Healing is not getting over it, it is learning to carry it
I often say at my funeral ceremonies that everyone expresses grief differently and there is no right or wrong way only your way. Memorial ceremonies can help if they are part of your way. They can be healing because they give permission. Permission to cry, permission to laugh at a remembered joke, permission to feel anger, relief, guilt, or numbness. Grief is rarely tidy. Yet many people believe there is a correct way to mourn, and they fear being judged if they do not perform grief in the expected manner. They often ask me, am I allowed to do that? One lady said - I know what I want to do, but am I allowed? My answer was, -you can do what you want to. I asked what it was and it was as simple as placing a loved book on top of her father’s coffin which of course with my support she did.
A well held memorial service invites the whole range of responses. It reminds mourners that grief is love with nowhere to go, and that love can still find expression through memories, rituals, music, and words spoken aloud. Healing does not mean the pain disappears. It means the pain becomes part of a larger story, one that includes meaning, connection, and continuing bonds.
At the heart of any memorial is a life story. Not a list of achievements, though those may matter, but the essence of a person. The way they made tea, the way they greeted neighbours, the way they were stubborn or soft hearted, the way they were wonderfully themselves.
When families share these details, they often discover something unexpected. Someone else holds a piece of the person that the immediate family never knew. A colleague might describe kindness in a hard workplace. A friend might recall a private struggle that explains a season of distance. A grandchild might share a moment of pure play, a memory that brings everyone’s face into the same warm smile. Each story becomes a thread, and together they weave a fuller picture that feels steady enough to hold.
One family decided to include a short section called “Dad in small moments.” People were invited to write one sentence on a card. During the service, a few were read aloud. “He carried biscuits in his coat pocket.” “He never missed a school play.” “He spoke to my mum when she felt invisible.” The room changed. The grief remained, but it was joined by texture, by realness, by recognition. She later told me, “I thought I would collapse. Instead, I felt supported and knew that my Dad had been seen.”
That is the quiet power of telling someone’s story
