Planning a funeral for a baby
Photo: The Good Funeral Guide on Unsplash
Firstly, if you are reading this as a bereaved parent - whether that loss is very recent, or whether it happened many years ago - I’m so sorry that this has happened to your family. It’s an impossibly difficult and painful thing that you’re experiencing, and I am sending you so lots of love and light.
As a funeral celebrant, I’ve planned several funerals for young babies. These ceremonies are very different, and call for particular care, attention, thought and love. The writing process, the family meeting, how we lead the ceremony on the day - all of these things are different when it comes to a funeral for a baby or a young child. I will never forget the first time I got a call from a funeral director, asking me to put together something for a little girl who had been born early and lived for just ten days. I was worried I wouldn’t know what to write, or how to approach it, but was able to draw on the advice and support of my Humanists UK colleagues.
The best piece of advice I was given was how important it was to just listen. Listen to the parents’ thoughts and feelings, whatever they want to tell you about their baby and their hopes for the life they were looking forward to together. You can’t, as a celebrant, ask questions in the same way as you would at other family meetings. Gentle prompts can be helpful but, above all, this is about listening, and holding that space with compassion. Every situation will be different, and you need to pick up on the cues - what is said, what isn’t said, body language, silences, to guide the family through an impossible situation. At most planning meetings with families, I take along a form with things we need to cover - I don’t use that for a baby funeral. I have, at most, five words written in my notebook as reminders, because I like to take as open an approach as possible and make this baby’s funeral whatever their family needs it to be.
I will also always use the baby’s name in any conversation. That marks their identity, that they are a part of that family, and always will be - and it’s important to their parent or parents to hear that being acknowledged. I recently did some brilliant training, put together by Rosalie Kuyvenhoven, a London based independent celebrant. It was put together with the help of the wonderful Carly, founder of Zephyr’s, a Nottingham based charity supporting bereaved parents, and I highly recommend it to all celebrants out there. If you would like to know more about the training, click here. Anyway, I learned lots of things from the training, but my key takeaway was about the importance of personhood. That means honouring the whole of that child and their life, their place in their family - that they existed and that they were, and are, loved. Keep these thoughts at the forefront of your mind when planning a funeral like this, and you will be off to a good start.
I was asked once, by a parent, what on earth we could actually include in the ceremony for their daughter, who had lived for just a couple of hours. There is always a story to tell, however short a life, and it’s up to us as celebrants, to find what that story is and how best to tell it. We can suggest a range of readings - I have a library of readings, which I am constantly adding to - and some really beautiful songs that can work very well. There is a playlist that you can access here. One of my clearest memories of that first funeral was of playing ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ at the end of the service, as we supported her dad to come and stand with her, touch her, and say his goodbyes. Neither of her parents had English as a first language, so I had had the words of the song translated into Bulgarian and Romanian in the keepsake copy of the script I made for them.
The cover I designed for my very first baby funeral (name and date have been changed)
After the ceremony I always put together a keepsake copy of the words spoken at the funeral and give a printed copy to the parent or parents; I like to take extra care over its design, particularly a front cover that reflects that child and their story, and how important they were to their family.
There are some really beautiful rituals that you can include, perhaps as a way of involving family members - grandparents, older brothers or sisters - that don’t feel able to speak. Helping say goodbye in this way can make them feel they have played an important part in the ceremony, whether you choose to tie handwritten messages to the baby’s coffin, place small gifts like painted pebbles or toys around the coffin, to blow bubbles or light a candle. I also will suggest to parents including a naming ceremony within the funeral, as a way of acknowledging the person their child was, and their place in the world. I know from parents I’ve supported that they’ve found this helpful, to mark that their child existed. That they were here.
Candles for baby J’s parents to light, and a white rose for each family member to lay on his coffin.
When it comes to the physical space where the ceremony is being held, there are lots of options - you might choose to hold a service outdoors, in a wood where you walked as a family or in a favourite park. If the funeral is happening at a crematorium, I often find it useful to use the space differently; chapels can have a very formal layout with a separation between celebrant and family - and, most importantly, the coffin. When I have led baby funerals before, I’ve abandoned the lectern and the rows of chairs, and we have all gathered in a circle round the coffin, where the baby’s family are free to be as close as they want and to touch the coffin.
Photo by The Good Funeral Guide on Unsplash
It’s important to remember that, as a celebrant, you are co-creating this ceremony with the baby’s parents and you are there to help them have the ceremony they want and need. I always do all I can to reassure parents that it is okay to change their mind about anything, and that I am there to support whatever they need to do. If they decide they can’t read as planned - that is absolutely fine. If they decide they want to carry the coffin - then I will help make that happen. Nothing is set in stone; this is all about empowerment, support, and - like I mentioned earlier - listening.
Putting together a funeral for a baby or young child, and walking alongside their grieving family, is a huge privilege. It’s important to remember to include time for self-care in your preparation for the funeral too. These are not easy services to lead, and holding space for grieving families can be very tough. But I don’t know any celebrant who doesn’t recognise how special the experience is.
On behalf of us all, thank you to all those families who trust us with their babies, and we are sending love to you today and always.