Come Rain or Shine

Simon Smith, of Heart & Soul, regularly writes for The Moorlander. Here’s his most recent piece, about summer funerals:

Summer funerals can have a very different feel to winter ones. Each season evokes differences. 

I always remember someone saying after a burial in cold, grey, windy and rainy November weather how it suited how they felt. It reflected the sense of chaos and rawness. 

Perhaps it’s a beautiful and blisteringly hot day, everything is colourful and blooming, people out and about are happy, you can hear the ice cream van, the days are long, but inside the grief is raw, you might just feel like shutting down, turning away from it all, be angry at the incongruity. How dare the world go on, and be so beautiful, when you feel shattered, when this special person has disappeared out of your life? 

It can also add poignancy and feel like a blessing, especially if at a beautiful natural burial ground with meadow flowers, birdsong, blue skies and white fluffy clouds. There’s time to remain, to take some comfort from the beauty, to remember good times, maybe for the gathering after to be a picnic outside. It’s gentle and holding in your grief. 

Similarly with Spring and Autumn. Spring can be painful when grieving as everything begins to grow again after winter, early flowers, new shoots. Autumn, with the beauty of the colourful trees, the days getting shorter, the leaves falling, nature preparing for the winter you are feeling inside is more congruent. 

Of course we have no choice about when bereavement may visit and it’s hard whenever it happens. The time of year and the weather will have an effect one way or another, depending on how each individual sees and feels things. 

Simon Smith, Heart & Soul Funerals, Buckfastleigh 01364 643522