Funerals and Memorial Celebrations

The help you need to celebrate the life and legacy of one who touched your heart

My services are individually crafted to be personal--reflecting your values and needs. They are designed to express your spiritual vocabulary and be both understood and felt by people from our many traditions.

 

My approach is informed by the goal of taking everyone's religion seriously and respectfully but without needing to take it literally. We know that most of the time, when we gather to mourn a death and celebrate a life, that we are not all the same and have a great variety of vocabularies and metaphors with which we try to express our sense of connection to the Source of Life.

 

These services are ultimately not for the soul of the departed, whose end is peace. Rather, they are for us the living to find a peaceful place to carry our memories, our pain, our loss and our love.

 

A funeral or memorial service is not closure.  It’s neither an ending nor a beginning.  It is a milestone in a journey of healing.

 

When we gather to celebrate a life, we acknowledge a unique individual. Therefore, a funeral or memorial service should be unique and personal, not generic or formulaic, but expressing truth told with kindness.

 

I bring 45 years of experience in guiding families of all faiths and philosophies through the difficult transition of moving someone from in front of our eyes and physical embrace to inside our hearts and into our spiritual embrace.

 

 

I’ll help you through the difficult challenge of celebrating a life within the short span of a service and will aid you in selecting readings and choosing music. I’ll also be available for coaching and consultations--as part of aftercare.

 

Whether the service is held in a church, synagogue, chapel, memorial park or at home, I will be there for you to make the many pieces and needs fit together.

 

I’ll want to meet with family members and some others whom you may choose, in order to gather stories and memories to help him find the right key to convey the journey and values of the person whose life ties us together and whose death brings us together.