“We should not be smuggled out the back door but leave with honour through the front”
We care so much about life that death brings great pain and while I cannot soften that pain with tales of a next life or meeting again, what I can offer is my own presence. A meeting with a dying person or conducting a funeral is about acknowledging that pain, being present but separate.
It’s amazing how just sitting in a room with a grieving person, neither wishing his or her pain away is the single most powerful thing we can do.
It is about facilitating people who cared about a loved one in coming together to share stories and memories, meaningful readings and songs and to express their love in the form of laughter, tears, hugs and just sitting.
According to Greg Epstein, humanist chaplain in Harvard
“Death needs courage. It is so overwhelmingly final that it can fill our lives with dread and anxious fear. When it arrives at the end of a long and happy life it is never welcome, yet not deeply resented. But when it comes too soon, invading young lives, disrupting hopes and dreams, it adds anger to our fear.
We may cry out at the injustice but we need courage. Courage to accept what cannot be changed.
It is about opening ourselves to love and support, even for the last time.
Courage in affirming that exits just like entrances, have their own dignity.”
I have conducted many funerals and memorial ceremonies, sometimes meeting the person who is terminally ill and discussing his or her wants, needs and wishes for their funeral and sometimes it is about meeting with family after they have died.
I find it deeply rewarding to be able to work with someone in creating their own funeral ceremony. No doubt there is sadness and tears but you know when faced with something you have no control over, i.e. Death, it gives back some feeling of control to be able to determine your farewell and this in a strange way can be quite empowering for an individual.
Sometimes I am confronted by despair but in teasing out someone’s life story it can bring a sense of calm and peace as in “Hey, I am leaving a legacy. I will be remembered.”
What they have achieved, the lives they have lived, the bonds they have created.
It gives people a chance to reflect.
These meetings can be healing and bring a sense of peace.
When I have not met the terminally ill person I will meet with the family afterwards and take time to chat with them about their loved one, their lives and what memories and stories will be shared at the funeral ceremony.
It can be very challenging for a family member to plan a funeral that was consistent with the values of a dead loved one. There are, of course, worries about loyalty to extended family, to tradition, worries about what the neighbours will think or quite simply feelings of being overwhelmed at the thought of it all, where to start, where to go?
I have dealt with such situations and I have to say that even the most negative of relatives at a meeting have come to me after the ceremony and thanked me for the service saying it reflected the values and life of their loved one in a respectful way.
Call me on 086-322-5624 (+353-86-322-5624 if calling from abroad)
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