Postscript 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.
Excerpt from Postscript, by Cecelia Ahern
It’s okay if this one is too real for you – it’s confronting, and it’s not for everyone. But some may find it comforting to think about death as a release from suffering.
To most people death is the enemy – a thing to be feared. It’s the thing that we have tried to avoid by minimising risks, by following the rules of health and safety and resorting to every treatment and medicine that might save us. Don’t look death in the eye, don’t let it see you, don’t let it know you are there. Head down, eyes averted, don’t choose me, don’t pick me.
By the rules of nature, it is programmed into us that we must root for life to win.
For so very long in Gerry’s illness, death was the enemy.
But as is so often the case for a loved one suffering a terminal illness, there can be a point when my attitude changed and death became the one thing that could offer peace, that could ease his suffering. When the hope of a cure is gone. And the inevitable is inevitable and when death is invited.
Death is welcomed. Take them way from this pain, guide them, help them, be kind and be gentle.
Even though Gerry was too young to die and he did everything he could to fight it – when he needed to – he turned to death. Saw it as a friend and went to it.
And I was relieved, grateful to death for taking him from his suffering and embracing him.
In a strange and wonderful way, the thing you have avoided, dreaded, feared, is right in front of you and it is bathed in light.
Death becomes our saviour.
Life is light.
Dying is darkness.
Death is light again.
Full circle.
Death is always with us. Our constant companion in partnership with life. Watching us from the sidelines, while we are living we are also dying.
Every second spent living is a second closer to the end of our days.
The balance inevitably tips. Death is there at our fingertips all the time and we choose not to go to it. And it chooses not to take us. Death doesn’t push us. Death catches us when we fall.