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Gary Homewood, Funeral Celebrant, Yalding (2025)

A Funeral Celebrant, based in Kent, and operating throughout the county, as well as part of East Sussex and Surrey, who will design and lead a bespoke service that fully reflects a family’s particular wants and beliefs.

04/11/2023

It is unusual, after a funeral, to have people queuing up to discover the provenance of the poem they just heard. You may care to read it too.

Here I Am

Here I am,
at the end of the journey that I so often feared to think about.
How strange that it should have been so simple, after all;
so natural, and that I should be here so soon.
I expected darkness, stillness, silence.
I wondered if I might be no more.
Instead, I have this new beginning: this dawn; this bright new day,
and a gentle pathway that stretches out before me.

I expected darkness: there is light.
I expected stillness: there is life.
I expected silence: there is a music in the air, a murmur in the trees, and voices calling to me across broad, sunlit fields.

I came to this place old, tired, hurting with the pain of life.
Now I am young, and strong, and well.
I yearn to walk, to run, to use this new-found energy,
To explore, and to enjoy, this new-found life.

I feared to be alone.
Strange to think that I never was.
I know that now.
At what I thought was the ending,
and the beginning of the never-ending darkness,
there, most of all, I was not alone, never alone.
A hand guided me, a voice spoke to my soul,
And there was peace.
Unutterable peace.

Those voices are still calling to me.
I must go to them, find them, fling my arms around them,
With the sheer joy of living together all over again,
With this new energy, with these new dreams.
What a wonderful, wonderful adventure we will have.

So, fear nothing when your time comes.
Not the pain, not the darkness.
Be still, and know.
And I will come for you,
And welcome you home.

--- oOo ---

If you wish to use this poem in a service of your own, let me know, and I will be happy to give you my permission to quote and use the text.

24/05/2023

WHEN A LIFE ENDS ...

When a life ends, you gather up all the pieces – the memories, the possessions, the heartache – and you wish that you could put them back together again.

If you allow it to, grief will take over, for a while, and stop you from seeing the world as it is, and as it should be, and will be.

And it is then that you should take a moment, and be still, and wait, and listen.
Faith will intrude upon your thoughts, and then you will sense something that is beginning to stir.

Something close to you that is vibrant with life.
New life.
A life that is ready to dance with joy.
And start again.
And go on, and on.

And, quite suddenly, and wonderfully, the grief has gone,
And all is well.
And always will be.

06/10/2022

Some simple thoughts.

A funeral service is as much about the living as the dead. It is the time when a family or an individual must decide how they are going to deal with separation and loss.

But how do you decide which kind of funeral service you should have?

There are lots to choose from. Almost every faith, or belief, or particular mindset, has its own template for such an occasion, and many people draw comfort from the sense of identity, of belonging, that such established patterns of worship or celebration give them at a time like this.

But there are also a great many people who struggle to express how they feel, and exactly what it is that they themselves believe in at a time like this, and they may very well feel that none of the templates available to them answer their need.

The solution to that problem is to have a funeral service prepared for you, a service that doesn't come out of a book or a website, but instead grows out of what you think and feel and want at this most important moment in your life.

The wording of such a service becomes of paramount importance.

Words can make people feel welcomed, but they can also make people feel rejected, or left out. Therefore, a service which is written expressly for you, can and should embrace everyone: those who have faith, and those who don't; those who believe in one world and one life, and those who believe in and hope for more. Everyone made to feel a valid part of the occasion.

And that, if you wish, is the kind of service I will prepare for you. I will visit you in your home, share your experience of bereavement with you, and work with you to design and then lead the service that gives you a sense of peace, and helps you to begin the gradual process of closure.

11/11/2021

For those times when we can only hope ...

AN ENDING AND A BEGINNING

When life comes to an end, there are duties that we must perform,
and there are beliefs that we must consult.
The duties are mundane, and very much of this world:
There are earthly remains to put aside, to lay to rest;
There are offices to perform,
Expectations to meet.
But the beliefs are set apart from duty,
And they take our thoughts and our hearts elsewhere.

Some turn to their God and to promises of a perfect kingdom,
Of wellbeing after death, peace and contentment, and a new dawn, a new rising to an everlasting life in Elysium.

Others turn, instead, they think, to an ineffable power of nature that embraces the entirety of the universe, and all its resurgent powers,
And there they too seek for continuity,
For something else.

And that is where so many of our beliefs converge,
In the hope, the determination, the conviction
That there is something more.

In truth, we cannot define it,
And perhaps we shouldn’t try,
Because all time and space, all that is,
is only defined by human limitations,
by thought, by speech,
By our endless desire to dream.

But in all our imaginings there is always something more.
It is magical mystery;
It confounds logic and rational science,
But it will not go away.

There is always something more,
Out there, just beyond reach,
Just out of sight,
Hard to imagine, harder still to ignore.

And that is where we place our hope,
That is where our belief, our instinct, takes us.
To the next place,
The next experience of being,
The next evolution,
The next discovery,
The next sharing in the wonders of life.

And all we ask is togetherness,
The chance to link our hands together once more,
In love.

Gary Homewood, 2021.

16/05/2020

If you are reading this post, it is quite possible that you find yourself needing to arrange a funeral for someone very close to you.
Perhaps you are not a regular churchgoer. You might feel that you want a religious service of some kind, but you don’t want a one-size-fits-all service that’s lifted straight from the pages of a book. It’s more important to you to celebrate the life that has just ended. You want to express your feelings simply, and in plain English, and you yourself want to choose what goes into the service.
That’s where I come in.
We meet and we talk, and I listen, and the end result will be precisely the service that you want: a life-story simply told, that’s full of happy memories, your thoughts, your music, and your love.
A dignified occasion that will give you and your family and friends the closure that you need.
If you think that I can be of help, please email me or give me a call.

Address

Yalding
TN125LN

Telephone

+447983536490

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