This week I’ve been transferring photos from my phone onto an external drive. I’ve had this phone for nearly five years, and there are a lot of photos on there. Fewer than there were on Monday, though.
As luck would have it, I hit January 2022 just as some online friends were discussing preferences for funeral music. My father died on 8 January 2022, and the pictures from that month are a jumble of memories and plans – beloved objects, photos of photos, and important documents – some taken by me, some shared by family members and friends.
Among those important documents was a two page note in my aunt’s handwriting, a summary of a conversation she and Pa had had during a COVID lockdown. On the first page were the details of the solicitors and the insurance. On the second, a very detailed list of funeral preferences. What. Where. Who should speak. Which hymns, including specific tune in one case and hymn number in another. Music for entrance. Music for exit.
It was immensely helpful. I ended up drafting most of the service, and this document gave me a starting point and an authority; it curtailed, if it didn’t quite avoid, a lot of disagreements; it provided some interesting challenges. We didn’t follow it exactly; we also found a previous version (another photo to pop up in the January 2022 folder) and added some bits from that. But we definitely followed it in spirit.
I have made one of these myself, but it was a good decade ago and I think it’s got lost, anyway. So I’m planning to do a new version this year. I’m not planning on dying any time soon, but you never know.
Morbid? Perhaps. Self-centred? Undoubtedly, but far more helpful than being self-effacing. Even if one doesn’t want a big fuss, one’s executors aren’t necessarily going to know what “not a big fuss” looks like, and, while good funeral directors, and, I’m sure, celebrants from all traditions, will have helpful suggestions, they’re going to be at least somewhat generic, at which point you’ve just moved the question on from “what would they have wanted?” to “would they really have wanted that?” And that’s not an easy question when you’re grieving. A plain statement of preferences in black and white can be one last, immensely helpful and comforting, gift. I’d recommend everybody does one, if they can face it, and saves their family and friends a lot of grief, in the informal sense – and perhaps in the formal sense, too.
Kathleen Jowitt 