Blessing for One Who Has Taken Their Own Life funeral reading

Here’s the next in my series of funeral readings you might like to consider for your loved one’s funeral or memorial ceremony. Some are sad, some are uplifting, some are comforting; there’s something for everyone here.

Readings are absolutely not a compulsory part of a funeral or memorial ceremony. Sometimes family members or friends desperately want to speak at their loved one’s funeral, but they haven’t got the wherewithal to write something themselves. Readings are a perfect stand-in: your emotions and feelings right there on the page ready for you to contribute.

Remember readings can be adapted – if your favourite reading is written for him, you can change it to her! If it’s written for Mum, you can change it to Dad or Grandma or Grandpa, whatever fits for you. Take out lines that don’t fit your circumstances. I just make sure to introduce such a reading as an adaptation.

Blessing for One Who Has Taken Their Own Life, by David Whyte

You decided to leave us
but we can never leave you,
not in our minds,
not in the inner recess of our wondering hearts,
nor in the long twilight horizon where you will always walk in our memory.

Above on the mountain the lark will rise from the summer grass
to the sky above your home and the song it sings will forever carry
the mystery of your going.

You turned away from all our help,
so that we have to ask for your help now, not in answers
but in asking the difficult and beautiful questions your life bequeathed.

We are still not sure if you ever asked for the helping hand,
but still we hold our hands out now to take yours in ours,
to reassure you in the quiet of the morning or the silence of the night
and in all the days to come when in our minds you still need our care
to help you go on where we can’t go,
to see you safe beyond the quiet line of our understanding.

To walk with you now arm in arm with our regrets
and our affection that one last mile along the way you
wanted to go, the quiet in which we wave goodbye,
only the sign of our secret promise to you,
the continued and helpless testament of our unspoken love.

Funeral Readings

• Funeral Readings: a new series!
• A Poem for Grandpa funeral reading
• Blessing for One Who Has Taken Their Own Life funeral reading
• Christopher Robin on Dying funeral reading
• God Saw You Getting Tired funeral reading