Funeral poems can be very strange things, some are full of wisdom and some seem to make no sense at all. Some are short and sweet, some are rather long, but however you feel about poems most of them are fairly good at capturing the essence of the emotion and grief surrounding a loved ones death.

I have researched many poems this week in order to write this piece, my premise was ‘What poem would I be happy to have at my funeral’? so alongside all the usual ones that are regularly used in services I have come across all sorts of poems in my search for something that I would be happy with at my own service. I have narrowed hundreds down to 3, and I think I would be happy for any one of these to be read out at my own funeral.

Having organised the funerals for 2 very close family members recently, the angst of trying to work out what they might have wanted was awful, what if I got it wrong? Death in general and more specifically our own deaths is still quite a taboo subject for many families and this has made me very aware as to what might get chosen for me if I don’t leave my wishes written down somewhere. I tell my family all the time what sort of things I want but the chances of any of them remembering is quite remote!

With my own experiences showing me that life can be taken in the blink of an eye I am now thinking long and hard about what do I want? and how I can save my family the trouble of second guessing what I might want read out, or what songs I might want played, and what were her favourite flowers again? So being proactive I have decided to leave my preferred wishes clearly stated with Richard and Ben so no one has to try and second guess me when I’m gone.

So along with my songs, my favourite flowers (Tulips and Roses) I have chosen one of these 3 poems, and my family can pick whichever one they like the best, at least I know that this is one less job for someone to think of. So my question to you is this… Which poem would you have at Your funeral? post me your favourite poem, tell me your music choices (one of my family members is having ‘Going on up to the spirit in the sky’!) nowadays anything goes from traditional to modern, from simple to ostentatious, from quirky to stereotypical, you can even hire someone to stand at the back of the chapel dressed as the grim reaper if it floats your boat! (not that we would particularly recommend this but yes it can be done)

So tell me how you envisage Your funeral taking place – what do you want? talk to your family about it! tell your friends! come let us know your wishes if you want! lets try and get the only one certainty about life – which is death – out into the open and into our conversations.

These are my 3 poems…

I Never Left You
I watch you every day, I am always very near.
I know deep in your heart, you realise I am here.
I watch you while you sleep, in your bed at home.
I hear you when you speak to me, when you are on your own.
You cannot understand the reason why I’ve gone.
But I will never leave you, I am there to keep you strong.
Talk to me, I hear you, though you may not see.
We share an unbroken bond that will always be.
Death will not keep us apart, for our love is forever.
Just remember me in your heart, and one day we will be together.
Live your life and live it full, don’t waste a single day.
Remember, I am always with you, every step of the way.

To Those Whom I Love And Those Who Love Me – Author Unknown

When I am gone, release me, let me go. 
I have so many things to see and do, 
You mustn’t tie yourself to me with too many tears, 
But be thankful we had so many good years.

I gave you my love, and you can only guess 
How much you’ve given me in happiness. 
I thank you for the love that you have shown, 
But now it is time I travelled on alone.

So grieve for me a while, if grieve you must, 
Then let your grief be comforted by trust. 
It is only for a while that we must part, 
So treasure the memories within your heart.

I won’t be far away for life goes on. 
And if you need me, call and I will come.

Though you can’t see or touch me, I will be near. 
And if you listen with your heart, you’ll hear,

All my love around you soft and clear.

And then, when you come this way alone, 
I’ll greet you with a smile and a ‘Welcome Home’.

Mary Oliver ~ In Blackwater Woods

“To live in this world

you must be able to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.”

“

Whoopsadaisy is a small Brighton based charity in Preston Park for young children with cerebral palsy and other physical disabilities, and we are really pleased that they our Charity of the Year for 2021. We are happy to announce that we are selling raffle tickets for their Summer Party to be held in Preston Park on Saturday the 17th of July 2021 at 1.30pm. All proceeds go towards helping the children and funding the marvellous work they do supporting the children and their families.

Anyone is welcome to attend and admittance is free, there will be 2 hours of fun and games along with music from Go Kid Music, art and craft activities, a book sale and children’s games.
The raffle has loads of prizes to be won including an afternoon tea for two at the Grand Hotel, a gift card for the Park View pub, handbags, florist vouchers and much more!

Please do pop in if you wish to purchase a raffle ticket or two to help out this wonderful charity and see if you could win a great prize in the process! Tickets are £2 each and are sitting in our office with the lovely Ben, its worth £2 just to get a cheeky smile off him so what are you waiting for? Come on in and give Whoopsadaisy your money!

I wanted to share an article with you I came across that was published in January this year by Cruse Bereavement Care, it explores how death is treated around the world. Freelance writer Erica Buist and author of the book ‘This Party’s Dead’ draws on her own experience of grief in a bid to understand how different societies react to death, and how they celebrate the departed. Erica went to seven ‘Death Festivals’ around the world and here is her summary of how other countries deal with the sometimes taboo subject of death. I think we can definatly conclude that other countries do it very differently to us!

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It is the strangest of times to say the words, “I travelled the world visiting festivals for the dead”. After four years of research, interviews, travel writing, I landed in the UK after visiting the last of seven death festivals, just three months before the first case of coronavirus was recorded in China. 

The seed of the project was, of course, grief. My then-fiancé and I found his father dead in his house after eight days (which I wrote about for Guardian Weekend). After a mental health episode which involved a period of agoraphobia, I realised this was as much to do with heightened death anxiety as it was my own loss, and I became interested in how people all over the world live day to day with the knowledge that they’re going to die. I am absolutely certain that the claim that we’re “more afraid” of death in the west is nonsense: we’re all afraid, by virtue of being human. But some of us are dealing with it well, and some are dealing with it badly.

Visiting the World’s Death Festivals

Mexico and Nepal 

I used to live in Mexico, so I’d seen many Day of the Dead celebrations, and I wondered if anyone else responds to their mortal terror by throwing a party. It turns out so many do. I started the journey by returning to Mexico, after which I went to Nepal for Gai Jatra, which is a procession of everyone who has lost someone that year. It’s a joyful celebration with drums, music, dancing in the streets. The effect is incredible – the main lie grief tells you is that you’re alone, that no one understands what you’re feeling. But that’s impossible to believe when you’re looking at a crowd of people who are going through the exact same thing.

Sicily 

I then went to Sicily for the Festa dei Morti, one of the only death festivals I found in Europe. Sicilian children wake up to gifts left not by Santa Claus, but by their dead relatives. What’s more, the gifts are hidden, so when they think of their dead loved ones, they associate them with a treasure hunt. It makes conversations about the dead happen in a joyful way, and normalises mentioning the dead.

Thailand

In Thailand, I celebrated a Chinese festival for the dead called Cheng Meng, or Qing Ming. My father has lived in Thailand for 20 years and his wife X (pronounced ‘Ek’) is half Chinese, so I went with my extended family to picnic in the cemetery and to burn paper money for the dead – though these days people also burn paper suits, clothes, houses and iPhones. X’s mother was very upset the first time they burned a paper mobile phone for her dead husband, complaining, “Your father never called me from Heaven.” X told her, “Oh no! It must be because we forgot to burn him a charger!” 

Madagascar

The Turning of the Bones in Madagascar involves exhuming corpses from the family tomb, re-wrapping them in a fresh shroud, and dancing them on their shoulders as the sun sets. This was the first festival I’d been to that involved the dead people themselves – this seems more likely to happen in cultures where dying is associated with a gain in power rather than a loss. In the Malagasy tradition, the ancestors are the intermediary between people and God, and they are who people pray to for good harvests, health and happiness. 

Japan

After the astonishing practices in Madagascar, I wasn’t expecting to be much moved by the Obon festival in Japan. Much like in Mexico, the spirits are invited to visit and food and drink is left out for them – and the invitation is good for a week. But Obon puts the emphasis on a goodbye ritual. The mountains surrounding Kyoto are lit with fires in the shape of giant Chinese characters so the spirits can hitch a ride back to Heaven on bonfire smoke. I found myself crying, saying goodbye to my father-in-law again – and I realised the point of the death festivals, and what it is they’ve noticed in Japan that we seem to have missed. That grief doesn’t heal like a cut, and that the death festivals are about carving out a moment to say goodbye again, and again, and again.

Indonesia 

In Tana Toraja, Indonesia, the economy runs almost entirely on death. Torajans disrespect the ancestors at their peril; everyone has a story about the dead taking swift revenge, as well as giving generous rewards. People are not regarded as dead until they’ve had their funerals, which are huge, festival-like affairs that can take months or years to save up for. Until that day they are treated as “ill”, their corpses are brought meals and clothes and spoken to daily. The festival, Ma’nene, involves exhuming the corpses from the tombs, dressing them in brand new clothes, and walking them around. They are posed for photos and involved in FaceTime calls for family members who couldn’t make it. Every death festival taught me something about grief and death anxiety, but Ma’nene highlighted one of the most brutal ways we’re getting death wrong. I realised that in Tana Toraja, people remain part of the community long after their physical deaths, whereas here in the west people die their social deaths first – the dying are abandoned because people “don’t know what to say” or “want to remember them as they were.” 

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So there we are! I don’t think the UK (or indeed most of Europe) will start to adopt anything like this anytime soon but its definatly an eye opener for us as to how other cultures perceive and actually celebrate death. Here in the western world death tends to be feared not revered, other cultures have a far more relaxed and open view to death and seem to be a lot happier for it on the whole. It would be lovely if we had some deep rooted traditions like some of the countries Erica visited, I’m not sure we should be going quite as far as the Madagascans or the Indonesians do but I rather like how they do it in Sicily! the notion of keeping the previous generations memories alive for the new generations and encouraging joy, positivity and most importantly conversations about their dearly departed sounds like a good idea to me. Lets not keep death a taboo subject, its the one thing in our lives that is actually guaranteed, no one can escape it, so talk to your family, ask them how they view death, tell them your funeral wishes, what music would you choose to sum up your life? talk about your departed loved ones till you laugh and cry and celebrate every beautiful memory of them you have.

Just a little post to remind everyone that we are still here for you if you find yourselves in need of our services. We have been a bit quiet with our posts recently but now things are slowly returning to some sort of normality – mainly thanks to the super impressive vaccination programme and the majority of people ‘sticking to the rules’ – we can now take a breather and start thinking about all we’ve been through in the last year or so and start to take stock.

Moving forward we will soon be up and running with our new and much improved website that we have been working on for some time, and we are hoping to look to resuming our Aftercare Coffee Mornings soon. We will wait until further into the year to assess the safety of everyone meeting up and will post details once we have some dates for you.

We continue to support our Charity of the Year, Whoopsadaisy, a Brighton based charity who help children with disabilities to live full and independent lives. Whoopsadaisy are based in Preston Park and help children from toddlers up to 12 years old with mobility, confidence and independence, and of course have a little fun along the way! For more information please follow this link: http://whoopsadaisy.org/

Further on in the year we will be planning our annual Remembrance Service at St Barnabas Church, and taking delivery of the Christmas tree we donate each year to Fr. John and his lovely congregation and Zoe will be finding ingenious things for our goodie bags and ordering copious amounts of mulled wine for everyone to enjoy. Even though this seems like a long way off now, things have gone so strangely this past year we suspect the time will fly by and before we know it we will be singing carols and eating mince pies once again!

We know times have been tough for so many of us recently, and it is heart warming to see all the new little businesses pop up in our area, people changing tact and using their skills in different ways to help make ends meet, or just being extra thoughtful of others at this time. Our local community have been making cakes and walking dogs, providing meals for others in need, cleaning up the beach, swapping services instead of money and everything in-between. We should all be quite proud of ourselves! Now things are returning to some sense of normality lets keep on supporting our local businesses, both old and new, and playing our part in the wonderful community spirit we have here in our neck of the woods. Let’s all look forward to a nice warm summer (well we can hope cant we?) and it wont be long till we can frequent all of our favourite places again, we have all of our fingers and toes crossed for better days to come for all of us!

Take Care, Richard, Ben, Zoe & Ray.

We were amazed to have been handed these photographs by local resident Tim Cox, we cared for Tim’s family recently and were really grateful to have caught sight of these amazing photos depicting the funeral procession of a Mrs Allen arriving at the Salvation Army Hall in Sackville Road on the 14th of May 1913!

As you can see from the top photograph the area has changed a little! this was taken at the back of where Honeycroft and Clarendon House now stand, and the second photo shows St Barnabas church opposite us on Sackville Road. Our office is where the W. Skinners signage is on the right hand side. From what we gather Mrs Allen must have been an important member of the Salvation Army in order to receive such a grand turnout, the streets were literally lined for her!

We love a bit of local history here at Bungards, having served our community for 115 years we also have a lot of history ourselves to draw upon so we decided to trawl back through the ledgers to see if we could find Mrs Allen’s service in our records, sadly we did not conduct her funeral but it was a fascinating way to while away a few hours looking over the old records!

We hope you found this an interesting piece of local history, we’ll post more as and when we find it, and if any of you can add to Mrs Allen’s story or have anything that is related to Poets Corner or indeed Bungard & Sons please do feel free to give us a call, or drop in and share your history with us!

Bungards are really pleased to announce that for 2021/2022 we will be supporting Brighton based children’s charity ‘Whoopsadaisy’

Whoopsadaisy run life changing programmes for children with a wide range of disabilities from the Whoopsadaisy Pavillion in Preston Park, Brighton. Whoopsadaisys founder Nina Holland discovered the power of conductive education when her own son Christopher was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy and she set up Whoopsadaisy over 10 years ago to share this life-changing method with other children and their families. Children can access help and support from the age of 1 through to 12, and can attend term time sessions and holiday clubs with their parents and carers.

The staff at Whoopsadaisy believe that everyone can learn. In the right environment, with the right support, and with tasks broken down into small achievable steps, the capacity to learn is unbound. Using an approach called Conductive Education, they start by finding out what a child can do. Then, in their playful, supportive small group sessions they build on those capabilities to develop mobility, confidence and independence.

Your support is everything. They rely entirely on donations, fundraising initiatives and charitable and corporate partnerships to do their life-changing work. There are SO many ways you can help Whoopsadaisy keep going, from organising a cake sale or holding a quiz, to simply following a link and donating through one of the partners Whoopsadaisy has:

Easyfundraising.org.uk
smile.amazon.com
payrollgiving.co.uk

Or you could simply just send a cheque to Whoopsadaisy, c/o West & Berry, Mocatta House, Trafalgar Place, Brighton, BN1 4DU

For Volunteering opportunities please email Nora at nora@whoopsadaisy.org and see just how rewarding being a part of Whoopsadaisy can be, they also offer structured placements for students wishing to pursue a career in healthcare, medicine, social care or education, again Nora will help you out just drop her a line.

Bungards are so pleased to be able to help such a worthy local charity, please do make contact with them if you are able to help fundraise or volunteer and help to continue the amazing work they do with our cities children.

I realise that for many of you, this past year has brought an unexpected twist in your life journey. I am always very conscious that when someone you care about dies, your whole world changes. Your world looks and feels different, and with it this Christmas. For everyone else, it is the season to be jolly; it’s the most wonderful time of the year. But you may not feel the same about things this Christmas.

“When someone you care about dies, your whole world changes.”

Today, I have three offerings for you … gifts for a grieving Christmas. The first is given for YOU, the second has to do with your loved one, and the third concerns your family and friends.

My first Gift is for YOU. Maybe you are facing this Christmas season with dread.   Here are a few suggestions:

First Gift 

• Recognise that this Christmas is different.   
• Plan ahead. Decide what YOU want to do. Act rather than react.   
• Avoid “shoulds and “oughts”.   
• Re-examine your priorities.   
• Make the changes you think are best.   
• Take responsibility for your own happiness.  
• Look after yourself. Don’t abandon healthy habits  
• Be compassionate with yourself if things are not perfect this year.

The next gift focuses on your loved one. They may be gone, but I am sure they will be very much on your mind.

Second Gift

• Acknowledge your loved one’s presence.
• Create a special tribute to your loved one. (Involve children in this one if you can.) 
• Stay in touch with your feelings.
• Be honest about your feelings.
• Don’t be afraid to relive your memories
• Let the light of the years you spent together shine on the event rather than letting the death cast its shadow on the years.

My final gift has to do with others around you like family and friends. Remember, they may be grieving too.  

Third Gift

• Balance solitude and sociability   
• Ask for and accept help.  
• Set differences aside   
• Learn to say “no”  
• Take a break from things   
• Try to find something positive in your life. How can you turn your situation into something positive and meaningful?  
• Take care of children  
• Try to make others happy    
• Remember, there will be OTHER Christmas’s

Finally we need to face the future with hope. There’s a little verse in the Christmas story of the Wise Men that often goes unnoticed. After finding the baby in Bethlehem, they returned home “by a different route”. They had to find a different road forward than the way they had come. When you have experienced bereavement, you suddenly find that life has taken on a whole new direction. And we find ourselves and our lives having to go on in a whole new direction. Sometimes in life we have to find new ways to get to where we need to be.

There is not enough darkness in the whole universe to hide the light of even one candle.

Perhaps you face this Christmas with some apprehension, and, this year, you feel like the light has gone out of your life. Nothing seems quite right, and you wonder if you have the strength to go on. But my friends, no matter how dark your situation, remember one thing. There is not enough darkness in the whole universe to hide the light of even one candle. Even when there is a flicker of hope, that spark overcomes the darkness. It may not banish it completely, but it is never all dark as long as there remains one glimmer of hope.

So come on, and light a candle. Light a candle in memory of your loved one, but also light a candle for yourself … to indicate that you believe there is hope for you to find your way through the darkness, even though life has taken an unwelcome turn and you are heading home in a different direction than the one you expected or even wanted.

So, this Christmas season, hold on to what is important.

• Celebrate the person’s life as well as acknowledging their death
• Don’t allow looking back at the past to spoil what you have in the present.
• Enjoy what you HAVE as well as grieving what you’ve LOST?
• Believe that there are reasons to go on, even though you may not see what they are right now.
• Believe in people, and in life, in love and laughter, and in hope!
• Believe in yourself, that your determination will help get you through.
• Believe that no matter how difficult your circumstances that life is important and can still be meaningful.
• Believe in a brighter tomorrow, and in possibilities beyond even your bravest dreams.

You will be surprised how that flickering flame of hope will continue to burn. You will make it through, even though it may not be easy. Your supply of strength and patience may be low, but hang in, because no matter what has shattered your hopes or your dreams or even broken your heart, you are not beyond repair. 

You will find this article and other meaningful resources on Coping with Christmas on Dr Bill’s website at www.griefjourney.com

Yesterday marked the last day of volunteering for the wonderful Food & Friendship charity we have supported for the last 2 years. Richard, Ben and Zoe headed down to help wrap the many, many Calendars Caroline and the team have had made for the members and helped to bag up the food parcels being delivered that day.

We would like to thank Caroline and the absolutely fabulous team based in Hove Methodist Church for all of their dedication and hard work. Without a sturdy team of volunteers it would not be possible to provide hot, home cooked meals twice a week, feeding hundreds of older people and vulnerable adults every month and providing a friendly face, a bit of entertainment, a friendly face and a chat. The whole operation was turned on its head due to Covid and so far well over 3000 hot meals have been delivered into the community since March which is fantastic to hear. Although Bungards may not be ‘officially’ supporting F&F this year we love the ethos, the people and the atmosphere so we will definatly be coming down to volunteer still!

Richard presented Caroline in a socially distanced way with a cheque for £850 to mark the occasion, a donation from Bungards that was greatly received and we know it will be put to fantastic use helping our community. We were also given gifts and a rather fantastic card each by F&F to say farewell, a little emotional all round but we will stay in contact with you all and Thank You all so much.

Bungards will be sad to see Food & Friendship go but we look forward to supporting our new charity Whoopsadaisy in 2021, a local charity based in Preston Park who support children with learning disabilities and their families.

Bungards are very happy to have worked in conjunction with St Barnabas Church again this year collaborating in this years Lights of Love Remembrance Service and presenting the church with their annual Christmas tree.

We want to say a big thank you to all those who attended in the cold to witness the turning on of the Christmas tree lights and to hear Fr. John’s service giving thanks and remembering the loved ones we have lost.

It was a short but beautiful service and we all managed to remain distanced and warm! As we could not go inside the church this year due to the Covid restrictions we gave out goodie bags instead at the end of the service, we hope you enjoyed them, and we want to wish all of our families and friends a peaceful Christmastime, from Richard, Ben, Zoe and Ray.

Lights of Love Remembrance Service at St Barnabas Church, Hove.

We hope everyone is safe and well! We would like to invite you, your friends and family to our annual Remembrance Service and Christmas Tree Lighting in partnership with St Barnabas Church.

We welcome all faiths and beliefs to join us and we hope that the service will provide some comfort to anyone who attends.

The service will take place outside St Barnabas Church, 88 Sackville Rd, Hove, BN3 3HE on Monday 7th December 2020 at 5pm.

Last year we held a reception inside the church afterwards but due to the Covid restrictions we are all facing this is sadly not going to be possible this year, so instead we have prepared some little Christmas goodie bags as a small gift from us to you.

If you would like to come along please RSVP so we know who is attending. Please may you RSVP by Monday 30^th November by calling Richard, Ben or Zoe on 01273 820018, or by emailing us at info@bungards.co.uk

We wish you all a safe and happy December