What is a funeral celebrant and what do they do?

by Carrie Thomas, Humanist Funeral Celebrant

Celebrants help people mark major events in their lives; those which indicate a significant change. We use ceremony to help people recognise that change and honour the transition it requires.

There are celebrants who name people, others who mark unions and conduct weddings and partnerships and some who, like me, mark loss.

With the active involvement of those concerned, I create ceremonies which celebrate and recognise what has been, acknowledge that there this has reached an end and appreciate the transformative power and longevity of the feeling stored in memories.

I’ve helped people formally separate. One couple approached me to help them honour their parting. I helped them celebrate the relationship they had had and acknowledge that their planned future together would not happen.

I asked them to choose music which had been meaningful to them. I devised a simple ritual to express their parting: on the silk dressed table a candle lit two gently entwined ribbons; each in the union had chosen a preferred colour and I had spooled these streams of satin.

I spoke about love and intimate connection and, with my encouragement they each wrote and delivered words to one another about what their union had meant. From what they had shared with me, I expressed for them why their relationship had ended. They took an end of their coloured ribbon and unentwined it from their ex-partner’s, I blew out the candle. They told each other what they hoped for their ex-partner and for themselves. I concluded the ceremony and they left separately.

But mostly I help people shape celebrations to honour someone’s life and to say farewell. Primarily, I am a funeral celebrant.

Some people plan their funeral. They decide what will happen to their body after they die and what the shape of the ceremony will be. They can choose the venue, perhaps a plot of land, the music, their coffin or shroud, plan some of what they’d like said and arrange who else they’d like to speak and so forth.

I work with people to help them arrange things in advance. If someone wants my help, I will meet with them and ask them about their life so I can shape a narrative arc of their history, if that is how they would like their story told. Sometimes they will introduce me to or put me in touch with friends and relatives to hear about them and sometimes just so I can explain I will, in due course, be the person’s funeral celebrant and will be in touch with them, after the death, to ask them for a eulogy.

Sometimes the planning crosses borders. I once worked with a celebrant in Wales to help an elderly woman plan her funeral. She lives in south east London but, originally from south Wales, she wanted her body to return to her homeland. She was organised and she liked to be in control so ‘getting things in order’ comforted her. She had bought a plot in a natural burial site before she got in touch with a Welsh Humanist celebrant. Hearing loss meant it was hard for the celebrant to hold a meeting with the elderly woman by phone and distance prohibited a face to face meeting between them. I offered to collaborate. I visited her sheltered home to meet with her and her daughter to hear about her life. I drafted a script for her approval; after some feedback, we finalised the text. She reflected on the music she wanted played and I communicated that and sent a copy of the script to the celebrant in Wales who will, at some point, deliver the ceremony. The adult children and grandchildren may choose to give personal eulogies, but the structure and the narrative of the woman’s life, along with the coffin and the funeral plot, has been determined by her.

More often, I work with those who live on after the person has died. I help family and friends tell the story of that person. That may be at a funeral soon after the person has died or at a memorial, which can be after what might be a direct cremation or a small private funeral, or some time later when grief is perhaps less raw.

I led a memorial on the terrace of a restaurant an Italian man had founded in London. Family and friends entered to his favourite song by Frank Sinatra, thronged the tables, heard me read his wife’s tribute, eulogies from his close friends, daughters and grandchildren and reflected on the joy they’d shared before a toast of prosecco and lunch, served by colleagues and staff who’d worked with and admired him over the years.

That time, I had been contacted directly, his wife had found my web page and liked my picture and what she’d read. It happens sometimes that I am found independently, when someone knows they want a non-religious celebrant and have an inkling of how to find one on the web. Other times I may have been recommended to them; someone has remembered how personal, poignant or pertinent they found a ceremony I’d led. Other times, a funeral director who knows me well and understands how I work, may suggest me, thinking I could be the ‘right fit’ for this person’s ceremony.

Unless the ceremony is a pure memorial, held after the body has been cremated or buried, I work in tandem with a funeral director to ensure the wishes of the person who has died, or the people who have survived if they are arranging matters, are met.

I will have a meeting with friends and family to learn as much as I can about the person who has died. Sometimes I will visit the family in home of the person who has died and see photos of them, perhaps the garden they tended, the picture they chose to bring back from that holiday. In corona times, I’ve met family and friends on the phone or Zoom.

I will ask all sorts of things about the person who has died’s childhood, their passions, their work and their loves. I’ll be interested in everything: whether they were good at skipping when a child, if they volunteered in the food bank, were CEO of a hedge fund, enjoyed a solitary life in the countryside, spent time in prison, loved to travel, struggled with alcohol addiction, ran marathons, collected fosssils, had a dog, were a really good mum who made the best roasts or were someone who enjoyed singing rugby songs. No detail is too minor.

I will ask what music should be played at the ceremony and find out why they want those pieces so I can understand better the person who has died and perhaps contextualise a choice. Sometimes people don’t know what they want played or have a zillion options and I can be a sounding board to help them explore what would best represent someone, or how this track here could achieve what they’d like at that particular point of the ceremony. Once surviving adult children joined in “Shaddap You Face” and led a clapping of hands as they remembered their mother singing it to them when they were small.

I can help people develop rituals to engage the gathering actively in a powerful and meaningful way. These may be designed to help people feel the joy inherent in the life they celebrate and the gravity of the loss they face. Rituals may involve placing letters from friends and family in the coffin beforehand, facilitating message writing at the ceremony itself for people to tie to the coffin or scatter in the grave, or placing flowers on the coffin or digging a hole to plant a sapling.

I suggested to a bereaved partner during the Covid-19 restrictions, when he had wanted the greatly reduced gathering of ten to each place flowers on his partner’s coffin to represent those who were not allowed to be there in person, but even that was an infection risk, that he bring a trug into the chapel and place it in front of the catafalque, at the foot of the coffin so their friends could lay their bouquets in that. At the end of the ceremony the trug and its bountiful load were borne out of the chapel with dignity and the flowers taken home to comfort each of the bereaved when they could not mourn together.

Sometimes a piece of comedy is planned, to remind everyone of someone’s ribald sense of humour and lend levity to the ceremony. I have been known to sign for the delivery of a coffin marked ‘return to sender’ as ‘Living in a Box’ played in its arrival.

Friends and family may have ideas of readings or poems they’d like to recite in the ceremony or would like me to read. If they haven’t anything specific in mind but would like poetry in the proceedings, I can make suggestions. One nephew, arranging his aunt’s funeral, knew he’d be happy to read something but had no idea what. I agreed to find something once I’d heard his aunt’s story. She’d grown up by the sea and travelled the world in her career before settling down to a more traditional married life of a woman in the early 1960s. I reflected on the poetry I knew, looked through my books and finally hunted down a piece that delighted him. His aunt had been a multi-lingual stewardess working for Pan Am at the height of the jet age. The poem was not professional, not poetically skilled, but it was written with enthusiasm and first-hand knowledge about their glamourous work. It was written by a contemporary and was a treat to read, it added a piquancy to the ceremony; the nephew loved the serendipity and read it with joy, knowing his aunt would be tickled.

Unless one of the family or a friend wishes to write the tribute to the person who has died, I will draft one drawn from everything I’ve been told, emails I’ve been sent and calls I’ve received. Those who have commissioned me to be the celebrant read this draft and tell me what changes they would like made. Sometimes no word is altered, sometimes details forgotten in the initial telling are remembered and should be added and sometimes I’m told, I know I said that, but I don’t think it should go in. The ceremony must work for those who are requesting it. I edit and change my material to fit the needs of the people I serve.

Being a celebrant is a kind of service. I have a responsibility to assist, to facilitate the day so that those who mourn are able to engage as fully as they can and want to in celebrating the life and acknowledging the loss of the person who has died. Sometimes people want distance and feel unable to be involved greatly and I may script and read an entire ceremony. Oftentimes, I support people to read their own eulogies, let them know I’ll be their understudy so they feel safely encouraged to read a poem, persuade them to play that piece of music they have composed. Occasionally I am but a mistress of ceremonies; I draw together and anchor a flotilla of readings and tributes.

Always the role is a privilege. Always I am lucky to learn about humanity, strife, love and excellence and help give those stories a voice.

About Carrie Thomas

Carrie is a compassionate celebrant. She will listen attentively and help you bring to light the story and the nature of the person who has died. She’ll support you to find the right way to tell that story and say goodbye or, should you prefer, she will shape and deliver the tribute to celebrate their life.

Carrie is an experienced storyteller; she has written and performed in cafes, at conferences and on stage. She has offered pastoral care and bereavement support during terminal illness, and after death; in hospices, hospitals and the community.

Carrie is accredited by Humanists UK.