The funeral is fast approaching.

Anne's Mum breathed her gentle last a week ago with her daughter at her side. She went as she had lived: quietly and self-effacingly; no fuss; no drama.

For the last few days we've been organising the final farewell ceremony. Neither daughter was clear about Mum's religious convictions, so we've decided that it would not be appropriate to drag in a strange vicar (or a normal one, come to that) to trot out a few platitudes about someone he had never met. And anyway, none of the small family gathering would be churchy types either.
The only alternative to a vicar is for us to do it ourselves. It seems more appropriate to us all, and a sort of last duty and thankyou, undertaken personally and not bureacratised.
We've employed an undertaker to arrange things with the crematorium, but have decided that I ought to conduct the ceremony, as I did for my Dad last winter.

Again, he was not churchy, and it seemed to be the decent thing to do. He hated hypocrisy above all things, and a priest would not have been right for him.
We arranged the music with the chapel ourselves. We entered to a Chopin ballade, one of Dad's favourites. Then his grand-daughter read a poem that felt right to her. I delivered an indaequate but heartfelt eulogy and, to my surprise, I felt strong enough to press the button myself without needing to call the undertaker to do it. We took our farewells to Andrea Bocelli's soaring voice.
It may have been a bit ramshackle, but it was personal. And surely a funeral should be personal.

Phyllis's ceremony will be similar. We'll enter to Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller, music from her youth. Two grand-daughters will read something; one a little poem called 'The Ship' by Bishop Brent, and the other a reading from Phyl's husband's diary, recalling how she ran their newspaper business single-handedly for four years during the war while he was away on service.
Then we'll listen to the Lord is My Shepherd by Kings College Choir. Then I'll read my eulogy. And then I'll press the button, and the curtains will close to Faure's 'In Paradisum'. Quiet and modest, for a quiet and modest person.

Are funerals changing? We're surely not the only people who think that a remote and official Church is not automatically relevant to our needs. I think we are part of a growing trend towards more personal funerals. What do you think?

I've wrtten a poem to read. Does it speak to you as it does to me? Again, I think these ideas are growing in currency, although not yet often stated.

We start our journey as a point of being, far beyond the dawn of day,
And slowly we descend to action and the world of form.
We choose, each day, a kindness or a curse, a thousand times
And slowly build our strength to hold our own.
Each cause plays out its own effect, and so will ours:
For every kindness we will gain a recompense;
For every meanness, a reciprocal.
And when we've done the job we came to do;
Fulfilled our promise to ourselves;
Created love where once was none before,
Then we return, as points of larger being, bright, enlightened and enlightening,
In due proportion,
Welcomed, and prepared to come again.