About me…
I have an education degree and I am a musician. Since graduating in 1983 I have worked with all ages ranging from babies to very elderly people and I have been involved in Music Education all my working life. I currently run three community choirs and have organised numerous concerts over the last 45 years, which means I am accustomed to addressing audiences both large and small and adhering to time constraints. In addition, I volunteer for the national charity, Home Start, and co-run a Loss Support Group. I am committed to helping people at difficult times and this has been a theme throughout my life from a very young age!
In May 2016 I found myself, with my sisters, sitting in a funeral home in a pretty Warwickshire village near to my parents’ house, in the town where they had lived for most of their lives and where I had been born. We had been at the same funeral home only five months previously to arrange our father’s funeral and now sadly, it was time to organise one for Mum.
It was a challenging time for us but we were treated with the utmost respect and sensitivity thus allowing us to talk freely about what we wanted for our parents and what they had requested. We felt totally secure in the knowledge that we were in ‘safe’ hands. Nothing was too much trouble and both funerals went without a hitch, leaving us feeling that we had given our parents a respectful and meaningful send off.
Following these two funerals I remember thinking that I would love to be the person who helps grieving families prepare for a funeral; one that would leave them feeling they’d given their loved one a truly meaningful farewell. Cogwheels began to turn and a seed had been sown in my mind.
Three years later, on a cold, crisp but beautifully clear evening with stars shining brightly in the sky, I attended a memorial service at Woodland Burial ground in Bristol. I had gone with a close friend whose husband is buried there and we were all clutching lit candles with flames flickering and dancing in the almost indiscernible breeze. The occasion was conducted by two celebrants and this was a magical, meaningful and beautiful experience, especially the torch-lit walk to visit J’s grave following the service. The seed that had been sown in 2016 began to germinate and within a few weeks of the memorial service I had booked to train as a funeral celebrant.
Training provided by Green Fuse in Devon was my chosen route. I was truly appreciative of the sensitive, caring and nurturing approach of our course trainers, all of whom were either funeral directors and/or funeral celebrants with many additional qualifications to their names. They are passionate about what they do in this immensely rewarding field of work and I now proudly hold a Diploma in Funeral Celebrancy.
I can honestly say as a result of my training, that if I had to organise my parents’ funerals all over again they would be so different. My imagination would be engaged and I would be thinking ‘out of the box’ to do something more personal and creative. Not everyone’s cup of tea I know, but doing something a bit ‘different’ and going ‘off piste’ is certainly an option if you are tempted!