My favourite celebrant

Published in the Autumn 2017 issue of Panui, the official quarterly journal of the Celebrants’ Association of NZ

We’re not supposed to have favourites. But I have a confession: I have three. Three go-to celebrants who make my life as a funeral director so much easier. They’re all completely different. They have different ways of working with families, working with me, working with my colleagues. They tell the stories entrusted to them in completely different ways. They all have different expectations of me, and I of them.

Dell is a celebrant who appears as comfortable with the Lord’s Prayer as she is with the lessons of Emmanuel the spirit guide. She takes on the family’s beliefs and resists the urge to share her own. She understands funeral ritual. We fill in the gaps for each other – those things each of us picked up from the family that the other may not have. She is well-read, and has a knack of finding the right reading for the right family. She is a talented storyteller, a consummate professional. I shake my head in wonder at the way she pulls all the threads together and ties them off at the end. I think, “Wow. How did you DO that?”

Murray is a hunting, fishing kind of a guy with a big heart, a big voice and a frequently irreverent sense of humour. He tells it like it is, without disrespect or flippancy. Even in the most challenging services he has a talent for making people laugh. He too reflects the family’s spirituality, taking on board and honouring each person’s perspective. Within a couple of hours of meeting with the family he’ll have a transcript of the entire service in front of me. I read it through and shake my head and think, “Wow. How did you DO that?”

Jim is a minister who talks at a hundred miles an hour, loves Holdens and not Fords, and has an admirable ability to laugh at himself and with others. He won’t wear a watch, and he hands me a handwritten order of service. His wife won’t let him sprinkle the dirt on the casket at the cemetery because he wipes his hand on his trousers afterwards. He’s been known to reword the Lord’s Prayer to hilarious reception, in a unique reflection of the life he’s honouring. I overhear members of the congregation after the service marvelling at how he got it just right, and can-you-believe-he-never-actually-MET-him and I think, “Wow. How did you DO that?”

As you can see, my favourite celebrants are all completely different. My relationship with each of them is completely different, and what they bring to the services they conduct is as well. What they have in common is their confidence in letting their personalities shine through, their respect for themselves and others, and their willingness to develop a working relationship with me. Respect. Professionalism. Determination to be the best that they can be. No half measures.

I’ve gotten to know each of them well over the last ten years. We’ve all grown in our roles. I know what information they want from me, and I know what information I’ll get back from them. I know what time they’ll arrive for the service. I know what we will discuss in that time, how we will establish our cues, and what they will give me in written form. I have gotten to know each of their unique outlooks on religion and spirituality. In short, I have a personal professional relationship with them.

This is the ultimate two-way street. We mutually trust one another to do our best for the families we serve. Because I know their styles, their likes and dislikes, and the other demands on their time which affect how quickly they can pull a service together, I can match the needs of the family to the right celebrant. I firmly believe that the right celebrant is integral to a family’s healing. You get one chance to do it well.

We work well together not just because we connect, but because we recognise that our respective roles are complementary. We have much to learn from each other. It doesn’t matter if our roles overlap, or if we’re both asking the same things of a family. What does matter is that we compare those notes at least once along the way. In any formal service which has solemnity at its core, there should be no surprises. Synchronise watches, agree on timings. Find out whether there are any time constraints, and stick to them.

Attention to detail is vital. Dell has a favourite quote, perhaps an ironically revealing one for a secular celebrant: “God is in the details”. To deliver the best possible result, we must attend to the details. I often think the flipside quote is “The Devil is in the details”. This describes, for me, the problems created when small but important things are overlooked. And the domino effect where one oversight leads to multiple stuff-ups and results in a flat experience at best and an absolute disaster at worst.

It happens. To quote the wonderfully eloquent Robbie Burns, “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agly”, or for those of you more accustomed to English vernacular than Scottish, even the best laid plans get stuffed up on occasion. Your secret weapon is an attentive and trusting relationship between celebrant and funeral director. When you can cover for each other, most people won’t notice when plans gang agly.

Your reward for taking the time to connect? A steady stream of opportunities. When you develop your relationships, you increase your chances of becoming a favourite. And you’ll have your favourites too. The biggest reward, at the end of what is sometimes a very, very long day, is the knowledge that together you’ve created a memory and helped people heal. Pretty worthwhile, don’t you think?