File #15 - The Funeral Nobody Wanted to Call a Funeral
They were very clear about one thing when we first spoke - they didn't want a funeral.
Well they did, technically, but they didn’t want to call it that. They wanted to remember him, obviously. They wanted everyone together. They wanted to talk about him, laugh about him and share the stories that had somehow become part of family folklore.
But the word funeral didn't feel quite right. So we talked about what they actually wanted instead.
And, as is often the case, once we stopped worrying about what a funeral was supposed to look like, the answer became much easier. It was still a funeral.
There were tears. There was music. There were stories about his life and the people who mattered to him. There was that strange mixture of people laughing one minute and wiping their eyes the next.
But there was also plenty of him in the room. And I think that's what they had been trying to find all along.
Not a funeral that avoided the sadness - just one that didn't lose the person in it.