Thank you Matthew, banana and marmite sandwiches are now very much a part of my life….
They will forever connect me to the memory of you!

A Good Goodbye

As a funeral celebrant I have the responsibility, privilege and joy of hearing someone’s life story.  I get to witness its impact on family, friends and wider community. Then translate that into a time limited service (commemoration or celebration) of their life that holds space for all the emotions , feelings and memories in the room.  The aim is to provide a little bit of comfort through bearing witness to the pain.  It’s also about providing a stepping stone from which family and friends can take their first step in walking the rocky, foggy path they have to travel with their grief.

It feels like a big ask, but it feels really natural too.  Something I do willingly and gratefully.  And something that provides comfort to families and, at the same time, feeds my soul and teaches me so much.  There isn’t a single family whom I’ve supported, or individual I’ve created a farewell for, that I haven’t learned something from.  Every connection shapes who I am and the nuggets I am gifted are stored in my heart and mind

Remembering Matthew

Matthew was someone I knew.  Someone I had met on a few occasions, someone very likeable, accessible and easy to be around.  He was, or rather is and will always be, the youngest sibling of my beautiful and incredible friend, June.
>When he died suddenly at the age of 39, I was very glad that her and her family felt comfortable turning to me to guide them.   I was able to help them create a service that celebrated his life and offered them connection to everything he was, and is to everyone his life rippled into.

Isat alongside June when she heard the tragic news.  Then alongside her and her husband to talk about Matthew.  Then, again, alongside his brother and sister beside June to help process and plan an authentic and meaningful celebration.  One that set the tone for his life legacy. I then travelled from Wales to Southampton to support the family and deliver the service.

Matthew was a character.  He lived life full and fast, hedonism and gathering a lifetime of experiences, friendships and relationships at record speed.  Everyone he met loved him.  He had that way with him, inclusive, welcoming, easy, fun, sincere.

Test Valley Crematorium

His funeral, at Test Valley Crematorium needed to and succeeded in reflecting that.  The coffin was a bright turquoise-green which the congregation (from all the facets of his life) quickly covered in neon coloured messages for him to take on his final journey.  The family flowers were stylish, simple and perfect; whites and purples with the odd splash of yellow.  The service was relaxed and informal.  Filled with love, laughter and tears which spilled from there to the Brewhouse near the house he grew up in.
>There we continued to be led by Matthews example; good food, a free bar, and lots and lots of wonderful stories.  Plenty of laughter and tears; children playing and cigars smoked in his memory.

Lasting Legacy & A Good Goodbye

That won’t be the last time Matthew is honoured and remembered.  There will be a lifetime full of moments that will do that.  Plenty of gatherings in Sheffield, Zante, Southampton and Mid Wales of people forever connected because of Matthew.  There will be objects, inherited traits, actions, sayings and bits of music that will regularly bring him to the forefront of hearts and minds.

There will be mementos created in his name, new friendships forged as well as old ones revived.  And, at some point there will be another relaxed, yet formal celebration of his life and legacy when we lay his ashes at Hay Meadow, with space reserved for mum when the time comes.

I will leave you with this, read at the crematorium by his sister, Livvy at the service and now very much a favourite of mine to gift to other families.  It’s called Eulogy from a Physicist by Aaron Freeman, and, in my opinion, it’s perfect.

Eulogy from a Physicist by Aaron Freeman

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy. So they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics.

That no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every bit of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your broken hearted siblings and tell them that all the photons that ever bounced of your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, – hundreds of trillions of particles – have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. May the physicist let your friends know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are their eyes, that those photons created within them constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. He will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here.  Still part of all that we are, even as we mourn and continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith. Indeed, they should not have faith.  Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy.  And found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time.

You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.

 

Want to read more real celebrations of life?  Here’s David’s story
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