Four minute read
When a parent dies, often their adult children will plan and organise their funeral. In this blog, Poppy’s Chief Operating Officer Rebecca and her sister Jennifer share how they found satisfaction, relief, and even joy, in planning a funeral for their mum that they could be proud of.
“Personality-wise we are both very similar to our mum,” says Jennifer. “We’re both opinionated! We share the same strong values and the same way of going about things.”
But with a large age gap, and older sister Jennifer living abroad, they don’t know the details of each other’s daily lives.
“We talk about the big things, but I have no idea how Jen takes her coffee!” says Rebecca. “We both had the same upbringing, but we haven’t lived in the same house since I was 12.”
‘We could see what was important to her’
When their mum Joan’s health declined, the sisters spent time together, with their dad, caring for her in her final weeks. During this time, they started talking about and planning her funeral, helped enormously by knowing Joan’s wishes.
“We had the benefit of time. When somebody is dying, you literally are just sat around waiting. It was cathartic to have something to do. Mum had written this document with ideas for her funeral. It was quite out of date, but it meant we could see what was important to her,” says Rebecca.
But this didn’t mean that sisters had to follow every word that their Mum had written.
“Some of those music choices were awful!” Rebecca remembers.
“We were very clear, there was the ‘yuck’ and there was the ‘yeah’,” adds Jennifer.
Avoiding assumptions
Despite agreeing instinctively on many things, the sisters took care not to make assumptions.
“I was living abroad,” explains Jennifer. “I have that permanent guilt thing that Becca's the one who's there — she has to do all the urgent stuff. I couldn’t just wander in and take over. We were mindful of each other and careful not to tread on each others’ toes. In many ways, we behaved like colleagues in the workplace.”
“Sometimes you're not your best self when you're with a family member, so that approach really helped us. There was quite a bit of checking in: ‘would you do it this way? I think this… would you agree?’”
Although neither of them had planned a funeral before, attending other funerals had shaped what they wanted — and didn’t want.
Rebecca explains: “We chose not to use a celebrant. I didn't want to be sat there listening to a stranger who didn't know Mum. So Jen and I spent a lot of time listening to music and writing the script for her funeral — in effect writing the story of her life.
“A funeral is a rare occasion where you get to see all the different sides of a person. I really wanted to tell a holistic story about her.”
‘They supported our choices’
As Joan was in Yorkshire, her daughters chose a local funeral director, rather than Poppy’s in London. They opted for Full Circle in Harrogate — a fellow B Corp, with what Rebecca describes as a ‘Poppy’s vibe’.
“They had big open windows and, when I popped in, I knew it was right,” she says “I was hugely relieved that they seemed like human beings and that they'd support us in any choices that we wanted to make.”
“The funeral director listened and understood. He didn't impose anything on us,” adds Jennifer. “His first question was: Tell me about her. He called her Joan all the way through. There were no euphemisms. And he was so good with Dad.”
‘Funerals are for the living’
Although Jennifer and Rebecca planned the funeral between them, they knew that it needed to be right for their dad as well. They followed his cues in deciding when to broach the subject.
“We spent a while putting it off, until he started talking about the inevitable,” says Jennifer.
But when Rebecca explained to their dad that she had already met the funeral directors, his response was positive: “There was a great relief there, actually, that he didn't have to be responsible for that.
"He’s quiet, but he has strong opinions about things that really matter to him. When we talked him through our ideas, he was okay with them. We were both comfortable that he would have said if he was not.”
Jennifer continues: “Funerals are for the living, not for the dead. We respected Mum’s wishes, but we made sure that Dad got the goodbye he needed and so did we. Lovely that other people were there, but we're family — we were going to do it how we wanted because it was our grieving.
“In fact, everybody really enjoyed it. We set the emotional tone, which was, we're all terribly sad, but we're doing what she wanted, in the way that she wanted, and we're celebrating her life.”
Advice for siblings planning a funeral
While recognising that all sibling relationships are different, and each bereavement comes with its own complicated feelings, what advice do Jen and Rebecca have for others in a similar situation?
“Try to enjoy the process,” says Rebecca. “So many people think they have got to endure this and it's going to be awful — actually, it doesn't have to be. It’s okay to sit and laugh and use it as a positive time. I think that helped us.”
“If I had to give any advice, it would be: don't wait until you think they're dying. Start thinking about it now. I'm really proud of what we did,” continues Jen. “I think it’s the biggest gift we could have given Mum. She would have really enjoyed it. And she would have been so proud of us.”
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Read more on the Poppy’s blog. Find tips on leading a funeral service yourself, as Jen and Rebecca, did, as well as our thoughts on managing family conflict when planning a funeral.