From our man in Arizona...

You may recall my OH (Other Half) is in America at the moment. His trips seem to coincide with news events, despite the fact that he is not a foreign correspondent. Last time it was the ash cloud, this time he arrived in Tuscon a few hours after the shooting of Republican Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. He took a photograph of the memorials to show you. He also saw this warning sign. It may relate to snakes, but that's good advice for life in general, I'd say...

I want to break free...

...not in a Freddie Mercury kind of way, but I want to break free of the lectern in crematorium chapels. Lecterns can be helpful, you can place your notes down, rest on them, take a sip of water from the plastic cup on the little shelf underneath, you're near the microphone, the all-important buttons, and provide a focal point for everyone. They are professional, traditional, etc.
However, I do feel quite 'separate' from people at times. I know that sounds odd because I suppose I have to separate myself in some respects. But today, for example, I led the service for the young man who died on Christmas Day. The crematorium chapel had a lectern that you step up to, so you're higher than everyone else. But I didn't feel comfortable. I wanted to step down and talk to people 'on their level' as it were. Be less formal. But if you step away, and the chapel is full, you can't be heard, or seen for that matter, and you'd have to walk back to press the buttons.
I'm not suggesting that I start wearing a lapel microphone and have a little device in my hand that works the music, curtain's etc. like some sort of funeral weather girl! But actually, why not?! If it's discreet (no hand-held mikes or ear-pieces), and helps make things less stuffy, then I'm all for it. I'm going to build a venue for funerals. It will be light and spacious, with real flowers, stylish furniture and quality audio-visual systems. When I win the lottery...

My old man

Among the many (repeatable) ways to refer to the love in your life, is the phrase 'other half'. It's one of the most emotive descriptions, I think, implying you are incomplete without them. Remember that tissue-grabbing scene in the film Jerry Maguire where he says "you complete me"? Not a dry eye in the house...
Well, please indulge me for a moment, as I pay tribute to my Other Half, who is away on the other side of the Atlantic for the next two weeks. He is a great support and comfort to me, and I couldn't do the work I do without seeing his smiley face at the end of the day. In the words of singer Joni Mitchell "the bed's too big, the frying pan's too wide". OK. Schmaltz over...

The happiness quest

I've just started reading Happiness by Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard. It's 'a guide to developing life's most important skill' (other than opening vacuum-packed food items) and contains wisdom, philosophies, guides and exercises to help 'train the mind to recognise and pursue a lasting happiness'. So far it's a pleasing mix of the type of mind bubblegum and soul fertiliser I like to dip in and out of, for both my own good and any gems I can glean for families I work with.
The gist of this book, and many, many other tomes on the subject, is that happiness comes in the form of living in the now. But that's hard to do for bereaved people, who want to be anywhere but the now, and will instead swing from re-living the past, to fearing for the future...

I enjoyed some comfort telly on Friday night, in the form of a new series called Life in a Cottage Garden with Carol Klein (she of stripey scarf, sounds-like-she's-about-to-laugh fame). It wasn't anything new or particularly exciting (although you could say it was 'earth shattering' by the way Carol wielded her garden fork with gusto). It was just half an hour of marveling at how plants survive the winter and that wonderful sense of renewal and regeneration that makes you want to buy a greenhouse. It also made me want to phone my bereavement support clients and insist they switch over to BBC2, just to reassure themselves that life re-emerges after even the darkest of winters.

My world just got bigger

Rejoice, rejoice... I have two new followers, both of whom have opened up such a manifold array of brilliant blogs, wonderful websites and colourful characters, that I may never have time to work, eat, or sleep again. Charles Cowling and his superb Good Funeral Guide http://www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk/blog/ and Gloriamundi's insightful Mindfulness and Mortality http://mortality-branchlinesblog.blogspot.com/
Not only am I extremely grateful to all my happy half dozen followers for reading my blog, but also, when I click on to your own blogs, websites and on-line communities, you lead me on to other blogs, websites and on-line communities, which lead on to other.... you get the picture.
I realise I sound like a www. hick from Just-Discovered-Computers-Ville, Arizona, "Aw gee, aint the t'interweb a marvellous creation y'all?" But (nasty stuff aside) yes, it is. And I for one am taking a moment to celebrate this fact and throw my hat in the air. Yee-haaw!

To boldly go where no man has gone before...

Leading funeral services and counselling the bereaved gives me a, sort of, dual-aspect into people's grief. And the more I see of grief, the more I realise that, alongside the pain, anger, guilt, fear, paralysis and downright wretchedness of losing someone, lies something that I feel I have to whisper for fear of causing offence. And that something is potential. 
By potential I mean a chance for us to go so deep within ourselves that, in spite of re-emerging from our grief cocoon bruised, battered and alone, we are also given an opportunity to see life with new eyes. I wasn't sure how I was going to explain this to you, but luckily someone else in my profession feels the same way and has expressed it far more eloquently than I could have. I came across this article by Richard Wright, a bereavement counsellor in Sydney, Australia, on the internet recently. So I hope he doesn't mind me sharing this meaningful extract with you. Take it away Richard...

"Could I say to them that their love for this woman and the sadness at her dying were part of her legacy. Forget the will. This love and sadness were taking them into places in their hearts they had not been before. Memories of their mother and grandmother’s compassion, impatience, golf games, generosity, quirkiness . . . person were tunnelling into their being. There was a real chance that there would be more room in their lives, in their sympathies, in their understanding because they had known grief. Or, not. Of course, I did not say this to the family. But I thought it and I believed it. Grief has that potential. It doesn’t always work this miracle but it is only grief that can do this for us. There is something about loss that can diminish and enrich at the same time. It is happening all the time. Leaves at Autumn, friends at trains, good-byes galore and those ideas and hopes wrenched from our clutching hands, with frustration and tears. 'Lacrimae rerum' – the tearfulness of things – was how the Latins used to put it. Maybe, just maybe, that tearfulness, wherever and for whomsoever, may help us become a little more tolerant, a little more compassionate, a little more human. At least that is my hope." Richard White is bereavement counsellor at W. N. Bull Funeral Directors in Sydney.

Grief... the final frontier? I'm visiting a family tomorrow whose 45-year-old son died suddenly on Christmas Day. Any thoughts on 'the potential of grief' may be one step too far for them. Understandably so. American activist and singer, Bernice Johnson Reagon, said "Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are." Death is clearly the ultimate 'challenge' and I'm not being flippant or trying to take an 'every cloud...' approach. It's just a thought-provoking, hopeful observation. Perhaps it's about coming full circle – when someone dies we lose interest in life, but it's death that makes life worth living, isn't it?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot?

It's the first of January – Happy New Year one and all! I needn't have worried and whittled so much in the run up to Christmas, as it all went very well. Everyone made it through the snow, the food was plentiful and delicious (too plentiful, according to my weighing scales this morning), and even my missing parcels turned up on Christmas Eve. So I enter 2011 basking in the afterglow of a fabulous festive season, spent with all the people who matter to me most.
One of the highlights of the past week or so, came in the form of an unexpectedly heartwarming funeral. It was the one I'd been stressing about driving to in my last post. But, as it turned out, I arrived safe, sound and super-early (as always). The funeral was for an 81-year-old man who I described as leading "a happy life, filled with simple pleasures, shared with those he loved" – his wife, children, grandchildren, friends and neighbours. I knew it would be a ceremony with a really strong sense of family love (unfortunately, this isn't always the case) and gratitude for the years they shared together, but when the son stepped forward to speak, he created such an atmosphere of rejoicing for the life of his dad that the mood in the chapel became quite euphoric. I watched the front row of mourners as he recalled humorous tales from childhood and memorable moments of family life; his sisters were all smiling, their mum sat between them, nodding at first, then laughing out loud as the stories gathered pace.
I talk a lot to families about 'celebrating the life' of a loved one. And in that chapel, where it was hard to tell whether the tears were from sadness or laughing too hard, the unique life of their one-of-a-kind dad was celebrated in the very best way. What a privilege to be part of their farewell to him – I couldn't help but come away inspired, uplifted and ready to create some family memories of my own.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot? I don't think so...