When we gather for a funeral ceremony, we have the opportunity to reflect on the life of the person who has died, connect with what they meant to us and find out about parts of their lives we didn’t know that may surprise us. It’s a huge task to do that in what is quite often a short amount of time – to gather those multiple voices, to create a version of a life that can do all those things.
But those ceremony scripts also tell us huge amounts about how people lived, what they did and where their lives took them. It’s social history at its most personal. I can’t think of anything that does the same thing. And yet those ceremonies and histories only exist in the moment.
As an undertaker I get to hear those stories every day. And I am always astonished by how a good celebrant will have made that happen – in a way that everyone who attended that service feels that it really reflected the person who has died. When it’s done well, it’s truly a fine art.
This project will help those historians of the future see how people lived, how their relationships formed and what was important to them in their lives.
It is difficult to overstate just how important this project will be in the future, for the many people who will look back at the life stories of those who have lived through the ever-changing decades from the 1920s to now. Life stories are fascinating, and some read as so unbelievable you might imagine they are pure fiction. But they are not, and having a bank of such stories will help future generations to piece together the historical context of life as we know it.
Funeral celebrants have a unique role. They are people who are naturally interested in the life that has been lived and not just the factual elements, like dates and what was happening in the world. They are interested in how a person felt and lived and loved and made choices throughout their life. What inspired a person and what their greatest achievements were. What essentially made them tick. This is what the celebrant finds out and writes about in funeral ceremonies. As professionals who are experienced and experts in their role, the stories they write are invaluable and should not be lost in time.
This is why this project is so important. The University of Birmingham is to be applauded for their part in storing and keeping these lives in words and for their foresight in understanding how very valuable this project will be for future generations.