By Abigail Price, funeral celebrant for Shoobridge Funeral Services.

One of my closest friends died suddenly in January and the last two months have been an exceptionally strange time in my life. In my work as a funeral celebrant, I am surrounded by death and grief. I am always affected by the sadness of the stories I hear when meeting families, and I have never approached a funeral without empathy, carefully judging atmospheres and family dynamics and making sure every word that I am going to speak is well-placed and right at a very fragile time. 

I officiated at my friend’s funeral and the raw bridging of personal grief with professionalism has been really challenging and, at many dark times in these weeks, almost soul-destroying. Doing her justice – her extreme kindness to others that I knew so well, her gentleness as a young mother, her love as a daughter, partner, sister, her loyalty as a friend – was something I had to get right despite the immense pain and sadness and despair that I was feeling in losing this wonderful person from my life. 

One of the side effects also seemed to be a partial writers’ block which is why I haven’t written a column since she died. I don’t feel I have anything to offer. I didn’t stop taking funerals at any point, I just tried to pull my socks up and delivered in the way I always have which, on reflection, has been pretty hard. I do feel a quietness around bereaved people, like their own grief is resonating with me as I try to make sense of my own. 

And what has struck me is how grief filters through to everyday life in the most bizarre ways. There is the despair and the sadness; regret at things left un-said and actions left un-done: in other words, the emotionalside. But I hadn’t realised that grief is also physical; there are moments when grief takes hold of your gut, a very real weight which rises up and you can’t even find the words to speak and say what’s wrong.  

Revd Richard Coles, the ‘celebrity vicar’ who made up the 80s pop group, The Communards, with Jimmy Sommerville, wrote a book called The Madness of Grief, about the death of his partner, David, in 2019. 

It is intensely moving. He has a wonderful way with words, even in the depth of his grief. He is human and easy to connect with. And one quote which I thought was wonderful was about feeling being full of grief “which sits in you like an indigestible lump of whale meat – not that I have ever eaten whale meat.”

Indigestible whale meat sitting there, heavy in the stomach. What an image of grief. And so relatable. I really recommend Coles’ book, and I also recommend ‘Grief is the thing with feathers’ by Max Porter, a poetic novella which can be read in an hour, about a man who is coming to terms with the death of his wife and mother of their two young boys. 

I have turned to our own Shoobridge Funeral Services’ Bereavement Guide on our website which gave some good advice as well and, even more helpful, was using the Grief Chat function. You click on the Grief Chat button and it connects you a real bereavement counsellor. You type in how you are feeling and a conversation begins, all online and all anonymous. I was able to talk about how I felt about my grief and the crossover with my work and I had some really calm, thoughtful responses which validated how I was feeling. I really recommend it. It is like thinking out loud but getting a human voice speak back. 

Grief is a very lonely thing but, thankfully, people have put pen to paper during their own hard times and, reading their words, it doesn’t feel as lonely as before.