Short Death Stories: Your Instructions for... (Can We Even Talk About This???)
Why and how to write your instructions for your own funeral
A softer, more melancholic space—because by looking at death, I believe we experience life more vividly. Elegy and obituary, beautiful words both, language for the abyss.
During my funeral celebrant training recently, I was asked my wishes for my own funeral.
Um.
Writing down your wishes for your funeral and sharing them with people you love is a gift. To them. To yourself.
I believed I had an answer, but when it was my turn to speak, I came out with something misty:
Water. Literary. Music.
Ummm.
At the funeral for my beloved friend years ago, I was asked to give her eulogy.
This task is seared into my heart. A rich sunset, a cup of coffee, a dancing beat and my friend is beside me again, refusing to talk about her upcoming death.
Her prerogative. Her journey.
But, oh, her funeral was hard. All of us were lost. The pain is right there, vivid. Because not-only was her funeral like drowning. Losing her was enough drowning for all of us.
She lived and died as she needed to. I’ve always respected that. We were all too young to know what to do to even have hard conversations.
So I know it’s not perhaps the right time for you. I invite you to consider these questions only if they feel clarifying or helpful. Save them or share them. Or read something completely different like this.
Let’s go.
Do you want a viewing?
Do you want a burial or cremation? An aquamation?
Do you want a ceremony? A celebrant to help? Who?
Do you want an indoor or outdoor ceremony? Where?
You’re likely a reader and perhaps a writer too. Which words do you want? Passages you love? People to speak? Do you want to write anything for your loved ones?
Do you want music?
Do you want any religious aspects?
Here’s the audio version of the questions, if that’s helpful for you.
Because this is hard work, take a pause. Here’s a poem by @Joyce Grenfell for you, perhaps for people you love.
If I should go before the rest of you
Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone
Nor when I'm gone speak in a Sunday voice
But be the usual selves that I have known
Weep if you must
Parting is Hell
But life goes on
So sing as well.
Please tell me in the comments anything you love to read that faces this vital part of our lives. Other Substacks? Novels? Non-fiction? Poems? I want to hear from you and create a space we can talk together about hard things.
Share if this is helpful for you.
xox
Alice
If you’re new here, my name is Alice Kuipers and I’m a writer, mother and dog-owner transplanted twenty years ago to the Canadian prairies from England. I’ve published fourteen books in 36 countries and my writing has been described as: “For storytellers and story lovers,” by Kirkus Reviews; ‘Gorgeous, heart-ripping, important,” by VOYA; and “Intense and wonderful” by Bif Naked.
Join me for Little Life Lists and more Short Death Stories…
Xoxo
Read a great conversation about preparing for death here:
and …
Write more? Here…
I thought about my own funeral/death a couple of months ago at my friend's funeral. She was Israeli and yet she was buried in the cold Canadian soil. As we watched her coffin being lowered into the ground, covered in snow, my German friend and I looked at each other and had the same thought: I don't want to be buried in Canada! I came home and informed my family that if I should die early, I would like to be cremated and for my ashes to be scattered in the sea, so "I could carry on travelling." No fuss. No ceremony. Hopefully I have done enough so I can continue to live on in their memory. I should add that my daughters were not too crazy about this idea...
You know it's funny, I actually said to my husband the other day, you need to leave me your instructions in French because I had this panic if he died in another country someone else would take over when I don't have the language and it wouldn't be what he wanted. But I didn't even think about what I might need or want. Thank you for the thoughtful prompting.