I lost my Mum in March this year and she was cremated on the 16th April. An unattended committal… as she wanted.
My siblings and I have decided we need to have a memorial/celebration of life for our Mum. She was a dynamic, amazing, wise woman who deserves a “send off” as such. Regardless of whether she would hate it or not… it’s for us to celebrate her
It’s July now. And even though we are planning for next April, I’m already feeling INCREDIBLY overwhelmed even thinking about it. I definitely want it to happen…. But in the early stages of thinking about it…. Woooo mama I am not ready at all……
I’m wondering if anyone has had this experience personally and what did your loved ones celebration of life look like? I’m wondering if some inspiration will help me envisage what we want for our beautiful Mum.
I’m so sorry for the loss of your mum. Thank you for sharing this with us. I’m just giving your thread a gentle, “bump” for you - hopefully someone will have some thoughts to share.
Hi for the celebration of life, it will hopefully be good that it is next year, giving you some more time. I found mums funeral hard but worse in the build up, i fthat makes sense. The day was ok all things considered, sunny which she would have liked. We arranged a flower spray for the coffin, nice service with booklets and a custom video was played with a song by Dolly Parton who she loved. I arranged everything as my brothers couldn’t handle anything.
Are there some favourite things that lifted your mum that you could use, flowers, music, art, photos, memories you could share. If she were present what would she enjoy ?
Hello there,
I’m sorry you’re finding the memorial planning so overwhelming. It’s a lot to take in and think about. The good thing is with a memorial you are a lot less restricted and therefore you can make it more personal. It’s what’s right for you and those close to you or your loved one.
I arranged my Dads memorial all by myself. Here are a few examples of what I arranged:
had orange juice served as it was one of his favourite drinks
*played one of his favourite songs
*hired a room that contained artwork I knew he would have approved of, he loved art
had photo albums created. The albums contained photos of him from his birth right up until present day. These albums were passed around the table and became a talking point and encouraged people to share memories and circulate
*had postcards representing his favourite theatre shows about the room. These worked similar to the photo albums
*had a memory tree. Basically a wooden model of a tree and people could write a memory on a paper leaf and add to the tree. Perhaps it was a little bit cheesy but I thought it was something interactive people might like because as we know people all grieve/handle things in different ways
I do hope there’s something here that inspires or helps you
Alex another idea is memorial cards, I just made them myself with various flower stickers and added soem detail, people then wrote on them with lovely memories and I can read them anytime.
We came back to my home for food, passed around photo books I had made, and generally remembered mum.
During the funeral I forgot to say the video was various photos of mum put to the Dolly Parton music, maybe you could make a Powerpoint that plays on a loop x
That sounds a wonderful memorial @Eponine , I am not very familiar with the process here (this was my first planning of a funeral) but assume a memorial is for when the burial or cremation is simpler or they do not want a funeral but the family created a nice memorial for themselves?
I love these things you did , my mum adored the theatre so I included photos of her in the theatre days think she would have liked me showing her off in her feathers and dancing shoes
@Sophie8, yes that’s correct, a memorial is generally more simple. Aww I’m sure those photos of your Mum were beautiful and she would be most grateful and proud
@ColdWaterMermaid - I’m so sorry for your loss and I hope you’re looking after yourself
When my Dad passed away just before Christmas last year, we had a lovely service for him, something he would have been proud of. My adult daughter made up some beautiful photo albums, which were passed around at the gathering afterwards, we also had a lovely order of service made up and it was full of poetry, readings and lots of photos of my Dad as a baby right through until his lost holiday, a few weeks before he passed away. I ordered some lovely little personalised bird seed paper bags from Etsy, along with some bird seed, and gave them to everyone to sprinkle them in remembrance of my Dad, who was a huge supporter of the RSPB. At the service we had lots of photos on a loop that were shown to one of his favourite Welsh lullabys.
Depending how many guests you’d like to have, why don’t you think about hiring a venue, big or small, depending on what you need, and have something like an afternoon tea made up or have your Mum’s favourite film played? She sounds such a special person and I’m sure you’ll all do her proud celebrating her life
