Recently, I sat with a man who was planning a funeral for his late father. As we went through the details together, we came to the music — and it was all Bach. Every single piece. He looked at me with a small smile and said, "Can you tell that I like Bach?" I smiled back, but quietly I found myself thinking — yes, but did your father? I didn't say it out loud. It wasn't the moment for that. But it stayed with me long after he left, gently turning itself over in my mind. Because it led me somewhere important — to a question I think about more than most people might expect: Who is a funeral actually for?
The Uncomfortable Truth About Funeral Wishes Here's something that might surprise you. In the UK, funeral wishes are not legally binding. You can leave instructions in your will, discuss your wishes with loved ones, even record them in a formal document — and yet the final decision still rests entirely with your executors or next of kin. Even if there is a clear written request for a particular method, there is no legal mechanism to enforce it. Anthony Gold That feels significant. It means that, in practice, a funeral is almost always shaped by the living — by their tastes, their grief, their need for comfort — as much as by any wishes the deceased may have expressed. And the data tells us that most of the time, the deceased haven't expressed very many wishes at all. According to the funeral industry journal Funeral Service Times, over 382,000 funerals take place each year in the UK where family and friends have had to guess at what their loved one would have wanted. Humanists UK That is a remarkable number. More than 382,000 times a year, a family sits down together — grieving, exhausted, often in shock — and tries to piece together a send-off for someone they love, with little more than instinct and memory to guide them. A YouGov study found that only 6% of UK adults have a pre-paid funeral plan in place Funeralguide — a striking contrast to countries like the Netherlands, where the majority of the population has some form of funeral provision. This is despite research showing that nine out of ten British people say the most important consideration when thinking about their own funeral is that their personal wishes are followed. FuneralHUB We want our wishes to be heard. We just haven't told anyone what they are.
The Man With the Bach So back to my client and his Bach. Was he wrong to choose music he loved? Absolutely not. Was it perhaps a quiet, unconscious act of grief — surrounding his father's final farewell with something that brought him comfort? Almost certainly, yes. And that is not a failure. That is a human being doing what human beings do when they are heartbroken. Because here's what the research tells us: funerals and wakes help the bereaved accept the reality of death, mourn collectively, remember the person, and offer prayers for the deceased. AIHCP They are, in many profound ways, for the living. The psychological evidence for this is compelling. Harvard psychologist Christy Denckla has described funerals and related rituals as "fundamental to how we mourn, to how we grieve, to how we reinforce social ties." NPR And research shows that cultures which emphasise communal grieving tend to have far fewer prolonged grief disorders when the loss itself is not complicated. AIHCP In other words, the ritual matters. The gathering matters. The music, the words, the flowers — they all serve a purpose for the people left behind. And there is nothing wrong with that.
But What About the Person Who Has Died? And yet. There is another side to this. For many families, honouring the person who has died — really honouring them, in a way that feels true — is itself part of the healing. In a large American study, 80% of people felt that the services they attended had meaning and value and genuinely reflected the life of the deceased. Famic When a funeral feels authentically like the person, it resonates. It gives mourners something to hold on to. It says: this was a real person, with a real life, and we saw them. Increasingly, people are recognising this. Consumer preferences are shifting away from traditional norms towards more personalised ceremonies, eco-friendly options, and technology-driven solutions — reflecting a growing desire for funerals to better align with individual values and lifestyles. Mintel The rise of humanist and celebrant-led funerals, the move towards "celebrations of life," the growing trend of wearing bright colours rather than black — all of these reflect a cultural shift towards putting the person who has died back at the centre of the ceremony. And research from the Netherlands, which followed 552 bereaved people over three years, found that the benefit of after-death rituals, including funerals, depends significantly on the ability of the bereaved to shape those rituals and say goodbye in a way which is meaningful for them. Meaningfulness, it turns out, is the key word. A funeral that feels meaningful — whether that meaning comes from honouring the deceased, or from the comfort it provides the living, or ideally both — is the one that truly serves its purpose.
There Is No Right Answer I have sat with hundreds of families over the years, and I have never once met one who got it "wrong." I have seen funerals filled with laughter, and funerals of near-silence. I have seen families choose music their loved one would have adored, and families who needed to sing something familiar and comforting for themselves. I have seen both bring people to their knees with grief, and both lift a room. The truth is that grief is not a performance. Psychologists recognise that the stages of grief are not linear and can vary widely among individuals. What helps one person find their footing after loss may do nothing for another. And a funeral, at its best, must hold space for all of that. The man with the Handel was not doing anything wrong. He was grieving. He was doing his best. And the music that brought him comfort in the hardest week of his life was doing exactly what it needed to do. But perhaps there is a gentle invitation here for all of us — to have the conversation before it becomes impossible. To tell the people we love what matters to us, what music moves us, what words we'd want spoken. Not to take the decision away from them, but to give them a gift: the relief of knowing. Because that, too, is an act of love.
If you'd like to talk about planning a funeral that truly reflects your loved one — or to think ahead for yourself — I'm here to help. Every conversation is completely personal, completely confidential, and there's no obligation.
