Informal Farewells
Here at Kapiti Coast Funeral Home, we’ve been developing over the last few years a different type of farewell, one, we’re calling an informal farewell. It’s not a funeral, it’s not a traditional gathering, it’s a how do we do this in an informal setting, how do we say goodbye in an informal setting. So, we’ve put together, it’s almost like a package, a type of farewell called an informal farewell.
It’s designed to perhaps have in your own home, we do it more often in our small crematorium chapel, which is a beautiful setting looking down the valley out to the ocean in Kapiti Island. It’s a setting where it’s not a formal setting, so you can move the chairs around, you can have the simple casket in the middle of the room, or to the side. You can write messages on the casket; you can bring a thought or a reading or share a story or two or three or four or five.
You can bring flowers from home and place it on. It’s a way of doing whatever empowers you. So this informal funeral, we’re calling it an informal farewell, not a funeral at all.
And for a lot of people, it’s a way of saying, well, I don’t really need to do anything, but my family needs something. Why be too prescriptive about what your family does? Why not just let them do what they want to do? One of the ones I had recently, the family came and they started talking about the sort of music she liked. One of them had bought a piece prepared, but once they started talking, they said, oh, it’s a shame we can’t play that.
Oh, yes, we can. And we literally Bluetoothed across to our sound system in the chapel and played the song. Another family I had just played the songs on their phone and bought a Bluetooth speaker.
One family I had bought some wine to sort of cheers to the person who’d gone to say, we’re including you in this conversation. Others have bought pens. We have pens at the chapel too, to write on the casket messages, drawings, whatever they need to do to say goodbye.
And we often caveat this informal farewell with a; you need to finish it in some way. And if you can prepare some words for that, that’s fine. If you need us as funeral home employees, staff, to actually just say a few final words of goodbye at the end, we’re happy to do that as well.
Just pre-warn us so the right staff member is there that is happy to do that. So an informal farewell, think about what you would want. If you don’t want a traditional funeral, but you still know you need something for your family to say goodbye, this might be it for you.
If you want to know more, go to our website, Kapiti Coast Funeral Home backslash blogs or look at our costs tab. So Kapiti Coast Funeral Home, Kapiti Coast Funeral Home backslash costs. And you’ll see our infield.
Go to Kapiti Coast Funeral Home backslash costs and you’ll see our informal farewell package there.
