‘I’d want a parade of micro pigs to run up the aisle of the church, midway through the service – just to make everyone laugh!’ This idea wasn’t about a wedding, or a christening, or a Sunday church service. It was part of a wider conversation about funerals – and I was getting increasingly worked up as I listened. I was at work in 2018 when the conversation turned to funerals – which is not quite as dark a twist as it sounds.
At the time, I was a copywriter, and I was taking part in a meeting trying to develop ideas for a Funeral care company. The plan was to sit around an unnecessarily large table and discuss the kind of funeral we would each plan for ourselves. I’d never really thought about my own funeral , in the same way that I wouldn’t plan a party I wasn’t going to attend.
I’m not particularly bothered about what happens – I won’t be there. Sort it out amongst the guests. But as it transpired, that put me in the minority.
Every other person in that meeting room had big plans. We’re talking marching bands, pyrotechnics, all day raves. Black was generally forbidden, as, bizarrely, was sadness – it was fancy dress and good vibes only, thanks very much! And then, of course, there were the micro pigs .
I wanted to stop the meeting and ask these people if any of them had ever planned, or even been to, a funeral. Because, as a comedian, I’ve spent a fair amount of time working out what makes people laugh, and I don’t think ‘micro pigs at a funeral’ quite hits the mark. In fact, I think an unexpected parade of miniature swine mid-ceremony would more likely just confuse the people left behind.
Each proposed funeral seemed so completely at odds with the person describing it, so totally out of step with the life they were living. They were funerals designed to celebrate who they thought they were, or who they wanted to be remembered as. They were funerals designed for the dead – and that’s not who funerals should be for.
A funeral should bring comfort and closure to the living. I know this firsthand. When my dad died very suddenly in 2014, he was 55 years old and hadn’t even begun to think about funeral arrangements.
And, in a way, that was perfect. Of course, there are elements of funeral planning that would be hugely helpful to get sorted ahead of time. There’s a lot of admin in death.
An astonishing amount of the immediate aftermath isn’t spent nursing your grief and consoling your loved ones, but instead making phone calls and filling out paperwork and assuring mobile providers that the bill payer definitely cannot cancel his contract himself because he is, in fact, extremely dead. If you’re in a position to sort out the more boring funeral details before you go – or, even better, take care of the financial side of things – then that takes a huge burden off the shoulders of people who already have a fair bit on their plate, what with all the grief and that. But when it comes to the ceremony itself, I believe that’s not up to you.
Dad left no plans whatsoever – we didn’t even know if he wanted to be buried or cremated – which meant we got to plan exactly the ceremony we needed when we lost him. We chose music that brought him to mind for us. We gave readings that fitted the man we loved, or wrote our own based on our memories of him.
I, for instance, read ‘The Carbon Cycle’ passage from a GCSE Biology Revision Guide. Dad had always helped me with revision, and so a scientific description of how the end of one life goes on to create the conditions for more seemed fitting and personal. It may not have been what he would have chosen, but it was what I needed.
And that’s the key thing. It might sound blunt, it might sound callous, but it’s always been my opinion that the least important person at a funeral is the dead one. Go see Rich at the Edinburgh Fringe Rich Spalding is performing his debut Edinburgh Fringe comedy show Gather Your Skeletons at 9.
15pm in Pleasance Courtyard’s Cellar until 26th August. For more information and tickets available here . Funerals are a chance for those left behind to say goodbye to the person they love, the person they’ve lost.
It’s not your chance to make one last, flamboyant statement to the world. It’s a chance for the world to start the process of going on without you. These ‘fun’ funerals come from a place of kindness, I’m sure.
They come from a desire to let your loved ones know it’s OK for them to go on living without you. More Trending University was supposed to prepare me for work – it did the opposite British woman, 19, dies after falling from hotel balcony in Ibiza Sam thought her aches were new mum pains - 9 months later my wife was gone A rare condition turned my baby girl into 'Wolverine' But when you try to bring joy to your funeral, you’re swimming upstream. When you die, people will feel sad.
Let them. Don’t try to tell them how to grieve, or how to remember you, or who you think you were. Let them remember you however they want, not however you want.
Ultimately, of course, it’s your prerogative to insist that everyone at your funeral wears fancy dress, if that’s really what you want. But you can’t stop them feeling sad. Instead, you might just force them to spend one of the hardest days of their life dressed as Mario.
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