Regular readers (thank you!) will know that I greatly fear complacency. Every ceremony should have the balance between experience (knowing where the buttons are, being able to calmly lead if needed) and that feeling that this is the first funeral.
After all, for the deceased, it is.
Being the sort of person who likes to keep files containing great phrases that I've picked up along the way, I am well aware that, if necessary, I could knock a ceremony together (excluding the tribute) in twenty minutes, just cutting and pasting. However, I am also well aware that the day I do, is the day that I should hang up by black suit and go back to fannying around with spreadsheets.
So again, how do we get the balance right?
I've been through a couple of similar experiences which, I hope, have kept the words fresh.
Firstly, I was mentoring a new celebrant. Just knowing that I was sending them every funeral that I wrote was enough for me to stop and think about repetition. After all, the family may not have heard it before, but if the (then) trainee had, it made me question if it was right for that family, that "loved one", that situation.
On a similar vein, I have a funeral director who uses me quite regularly (and we love him for that!) and he makes a point of sitting in on every ceremony. Not for him the crafty fag, or the twenty minute opportunity to catch up on phone calls. No, he sits there, keeping an eye on the congregation and making sure that everything is going fine. (It won't surprise readers to know that this is another of Charles's recommended funeral directors)
I don't pretend that he listens to every word that I say, but that fact that he could, is a good discipline for me. It makes me look for those new words, innovative turns of phrase, interesting ways of tying in those "thoughts on life and death" to the family in question.
And for this, I thank him.
There may be people reading this who are horrified. Well, folks, stuff does get re-used. Lots of people want the Joyce Grenfell poem read, or "She is gone". And that's fine - as long as we deliver them as though for an opening night, after rehearsal, but without monotony.
Apologies, I think I'm going over old ground here, but after a week of six funerals (when I read "S/he is gone" at least three times), I feel this need to remind myself of the need to keep fresh and my occasional ability to do it!
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5 comments:
X piry, we all reuse stuff, even sanctamonious old me. A good phrase is too good to be used just once. And a service cannot be completely constructed from nowt each time.
It took me several years of funeral directing to actually work out that the other funeral directors didn't sit in on the service. I mean, how extraordinary is that? How could have thought that a funeral director would miss the actual funeral? There lies the problem with the industry. A passing back and forth of the buck between undertaker and minister, stopping nowhere.
Thanks, Rupert.
I wonder if many FDs don't sit in because, in the bad old days, one funeral was very much like another? I'm thinking back to the times of the duty vicar who would spent his day at the crematorium, simply "inserting name of deceased here....".
Hopefully, we've moved on from there.
Interesting what you say about buck passing, though. My understanding has always been that from the moment the FD closes the door, until I open the exit door, the ceremony is my responsibility and so any over-running speakers etc are my problem to deal with.
When the FD sits in, however, I am conscious of "stepping on his toes", and am probably less like to take action/make an executive decision than when he is absent.
I realise that problems are rare and, with a quick bit of communication, they can be resolved in most cases, but you raise an interesting point, thank you.
I agree that responsibility for the ceremony lies with you, but what about something else? Someone faints, the coffin comes adrift (somehow..) a child is sick/gets bored etc. We often look after bored toddlers, and at one home burial in a marquee at the family home, my wife had to take care of a persistent collie who kept happily approaching the congregation and the minister and expectently dropping a ball at his feet. She started throwing the ball as far away as she could, but being a bloody collie and smarter than all of us, it soon worked out her plan and ran away with it whenever it saw her coming. She had to get the caterers to stop making sandwiches and throw the ball, alternating so the collie didn't work out it was being kept occupied. Now, you can't hold a congregation's attention and deal with that at the same time, or if you can, please relocate to the West Country, we need your skills!
This is an agonising one. I agree with Rupert (as also with his observation that it passes belief that someone calling him/herself a funeral director can deliberately miss the funeral.)
I always think of things I repeat as liturgical elements -- forms of words polished by many revisions which I know to be of value to people. It seems a shame to re-word them, frankly. And yet... I do very few funerals these days, so I can get away with it! Have you read Thos Long's Accompany Them With Singing? a Xtian text but full of value to us secularists. He talks about the joy of pulling out the well-known, well-loved script and enacting it once more. I even kid myself that if someone has been to another of my funerals they may be thinking, "Ooh, great, it's him; I hope he says that really beautiful wise thing he said last time.'
Stuff about life and death -- that can get a bit 'liturgical'. And there's a forcedness about deciding not to use that quote, that poem, however apt,because you used it last time. But ringing the changes can get to be terribly hard work when you're looking for a substitute for something which was ne'er so well expressed. No, it's agony!!
Thank goodness, then, for the tribute, which we can come to absolutely fresh every time. And it *is* the glorious heart of the whole affair.
Jolly courageous of you to talk about this. Golden oldies are shrieking, gibbering skeletons in the cupboards of too many celebrants. We need to talk about this openly and honestly.
Thanks, Gents.
Rupert - I love the story of the collie dog. Yesterday, during what was supposed to be a moment of silence, a toddler came hurtling around the chapel having "broken free" at just the wrong moment.
You are right, the presence of someone else is invaluable, even if it's just to get a glass of water for the poor soul who suddenly has a tickly throat.
Charles - thank you for the recommendation, I shall look that out.
When I know that I'm dealing with someone who has definitely been to one of my ceremonies, I usually ask "was there anything that you particularly like/would like to have in this funeral?" That way, I know where I stand.
Thanks for the comments, gents, much appreciated.
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