A conversation with Karen Acres
What does a funeral celebrant actually do?
The full podcast is below.
Before talking to Karen Acres, I suspect my answer would have been fairly simple.
They turn up at the funeral, say a few words, introduce the music, read the eulogy and keep the service moving.
It turns out there is rather more to it than that.
Karen is a funeral celebrant and minister, and in this podcast we talked about what happens behind the scenes, why families use a celebrant, how a funeral service gets put together and why choosing the right person matters.
Perhaps most importantly, we talked about the part that doesn’t appear on the order of service.
Dealing with people.
Why not just do the funeral yourself?
It is a reasonable question.
Most of us have been to funerals. We know roughly what happens. Somebody welcomes everyone, there is some music, perhaps a reading, somebody talks about the person who has died and then the service ends.
How hard can it be?
Quite hard, according to Karen.
The problem is not simply standing up and speaking.
You are trying to do it while grieving.
A son may feel perfectly capable of reading his father’s eulogy when sitting around the kitchen table discussing the funeral.
Then the day arrives.
He walks into the crematorium, sees the coffin and a room full of family and friends, and suddenly the words will not come out.
Karen sees this regularly.
Part of her job is making sure there is a plan if that happens. If someone wants to speak but finds they cannot manage it on the day, Karen can step in and read their words for them.
Nobody needs to make a fuss about it.
The service simply carries on.
A funeral needs putting together
There is also a practical skill involved.
A good funeral service has a structure.
The words, music, readings, memories and moments of silence have to work together.
Karen described putting a funeral together as an art.
I think that is probably right.
If you have never conducted a funeral before, you also don’t know the practical side of running a service.
You may not know how the crematorium works, how the music gets played, how much time you have or what happens next.
That is probably not the sort of thing you want to learn while saying goodbye to somebody you love.
First, Karen needs to know the person
Karen’s work usually starts before she ever enters the crematorium.
She speaks to the family and arranges to meet them.
Before the meeting she gives them an idea of the things they might want to think about.
Will the service be religious?
Non-religious?
Perhaps somewhere between the two?
Is there particular music?
A hymn?
A poem or reading?
Does somebody in the family want to speak?
But those are only the practical questions.
The real job is finding out about the person who has died.
Who were they?
How did they live?
What mattered to them?
What made them laugh?
What did other people remember about them?
That information allows the celebrant to create a service about the person rather than a standard funeral with a different name inserted into it.
Not every family story is a happy one
This was one of the more interesting parts of our conversation.
We tend to talk about somebody who has died as though they immediately became wonderful.
Loving.
Kind.
Generous.
Devoted to their family.
But sometimes they weren’t.
Families can be complicated.
The person who has died may have been difficult. There may have been arguments, estrangement, old wounds or things within the family that nobody wants discussed in public.
Karen’s job is not to rewrite somebody’s life.
If the family knows Dad was a difficult sod, standing at the front telling everyone he was the kindest and most generous man who ever lived isn’t going to work.
Sometimes the skill lies in knowing what not to say.
Karen has to find a way of producing a service that remains respectful without pretending somebody was something they were not.
That requires judgement.
Some funerals are especially hard
Karen conducts many different types of service.
Adult funerals.
Children’s funerals.
Baby funerals.
Religious and non-religious funerals.
She also works with people from different faiths and backgrounds.
Each one brings something different.
Sometimes the family simply needs somebody who knows what to do.
Sometimes they need much more support.
There may also be information the family wants Karen to understand but does not want repeated during the service.
That means trust matters.
The family needs to know that they can speak openly and that Karen will use what they tell her with care.
The celebrant isn’t just there for the funeral
This was probably the biggest change in my own view after our conversation.
I had thought of a funeral celebrant mainly as the person conducting the service.
Karen’s role starts well before that.
She helps the family make decisions.
She helps them think through the service.
She deals with the emotions that come with it.
She may also find herself dealing with disagreements or tensions within the family.
Then, on the day itself, she holds all of those pieces together.
That ability doesn’t come from downloading a funeral script from the internet.
Much of it comes from experience.
It comes from knowing when to speak, when not to speak and when somebody in the room needs a bit of help.
How do you choose a funeral celebrant?
This raised another useful question.
If you need a celebrant, how do you choose one?
You could, of course, search Google.
But a list of names doesn’t tell you whether someone is right for your family.
Karen gets much of her work through funeral directors.
That makes sense.
A good funeral director has met the family. They know something about the person who has died and the type of service the family wants.
They also know the celebrants they work with.
That means they can often match the right celebrant with the right family.
For example, somebody may have attended church throughout most of their life, but the family may not want a full church funeral.
Karen is also ordained, so she can include that religious part of the person’s life while still creating a more personal celebrant-led service.
Another family may be better suited to a completely different celebrant.
The point is not that one celebrant is better than another.
It is about finding the right fit.
Think about the person who died
Karen’s advice when choosing a celebrant is simple.
Think about the person whose funeral you are arranging.
What would they have wanted?
What sort of personality would suit them?
What sort of service would feel right?
You are not simply choosing somebody who can speak in public.
You are trusting them to tell part of someone’s life story.
Choose carefully.
And find out what people want before they die
As with so many of our conversations about death and funerals, we eventually came back to planning.
Does the person want to be buried?
Cremated?
Would they want a direct cremation?
Do they want a religious funeral?
Do they even want much of a funeral at all?
Has anybody asked them?
Then there is the money.
Is there a funeral plan?
Life insurance?
Savings?
How much can the family realistically afford?
Karen made a point which I think is worth repeating.
Do not put yourself into debt to pay for a funeral.
A funeral should reflect the person who has died, but spending money you don’t have will not make the goodbye more meaningful.
Families need to work within the money available.
The most useful conversation may happen before the funeral
There is a theme running through these podcasts with Karen.
Talk about this stuff.
You don’t need to plan your own funeral down to the last song and sausage roll.
But giving your family some idea of what you want can make an awful week a little easier.
Burial or cremation.
Religious or not.
Big funeral or something quiet.
Who you might want involved.
And if you don’t have strong views, tell them that too.
Because otherwise your family will have to guess.
And they will be trying to guess while dealing with grief, paperwork, funeral directors, relatives and everything else that follows a death.
A good celebrant can help enormously when that happens.
But giving them something to work with makes the job easier for everyone.
Listen to the podcast
In this episode, I talk with Karen Acres about her work as a funeral celebrant, how she helps families build a funeral service and what to think about when choosing the person who will conduct it.
You can find out more about Karen and her work at:
