My Dad died of cancer in 2008. He was of no faith. He had a pact with his long-time pal that whoever died first had to come back and ‘tell’ the other if there was an afterlife. His friend never did, so Dad’s mind was made up! So when Dad died, we didn’t want a church service as it would have felt wrong. So, we asked if we could have a very personal service at graveside – which we did. We wrote a long speech all about his life and played snippets from 6 of his favourite songs. All his old pals were jigging along at the graveside. It felt very fitting and personal, not soulless like many “traditional” church or crematory services can be, where only the shortest snippet seems to be about the actual person being remembered and honoured.
