By Jo Napthine, who works as a funeral celebrant in London
1. The love and grief needs a place to go. People are craving connection, a safe space to be present and together find a light in the darkness.
2. The power of ceremony, the need for ritual, the desire to contribute and find a new meaning, to share the connection of grief. It is such an important experience that can still be transformative.
3. COVID-19 has created distance and a disconnection. My response is empathy, a desire to help guide and inspire people to focus on the things they can control- to be inventive, resourceful and use my creative energy to discover an alternative, to create ‘something’. Isn’t some shared sense of grief better than none?
4. It’s the little things people will remember - lighting a candle together, singing together, thinking together, listening as one. A life story told through photography, memory and music.
5. Digitised experience will never replace the sanctity of collective communion. However, it is something. We may be mourning from a distance but for now it is a solution. It’s where we are, it’s all we have. It’s the best we can do.
About Jo Napthine
Jo is a new funeral celebrant in South East London, a professional singer, a wife, and a proud mother of four boys - three who are physically here and one who died due to an unexplained stillbirth at full term in 2008.
You can follow Jo on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
www.jonapthine.com
