Let’s Hear it for the
www.iocf.org.uk
by Anne Barber
Funeral Celebrant
After speaking at a recent conference, Rosie hung around to listen to other
talks and sessions. At one, attendees anonymously wrote down some of
their most challenging funerals incidences, these were then read out and
discussed. This exercise really got her thinking about celebrants and their
encounters. A call to Anne Barber at the Institute of Civil Funerals has
resulted in this article.
A funeral celebrant has to be all things to all people
and much more besides. They lead funerals that can
include anything from physical fights to families at
war to malfunctioning curtains!
At the Institute of Civil Funerals’ recent annual conference, members gave dramatic accounts of some
of their experiences. It takes a certain type of individual to cope with the dramas and high emotions
that arise and experiences seem to fall into certain
categories.
Firstly what you might call ‘content issues’. At the
slightly less difficult end are the families where the
celebrant, try as they might, simply cannot extract
any information whatsoever about the person who
has died in order to make the ceremony personal
and ‘tell the story’ of the life that has been lived.
Using their own resourcefulness, celebrants report
how they track down other people who knew the
person and endeavour to build a picture to portray at
the funeral. In other instances content is put forward
by families with wording that is simply not repeatable or else it sets out to attack another person or
organisation or is so badly written to be unreadable!
This is hard enough. Then we get to the category of
‘difficult family situations’ when the family is literally ‘at war’ within itself or family members detested
the relative who has died. The amount of tact and
diplomacy required to create a meaningful funeral
ceremony in these circumstances is unbelievable.
Examples were given by members where families
have actually sabotaged a funeral to ensure the
‘other’ section of the family did not get the funeral
content they wished for. The poor celebrant, who is
bound to do as their client instructs them, is caught
right in the middle.
Take this a stage further and you see the physical
fights that have broken out at some funeral cere-
monies. Special qualities are indeed required by
celebrants to deal with these situations. Unflustered
professionalism, along with great teamwork with
chapel attendants and funeral directors. Fights
aren’t the only physical issue to be dealt with however, one celebrant recounted the funeral where an
ex-girlfriend of the man who had died, flung herself
on the coffin and would not be moved. Drunken
mourners, abusive language and heckling are far
too often experienced and dealt with by the celebrant, who on occasions have had to ask mourners
to leave the funeral out of respect for the family.
Equipment issues arise all the time, broken microphones, curtains getting stuck at the committal
or failing to close when they should or the wrong
music is played, however carefully it was checked
beforehand.
Then there is the isolation of the work, sitting up till
all hours the night before the funeral, composing a
revised ceremony with information that a family has
just sent through. It happens all the time. The other
side of this difficult coin is the family that believes
you can fit two hours’ worth of material, stories,
poems and music into the permitted single slot at
the crematorium. The art of saying a lot in a few
words is a key celebrant skill!
Taking funerals for people who are known to the celebrant is really hard too, they have to put their own
feelings under their professional hat. The emotional
drain involved can only be imagined, especially with
the ‘too soon’ deaths of babies, children and young
people, the suicides and the deaths by accident or
murder. Dealing with other peoples’ extreme grief
and making the day of the funeral something that
a family can bear is the role these amazing people
play.
So all in all – let’s hear it for the civil funeral celebrant.