The Funeral of a Clown

Much like our funeral home, most funeral homes have an aftercare project where they help those widowed people in the community blend back into life in what I call a “new normal”.  Part of that service is helping these people socialize and might entail, something like we do many times annually, loading onto a bus to go to play, sporting event, or some other event some distance away.

Well, Michigan funeral director Joe Pray is taking that one step farther and having a contest to pick people to fill a bus for a Detroit Cirque del Soleil production of “Corteo”.  Corteo portrays the imagined funeral of a clown.  You can read an article on Pray and this event here.

Pray’s goal in all of this is not to help widowed people socialize as his trip is open to all, including students.  His goal is to give his community a sense of, and help them imagine what funerals could be like.  As a matter of fact, Pray, who is a funeral director and owns his funeral home, sees himself as what he calls a “Creationeer”.

Pray says, “We hope the contest encourages people to think creatively about how they would develop a life celebration or funeral for a family member of friend.  It shows that a person’s life had meaning, kind of affirms their value in community and how that influence will carry on, and that’s a great comfort.”

According to the article, Pray says he’s been interested in reflecting the personality of the deceased for going on thirty years.  He mentions that he went through life appreciation training and that taught him to focus on the person’s story.

Funeral Director Daily take:  Kudos to Joe Pray.  In a funeral/memorial world where there is ever going talk about families going without funeral and memorial services, Pray is trying to get them to understand how meaningful they can be.  He’s fighting back against the cultural mores that say we don’t need these services.  Good for him.

We, as funeral directors, need to do more things like this that can show the value of memorialization to the people we serve.  I’m old enough to remember the very first slide show (power point) presentation put to music at a funeral in my community and all the positive comments around it.  A video tribute is so common that it is now a part of almost all services and can be accessed from most funeral home’s website.

I never called myself a “Creationeer”, however, I did always tell families that the more “personal” you can make the service, the more meaningful it will be to you.  Two services I remember fondly included one for a life-time Chevrolet car dealer where I was able to make arrangements with the pastor that after the Benediction, we could recess out of the church joyously singing and clapping to the tune, “See the USA in a Chevrolet”.

The second one was for the man who owned the local bowling alley.  It was located three blocks from my house and I spent a lot of time there as a kid.  The owner was always there and what I remember was the constant “noise” of the bowling pins always in the background.  At his death I went and asked the local radio station manager if he could record from a sound effects tape 3 hours of bowling pins falling.  When the family came in for the visitation, before going into the room, I told them that I had a special background tape on and if they didn’t like it we could put the regular background music on.  They liked it and for the entire visitation everyone that came commented that they felt like they were at the bowling alley.

People still talk about those services – and others like them – that had something unique to it.  All people are unique. . . if we would honor that during services, I think we would do more services.

Use your imagination. . . ask families for ideas. . . funerals and memorialization are important for the grief process.  We need to swim a little bit upstream in today’s culture to let them know that.

 

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1 Comment

  1. Joe E Pray on December 4, 2018 at 6:34 am

    Great Examples of the services you conned. I hope we can continue to educate our colleagues and the public on the value of personalized services. I believe that the folks who choose to do nothing to gather community together to commemorate the lives of the deceased are making their loss even more difficult to bear.

    We have had a number of great responses to the Corteo Contest already and I believe we will have even more before the deadline. Perhaps you can help me share the results with fellow professionals.



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