Suzanne Barker | November 2023
“You were perfect; she’d have loved that.”
At just over 24 hours notice, I imagine my ninth funeral - for American-born Suzanne Barker - will be the quickest turnaround for a ceremony that I’ll ever experience.
I got a message from Belsay Woodland Burials - where I’ve done one service before - asking if I could lead this one with extremely short notice and I was free so of course I said yes. Learning someone has died - and died young at 60 - is always sad and sobering, but on a personal level I was pleased that I didn’t feel (too!) daunted by how little time I had to prepare. My first celebration of life, for another woman who died far too soon, had been just over a year before and I felt like I had learnt so much in that year. And I was grateful.
One important thing I think I’ve learnt is that while the content of what you say is absolutely paramount, the quote from Maya Angelou is oh-s0 true: “At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel”.
One of the most important jobs as a celebrant, and perhaps most importantly at a celebration of life, is to help create the right atmosphere. I need to be able to read the family’s desires for the day through their tone and their body language. And I need to be able to bring a sense of calming support so that they can relax away from the admin and into their private pain. You only get one opportunity to say goodbye with a funeral. Of course, your loved one stays with you in thousands of ways, and there will be many more little moments of ritual, but there is only one funeral, and so I take its importance really seriously.
For anyone reading this and wondering why I had such little notice, I guess my answer would be that many of us don’t know what it feels like to lose the love of our lives. How we’d cope, whether we’d want to focus on funeral planning or be too overwhelmed with grief.
I feel grateful to Suzanne’s family that - in the end - the ceremony came together, with poems and contributions (and even a Hebrew funeral prayer) from five different people. It was moving and, given it was so unrehearsed, it felt incredibly authentic. You could feel the loss of this wonderful woman (a devoted wife, mother, sister, friend) permeate through the room, and it was beautifully sad to witness.
When I go,
don’t learn to live without me,
just learn to live with my love,
in a different way.
And if you need to see me,
close your eyes,
or look in your shadow,
when the sun shines,
I’m there.
Sit with me in the quiet and you will know,
that I did not leave.
There is no leaving when a soul is blended with another.
When I go,
don’t learn to live without me,
just learn to look for me in the moments.
I will be there.
When I Go, by Donna Ashworth
“I want to thank you for everything you did and in so short a time. I will recommend you wholeheartedly.”