Forget Everything You Thought You Knew

I was listening to The Funeral Fix podcast recently, in an episode called "The Art of Rituals: Mastering Symbolism in Funeral Ceremonies", and a celebrant shared a story about a family who wanted to release white doves after a funeral. When he asked what the doves meant to them, what they actually symbolised for their person, the family said nothing, really. They'd just seen it done somewhere else and assumed that's what you're meant to do.

That's stuck with me. So much of what happens at a funeral or memorial isn't chosen, it's inherited. The chapel, the order of service, the hymn nobody in the family actually likes, the doves. Not because any of it means something to the person who died, but because somewhere along the way it became "what you do."

And thank goodness for the celebrants and funeral directors who ask questions like that and put choice on the table. Not every family gets that conversation. In the fog of grief, it's hard to know you're allowed to step outside what's expected, so many people do what's always been done, not because anyone pushed them, but because they didn't know there was another way.

That's why we want to say it out loud.

Forget all of it.

There's no rulebook. There never really was, we just behaved like there was one because everyone else seemed to be following it. The truth is the rules are changing, and families are allowed to take the space and the time to build something that actually reflects the person they lost, rather than a template built for a stranger.

Maybe that means a long lunch instead of a chapel service. Maybe it means no eulogy at all, just people telling stories over a few hours with a glass in hand. Maybe it means doves, if doves actually meant something to your person. The point isn't that tradition is wrong, it's that it should be a choice, not a default. You don't have to do something just because it's always been done, and you don't have to keep following a path just because no one showed you another.

If you're reading this thinking that sounds lovely in theory but you have no idea how you'd actually pull it off, that's fine. That's literally what we're here for. Building a day that reflects a specific person, one we got to know, rather than assembling one off a template, is the whole job. You don't need to arrive with the answers. You just need to tell us who they were, and we'll help you work out what that looks like.

Forget what you thought you were meant to do. Do what's true to them instead. And if you want to chat to us at Banksia about something you’re envisioning but don’t know how to pull off, just reach out.