From the outset, I will apologise for starting what I hope is a bright and sunny Sunday morning with morbid thoughts, but just recently I have seen a string of adverts on the television for simple cremations and if I’m being honest they irritate me. When I first started working in the full time ministry, I would check the list at the cremetorium, just to make sure that I was in the right place at the right time and my would be just one in a list of Reverend’s leading services that day. During the last twenty years that has changed and today the majority of services seem to be led by civil celebrants, which sadens me, but I can accept it.
If I believe what I read on the internet there has been an increase of somewhere between five hundred and six hundred percent of people signing up for simple cremations which deeply concerns me. The idea is that there is no funeral service of any kind and instead of spending money on a funeral, the cremation happens in private and an urn of ashes is delivered to the family. I never tout for business and I conduct most funerals without charging a fee, but I see them as being an important part of the grieving process when sombody we love has died. I work hard with families to ensure that these services are conducted in a reverant way and we have cried, smiled often, and even laughed as we have remembered somebody we have loved and miss. I recall leading Afro Caribbean funerals, which have been a real celebration of life and I have even witnessed the mourners dancing as they have left the Church, because they have been celebrating that their loved one has now gone to glory.
Please don’t misunderstand me, and I know that there will be people reading this for whom this is personal and even quite raw just now. I don’t know how many readers believe in the mere existence of heaven, but I find great comfort in beliveing that even though it is a long time now since my parents and my daughter died that are are somehow together and they know what I am doing and even as the decades pass, I still want to make them proud. There is no doubt in my mind that the death of somebody we love is painful and sad, and I feel that a funeral service is an important part of the grieving process.
I can live with the fact that people want to take religion out of weddings and funerals and increasingly people are using other places to mark these important life changing experiences. I don’t expect people to sing ancient hymns and to be honest I’d prefer to use secular music than to sing a solo, not particulalry well. But I think that these ocasions are far more important than simply saving money. I am airing my opinion and you are welcome to disagree.