COVER STORY
Last orders We plan for every aspect of our lives – education, career paths, finances, holidays – yet, writes JULIE LAKE, when it comes to our funeral, most of us leave the job to somebody else.
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utting together an appropriate funeral that reflects the life of the dear departed can be a considerable burden on families if only minimal – often no – instructions have been left. I know a woman who has planned her funeral to the smallest detail. She has chosen the funeral director, the location, the style of memorial (celebration rather than service) and the music. She has even written – and recorded – her own eulogy. Everything is put together on paper, clipped to her will, and also on flash drives which have already been given to each of her children. There is absolutely nothing for anyone to do after death except to carry
out her wishes as clearly specified. “When you get to the age of realising that nobody gets out of this life alive, you’ve already been to a lot of funerals and seen just how badly some of them can be done and how little they reflect the life or character of the deceased,” she says. “I’ve seen brothers and sisters quarrelling fiercely over how best to give their mother or father the right kind of send-off. I’ve seen newly-made widows and widowers too grief-stricken to make rational decisions. The only person who can really decide how it should be done is you!” And these days, we have a wealth of
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4 YOUR TIME MAGAZINE / May 2018
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choice when it comes to saying our goodbyes in style. Of course the conventionally religious have it easy because they can opt for the traditional church and service of their faith. For the rest, the sky is literally the limit because some have even opted to have their ashes scattered over the sea or some other beloved place from a plane. Fortunately, today’s funeral directors, responsible under law for the postmortem basics, are a flexible lot and ready to consider just about anything in the way of a memorial except for the illegal and the distasteful. Dean Gregson of a long-established family firm of funeral directors, says he likes the way in which funerals have changed from the sombre traditional service where the name of the deceased might be mentioned only once or twice to today’s customised event with input from family and friends. He says the latter is very important and those who refuse to consider their own demise and say they “don’t want any fuss” need to understand that the friends and relatives left behind need a ceremony of some kind, however modest, for closure. Community celebrant Sandra Hardie agrees, though she finds the term “closure” rather too final and prefers to think of her role as helping the bereaved accept their loss. Sandra, author of the hilarious Diary of a Menopausal Poet is now writing a book on dealing with bereavement and says that funerals/memorials are not for those who have died but for those left behind. She lists the most important points when planning your own funeral as: • Tell your stories when you are alive. Share these with family and friends. • Write down what you don’t say – including any instructions for your memorial service or life celebration.
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• Put everything in a box (Sandra says she is a tactile person and prefers this to digital storage), including photos, documents, favourite songs and anything else that can be used after your death to construct a relevant service to remember you by. • Don’t make it too long. “The mind can only absorb what the bum can handle” she says, no doubt remembering, as we all do, those memorial services that drag on drearily to the stage where grief is replaced by a sore bottom and boredom! “One of the most important aspects of any funeral ceremony,” Sandra says, “Is that it contains both laughter and tears”. “What’s more, people are multidimensional and your memorial needs to reflect the several different aspects of your life because those attending will each see you differently, depending on your shared relationship. Often they are surprised to learn things about you that they never knew before”. As with weddings and other celebrations, themed funerals have become very popular so If Star Wars is your favourite movie you could get all the guests to come as characters from the series – you could even take part yourself, lying there in an open coffin dressed as Darth Vader. It has been done! In fact as Dean Gregson says, when it comes to customised funerals “there is nothing different; it just hasn’t been done yet”. And to suit the theme of your choice you can have a personalised coffin made by a specialist company – no more sombre mahogany and polished brass but something environmentally-friendly in a bright colour, maybe with a motif to represent your interests – sport and music being two popular choices. Secular music and photographs have become standard at most memorial services today but if you don’t want the choice of both to be left to others, it’s a
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