The saying goes: ‘in the midst of life we are in death’. Never has this felt more blatantly true. In my work as a funeral celebrant, and in Paul Shoobridge’s work as a funeral director, we are surrounded by death every day. And we are often asked by the families we work with how we cope when death is our way of life.
Usually, we are able to say that, in all honesty, it is not the miserable job you would imagine. We spend our days with families, supporting them and being a shoulder to lean on and cry on but, as sad as most situations are, they are also incredibly special situations as it is love at the centre.
However, these first days of 2025, Paul and I have recognised how it is taking its toll on us and, more than us, how it’s taking its toll on other people in front line jobs. There are so many people working to comfort the dying or to hold the hand, literally or metaphorically, of someone trying to process the death of a cherished loved one. We don’t know that the person in the queue in front of us at the petrol station, the supermarket or the café has just been the emotional tower of strength to someone in a desperately sad day.
When I walked in to our Honiton office last Thursday, I heard Paul talking on the ‘phone, taking down the details of someone who had died at the hospital. Towards the end of the call, he asked the person he was talking to, who was from the hospital’s bereavement team, how she was coping and they spent a few moments in solidarity and empathy with each other.
The hospital is currently coping with huge numbers of people dying. Last week, there were more than ten deaths a day at the RD&E and the staff in the bereavement team are sitting down with family after family to be there for them at the very worst times in their lives.
To be a Hospiscare nurse and sit at the bedside of the dying, to be a carer at a care home, watching residents fade away day after day … these human life lines go home at the end of their shift and have to return home and look to those around them for emotional support as they re-tell their day.
The families we work with are so full of respect and praise and love for the staff who have guided them through a truly awful time. They speak of the compassion and the patience and the love shown towards them, the way staff have gone above and beyond and how they have become like extended family. Very often the tears that we cry are because these people are not just doing their job well but they are doing it with humanity and kinship and love.
So this column is a column of thanks and gratitude to all these saints who live and work among us. Saint Mother Teresa said: “It’s not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It’s not how we give, but how much love we put in the giving.”
Writing poetry is wonderful but it is the sharing of this writing with others that is even more wonderful. When Christina Rosetti sat down at the age of 19 to write one of her most famous poems, Remember, full of beautiful, mournful, evocative language that still pulls at heart strings almost 200 years later, she would have had no idea of the sheer number of souls she would touch with her innermost thoughts.
And this is all part of the reason why we at Shoobridges decided to launch a poetry competition to coincide with National Grandparents Day on October 6th. We have received some brilliant poems from people across our branches in Honiton, Exmouth and Exeter, poems with heart and soul through vivid memories and colourful thoughts. And there is still time to enter your poem! Just email it to us at [email protected] or pop it through the door of one of our offices. Please include your name and contact details, and your age if you are under 16 years old.
