A complete change of career

[Twilight]

Claire Sutton has become a funeral celebrant; she's trained for six months & is now preparing her business cards. My parents had Humanist funerals, they died a few months apart & the same celebrant did both services. My sister arranged a direct cremation for my brother in law & found a celebrant who lived locally; all three funerals were true thanksgivings for lives well lived & the ladies who conducted the ceremonies were wonderful. I wish Claire every success with what I'm sure will be a rewarding albeit emotional role.

 

[Suki 1]

Claire Sutton has become a funeral celebrant; she's trained for six months & is now preparing her business cards. My parents had Humanist funerals, they died a few months apart & the same celebrant did both services. My sister arranged a direct cremation for my brother in law & found a celebrant who lived locally; all three funerals were true thanksgivings for lives well lived & the ladies who conducted the ceremonies were wonderful. I wish Claire every success with what I'm sure will be a rewarding albeit emotional role.

I thought she left QVC to concentrate on her Family not to take on another job!

 

[Twilight]

I thought she left QVC to concentrate on her Family not to take on another job!

She said that she needed to support Tom, her older son who has has Down syndrome, with his application for a place at a catering college for students with special needs. She also bought & decorated a holiday property in Aldeburgh.

 

[maymorganlondon]

Good for Claire! I am sure it will be very rewarding on a human level. No commutes into London, no more meetings where people half her age run the show. Got to be a step in the right direction. Saying that as London dweller.

 

[Letz-be-avenue]

Good for her, I think she will be good at that as long as she doesn't speak to everyone as if are two years old,

 

[Deleted member 21102]

She will be good at it as long as she acts naturally.

 

[Dream Girl]

There’s long term future in her new occupation her services will always be required.

 

[Vienna]

When my sister died it was a humanist ceremony at the crem and the celebrant was awful. She sounded like she was reading a shopping list, her voice was monotone and she had a sour expression on her face. My sister asked me to do a eulogy at her funeral (she knew she was dying) and the celebrant wasn`t happy about it but tough for her, sis asked me and I`d have walked over hot coals to do so.
Just a few weeks after sis died, her husband went to the pub one Sunday evening, had a couple of drinks, said goodnight to his friends, walked out of the door and fell down dead in the car park. Another humanist funeral and this time the celebrant was lovely, in fact wonderful, she talked about my BIL with feeling and asked his friends and family about him, made us laugh, made us cry and made us feel we were saying goodbye to a loved one and not a bag of shopping like it was at my sister`s funeral.
I hope Claire does well and makes the families she works for feel glad that she`s done a very important job for them. There can`t be a re run of a funeral so the celebrant needs to set the right tone from the beginning and it`s harder than it looks.

 

[Twilight]

When my sister died it was a humanist ceremony at the crem and the celebrant was awful. She sounded like she was reading a shopping list, her voice was monotone and she had a sour expression on her face. My sister asked me to do a eulogy at her funeral (she knew she was dying) and the celebrant wasn`t happy about it but tough for her, sis asked me and I`d have walked over hot coals to do so.
Just a few weeks after sis died, her husband went to the pub one Sunday evening, had a couple of drinks, said goodnight to his friends, walked out of the door and fell down dead in the car park. Another humanist funeral and this time the celebrant was lovely, in fact wonderful, she talked about my BIL with feeling and asked his friends and family about him, made us laugh, made us cry and made us feel we were saying goodbye to a loved one and not a bag of shopping like it was at my sister`s funeral.
I hope Claire does well and makes the families she works for feel glad that she`s done a very important job for them. There can`t be a re run of a funeral so the celebrant needs to set the right tone from the beginning and it`s harder than it looks.

Vienna, as always, you've summed up the situation perfectly. I'm so sorry that you had the experience of a dour person at your sister's funeral; I've written about my grandmother several times & always knew that her funeral would be difficult, it was actually horrendous. She left behind her faith when she got out of Poland but for some reason my aunt wanted a C of E vicar to conduct the service of a woman he'd never met. She had obviously given him family names, he got them muddled, he talked about my grandad - the marriage survived in name only but nothing about the man who came into her life when she was in her 70s & made her happier than she'd ever been. There was nothing said of the vibrant woman just a few flat words & because he had another appointment immediately after he ran out of the crem before the end of the service. A pull no punches letter was sent that afternoon.

 

[Brissles]

Lots of sense being said on here. This is the worst occasion in the world for most people with emotions running high, so setting the right tone is absolutely essential.

As Lez-be-A said, providing Clare doesn't come across as too syrupy and treating her 'audience' as 2 year olds, then she should do well.

 

[Nicky-j]

I thought she left QVC to concentrate on her Family not to take on another job!

I imagine her new vocation has much less unsociable working hours … But it is obviously something she cares about greatly. That's wonderful.

 

[Huggles]

Perhaps she got sick of the hypocrisy of selling stuff people don’t need, with money they don’t have to impress people they don’t like. At least as a celebrant she isn’t destroying the environment with land fill and depleting finite resources. I wish her serenity in her life and career.

 

[Bea Frugal]

Claire could be good, she seems quite warm. It’ll be a redemption after years of persuading people to buy things they don’t need, often with money they haven’t got. It must be quite a draining job though. Can she resist the temptation to pat everyone on the head and hand out lollipops?

 

[Dream Girl]

My hubby did comment when I told him “Now I had to think first with the name, you mean from QVC. Oh well that’s a change, did you know? What’s she going to do with her hair!!!”

 

[miss molly]

My friend died suddenly recently and had a celebration of life service in the crem for 30 family and friends, it was beautiful. A lot of people could not attend due to numbers but they could watch it online which was lovely for them. A sad day but a lovely service.

 

[maymorganlondon]

I've been to a couple of horrors, both family ones.
My gran was a staunch atheist, so no religious proceedings. At the time, no humanist alternative.
We went to the crematorium. No intro music, no reading or address. Just silence then the coffin disappeared. Awful. Everyone still remembers it.
The other was for an aunt. Celebrant didn't know her and talked about her by the name on her birth/death certificate. Not one of us ever used it, so it was a stranger's funeral.
Both were deeply loved, vibrant ladies who had lived full lives. You definitely wouldn't know it from their respective funerals.
A caring celebrant can make the world if difference to a shell-shocked, grieving family and close friends.

 

[Vienna]

Talking about horror funerals, well my Mum`s funeral takes the biscuit. She died at the end of November in 1987 and the weather was atrocious every day up to the funeral, it rained and rained. She was being buried in a family plot in a small village church yard and alongside her parents. It was the village where she`d been born, christened and married to my Dad.
Her death had been sudden, one minute there, the next minute gone by a sudden massive stroke and we were all in shock, especially my Dad who`d found her in bed besides him. Anyway the drive to the Church went ok, the service went ok but the internment was everybody`s nightmare.
As the funeral director and his staff began to try to lower her into the grave, she simply wouldn`t fit. They lifted the coffin, jiggled it about, tried to lower the top end in first, then the bottom end in first, then tipped her slightly sideways (we heard her bump inside) then tipped her the other sideways but no way was she going in. They plonked her on the wet grass and everybody just stood there in complete shock. It was a hand dug grave done by the Church`s own grave digger and he wasn`t at the graveside and was meant to come fill in the grave after we left. The vicar sent someone off to find him asap.
My Dad was frozen in shock, myself and my siblings were in tears, the rain was bucketing down but my late first husband saved the day and Mum`s dignity. He took off his jacket, jumped into the grave which was muddy, had several inches of water in the bottom and pulled out the wooden shoring holding up the grave sides so as to make more room. The undertaker panicked and said the grave might collapse thus exposing the other bodies in there but my husband shouted "Right, now that`s my Mum in law in that coffin and we get her in here with dignity, now lower one end of her very gently down to me and then the other end. He got her in and the vicar could continue.
Hubby`s shirt, trousers, shoes etc were filthy with mud, wet through and we were all just frozen to the spot.
My Dad later got a letter of apology from the Church who said the grave digger was mortified at what had happened, he`d dug the grave to the measurements provided by the undertaker but the continuous rain the night before and the morning of the funeral had made the ground swell. The vicar said the grave digger begged our forgiveness and was heartbroken at the grief he`d caused.
At the wake we emptied a full bottle of brandy between us and how my poor dad kept his composure I`ll never know.

 

[Twilight]

Talking about horror funerals, well my Mum`s funeral takes the biscuit. She died at the end of November in 1987 and the weather was atrocious every day up to the funeral, it rained and rained. She was being buried in a family plot in a small village church yard and alongside her parents. It was the village where she`d been born, christened and married to my Dad.
Her death had been sudden, one minute there, the next minute gone by a sudden massive stroke and we were all in shock, especially my Dad who`d found her in bed besides him. Anyway the drive to the Church went ok, the service went ok but the internment was everybody`s nightmare.
As the funeral director and his staff began to try to lower her into the grave, she simply wouldn`t fit. They lifted the coffin, jiggled it about, tried to lower the top end in first, then the bottom end in first, then tipped her slightly sideways (we heard her bump inside) then tipped her the other sideways but no way was she going in. They plonked her on the wet grass and everybody just stood there in complete shock. It was a hand dug grave done by the Church`s own grave digger and he wasn`t at the graveside and was meant to come fill in the grave after we left. The vicar sent someone off to find him asap.
My Dad was frozen in shock, myself and my siblings were in tears, the rain was bucketing down but my late first husband saved the day and Mum`s dignity. He took off his jacket, jumped into the grave which was muddy, had several inches of water in the bottom and pulled out the wooden shoring holding up the grave sides so as to make more room. The undertaker panicked and said the grave might collapse thus exposing the other bodies in there but my husband shouted "Right, now that`s my Mum in law in that coffin and we get her in here with dignity, now lower one end of her very gently down to me and then the other end. He got her in and the vicar could continue.
Hubby`s shirt, trousers, shoes etc were filthy with mud, wet through and we were all just frozen to the spot.
My Dad later got a letter of apology from the Church who said the grave digger was mortified at what had happened, he`d dug the grave to the measurements provided by the undertaker but the continuous rain the night before and the morning of the funeral had made the ground swell. The vicar said the grave digger begged our forgiveness and was heartbroken at the grief he`d caused.
At the wake we emptied a full bottle of brandy between us and how my poor dad kept his composure I`ll never know.

Oh my life, your husband was the stuff real men are made of, bless him.

 

[loveallthingsitalian]

Oh dear - if that was in a comedy sketch you wouldn’t believe it.

 

[slinky]

What a wonderful bloke you've got there. Hats off to him and thinking of you all xxxxx