Hilary Walker - Civil Funeral Celebrant

27/11/2025

Open Monday to Friday 9.15 /3

Gorgeous day for a walk now its warmed up a bit.

06/11/2025

Forever My Love

When I’m no longer around
do not doubt
I will still be loving you

I shall look for you
from my new home within the stars
remembering the simple things

Your zest for life
your unwavering positivity
the flash of your ever ready smile

I will never be convinced
that our brilliant bond
could ever die

So I will live on
inside your kind heart
inside your intelligent mind
always at one with your familiar body.

Forever my love.

27/08/2025

Beautiful words shared by a daughter at her father's funeral:

'May love linger like light even after the sun has slipped below the horizon as death is both an ending and a shadow that teaches us about the brilliance of what came before.'

11/08/2025

21/05/2025

Please welcome Hilary, our next spotlight on our wonderful funeral celebrants

Hilary Walker is a trained Civil Funeral Celebrant available to conduct funeral services within the North-West area. With a career background within the Registration Service, she has spent many years delivering a variety of ceremonies including Weddings, Baby Naming, Renewal of Marriage Vows, British Citizenship ceremonies and Civil Funerals. She was trained and accredited with Civil Funerals Limited in 2004 and first offered funerals via Wigan Council. For the past nine years she has continued in this role on an independent basis.

Hilary believes the services she presents focus on celebrating, remembering and reflecting the life of your loved one and the tributes she creates are a respectful and highly bespoke memoir. On a personal note, she has found the level of satisfaction gained from being able to provide such services to families at their time of need to be immense and extremely worthwhile.

Because every life is unique, every funeral deserves to reflect this.

23/03/2025

A wonderful uplifting poem for a funeral service:

Poem: Raise a glass (James Mooney)

Do not mourn me.
Don’t drown me in black cloth and quiet whispers.
Laugh loud, drink deep,
Tell the stories that made me live.

Remember the bad jokes,
The nights that stretched into dawn,
The times we swore we’d never forget…
And don’t.

I was here
A life well-lived.
I want something more than tears.

So raise a glass,
And dance a little,
Let the wind take my name…
I’ll be listening.

Do not mourn me.
Celebrate me.

10/03/2025

Just realised that today would have been my mother's 110th birthday. She was born in 1915 and I came along later in life when my parents were in their forties. Although I experienced a wonderful childhood the downside to having older patents is that you may lose them earlier than expected and sadly she passed away when I was a young teenager. I wrote the poem below as an adult trying to make sense of this loss which, although it happened a lifetime ago, never goes away.

Conversation with my mother.

People play a game 'who would you invite for dinner, dead or alive, saint or sinner' impress with guests like Madonna, Marilyn or Mandela
For me there would only be one name on the list,
Marion, my mother.

Memories are childlike for I was always a child with her.
Now we'd meet through adult eyes and I'd learn so much about the woman who changed everything.

Recollections are sweet:
exotic skin, quick to darken in meagre sunlight,
the touch of soft flesh on her arms as we'd link each other,
mother and child sharing secrets, laughing in tandem
her serenity,
her scent,
how safe it was, my home within the centre of her world.

Over dinner I'd ask her why,
why she suffered,
why she didn't tell,
see a doctor, left it too late
and I would lie and sensitively say that I don't really remember her in that way.

Haunted by questions:
If she had lived, who would I be,
If she had lived, whose life would I be living.
A part of me is buried beside her, for children always blame themselves.

Sadly, there's no resemblance
but lately I learned a magical truth that warmed my soul.

My mother loved to write!

Throughout my adult life I've been fine for most of the time
but today I'm frozen,
finally realising how much
I lost.

31/12/2024

Endings & Beginnings

When all is said and done
And the light has finally dimmed
Send my soul to a higher dimension
Pay the ferryman for my sins.

At journey’s end we dream of tranquillity
A hollow chasm of contemplation and rest
A time for forgiveness, truth and redemption
A sense of knowing we were blessed.

And if someone’s God should greet me
As my loved ones gather by my bed
I will be grateful for this lifetime
When all is done, and all is said.

I long to sleep for centuries
Within an aura of wellness and light
To feel I’m floating timelessly
Out of body, out of mind, out of sight.

For if all there is, is nothing
And if all there is, is space
How fortunate, how lucky are we
To be part of the human race.

So, here’s to us, the survivors
The ones who’ve touched the sky
Who’ve endured through all the seasons
Without knowing how or why.

I ‘d like to think that at the end of our days
We’ve only just begun
We will live again, perpetually
When all is said and done.