celebrants to offer a joined up service here.

Views?

From a practising funeral celebrant, more opinionated stuff that possibly needs a health warning: it’s only what I think.

I’m not really sure why we do it – I’m sure we have many very different conscious reasons and less self-aware motivations. As Freud, Jung, Adler and Frankl all said, or if they didn’t, they should have: our motives are opaque unto ourselves. If you think you’ve understood your own motives in something as complex as this, then your motives have probably just skipped a step or two further back into the mists. Anyway, here’s a few pointers through the murk:

• *     We do it because for some strange reason we can do it, this odd thing. It’s difficult, demanding, fascinating, and

• 
  
• *     No, we don’t do it just for the money. We’re not that stupid.  
•   
• *     It needs doing, if people are to have more freedom and choice about an important event. That’s the ideological motivation. Not everyone’s spiritual needs (or atheistical requirements) can be well served by ordained ministers of religion.
• 
  

• *     It’s intensely interesting, the patterns of all these lives and their endings. Many “ordinary” lives are not in the least ordinary. It is a privilege to help mark their ending.
• 
  

• *     The job flatters or completes our egos; it feels good to be wanted, at a time of crisis in people’s lives. People are mostly very appreciative; the bond between us and a family is brief but it can suddenly feel very warm, very strong. If we’re doing the job well, we have to share a little of their grief, and feel some love for them. So it’s a bit deeper than flattery, but the mists are swirling, so I’ll move on…
• 
  

• *     No, hang on, let’s look into that: maybe we get a charge out of being close to some strangers for a short and intense period, and then we can – have to – move on; we’re compassion tarts, sentiment junkies, it makes our own lives more intense. And that sense of heightened meaning, contact with an absolute, is very addictive.
• 
  

• *     It helps us to explore our own mortality and to come to terms better with the prospect of our own deaths. So we’re trying to work through fears of our own about death, by a kind of familiarisation therapy.
• 
  

• *     Following on from that: we are close to death at funerals, but afterwards we are still here; after a successful funeral, we feel a sense of achievement, even a small victory. We’ve helped some people find meaning when death has taken away someone who meant a lot to them. Not a victory over death itself, of course, but over the desolation and emptiness it creates.
• 
  

• *     We like the attention – it’s a small-scale public event, and they sure as hell pay attention to you, even if many of them won’t remember a word.
• 
  

• *     We are chronic melancholics and we like hanging around graves and crematoria, wearing black and looking profound – sort of doing a Hamlet: “Alas, poor Yorick! I never knew him Horatio, but he sounds to me like a fellow of infinite jest, why, his family were telling me just the other day they well remember the time he…”
• 
  

• *     We’re disgusted by what we see as the emotionally stifling conventions of the funeral business and our culture’s mortality aversion. We want to open it right out, because we can see a way it can be done better, a way that can enrich people’s lives, honour their deaths, and be use to their grieving.
• 
  

• *     Oh, and (let’s be fair to ourselves): It’s good to feel you’ve helped some people, and done a good job for them for a fee that is not extortionate. If, of course, you have done a good job…
• 
  

It’s interesting how many celebrants I know moved into the role after some profound and distressing experience – a near-death illness, the death of someone or some people close to them. I very much respect that. Which raises the question: can you be a successful celebrant if you haven’t been bereaved? Don’t know – guess so, but I do think our own losses can make a bridge for our empathy and compassion.

Posted by Belinda Forbes

From the moment I had booked myself onto a course to become a secular funeral celebrant, it started happening.  Like when you get married, get pregnant or get a puppy.  Suddenly everywhere you turn, it’s about weddings, what the expectant mum shouldn’t eat or drink, and how you should never play tug of war with a puppy.  Oops!  Too late.

So, three years ago, having resigned from my job as a teacher, I was looking forward to my course on writing and conducting non-religious funerals when I read an article in the Sunday Times.  To sum it up, the non-religious journalist Minette Marrin extols the virtues of tradition and religion for funeral ceremonies.

http://www.minettemarrin.com/minettemarrin/2008/08/im-not-religiou.html

I was so annoyed, I wrote to her: 

Your article, “I’m not religious, but there’s something about funerals” makes the point that non-religious funerals do not quite hit the mark and are not a proper end.    Most funerals I have attended were Christian ceremonies, and in almost every case the deceased was not a practising Christian.  The passages from the Bible have been anything but comforting for the majority of non-religious people in the congregation.  At my grandfather’s funeral, a dreadful passage from Revelations was read out.  At my grandmother’s funeral, the vicar referred to her as ‘Kay’ throughout – her name was Kathleen!  …We cannot all have a handsome Victorian Gothic church and Harold Pinter reading a poem.  But we can choose a fitting farewell whether religious or not.

She replied:

…Each to her own, I guess, as far as funerals go.  I think it’s very hard at the last moment, in the middle of grief, to make decisions, and if no one has taken them before, then convention is good to fall back on. I think the words of the prayer book are very beautiful, and give me a sense of connection with the past and other funerals, but I entirely take your point.

With best wishes

Minette Marrin

Although I was impressed that she had taken the trouble to reply, I was still annoyed.  However, three years later, I look back at my pre-celebrant self and smile.  I am annoyed no longer.  If an atheist wants a traditional Anglican service in his village church, why not?  If a Roman Catholic wants to be cremated and asks me, an atheist celebrant, to conduct the service, why not?

And thank you Minette for replying!  In many years to come, may you have the send-off you have asked for.

Posted by Jonathan

A celebrant said today:

“Even when funerals are designed to be a celebration of life, I nearly always begin by acknowledging people’s grief and sadness.”

Jose (see his thought provoking blog post of 19^th September), ever enquiring and studiously leaving no stone unturned, wants to know about incorporating grieving and celebration of life in the same goodbye ceremony.  His tenaciousness is stimulating for us celebrants, who must every day question our way forward.

His query:  “Which are the elements that you use afterwards to move the mourners and their emotions to a more positive feeling?” is not an easy one to answer.  I never thought of it in terms of involving ‘elements’, and I never thought of grief as being any less positive than celebration of life.

Grief has to do with sadness, not unhappiness.  There’s a big difference between the two. Unhappiness is isolating and unattractive and faces towards depression.  We’ve all been there.  It’s not grieving, it’s self pity.  Sadness, particularly about death, is beautiful even when it’s unbearable.  It’s feeling sorry not for yourself but for your loss – loss is not separate from you, but it is not you; it encompasses you, and it’s helpful to share it with others. We’ve all been there, too.  It is a noble feeling, and one I certainly wouldn’t want to be deprived of after even a tragic loss.

Following the last funeral I conducted, when I was trying to ‘let it go’, I found I couldn’t do so until I’d understood what it had taught me.  I was feeling uncharacteristically sad that it had ended, but I didn’t want to stop feeling sad because I knew if I did I’d miss something very important.  So I sat at the pavement table outside a café, watched the human beings go by with all their inner concerns showing or not showing, had a fag and a double espresso, and I thought deeply and wrote down what these last ten days of ‘funereality’ had given me.  Why was I reluctant to release it, this recent experience that my sadness was holding so close to me? 

It was only then, after I’d understood just what I was losing, that I was prepared to say goodbye to it and feel glad I’d had it while I did.  That’s what a good funeral does, too.  You could say it bequeaths you with a greater energy, a wisdom, as this did for me.  It crystallized into a poem, which I kept to remind me why I do this (and incidentally why, unlike some bereavement workers tell me they feel, I actually find myself energized rather than burnt near the furnace of recent death).  It also approaches the matter of our relationship with, and our role in, others’ grief, so I can happily share it with you here:

‘The funeral nourishes me
by embrace in the humanity of strangers.

I relieve them of their bewilderment
and reveal them to themselves in the majesty of their pain,
with words, with voice, with actions.

I touch their hurting hearts
to know they are not in isolation;
that their own grief is universal;
that healing lets love in and does not banish it;
that anguish is their invited guest;
that tomorrow will still come.

And then I leave.’

OK, I was only losing an experience, not a real live person, but the principle is the same; you have to be aware of what and whom you have lost, and the desirable pain to which love commits you, to move you on from just the raw feeling of pure loss before you can celebrate what you did have and what you still will have.  The pain of loss doesn’t go away with celebration of life.  It just becomes less overwhelming and more manageable when you’ve identified your loss, and understood that you still have something real and priceless, yours to keep.  And it brings to your attention that we are all human, and that this is the deal.

If a bad funeral damages you by making you unhappy, that detracts nothing from the healing value of a good one, even a good sad one.  And I think there’s something to do with loyalty where grief is concerned.  We can’t in good conscience abandon our dead by just getting intoxicated at a hooray party, any more than we could by indulging in the misery of a self pitying orgy, or going through the motions of an irrelevant tradition. 

Our dead leave us through no fault of their own.  We have to include their absence in our funeral for them, painful as it is, and I believe we owe them our mourning as much as our appreciation.

First posted by Charles on 9 Feb 2010

I’m putting this back up as a contribution to recent debates started by Jose and Richard.

Following my post about the ineptitude and ineffectiveness of words, I stumbled on this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald. It’s actually about citizenship ceremonies, but you’d never guess it from the way I’ve plucked the extracts:

Traditionally, ritual, including rites of passage, is embedded in our religious culture. And it is true that religion seems to have a competitive advantage when it comes to this stuff. Religions have been practising their liturgy for a long time. The godly are very good at all of the non-verbal aspects of ritual from bells and smells to crazy cozies to speaking in tongues. Great ceremony is about an absence of speeches and many faiths get this.

Moreover, the godly have the advantage that they feel that they are consecrating their rites in the presence of their transcendent God. That ineluctably gives an ineffable power to the ceremony. The godless will obviously struggle to match that attribute of faith. And we need to get better at the non-verbal stuff. We atheists can talk the leg off a chair but we can’t sing or chant or dance the leg off an amputee.

Now a real rite of passage doesn’t just rejoice in change. It is the change. A ceremony which merely celebrates but doesn’t cause the change is not strictly a rite of passage. Graduation ceremonies from university are rites of passage because you don’t get the damned piece of paper without enduring the ceremony. On this definition, school graduations strictly aren’t rites of passage because the exam marks after the ceremony are the life-changing event, not the school graduation or valedictory service. So funerals aren’t strictly rites of passage because unless you’re a time traveller, your funeral won’t end your life, just celebrate it.

We, of the secular world, often fail to employ those non-verbal rituals that make a ceremony. You can easily cock up even the most moving event by speeches. During my days of municipal service, these ceremonies meandered between inspirational and pedestrian. The pedestrian bits were inevitably the speeches. The best bits were non-verbal – the Mayoral handshake, the familial hugging, the singing of the national anthem, the presentation of the symbolic wattle and the giving of certificate. All of these had no words merely music or actions.

Religions don’t have a monopoly on rites of passage but they do them better than us. The secular world needs to learn more about celebrating without speeches. We need to have rituals we perform together and not passively watch. I think we are still a century or so away from really learning these skills.

At the heart of great ceremony is performance that is not normal. Normal is pedestrian. Words are dull. We need transforming ceremony and that requires anything but speeches.

Read the whole article here.