I was recently invited to join A Natural Undertaking on their stall at the Kings Heath Artisan Market, which is a monthly event, held in York Road.
You may wonder how a stall containing a coffin would fit into a street market, but the overall aim is to help people to understand that talking about funerals and end of life is OK, and really is something we should be doing.
The lovely ladies at A Natural Undertaking work differently to more traditional Funeral Directors. They help each family to create a really bespoke service (no off the shelf packages), and have gatheCred around them a group of people who provide support in different ways. This includes celebrants, and florists. The ladies make sure that everyone they work with puts the family at the heart of everything they do, and it is an absolute honour to be one of the Celebrants they recommend to their families.
So, yes, I spent lots of time leaning on a beautiful coffin, and a lot of time chatting to the people who were drawn to the stall.
We often talked about the different options available, the fear around talking about all things funeral, the music choices people would want, and more often than not we laughed.
There were two things that stuck with me, one was a lady telling me that she had created a funeral music list on Spotify, which she had shared with her friends. She occasionally updated it, but knew that if anything happened to her, then the music she wanted would definitely be played.
The other was a young lady who informed her Mum that she definitely wanted to be cremated, as then her friends could 'snort her', so she could always live in them! (I told you we had lots of laughs).
If you ever see an Undertaker or Funeral Director witha stall at a market, please do take time to stop and chat. You will be surprised how easy it is to chat about funerals. Let's banish the stigma, and ensure we all have the send off that we want, when the time comes.