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Funeral Ceremonies to Reflect the Beauty of Life

Many people are now unaffiliated to a particular religion but want to express their own unique beliefs during a funeral ceremony. To manage this, together, we will co-create a service that is moving, memorable, and something you will always cherish:

  • By carefully listening to you as a family, gathering all the details about your Loved One, who they were, about their life, the stories to be told, and the service details required
  • I will then design a funeral that authentically celebrates your Loved One’s life
  • Once we have agreed on the service style together, I will then conduct the ceremony on your behalf.

My work is about inspiring and encouraging you to decide and design the best funeral possible through support, warmth and kindness, at a most difficult time. Green fuse Funeral Celebrancy is about building a funeral service with you to celebrate your Loved One’s life, and to say goodbye. The Green fuse special “S” shaped funeral will share a well-told story, tribute or eulogy with readings, poems, music, and close with carefully chosen words, and so be the unique, moving service you require. As a Medical Herbalist and Transitions Mentor, I bring years of experience of dealing with Life’s significant times of change to Funeral Celebrancy.

Introduction to Me, My Work and What YOU Get

I am Benn Abdy-Collins, a specially-trained Independent Funeral Celebrant, Green fuse. My work is about inspiring and encouraging you, as a family – at a most difficult time​ – to decide and design the best funeral possible through support, warmth and kindness.​​ Each service is freshly created and unique to the person who’s life we will celebrate together.

What I Bring to Funerals

My work as a funeral celebrant is underpinned by almost 25 years’ experience of being a professional herbalist, and years of mentoring people through times of transition, trouble and change, and bereavement. I believe we all deserve a good send-off. As a professional speaker and writer, I craft funeral services with care, consideration, attention to details and a good dollop of Love, regard and respect. In times of loss, grief and crisis, I hold the space for people to feel their feelings and to witness the moving of time through ceremony, ritual and a structure to release their Loved One and to see the future ahead.

The Unique Green fuse-styled Funeral Service I Deliver

The Process:

  • I carefully listen to you, the family, to gather all the details about your Loved One – who they were, their life, the stories to be told, and the service details required
  • I then design and write a funeral that authentically celebrates your Loved One’s life and agree the service style and content with you
  • I then conduct the ceremony on your behalf.

The Structure:

The Green fuse “S” shaped funeral allows you, the mourners, to celebrate your Loved One’s life, and to say a final goodbye, with a real emphasis on life after the goodbye. The service concentrates on the needs of the living and provides a memorable moment at a time filled with grief, sadness and deep change. Below are the details:

Opening – welcome, introduce the service, the one who has died and the family and BA-C

Words on Life and Death – talking about death from the perspective of the one who has died

Eulogy – a circa 1,200 word tribute with stories and anecdotes, legacies and achievements

Committal – the final goodbye, whether a cremation or burial

Closing Words – final messages for close family – focussing on the legacy, the future and reminders of the person who’s life is being celebrated. Rituals, poems, readings, prayers, music, singing, silence, tributes, as required and / or requested by the family, complete  the service.

What YOU Get

  • A committed, professional service that at all times follows utmost discretion where every family relationship I work with is accorded absolute confidentiality. All notes and private family details are shredded once I have finished working with you
  • A face-to-face family visit at your home for a minimum of 90 minutes, usually longer
  • Liaison by telephone with other family members to get their input into the eulogy
  • Establishing and agreeing the ceremony tone that you as a family require, including how much religion (or not)  you wish for
  • Helping you to choose poetry and music, if necessary from a broad anthology
  • Creating the Order of Service running order
  • Writing the service – each and every ceremony is written ​afresh and tailored to the wishes of you, the family– I do not use a “set script” – this involves:
    1. writing the eulogy (circa 2-3 hours)
    2. checking with you and editing accordingly
    3. double-checking correct pronunciations, names, places, dates, facts and family relationships
  • ​Ensuring a diplomatic and sensitive handling of sibling / family rivalry – often editing the ceremony and eulogy for two  different people and working to get agreement on a final version
  • Answering any calls or emails from you, usually within 2 hours, 7 days a week
  • Rehearsing the entire ceremony and any poetry at least twice to ensure a good delivery
  • Carefully timing ceremony, including length of each piece of music and dealing with unscheduled events, adjusting the service to ensure time-keeping
  • Arriving at the venue 30 minutes before the ceremony to personally greet you as you arrive
  • I will liaise with family or friends who are doing readings – speaking to them on the phone, to reassure them/or coach them and checking-in before the service – replacing them if they feel unable to deliver as I’ll always carry a copy of their reading
  • ​Backing the entire ceremony up to the internet, to be available in case I’m ill, in an accident etc. for another person to deliver

For Funerals at Venues (other than chapels or gravesides), I will also: 

 

  • Complete  one or two site visits to plan the choreography of the entire event including discussing plans with any caterers and outside staff to organise all seating
  • Arrive at least an hour early to check all preparations
  • ​Do a check of sound / PA equipment – including sound checks for my speaking voice
  • Respond quickly to potential unseen problems and adjust the service accordingly.
Thank you so much for all your help and support over the last few weeks. Someone at the service was so shocked to learn you had never met my Nanny and so that just goes to show how much you were able to capture her and all she stood for. For that I am eternally grateful.
- Thank you for everything! Kirstie W.

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What Would You Like to Know About?

Transitions Mentoring

Within you, you have remarkable resources to  deal with any time of transition (change or loss) that affects your  life.

You just need to [re-]find these resources.

Potential solution: Choose a service that enables you to deal with both the acute/current problem – a transition, loss, bereavement – and empowers you towards your own independence towards the future.

Do this and you’ll attain incredibly powerful results and clarity. Click here for more information.

Midlife

Being 35 – 65 [in midlife] is a potent time of challenge when you become increasingly aware of mortality and death – of parents, of family – even your own… Parents age, children grow, things change and life demands so much…

Everything gathered together makes coping impossible as heartbreaks, sanity and conflicting emotions struggle to deal with such demands. And you feel a sense of loss of self; even traumatised.

Potential solution: Choose a holistic Midlifer Life-Changing bespoke service that’s, personalised to you and your needs.

Options include: herbal medicine, personalised mentoring and care to explore and find your own sense of well-being. Click here for more information.

End of Life & Living Funerals

Each individual is unique and deserves their opportunity to celebrate their life whilst hale of mind, if not hale in body. To lift a glass with loved ones, to smile, to touch, to hug, to have one last dance. To laugh; to cry.

Potential solution: Living funerals or “awake wakes” are special, well-held spaces for one at end of life to say their farewells in person. For family and friends to make memories; share love; to remember the beauty of life, even as life is fading.

You get to celebrate your life together unrestricted by chapel times and death getting in the way. Click here for more information.

Dealing with Death

At death, the person we knew is no more. Losing their personality changes everything and forms much of the grief you may face – you may longer hold them, care for them, or experience their presence for they are silent. But your love is not.

Cultural beliefs may include don’t discuss “it” for it may be contagious; ignore it; fear it; don’t acknowledge it. If you follow these ideas, then death can’t overwhelm you…

These old customs encourage keeping silent  about the painful, frightening things of life. Whilst no one may listen to how you feel, they will tell you should deal with your emotions, to fix your mind, thoughts and feelings. Question is: how would you like to feel?

Potential solution: When you choose to release bottled up emotions without judgement, you’ll feel cared for and released from the darkness of pain.

This can be achieved by regaining perspective of your life through airing what you’re thinking and feeling about your grief. With a person detached from the rest of your world in a safe, confidential environment. Click here for more information.

Funerals

There are many ways to design or host a funeral. For some people, tradition is essential; for others, a service without the sombre, formalised rituals suits them as a preference.

Many modern funerals are personalised with a blend of tradition with modern ritual that fits the one who has died, and their family. Whether this is religious, secular, with or without spirituality.

Potential solution: You require a completely different way of doing a funeral. One that encompasses the one who has died;  their and your beliefs and rituals; one that fulfils your needs as you say farewell in whatever way works for you. For you have designed and created a funeral you’ll cherish and value by working with a professional. Click here for more information.

Grief & Bereavement

Grief – the experience of loss and how you deal with it – is very individual to you.

Loss comes in many forms; the end of a life, the end of a relationship, the end of a role at work, significant life changes such as moving home or a health crisis…

One description of grief is “heartbreak”, a devastation that may influence an entire life, to be invisibly ingrained with far-reaching effects.

How you respond to these knocks and heartbreaks depends upon your resilience and perspective.

Potential solution: When you gain a fresh perspective, you arrive at a place you can deal with something that [invisibly] traps you. On release, you can regain your inner strength to face life. Click here for more information.

Want to know more about something? Please connect!