WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:14.940 A humanist funeral is a very profound experience and also it manages to 00:00:14.940 --> 00:00:20.670 encapsulate two what might seem to be quite opposing factors, the first being 00:00:20.670 --> 00:00:24.900 that we recognise that this is the end of a life, we don't believe they're going 00:00:24.900 --> 00:00:29.070 on somewhere else, this is the end, this person is dead and we are 00:00:29.070 --> 00:00:33.390 saying goodbye to them and a humanist funeral is able to really capture the 00:00:33.390 --> 00:00:39.690 profundity of that. At the same time as celebrating the fact that this person 00:00:39.690 --> 00:00:47.250 lived, that they created so many profound relationships, so many memories, they have 00:00:47.250 --> 00:00:51.270 a profound legacy that they're leaving in the children possibly that they 00:00:51.270 --> 00:00:57.900 created, in works they've left behind, and when we commit somebody within a 00:00:57.900 --> 00:01:01.800 humanist funeral ceremony, we're not committing them to god, we are committing 00:01:01.800 --> 00:01:07.710 them to the hearts and the minds and the memories of those people who loved them 00:01:07.710 --> 00:01:14.189 and whose lives they impacted, and whose lives they will continue to impact and 00:01:14.189 --> 00:01:19.049 for us, in a sense, that's the afterlife in that, although the person has died, 00:01:19.049 --> 00:01:24.600 a humanist is very strong in believing that they can still have an impact 00:01:24.600 --> 00:01:27.840 on your life through the relationship that they had on you and through the 00:01:27.840 --> 00:01:29.600 influence that they had. 00:01:29.600 --> 00:01:34.200 We are beings who are connected and in that sense through 00:01:34.200 --> 00:01:37.950 the funeral we've been able to bring the connection together and for people to 00:01:37.950 --> 00:01:42.329 see not just an opportunity to release grief and things like that which will 00:01:42.329 --> 00:01:47.639 happen in many cases but more frequently for people to actually see joy in the fact 00:01:47.639 --> 00:01:51.400 that somebody has been part of their life and has changed their life indelibly. 00:01:51.400 --> 00:01:55.439 So the focus obviously essentially is on the person who has 00:01:55.439 --> 00:02:02.789 died at a humanist funeral but second to that, the focus is then on the community 00:02:02.789 --> 00:02:10.000 of the person who's died and the relationships that each of them had with that person. 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:13.530 What I would hope to bring out in working with them on the words 00:02:13.530 --> 00:02:18.430 that will be said during the funeral ceremony is that 00:02:18.430 --> 00:02:25.719 every time the family comes together for every marking of a family moment, be it a 00:02:25.719 --> 00:02:30.609 birthday or a Christmas or some kind of festival, that they are where the 00:02:30.609 --> 00:02:35.439 family are, the wider family or the community is coming together, that the 00:02:35.439 --> 00:02:39.969 person that they've lost through death is going to be able to be there with 00:02:39.969 --> 00:02:45.790 them if they make that possible insofar as they are the living embodiment of the 00:02:45.790 --> 00:02:50.620 impact that that person had on the world, or if their children or grandchildren or 00:02:50.620 --> 00:02:55.900 great-grandchildren, they are carrying the genetic material that means 00:02:55.900 --> 00:03:01.000 that that person lives on, that the ripples of that person's life, physically 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:06.219 and in terms of the memories that everybody carries of them, is in the room 00:03:06.219 --> 00:03:11.650 every time that those people come together and so that as long as they 00:03:11.650 --> 00:03:19.800 acknowledge the being and the impact of that person in those events, then that person is going to live on. 00:03:19.800 --> 00:03:22.120 And every time we tell the stories, that's how we 00:03:22.120 --> 00:03:26.379 stay alive because every time the characters that played are brought back 00:03:26.379 --> 00:03:31.900 to life and with that we live on in the minds and the imaginations of those who 00:03:31.900 --> 00:03:33.644 remain after our days are done. 00:03:33.644 --> 00:03:36.400 I have a very personal experience of this in that 00:03:36.400 --> 00:03:43.180 my best friend died earlier this year and I took her ceremony and before she 00:03:43.180 --> 00:03:48.639 died she'd wanted me to take her ceremony and we discussed it for weeks 00:03:48.639 --> 00:03:54.639 beforehand and she decided that she wanted me to transcribe something that 00:03:54.639 --> 00:03:58.180 she wanted to say to the people in the room at the end of the ceremony which of 00:03:58.180 --> 00:04:03.699 course I did and it was tremendously powerful in that her message to 00:04:03.699 --> 00:04:08.739 those people in the room was that she thanked them all for having helped her 00:04:08.739 --> 00:04:14.560 to have an incredible life and thanked them all for their love and their 00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:21.370 care during her journey through cancer but most importantly she said I really 00:04:21.370 --> 00:04:26.289 hope that the experience of my illness and death has taught you to enjoy your 00:04:26.289 --> 00:04:32.320 life even more, to take even more relish and importance 00:04:32.320 --> 00:04:39.250 out of each moment in the day and to be inspired by the friendship that we 00:04:39.250 --> 00:04:43.780 shared and the moments that we shared and to let that blossom in your lives 00:04:43.780 --> 00:04:48.150 and it was very very very powerful because the people went away 00:04:48.150 --> 00:04:52.780 terribly sad because she's died but almost everybody said they felt hugely 00:04:52.780 --> 00:04:58.870 uplifted and hugely reignited in terms of a recommitment to life, recommitment 00:04:58.870 --> 00:05:03.790 their values, recommitment to their goals, and I think that's a wonderful thing 00:05:03.790 --> 00:05:05.600 that a humanist funeral can provide.