Why I work as a Funeral Celebrant

When people see me celebrating marriages and births so joyfully, they sometimes forget that I work on “the death stuff” too.

In fact, my primary motivator in becoming a Celebrant was to work with families in the raw times of their lives… by providing deeply meaningful memorial and funeral services and of course Celebrations of Life ceremonies.

I feel at ease around death.  I’ve mourned and experienced firsthand many deaths. – friends, family, strangers – some of which were tragic deaths including suicide. Instead of numbing out, I chose to fully experience the complexity of grief, with all its swings of emotion. In many ways, death transformed the way I live my life.  One of my guiding personal values is to “To move towards sorrow and not away from it.”

In 2006 I trained as a Palliative Care and Hospice volunteer. This has been a great gift in my life.  To be with people at the moment of death, and to be of comfort to their families, is a tremendous privilege.  I also learned a lot about living from some very forthright souls in the final days, weeks, and months as they prepared to die.

This mindful awareness is what I bring to the families I work with in my practice as a Funeral Celebrant. Helping people create a Celebration of Life, Memorial or Funeral Service, Ash-Scattering, or Committal Ceremony isn’t ‘just a job’ to me!  Oh my gosh… so FAR from it!

I love to hear their stories.  I see how the telling helps to make things real especially in the first week after a loved one’s death.  That’s a weirdly unstable time… I suspect that our brains simply cannot compute that the person who was, is no longer.

My gift is to draw out the stories and the memories in a way that illuminates the deceased in the fullness of his or her being.  And then to weave all the threads into a beautiful tapestry — the actual ceremonial experience.

Often people ask me to write the eulogy.  I have to use all my senses when I am with the family so I can absorb the personality of their loved one.  As you can well imagine, it’s hard to write a Memorial Eulogy for someone you’ve never met.  And to have it be a ‘bang on’ portrait of the person.  It’s an extraordinary experience for me!

Death is a chapter in the book of our remarkable human lives.

With heart,

Celebrant Michele

Helping a Vancouver family create a Celebration a Life

Recently I worked with the family of a woman who had lived in South Vancouver virtually her entire life.  Known as Grandma, she died just shy of her 91st birthday. Her’s was a long life, a life well lived, and though deeply mourning the family wanted to create a special memorial.  Like many of the families I have the immense privilege to work with as a Celebrant in my ceremonial practice, they wanted a heart based Celebration of Life but weren’t quite sure how to make it happen. Here’s what we did:

I interviewed the daughter to get a sense of Dorothy.  Who she was, what she stood for, her life story, the people she loved, what she liked and disliked.  Also to learn a little about what the family members were experiencing.  This latter piece helped us figure out who wanted to and who might be able to speak at the memorial service.

The family wanted to write and speak the eulogy.  They felt a deep longing to do this and felt it would be a meaningful way to work with their grief.  I agreed and gave them tips on what some of the content might be. The grandchildren also wanted to go through family photos and create a video portrait of their beloved grandma, complete with music.  (It was incredible!)

My role was to write everything else in the ceremony and also to give suggestions for format and readings. Though we had just a few days, everyone worked together and the end result was that every detail was truly resonate with Dorothy’s personality.  Even the flowers chosen for the memorial service were the kind she liked to grow in her garden!

The day of, I arrived early to help the family set up and welcome their guests.  When everyone was settled, I rose to speak.  I try to speak my words in such a way that creates a container for the emotions present in the room.  To create a safe place where family and friends can mourn but also to smile and laugh through their tears.  All emotions at a memorial are natural… I don’t believe there is a ‘correct’ way to be.  I talked of the mysterious cycle of life and death, of which Grandma was well aware… having been an avid gardener.

I also named grief and spoke to the responsibility of community to support a family whose loved one has died.  Death leaves a void that can never be filled, but the support of others not just the day of the ceremony, but in the weeks and months ahead is so helpful to the healing process.

It was a wonderful magical experience because it was so REAL and HONEST.  To be with a family at such an important time in their lives is an honour.  We don’t have many collective experiences these days… a memorial ceremony, when well done, where the family is part of the creation, can be very powerful.

The beautiful camellias in the photo above were from the tree in Dorothy’s garden. I arrived home to find these, along with a card from the family on my doorstep.  Included was a package of Dorothy’s famous thumbprint cookies, lovingly made by her daughter from what is now the family recipe.  It will soon be mine too!  I plan to make some this weekend.

With heart,

Celebrant Michele

Many thanks to Robin Naiman for her always mindful hosting of Mountain View Cemetery’s Celebration Hall and Courtyard.  It is a beautiful space. The best in Vancouver, I think, for a memorial or funeral service.  And certainly the most appropriate for a Celebration of Life!!!

In Death a Celebration of Life

Recent weeks have brought death to my office door.  I have been called upon to work with a number of families who have experienced the death of a loved one.

When people see me celebrating marriages and births so joyfully, they sometimes forget that I work on “the death stuff” too.

In fact, my primary motivator in becoming a Celebrant was to work with families in the raw times of their lives… by providing deeply meaningful End-of-life Ceremonies.

It may sound odd but I feel at ease around death.  I’ve experienced a somewhat shocking number of deaths of friends and family, some of which were tragic deaths including suicide. Instead of numbing out, I chose to fully experience the complexity of grief, with all its swings of emotion. To move towards sorrow and not away from it.

In 2006 I trained as a Palliative Care and Hospice volunteer. This has been a great gift in my life.  To be with people at the moment of death, and to be of comfort to their families, is a tremendous privilege.  I also learned a lot about living from some very forthright souls in the final days, weeks, and months as they prepared to die.

This mindful awareness is what I bring to the families I work with in my practice as a Funeral Celebrant. Helping people create a Celebration of Life, Memorial Service, Ash-Scattering, or Committal Ceremony isn’t ‘just a job’ to me!  Oh my gosh… so FAR from it!

I love to hear their stories.  I see how the telling helps to make things real especially in the first week after a loved one’s death.  That’s a weirdly unstable time… I suspect that our brains simply cannot compute that the person who was, is no longer.

My gift is to draw out the stories and the memories in a way that illuminates the deceased in the fullness of his or her being.  And then to weave all the threads into a beautiful tapestry — the actual Celebration of Life Ceremony or Memorial Service.

Often people ask me to write the eulogy.  I have to use all my senses when I am with the family so I can absorb the personality of their loved one.  As you can well imagine, it’s hard to write a Memorial Eulogy for someone you’ve never met.  And to have it be a ‘bang on’ portrait of the person.  It’s an extraordinary experience for me!

So yes, in amongst my birth and wedding ceremony commissions are my memorial services. These all fit together as chapters in the book of our remarkable human lives.

Here is a quote from a Blackfoot elder that I like…

“What is Life? It is the flash of a firefly at night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”

Remembering our Dead: Part II

You may have read my recent post on leaving Rosemary or small pebbles when visiting a grave site.  Continuing on the same theme, I thought I’d share some of the offerings I’ve noticed these past few years while walking my dog through the beautiful grounds of Mountain View Cemetery.

There is such a variety of grave markers to begin with… each cultural group seems to have its own style.  Inscriptions vary widely, but share the brevity dictated by marker size. One of my personal favorites is the Victorian-era description of a widow as a “Relic”.  But I digress…

With respect to offerings left at graves, I’ve seen:

• Every flower under the sun. Bouquets small and vast.
• Teddies  (not recommended!  Stuffies look so sad after rainfall.)
• Plastic toys, soothers, jewelry,
• Photographs, sometimes framed
• Candles (I love it when I find these still burning)
• Coins
• Food, paper money, and paper furniture in the Chinese section
• Crosses, religious figurines, icons, crucifixes
• and the most perplexing of all… a gravesite that regularly has a bucketful of cigarette butts dumped on it.  And often a small empty bottle of booze. Once a shot glass.  I never seem to catch the visitor in the act… I’d love to know more.

Today I noticed two graves, side-by-side, with long stemmed fresh flowers standing on end around the markers.  Someone had inserted a sturdy wire into each flower stem and then speared them into the ground. Like a ring of flower-trees.  It looked fabulous!

Cemeteries are wonderful places to walk and reflect on the beauty, the strength and the fragility of the human life. I love reading the inscriptions to learn about lives lived. Amazing the personality that can be described in just a few well chosen words.

Far from being scary places, cemeteries are a testament to our capacity and our desire to remember those we love.

On October 30th, Mountain View hosts their 5th Annual Night of All Souls.  This is a public event for us to remember our dead in an atmosphere of contemplative beauty, with music, warming fires and fragrant teas to comfort the living.  Candles, flowers and other materials are available for the creation of personal memorials that can be added to the public shrines throughout the cemetery.

Remember,

Celebrant Michele Davidson