How to get the only funeral plan you’ll ever need and it will cost you nothing
I led a funeral last week at which the message in the picture was read out as family and friends said “farewell” to Bikkar. Then at the end of the ceremony I handed out printed A5 cards with the same message as a memento. Bikkar dictated this message to his wife a few years ago when they were arranging a financial funeral plan. I can’t help thinking this simple message was by far the best investment he made at that time, because it had a huge impact on the funeral ceremony and allowed his family to really feel that Bikkar’s voice had been heard.
Sometimes when I visit families to talk about the funeral, they will produce a sheet of paper or a few manuscript notes from their loved one containing some funeral wishes and perhaps a few sentences of personal testament, some music choices and sometimes a poem or two. Most families place huge weight on such documents, because they help give them a feeling that they are doing what their loved one “would have wanted”.
I’d urge everyone to think about what you’d want for your funeral and to write it down. Maybe you don’t want anything or simply don’t know, well write that down, because at least it tells your next of kin how you felt, and they can get on making their own plans for how to say “farewell” to you. It need only be a sheet of paper covering such issues as:
- Whether you’d like to be cremated or buried.
- What kind of ceremony you’d like – religious or non-religious.
- Any music you’d like played.
- A message you’d like read on your behalf (like Bikkar did).
- Any poems or readings you might like.
- Some notes about your life story.
There is also lots of help online if you search “my funeral wishes” and a variety of forms you can download, like this one by the Bereavement Advice Centre. But you don’t have to use a form and if you do, be careful only to use it to communicate things you care about – for example if there’s a box to disclose what sort of coffin you’d like, and you don’t care, then just write “I don’t care” or some such. The bottom line is just write about what you want or don’t want, not what you think you should want and if it’s just a simple message like Bikkar’s, well that alone can be priceless.
Having written your wishes down either keep them somewhere safe, for example with other important documents like birth certificates and insurance policies, or better still show them to your family and try having a conversation with them. You might get fobbed off and told you’re being “morbid”, or it might spark off a really useful conversation either there and then or months down the line and you might be surprised to find out just how much they love you.
