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Celebrating Life Everyone Has A Story... |
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Pam Vetter April 21, 2009 |
There are no rehearsals in funeral service. It's not like a wedding. There's no walk-through, no run-through of speakers, and no practice session. Funeral Celebrants plan well in advance and honestly, with last minute changes, it's sometimes surprising that farewells are delivered so seamlessly and beautifully. Without rehearsals, fact checking is important to the process. Much of the delivery has to do with the Celebrant Training or the individual Celebrant who conducts the funeral service. Charles Cowling is a Civil Funeral Celebrant in the United Kingdom. "In the matter of fact checking, it is built into the training and the codes of conduct of both the Institute of Civil Funerals and, I think, the British Humanist Association (the two main training bodies) that scripts must be shown to families before the ceremony and facts checked. I can think of no celebrant for whom I have any respect who would airily tell a family to 'trust me.' The celebrant is an enabler and an agent, but the ceremony must be an expression of the culture, customs and beliefs of the family (and the dead person) and it must be delivered IN THEIR WORDS. It is never right that a celebrant should mediate or assume a position higher than that of great humility," Cowling stressed. "I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that the evolution of a ceremony is an organic process. Once a family has engaged with the business of co-preparing the farewell ceremony, their ideas and input grow. There's something new every day, and the celebrant talks to them often. In the United Kingdom, hardly ever does a family not want to see the script before the ceremony. Having worked so hard to create it, they want to get their hands on it. In the very rare cases where families do not want to see, I will always double-check facts and pronunciation of names." To reinforce ownership of the funeral service, Cowling reminds the crowd to whom the service belongs, prior to the eulogy. "When delivering a script I always begin by saying to the audience, 'The words you will hear are their (the family's) words.' We can never rehearse unless the ceremony is at a venue other than the crem or a burial ground (unusual). In terms of stage management, it is a miracle that such a high proportion go off without a hitch. Many of our crems now have the Wesley Music system, which gives the celebrant the means physically to cue the music. Perhaps the worst thing that can happen, given our production line crematorium funerals, is that the ceremony should overrun (normally because a family member talks for longer than they'd thought they would)." UK Civil Funeral Celebrant Zinnia Cyclamen* uses what the family shares with her on trust. "I touch-type notes into a laptop during the family meeting, so I get a lot of what they tell me down verbatim. Having said that, if anything in my notes is unclear when I come to work on the script, I will check back with them to make sure I've got the story straight," Cyclamen said. "I know families don't usually tell us the full story of someone's life and their relationships, but I think that has to be their choice. They are giving us information for use in a public ceremony, and may not want to disclose aspects of someone's life that they find embarrassing or that they fear would be socially unacceptable. Having said that, one of my colleagues was once faced with a situation where, in full flow delivering a tribute, she said 'X's first-born child was Y' and a man in the audience stood up and said 'no it wasn't, it was me!' and my colleague stopped the service and did her fact-checking there and then. It turned out that the man in the audience had been born out of wedlock, with a different father than the deceased's husband, and the deceased's husband and their children had always refused to acknowledge the man, although he'd always been in touch with his mother. I have thought about this long and hard over the years, and I don't know how we could check thoroughly enough to guard against such happenings without taking on a role closer to policing than to the celebrant role as I understand it." Cyclamen believes it is very important for a Celebrant to check with a family on important facts about a person's life. "I do this as I go," Cyclamen noted. "I have a mental checklist of things to ask about - place of birth, other family members at birth, name(s) the deceased was known by, spellings of people's names, later siblings, childhood, school, work, relationships, children, grandchildren, the exact nature of family relationships, hobbies, interests, pets, holidays, what made him/her laugh, etc - and cover them all in the course of the meeting. Of course, I don't need to ask questions when families offer information freely, but I know families often find my questions helpful to jog their thoughts and memories, and having this mental checklist enables me to cover the important areas. The order doesn't matter, I can sort that out later." If a family asks to see the entire service prior to the funeral, Cyclamen always accommodates. "If they do ask, I'm happy to share it. Also I sometimes offer, if they seem anxious or uncertain about how things will go on the day. Sometimes I think they prefer not to see the written service until afterwards. I always offer them a copy to take away, and they usually say 'yes please,'" Cyclamen added. "My funerals are always organised well in advance. I can think of one occasion where I did a funeral for a teenager, and the mother arrived in the limousine behind the hearse with two very young children in tow, and just as we were about to go into the crematorium both children asked to go to the toilet. I guess you can't legislate for that kind of thing. It wasn't a problem anyway, we just pointed them at the toilet by the waiting room, and stood in the procession until they were back with us." Surprisingly, Cyclamen said there is very little that can throw a service when it is completely planned. "If someone has a coughing fit, they will bring water. I have never had anyone faint, or be taken ill - or die! - in one of my services, although I know it can happen. Once the crem staff forgot to start the music when they were supposed to in the middle of the service, and I had to leave the rostrum and go round the corner and open the door and hiss 'put the music on will you!' - I felt terrible, but I made a joke of it which the audience responded well to, and the crem staff were hugely apologetic afterwards (as they should have been). They'd just had an attention lapse, I think. It's only happened that one time in over 11 years," Cyclamen said. "The only thing I do that's a bit different is for burials (fairly rare, most of my funerals are cremations) where, instead of casting soil into the grave, I suggest to families that they might like to think of something more personal. So, for a keen cook, we used a bowl of whole spices (delightfully aromatic and tactile); for a Lancastrian, we used red rose petals; for a video lover, we used segments of videotape (and it was a windy day; that one is quite memorable, because they went everywhere!). I remember spending a couple of hours sitting by my fire one winter weekend, cutting up printed sheets of poetry into individual words and phrases, so we could scatter a poet's own words onto his coffin." Still, funerals are public events without rehearsal time. "Perhaps it is amazing! I've always taken it for granted up till now. It's what we're trained for, after all," Cyclamen reminded. "There is one moment that sticks in my mind, where the six grandchildren of the deceased were going to begin the ceremony by lighting candles of remembrance. The funeral staff and I made sure the candles and matches were ready, on a small table at the foot of the coffin. I hadn't met any of the grandchildren, which made me nervous, but I'd been told they ranged in age from 17 to 3, and that the 17-year-old would take the lead and help the others. I introduced the ceremony and explained what would happen, and they came up to the front, and stood in a line in front of the table in age/size order (which was lovely - I don't know if they planned it that way). The 17-year-old used a match to light a candle, and then used the lit candle to help each of the others to light their own candle. Then they placed the candles on the table, and went quietly back to their seats. The atmosphere was quiet, reverent, peaceful. Maybe they had rehearsed it in their own time, but I doubt it; I think they were just in tune with the moment." Funeral services last 30 minutes to 3 hours in the United States. Cyclamen said that funerals are far longer in the U.S. than they are in the United Kingdom. "Our services here are shorter - typically 15-20 minutes (a standard 'slot' at the crematorium is 30 minutes, which includes time for getting everyone in and seated at the start, and getting everyone out again at the end), although they can run for longer, either if a double slot is booked at the crem (common practice in my area for younger people's funerals) or if the funeral is held in a different kind of venue (I did one in a hotel, once, for example)." Civil Funeral Celebrant Neil Dorward of Scotland is also the Joint President for The Association of Independent Celebrants, which is training eight new celebrants next month and have people signed up for their September and November courses. "The 'rehearsal' is done in the days prior to the service. I cannot understand why it is not standard practise if not mandatory with all celebrants' standards of excellence that the draft version of the service must be emailed to the family as soon as it is written. It is not as if the material is 'ours.' The celebrant is merely a temporary custodian of a family heirloom. We are the servants of the family, we are there to make the funeral day easier and gentler and if the bereavement process is aided by families knowing what is going to be said in advance and by having the opportunity to add, change or delete anything within the draft then that family MUST be given that opportunity. We are not in charge, the family is," Dorward explained. "I never feel as if I deliver a service on a wing and a prayer, but that is the beauty of authenticity and having established a relationship of trust with the family in the days leading up to the service. They trust me to speak eloquently and passionately and I believe that the connectedness with the family will not be the same if they have not be involved in the drafting and re-editing of the service." Dorward raises the question for all funeral officiants: what if one of your facts is wrong? "Facts not checked can have a potential disastrous affect on the family and their healing. Last night I visited a family and the lady was known by three different names; Mable to her family, Margaret to her fellow professional Head Teachers and Maggie to her cat loving friends. If that detail had not been checked and confirmed and all three names used on the day, some people may turn up at the funeral and feel they are at the wrong service because they never knew anyone called 'Mable.' I believe it is a tradition amongst clergy (not sending an advance copy of the service) but Civil Celebrants are distinctly different and the starting point for celebrants is the family's needs and wants not ours. I email the service as soon as it is written and give the family maximum amount of time to change the draft. I then phone the night before to double check for any last minute changes from the family," Dorward said. "I quoted the example in my soon to be published book of a lady who at the last minute asked not to be referred to as the deceased 'partner' but his 'friend' in case word got back to the social service that she had been living with this man and claiming (possibly) social security benefits she was not entitled to. It is vital to check and double check, we are professionals and all potential causes of hurt must be removed otherwise we are not true servants of the family." Other last minute rehearsals for Dorward include: 1. Arriving early and checking with the organist at the crematorium how many verses of the hymn are to be sung and that the CD's are in the correct running order. 2. Alerting the crematorium staff to any changes to your typical service. Many of the crematorium staff know that I would ask for the curtains to be closed at the 'moment of quiet reflection' but this is not always the case and I always double check with crematorium staff when the curtain is to be closed or indeed if the curtains are to remain open. "It is these sorts of things that can throw crematorium staff off and they end up closing the curtain at the wrong moment or play the wrong track of the CD - Elvis' 'Return To Sender' instead of Elvis' 'Amazing Grace.' Small mistakes can cause irreparable damage and hurt," Dorward said. 3. Release of doves, balloons etc. require special permission in Scotland, sometimes in writing. Some places do not allow the release of balloons because of potential hazard with over line electricity cables and if you video you must put up a public sign alerting people to the fact they will be filmed as they might object to this. For a recent example, Dorward offered, "Sometimes celebrants must ask the family of their wishes right up until the last moment if necessary. A fellow celebrant was asked to conduct a very simple service, so simple that it was a two-minute service. He was aware there was some family tension and had come to understand during the family interview that the family did not like their mum. Only four people were at the funeral, the four sons. It was agreed with the sons that quiet organ music would open and close the service. So the celebrant asked the family on the day of the funeral, moments before the coffin was to come in, would they like any specific organ music - Scottish Irish? 'No,' said one of the sons. 'Do you have any heavy metal music?' The celebrant was a bit taken aback and gently asked if they are sure they wanted heavy metal (as the celebrant was not sure if the crematorium would have a spare heavy metal CD lying around from a previous funeral and hence might not be able to supply a CD at such short notice). 'No we want heavy metal', he insisted, 'because she f***ing hated it.' An extreme example, but that is what the family wanted. Sadly or thankfully, no heavy metal CD was lying around the crematorium." For more information about Charles Cowling visit "The Good Funeral Guide" www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk/blog.html. For more information about Zinnia Cyclamen visit "Real E Fun Blogspot" http://realefun.blogspot.com. For more information about Neil Dorward and Neil's upcoming book visit "Neil Dorward the Legacy Man" http://thelegacyman.blogspot.com. Zinnia Cyclamen* is a pseudonym. |
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