What we do not do
We do not lead the service, and we do not provide the clergy
The rite is yours. We hold the room, the day and the arrangements around it.
If you have a priest, an imam, a rabbi, a pandit or a celebrant, we work to them. If you have nobody, we will find someone who will do it well and let you decide, and we pay them on your behalf and pass on exactly what they charge. What we will not do is stand up and conduct a religious rite that is not ours to conduct.
This neighbourhood holds a dozen traditions and it would be presumptuous of any funeral home to imply it can perform all of them. The rooms here have nothing on the walls precisely so that they can hold whichever one you bring.
How it works in practice
Whoever leads it is yours. The day built around them is ours.
If you have a priest, an imam, a rabbi, a pandit, a minister or a celebrant, we work to them. They set the shape and the timings and we arrange the day around what they need, in this building or in yours. Nobody from here stands at the front, and nobody from here decides what is said.
If you have nobody, we will find somebody who does it well and let you decide about them. That is a different thing from providing one: you meet them first, you may say no, and you may ask for a different person without explaining yourself. We pay them on your behalf and pass on exactly what they charge, with nothing added.
What to do about it
What to do about it
Most of this is telling us early. The rest is telling us what the rite needs from a room.
Say who is leading it at the first meeting, even if it is a maybe
Their diary is one of the three things a date waits on, and it is the one families settle last and mention last.
If you have nobody, say so plainly
It is an ordinary answer and it is not a failure of any kind. Where more than one person would suit, we will offer more than one name and stand back.
Meet them beforehand if you can
A short telephone call is enough for most families to know whether this is the right person to say their mother's name out loud.
Tell us what the rite needs from the room
Water, a table at a particular height, shoes off at the door, an open flame, which way the room should face, more time than the diary shows. Far better told at the meeting than worked out as the room fills.
Let us pay them
It goes on the itemised statement as what it is, at what it cost, with nothing of ours on top. If you would rather pay them directly, that is fine too and it changes nothing else.
How to recognise it
What a less honest version of this looks like
The failure here is a small one, usually made kindly, and its effect is to narrow what a family believes it is allowed to ask for.
A house form of words offered as the default
If the first suggestion is always the same service led by the same person, the choice was made before you arrived. Ask what else is possible, and ask what happens if the answer is something the firm has not done before.
A room that has already decided the tradition
A symbol fixed to a wall is a small thing to a family that shares it and a large one to a family that does not. Ask what comes off the wall for the day and what stays on it.
A rounded figure for whoever leads the service
What that person charges is theirs and it should appear on the statement as their own line. If it has been folded into something larger with no breakdown, ask to see it on its own.
The rooms here have nothing on their walls precisely so that they can hold whichever tradition you bring. That was a decision about usefulness rather than taste, and it is why we are frequently taught something on the day by the family.
This neighbourhood holds a dozen traditions in the space of a few blocks, and it would be presumptuous of any funeral home to imply it can perform all of them well.
- The chapel — The room with nothing on its walls, the hearing loop, the rows that come out, and what all of it makes possible.
- Funeral service — The service with the body present, and where it can be held.
- The family — Why the building was altered as it was, and who the arrangements here are for.
The rest of the argument
One argument in nine parts
Each of these is a place where a family is told less than it needs to know, by somebody, in an ordinary week. They are on separate pages because they come up separately. They are the same argument.
The other eight
If you are not sure who would lead it
Ring and say so. It is one of the most common things anybody says on a first call, and there is more than one good answer to it.