Here’s one other thing to share from last Friday.

I’ve experienced bereavement before as a young person and I’ve had that young Jeremy with me often this past month as well as Noah’s young friends on my mind. In preparing for the service this last Friday, I wrote a guide for the 5-20 years old crowd (there were nearly 20 joining us), in many ways just to enable young people to feel comfortable being present and authentic without the sense that adults had rules for them. Here’s what I wrote:

Dear young friend,

When I was an age similar to yours I had to attend an unusual number of funeral services for someone my age. In most cases, I didn’t really understand what was going on, didn’t have anyone I could ask questions that I worried might be a bit silly, and probably missed noticing some important things because I hadn’t been told to anticipate them. This is understandable, as the adults around me were also overwhelmed and feeling very sad, but now that I am an adult, I still carry that memory with me of feeling a bit confused and worried. If you would like, I’m going to explain here what is going to happen on Friday, why we chose to do those particular things, and why I think they are important. You can read this guide at your own pace and should feel free to skip the parts that feel boring or overwhelming.

Part 1: what happens before the funeral

When someone dies, especially someone who is close and special to you, it can be really overwhelming. There are a lot of people you have to talk to, they ask a lot of questions, or in some cases they feel awkward or embarrassed and don’t ask questions you were hoping they’d ask, or don’t feel comfortable being silent or distracted even when this might be the right thing to do. It’s a good idea to find helpers when things are overwhelming, and one of those people is called a “funeral director”. This was one of the first people I called on the phone to ask for help in getting things organised for Noah’s funeral. Our director is named Richard, and he has an office in Newtown where we live about 5 minutes away from our house. Richard helped up to remember all the details and took notes when we met at our house – he knew that we might forget things because of all the sad feelings and overwhelm.

We still don’t know why it happened, and that is one of the big questions that I keep wondering about when I think of Noah right now. When Noah died, a big team of medics and policemen came to our house to try to help. We even had a helicopter circling around our house which they called for us before they realised it was too late to save him. The medics took Noah’s body from our house, along with his favourite blue blanket, to a special part of the hospital in Aberystwyth. Katy and I went to the hospital to be with Noah when he arrived. Some nice people at the hosital gave us two soft elephants – we gave one to Noah and took the other one home and that helped us to feel connected even though we weren’t in the same place together anymore. The people at the hospital also really want to find out what happened to Noah for us, so they ran some special tests to try and find out what happened. They’ve said they won’t be able to say anything more for a lot of weeks, maybe not even until May or June.

When I was young, I didn’t feel as affected when old people like grandparents, or people my parents age died, because I was much younger than them. But I also had a classmate in school die when I was 10 years old. I remember wondering at the time if the same thing might happen to me, and this felt a bit scary. In case you’re thinking about those kinds of things, I wanted to share with you that even while we are still waiting for more information from doctors, one thing we do know is that the cause of Noah’s death isn’t related to doing normal things like eating snacks, playing games, hugging cats, sitting in cozy chairs, or catching a cold. We do know it’s a really rare and unusual thing that’s hard to find out, which is why those doctors are still doing their investigations. So if this is something you’re feeling worried about, I think Noah would want you to keep doing all your normal things and try to set aside that particular worry so that you can focus on your sad feelings, giving people in your family lots of hugs, and playing minecraft as much as possible.

Part 2: the funeral service

One of the jobs that our friend Richard the funeral director has done for us is to take care of Noah’s body while we’re waiting to take him to the crematorium in Aberystwyth. We’ve given him one of Noah’s favourite outfits to wear along with his cozy blue blanket. On the day of the service, we’ll all drive to the crematorium in our different cars and meet there so we can spend some time together. A few of us are going to drive with Noah over to Aberystwyth, but we decided to make this a small group so that we don’t jam up traffic and make the drive even longer for everyone.

When we’re all there, you’ll notice that rather than the usual wooden ones, we chose a wicker casket to hold Noah’s body, becuase he loved to carry around baskets collecting things, and also because we know he was concerned about sustainability. The crematorium has special rules which don’t allow us to have the casket open. We have had a chance to visit him ahead of time, talk to him a bit and put some special things inside the casket to go with him.

When we get to the crematorium a group of special people, Noah’s dad (me!), three of his Uncles (Ryan, Josh and Shane) will be what are called pallbearers. Isaac has also decided he’d like to be one, and has a cousin helping alongside him as we walk in. We’ll carry Noah into the crematorium. It felt appropriate to us to let Noah lead the way and then the rest of us will find seats inside. Richard the funeral director told me that it’s traditional for family to sit on the left side. I’m not sure why this is the case, but sometimes it’s a bit easier jus to go with the flow, so Noah’s grandmas and grandpas, uncles, aunts, cousins, as well as Katy, Isaac and I will be sitting over there. But I’d want to emphasise that we (and Noah) would have thought of everyone joining us on that day, including special friends like you, as part of our extended family.

My experience of funerals in the past is that they can be really overwhelming, some people will be crying loudly, other people won’t want to show their feelings. Some of us find it easier to feel sad when we’re with friends, and others find it easier to explore their feelings when they’re along. You might be wondering how you’re expected to act while you’re sitting in the crematorium and at the reception. The most important thing, I think, is for you to sit with your feelings in a way that feels natural, and we know that everyone has a different way of doing things. So if you feel like sitting quietly and watching, that’s fine – if you feel sad and want to cry a bit, that’s fine too. There might even be some memories that seem a bit funny, or your feelings might be all mixed up. It’s totally ok to feel a whole bunch of mixed up ways all at once, and I’m pretty confident that none of the adults have rules or expectations for how you’re supposed to act and feel.

Noah didn’t really like singing songs in church when we’d gone to church in the past, so we aren’t going to have any singing. We’ve picked out some nice songs that we’ve listened to as a family that convey some of our feelings right now. Also some minecraft music because Noah loved it.

It’s hard to know when you plan for a funeral, who the words are for – is it to try and help us to feel a bit better even though we feel sad? Or to speak truthful words about important values and beliefs that we have? When we were thinking about this, we thought that the best thing, and what we think would probably have been Noah’s preference would have been to share some truthful things about how we feel right now, rather than trying to talk about how we *want* to feel or imagine that people should feel. So we’ve chosen two poems to share at the start and end which say some of those things really well. I find that sometimes it is helpful to read things in advance, and with poems maybe more than once, so I’ve shared the programme for tomorrow along with the text of the poems so that you can read them ahead of time if you’d like.

One of Noah’s special interests was the bible – when we lived in Birmingham for a time he had about 8 different bibles that he insisted we carry around with us when we went out, and he really enjoyed reading and sharing bible stories. He also always felt free to ask questions about parts of the bible that were confusing, paradoxical, or contradictory, and we had many discussions about this as a family. We’ve chosen to read a verse that was one of Noah’s favourites, and have a little story to share about it from his Grammy.

After the memorial, we’ll all go over to the Golf Club where we’ve hired a room and gotten some nice snacks for everyone to enjoy. We’re hoping that people have a chance to talk about Noah, give each other hugs, and just be together for a bit. We thought that it would be nice to have lots of places to sit down and get cozy, so each of the tables is about one or more of Noah’s special interests: birds, minecraft, jokes, riddles, board games and so on. Some people at the reception are going to be feeling really sensitive and overwhelmed, so we’re going to ask if it’s possible not to have big loud games like tag or chasing in the reception (or outside). This is going to be hard, because I think we’re all going to have a lot of really big nervous energy without a good place to put it! And, the venue has a wonderful big floor, so I think this might feel really hard not to try and start a game of tag. But if you could, I’m hoping that maybe you’ll be able to find a cozy table and do some drawing, tell a story, play a game or some other thing as a good substitute and that won’t be too hard. And if you have a lot of big feelings and you’re not quite sure where to put them, you should feel free to tug on any person there and tell them about your feelings and hopefully we can help each other to feel a bit better together.

I’m so glad you are able to come and be with us. Even though it makes me feel sad, I really like to talk about Noah and all that we’ve experienced this last month. I’m sure you will have a lot of other questions or curiosities – and I’m very happy to chat about things in the months to come when we get to spend more time together. Looking forward to sharing a hug and maybe playing a board game tomorrow,

With love,
Jeremy