Making Cemeteries Relevant, Lees + Associates

The Woodlands Memorial Garden

 There is perhaps no more important place for the arts to have an impact than at cemeteries.  Creative designs based on a deep understanding of the needs of the grieving and the stories of the departed make an enormous difference in the lasting impact and relevance of a cemetery.  In order to be relevant to their families and communities,  cemeteries need to create spaces and memorials designed to appeal to families, not to groundskeepers. In this series, "Making Cemeteries Relevant" I highlight the work of cemetery innovators.  I am very pleased to present in this installment, the moving work of landscape architects, Lees + Associates, and to share a conversation with Erik Lees.

Pat McNally: When most people think of cemetery projects, they often envision something cold and formal.  Something you may need, but wouldn’t necessarily get excited about.  Your work is different.  In the nature of the projects your firm has been involved in, and the responsiveness of your designs to the stories behind the grounds, and the people who will visit there, I find something very compelling.

What is it about your approach to a project that results in the very personal and human quality of the end result?

Erik Lees: Our approach is collaborative. I think that is one of the reasons the cemeteries we design have a unique character and feel. Working closely with cemetery managers, sales and field workers means that we are able to capture the “site intelligence” that our firm alone could never acquire. We also strive for meaningfulness in our work, in fact it is a common refrain around our office. This means not only a direct relationship with the unique physical qualities of the cemetery, but a thorough understanding of the community, demographics and their interment and memorialization preferences and patterns.

The Royal Oak Green Burial Area

PM: Your firm has been involved in many very interesting and prestigious projects.  In our time here, I’d like to specifically discuss four:  The Royal Oak Green Burial Area, The Woodlands Memorial Garden, the Doukhobor Commemorative Site, and the Mountain View Cemetery Masonic Area Redevelopment.  Each of these projects presented unique challenges, to which creative, humane responses were made.

Let’s start with the green burial area at Royal Oak.  Often the idea of a green cemetery is one where a parcel of land is left to natural forces to determine what changes are made to the landscape.  Often the reality, at least in the UK where the green burial movement has had its biggest impact, is an unattractive and chaotic row upon row of memorial plantings.  While the deceased may have wished to have no permanent marker, survivors often feel differently.  The approach at Royal Oak is different, combining a planned layout with green values.  Please tell us about your approach and design parameters for this project. 

The Royal Oak Green Burial Area

EL: We had three primary objectives when Stephen Olson (Royal Oak Burial Park Manager) asked us to work with him on the Green Burial Area: optimize space utilization, maximize habitat value and create a rich, meaningful experience for those that choose green burial. Our approach is that green burial should not consume more land than traditional burial, so we platted the site at a density roughly equivalent to the rest of the cemetery. In this way the yield in terms of the # of graves per acre was optimized and the financial returns for the cemetery were approximately the same as for traditional burial. Each grave is planted with native shrubs and ground covers and certain graves also accommodate a native tree. This approach will see the habitat value of the green burial area meet or exceed that of the adjacent natural west coast forest. It will also create a feeling that is unique to this part of the world – further enhancing the meaning to this space. One of the challenges with green burial is the manner and method of memorialization. At Royal Oak we created a series of 9 communal memorial stones in basalt where the names of those interred will be inscribed. Basalt is native to British Columbia, takes a beautiful inscription and fits very well with the native plantings. This combination of materials creates a sense of place that few other cemeteries enjoy.

The Royal Oak Green Burial Area

PM: I was deeply moved by your work at Woodlands Memorial Garden.  People who are developmentally disabled have historically been so marginalized, that there is a great satisfaction in seeing this kind of memoriaization, albeit long after the deaths of many of the commemorated residents of this facility.  The integration of the old markers is particularly telling and moving.  What challenges and inspirations did you find in this project?

The Woodlands Memorial Garden

EL: There were so many challenges with this project, but great projects are rarely simple!

The headstones from this 2 acre cemetery had been removed over 40 years ago, some of which were just dumped in a ravine, some were used for patio stones and a retaining wall – as sacrilegious as this may seem.  Our task was to repatriate those stones to the cemetery site, but in the absence of accurate records, we were not able to definitively say where each headstone belonged, hence our decision to incorporate them in to a series of walls. The other challenge was that we only found 900 of the 3200 headstones, so we had to devise a system to acknowledge and remember all those that were buried there, not just those whose names were on the headstones we found. As with all our projects we undertook thorough research and during that process found inspiration in the history of the institution and even more so: the stories of those who lived there. 

The Woodlands Memorial Garden

One of the most compelling stories was how many of the children were housed in dormitories with windows too high to see out of. We decided to create a “window too high” and although it is far more literal than we might otherwise choose, it proved to be a very powerful icon in the garden and one around which visitors had their picture taken. 

The Woodlands Memorial Garden

PM: The Doukhobor Commemorative Site is a site that marks a tragic period of separation, rather than the physical resting place of the families it memorializes.  In this site you were able to communicate the story of a community torn apart to those intimately familiar with it, and to those who have never heard of it in a compelling and sensitive manner.  It seems to me that you were also very responsive to the cultural touchstones of the Doukhobor community in this process.  Please give a bit of background on the story, and tell us how this project was envisioned and completed.

EL: I was drawn to this project after spending much of my early adult years in the West Kootenay area of British Columbia. This is where the Doukhobour community settled after a long period of exile and immigration from Russia and forced movement across Canada. A breakaway sect of the Doukhobours, called the Sons of Freedom, undertook varying degrees of civil disobedience in the early 1950’s. In response, the Government of BC chose to house the sons and daughters of the Sons of Freedom in New Denver – a remote mountainous community that in those days was far removed from the communities in which their parents lived. Over a 5 year period hundreds of children were housed and schooled in a facility in New Denver. 

Doukhobor Commemorative Site

Our task as designers was to create commemoration that told the story in a fair and objective manner, but also reflected the heart wrenching and long lasting effects of the event. Given their communal lifestyle and importance of sharing bread, salt and water at community tables, we created a long community table that was “broken.” The seats around the table are smaller at one end and larger at the other. The plan also included large local stones upon which the first person narratives were to be inscribed. Unfortunately, and perhaps tellingly, this part of the design was never implemented. 

Doukhobor Commemorative Site

PM: Mountain View Cemetery one of the most progressive and culturally responsive cemeteries in North America.  In the past, I have interviewed Cemetery Manager Glen Hodges and Artist in Residence, Paula Jardine.  Now I have a new connection to Mountain View in you!  Mountain View is a cemetery that had run out of burial spaces, and as a result had lost it’s source of income and connection to the community of Vancouver.  What has been accomplished there is nothing less than remarkable, and your firm has been an important part of it.  The Masonic Area Redevelopment was the first of the cemetery’s 12 sections to be redeveloped, and in addition to creating more and varied interment options there, your firm created some remarkably attractive and inviting areas for people to spend time.  The beauty and scale of a cemetery section is vitally important because when families feel comfortable and inspired when visiting, they will return again and again.  This attachment to place is a great benefit to the survivor in continuing their relationship with the deceased, for the community, in having a sense of ownership in the cemetery, and for the financial future of the cemetery itself.

What thoughts and concerns went into the creation of this project?

Mountain View Cemetery Masonic Area Redevelopment

EL: You are correct in that Glen Hodges and Paula Jardine have been two of many keystones to the success of the re-development of Mountain View. Our role was to lead a group of design, heritage and financial consultants in creating the re-development plan, in collaboration with Glen. One of our primary concerns was to develop a design that was not just sympathetic to the very historic Masonic Area, but to enhance it in a sensitive, yet modern way. 

Mountain View Cemetery Masonic Area Redevelopment

We approached this through two primary routes. First we were very careful to integrate the design of the columbaria, family vessels and commemorative elements with the proposed new customer service building and celebration hall. We worked closely with Sandra Moore, Architect, on the landscape around the building and she worked closely with us on the improvements in the Masonic Area. The second strategy we used was to choose materials that worked beautifully with the grey granite curbs and headstones in the area. We took a disciplined, deliberate approach to the selection of material types, colours and textures which resulted in an elegant palette of granite, basalt, concrete and andesite. Cast and extruded aluminum further integrated the cemetery re-development with the buildings.

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Mountain View Cemetery Masonic Area Redevelopment

We also wanted to be sure the columbaria were specific to Mountain View, and so we designed a “rosette-less” system that is at once secure, convenient for field staff and beautiful. It also allowed us to optimize the number of interment options we were able to accommodate on the very narrow and limited road and pathways in this part of the cemetery. Collaboration with Glen and his team, combined with sensitivity to the site has led to a very meaningful and beautiful place.

Mountain View Cemetery Masonic Area Redevelopment

PM: Thank you for your time, Erik, and thank you for the remarkable projects your firm has created.  These memorials have inspired me and I hope that they will inspire other cemeteries and firms to be more creative and responsive in their work.  I invite my readers to visit Lees + Associates on the web to view more of their projects.

For more of the articles in this series, visit:

Columbarium Galleries and Cemetery Sculpture Gardens: Making Cemeteries Relevant, Part 4

Bicycles and Cemeteries: Making Cemeteries Relevant, Part 3

Innovation in Toronto

Feng Shui in Minnesota

Japanese Cemeteries Fill Up

While American Cemeteries Become Irrelevant

Paper Lilies: Exploring Our Relationship with Death

Death is a constant possibility and a recurring visitor in our lives, as well as an eventual inevitability. So, what is our relationship with death?  Is it something we dread and avoid, something we think about often?  Is is true that death is never more than an arm-length away from us - do we carry our own death and the deaths of others around with us throughout our day-to-day lives? When we envision death, do we see it personified, a grim reaper, a skeleton?

We know that our existence will change when we die; and while no one really knows what that existence will be like, our understanding of that existence effects the way we live our lives and our relationship with death.

These are some of the thoughts that are brought to mind upon engaging with the subtle, yet powerful photography of 'Paper Lilies' photographer, Michele.  Her work draws us in to a dreamlike, otherworldly reality that is at once ordinary and fantastic.  

Michele has gracefully agreed to share her work, and some of her thoughts on art and death with The Daily Undertaker: 

"death to me is very confusing, i don't understand it and i don't know what comes afterward, but i think that's somehow the sort of beauty in it. "

"nonetheless i think death is a very interesting topic, sometimes overlooked, ignored, feared."

"my photographs with the skeleton show a sort of desired connection to death - wanting to hold on to past loved ones, not wanting to move on." 

"my fading portraits, however, show a very different aspect.i think we all feel like we are fading into the atmosphere a bit, like we aren't all here..or that we aren't seen. that we are fading into what could be death....an unnoticed or forgotten instance."

"my 'double exposures' are actually not double exposures at all, rather, they are just long exposures. i would have the shutter open for 30 seconds, run and sit where i was taking the photo for half of that time, then run and leave for the next, so you get this dream like, half-there-half-not effect." 

"i think that yes, my images do have a correspondence to death in some ways,
my photographs have brought me closer to the subject of death. i think it has made me less afraid of it, and more curious."

For more of Michele's beautiful and engaging work, visit her Flickr site, Paper Lilies
For related posts, visit  Art and Death

Dressing the Dead: An interview with Designer Pia Interlandi

Pia Interlandi is a fashion designer, artist, funeral celebrant and teacher based in Melbourne, Australia.  Her work, often incorporating ideas of death, ritual and transformation, is varied, thoughtful and benefited by a great depth of research and experience. I am very pleased to be able to share Ms. Interlandi’s work and a conversation with her on The Daily Undertaker:

Patrick McNally: Clothing is very important to our sense of self.  We express our membership in certain social and religious groups as well as our own personal tastes and unique qualities through our clothing.  What does the choice of clothing made specifically for burial say about the person who chooses to wear it?

Pia Interlandi: There are (almost) no human cultures who do not engage with some sort of dressing, it is in fact one of the key determining factors in identifying humans in the history of evolution. In many ways our clothing is a second skin in which we present ourselves to the world.

This is no difference for the dead. To leave one naked for burial (which is something environmentalists have enquired about), is often seen as a sign of neglect or disrespect. Whilst the dead don’t have the same requirements of clothing that the living do; warmth, protection, comfort, it is the living who require the dressing of the dead.

A person who chooses a garment created specifically for internment is in fact acknowledging the end of life as an event, a moment as important and as sacred as birth. They also carry an awareness that this will be the last garment ever worn, and will in fact carry their body through its physical afterlife, symbolically and literally merging with their body. As my garments are designed to break down and encourage decomposition (rather than preservation), the message that people who choose to wear them is one of surrendering or the giving back of their body to the environment, an acceptance and embrace of biological inevitability.  

Designer Pia Interlandi

PM: Clothing that is designed to transform in a specific way when buried with the dead seems to have a sense of the secret about it.  Those who view and those who wear it will never see the transformation take place.  How do you as a designer communicate the value of this kind of garment?

PI: When designing I have undergone rigorous testing to determine the rate of fabric and fibre deterioration. Whilst these results are scientific they have meant that I can design my garments with intentional stages of transformation. I believe that these transformations, whilst indeed unseen, and therefore secret, are reassuring to the living. Knowing that there is something that will gradually unwrap the body, and reuniting it with the earth, with almost a sense of poetry, takes some of the fear out of burial. 

PM: Most clothing used for burial is a representation of who we are in life.  I have buried people in their bib overalls, in uniforms, in formal clothing, and have buried some with many different outfits.  Ritual clothing is something different.  The adherents of some traditions like Judaism and Later Day Saints, are dressed in special burial garments as a preparation to being presented to the divine.  In a way, I see your clothing doing the same thing, only the divine in this case is the earth.  What ritual meanings do you hope your clothing will have the potential of conveying?   

PI: I believe that my garments offer an option that both is representative of a person’s individuality in life and also symbolize their presentation to the physical afterlife, by which, you’re right, I mean the earth.  The ritual I hope to convey is one of establishing a reciprocal relationship with the environment, and the gradual absorption of the body into the landscape. 

PM: Your Body Sculpture work creates wonderful tactile and visual representations of our bodies transforming into earth.  What do you hope that viewers will take away from pondering this process and eventuality?

PI: Most people think that I have digitally altered the images, superimposing the roots, when they realise that all I have done is grown the pieces and with relatively unsophisticated methods photographed them, they experience an ‘ah’ factor.  I hope that viewers will then realise and see the beauty and magnificence in the natural process of the body becoming the landscape. That in many ways we are all linked to the planet we walk on and breathe in.

PM: Your work as a celebrant started with dressing one of your own loved ones after death.  Certainly participation in the physical acts of preparing a loved one for the grave is a wonderful opportunity for ritual and for understanding our own relationship with life, death and our loved one on a much deeper level.  Do you encourage the families that you work with to also engage in this kind of activity?

PI: Absolutely. The dressing of a deceased loved one in an immensely powerful process, and whilst it may not be for everyone, I gently encourage families to participate.

 The first time I encountered the body of someone I knew, I was shocked at how still and cold he was. It was so clear to me in that instant that whatever it was that made him alive, be it a soul, a sprit, chi, electricity between the neurons, had gone elsewhere. I found the experience positively enlightening and one that deeply assisted with my own grieving process. His body was not scary; it was just the physical shell that he left behind.

 With the dressings I have had the privilege of participating in, I have found that it is important for me to be as honest and relaxed as possible, explaining rigor and livor mortis as natural processes, and being at ease with maneuvering a person into their clothes. When families see that the body is not an object of fear or anxiety, they relax and grieve, and sit, and just be, with the person who has died.  The dressing encourages touch and tenderness. One of the most beautiful moments I’ve experience in dressing occurred when the daughters of the elderly lady we were clothing all started giggling when we were shuffling her into her tights, an item of clothing their mother had not worn in years. By the time we got to choosing her lipstick they were smiling through their tears, and reminiscing about all the funny things their mother used to do. The following rosary was a much more somber event, but through the dressing they were allowed to experience a wide spectrum of emotion.

I do warn families that the dead will ‘pass wind’ on occasion, but I’m yet to actually have this happen in a dressing.  

PM: Your dissolving clothing project seems to be a precursor to the burial garments, but it is also such a captivating idea in itself.  Clothing that is designed to dissolve is also like a secret; invisible ink for example.  We are left to wonder what was once there after the clothing has dissolved.  We are also drawn to ponder the importance of the process of dissolving instead of just interacting with clothing in its new and seemingly permanent state.  There are many analogies that can be drawn between our fleeting lives and the disappearing tissues of dissolving clothing.  Most prominent for me is the thought that the breakdown of my body from its beginning to it’s indistinguishable state in the earth can be seen as a beautiful process, not unlike cherry blossoms falling.  Can you tell us about your intentions and experiences with this work?

PI: At the time I began using dissolvable fibres within garments I was exploring concepts of fragility. Working with a cloth that would begin dissolving if your hands were too sweaty when you were sewing it, or, as I only experience once, would deteriorate if you sneezed on it, meant that as a maker I had to reassess my approach to the material.  On the body it drew awareness to the mortality of the garment, which in turn made the wearer aware of their own, human, mortality and fragility.

The dissolvable garments now work as a sped up version of what happens to the garment and body when buried. However, in a much more aesthetically acceptable way, which allows me to use the images as a way to communicate decomposition, without the disgust it usually conjures up.

PM: The research you have engaged in, studying the transformation of different kinds of clothing through burying pigs in your garments just floors me.  I have to mention here that ethical considerations were carefully addressed and approved in this work.  You have done the research on this material and I admire your dedication and passion in pursuing this special knowledge.  Can you share some of your motivations in engaging in this lengthy and controversial work, and tell us what you learned, and how you plan to make use of this knowledge in your future work?

PI: In 2009 RMIT supported me do a residency at SymbioticA, an artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning, critique and hands-on engagement with the life sciences, with the intent to study clothing and biological tissue decomposition and interaction. I was introduced to forensic entomologist Prof. Ian Dadour and over a few months we designed a project that would investigate at the rate of textile decomposition in a natural earth burial scenario.  I knew prior to starting the project that forensic research conducted in Australia involved the use of pig carcasses. Donated human bodies go to medical studies and not forensics, so pigs, with their similar size and organ orientation are the next best ‘alternative’. When Ian told me the number of pigs required to get statistically significant and therefore scientifically approved results, I almost withdrew from the project.

I had initially thought that we would use 3 pigs, and finding out the experimental design would include 7 digs, each recovering 3 pigs, totaling in 21. I felt overwhelmed, and after a few months of discussion with peers, I eventually negotiated with Ian that we would use pigs from the human food chain, and that they would be the pigs deemed undesirable and likely to end up in dog food. As such I would be acknowledging the lives of the pigs in a way that would not occur otherwise.  To Ian’s horror, I was going to visit the pigs before their death date, to give each a name, and to thoroughly wash and anoint each with rosemary oil for remembrance, prior to the dressing and burial. I wouldn’t refer to them as ‘tissue’ or ‘carcasses’, and so each received the name of an influential person in my research.  To distance myself from their deaths was counter intuitive, I wanted to be as engaged and present in the process as possible. 

Fabric recovered after burial 

The entire project, which stretched over the period of a year, has been thoroughly documented by film makers Kathy High and Cynthia White, in a film titled ‘Death Down Under’, currently in its final stages of editing. The documentary is one way in which the research will be disseminated; exhibition and academic publications some of the others.

PM: I look forward to seeing the documentary.  Thank you so much for sharing your work and your thoughts with us!  For more of Ms. Interlandi’s work, visit her website, http://www.piainterlandi.com/

Beyond Goodbye: A Conversation with Jimmy Edmonds and Jane Harris

A video tribute to any promising and well loved young man is a touching experience that helps us to reflect on that which is most important in our lives.  Remembering Josh, a film by bereaved parents, Jimmy Edmonds and Jane Harris, is much more than that.

What Remembering Josh gives us, beyond an emotionally powerful montage, is a story of a family struggling to create a meaningful and appropriate service for their son, while dealing with their overwhelming and devastating grief.  The fact that this family is a very creative and loving one, surrounded by other creative and loving friends makes the service for Josh an incredible experience for all involved.  However, it is easy to see how even families without their capacity for artistic expression or their depth of support could take home a great deal of inspiration and practical lessons from the Edmonds’ example.  I am excited to share with you a conversation with these parents, Jimmy Edmonds and Jane Harris.  

Pat McNally: Thank you both so much for this important  film, and for sharing your thoughts on The Daily Undertaker.  It seems that you were clear from the beginning that a conventional service just would not be fitting, meaningful, or appropriate for your son.  I even got the impression that that kind of funeral would have been a disservice in your minds.  What was it about the conventional that was so clearly wrong for Josh, and what kind of experience were you hoping for initially?

Jimmy Edmonds: The main issue was our need to celebrate Joshua’s life as much as to mourn his death.  We had very little experience of  attending let alone organizing a funeral for one so young, and really we only had examples from television and films to go on.  But I think we knew what we didn’t want and I remember expressing a fear of having to let Josh go in what I considered to be a heartless and sterile environment of the local crematorium.  It felt like we would be delivering him to some anonymous, institutionalized ritual where strangers would take care of things.  Two young police officers had brought us the news of Joshua’s death and for his body to be committed by more unknowns felt just too much – you can’t hug a policeman, neither did I feel like hugging an undertaker – it felt like the only way to properly deal with this was to gather family and friends around and share our grief, and not just for half an hour at the “crem”.  We needed more time and we needed to fill that time by doing things that would help us all come to terms with our loss.      

Jane Harris: Ritual was very important to me and as our 18 year old daughter Rosa said "..Josh wasn’t just ours”. I wanted to be sure that the funeral was about Josh and I wanted  his friends to be a large part of that ritual.  I was worried that we didn’t know what form that would take but in the 11 days between our son’s death and the actual funeral it came together through a mix of our own ideas and those of our friends. And it felt right that it should take as much time as we needed on the day.  We couldn’t possibly have done it in an allocated time slot at a crematorium.  It had to be part of a longer journey of saying goodbye.

Pat: A point in the film that was very interesting for me was your family explaining how difficult it was to pour so much energy into creating this service at a time when you had so little to spare.  In several instances you express the fears you experienced that the whole thing would come off wrong or fall flat.  Fortunately, that did not happen, but I imagine that this is something everyone would experience if attempting to create their own service on this scale.  Creating a service like this must be very rewarding and meaningful, but also demanding and, in a sense, risky.  What would you say to a family considering something like this? 

Jimmy:  I’m not sure I worried too much about the funeral going wrong.  Jane did at the time and we found out later how concerned Joe was.  But without the help and advice of Su Chard, an independent celebrant who was introduced to us by some friends, the whole thing might well have ended up as a complete fiasco.    

The main problem was that convention, as we knew it, was telling us to hold a funeral first and then organize a memorial service at some later date – that was never going to work if only because we would have been unable to accommodate all the tributes from Josh’s friends many of whom we hardly knew.  I can’t remember now what the initial plans for the funeral were but what was always important was that it should be as much a celebration of life as it was a sadness for our loss and that Josh’s body should be present throughout that celebration.  Another important thing was that the event should represent a journey, for Josh and for us so we began to plan the day as three distinct movements of the coffin.  Loads of different ideas were flying around our kitchen table, but exactly what each section would represent remained unclear until Su reminded us what other people's expectations might be and our responsibilities to their own feelings of loss.

Jane: One of the most important and liberating lessons for me was that there are no rules and we could do exactly what we as a family wanted to do. For example  I know for me it was important to incorporate some kind of reference to Judaism into the day,  from a cultural rather than religious perspective. This represented one of many threads that emerged through out the funeral day. We were also very mindful to encourage people to honour Josh in ways that felt right to THEM…….we truly wanted to share the day with others, and that in turn offered us a lot of comfort. I remember feeling strong on the day despite having a broken heart and that was largely to do with the love and support of everyone present.

Jimmy: It's really all about accommodating a whole range of emotions that at the time feel out of control.  As James Showers puts it in our film, funerals like this are “a collision of grief and happy memories”.  Both he and Su helped us manage that risk by ensuring that we knew which moments were to be held as sacred and which were more celebratory.  

There was also the important consideration of food and the fact that many people would have traveled miles and would be tired both physically and emotionally.  So at the most basic level,  our structure for the day was organized around the living and their need to be well fed and rested.  Tired and hungry mourners are grumpy mourners and we didn’t want grumpy mourners, sad yes but not grumpy.

So if there’s one piece of advice for others planning to organise their own funeral, it is to give a very clear indication of what the order of service will be, to make sure the event has moments of solemnity and calm as well as opportunities for laughter and celebration.  And to build in very specific tea/coffee meal breaks.

Pat: A great many people participated in Josh’s service.  There were expressions of love and memories from a vast range of people who knew your son in different ways.  Were hearing new stories about your son a healing experience for you?  Was it a surprise to you?

Jimmy: A surprise and a delight.  Josh had moved away from home soon after leaving school and had made a whole new set of friends in London.  But there were still many of his school friends that we didn’t know that well, so its been a real eye opener to discover not just how well loved and admired he was, but how full his life was.  And getting to know those friends of his now, all of whom carry a little of Josh with them is a great comfort.  One of them as set up a website “Postcards to Josh” in which we can keep in touch with each other.

Jane: It was remarkable to be able to get to know Josh better through the loving and often hilarious contributions  of his friends.  I found it gave me a lot of strength to know how loved he had been in his very short life. I also find it helpful to know that as my memories fade the film will be there to help me recall the detail and nuances of my son’s life that I never want to forget.

Pat: There were so many ways that people were able to participate physically in the service, not only those who spoke or sang or carried the casket,  nearly everyone did something.  Did you intentionally create opportunities for participation?  How do you think these activities shaped the service?

Jimmy: Definitely.    I think we recognized the need that people would want to contribute in some way and that they would be able to use what ever they had to offer both as gifts to Josh, as well as part of their own healing process.  And that’s not just for those with talent as a performer.  It would have been physically impossible for us to organize an event on such a scale, and people do want to help, they need to help at times like this.  It was interesting how some traditional gender roles emerged.  The women attending to flowers and candles and decorating the hall.  The men helping to build the coffin.  Personally I found the male only environment of my friends workshop where we built Josh’s coffin very stabilizing.  When Josh died I experienced some very frightening and some very unfamiliar emotions, but I was somehow aware they were kind of different from what the women were going though, and being able to share these with my male friends as we planned and built the casket was probably very important.

Jane: The most central element of what we wanted to do was to share the day with as many key people from Joshua's life as was possible. I was also very struck by the different ways men and women grieve and how  afraid a lot of people were about being with us.  From the moment we started to organize the funeral I knew I wanted it to be a shared experience and though people were reluctant to do so initially I discovered that what they needed was permission to be themselves  and once that had been understood this was easier for them and us. The difference between compassion and pity didn’t take long to become apparent and we surrounded ourselves with people who understood this.

Pat: You decided against engaging a traditional Undertaker, but you did work with an independent one.  Could you share your experience of working with this man, and tell a bit about the role he played?

Jimmy: It happens that we already knew James Showers, the undertaker.  I had made a short film with him and got to know something of his work and his views about death and mourning.  James sees his role as, in his words “helping people to reclaim their farewell”.  Commercial undertakers provide a service which, in a time of great stress, we have come to believe is beyond our capabilities.  But in doing so they have also robbed us of one of life’s most important encounters.  What James did was to take care of the legal stuff, the administrative stuff, while supporting and encouraging us to concentrate on creating a ritual that would be meaningful and cathartic for us all.  In a sense he was very “hands-off” but always there in the background.  But Su Chard, the celebrant, was also important in the way she help us design what she called “a rite of passage” for Josh.  

Jane: James’ personal and accepting approach really helped. He was sensitive to our needs and priorities and didn’t once questioned what we were trying to do.

Pat: The process of creating the film seems to be entwined with the service and the grief experience itself.  How did this activity help or hinder your experience?

Jimmy:   In a way making the film was about hanging on to Josh for as long as possible.   On the day, I had asked a camera man and sound recordist (both friends) to record what they could of the event.  They are both professionals and went virtually unnoticed.  We then had to decide what we were going to do with the footage.  Who should it be for?    Who would want to watch it?

Jane: The making of the film was a huge part of the grieving process.  I know that some people might think it improper to bring a camera into  such a personal arena but for us as a family what matters is that we will forever have a record of Josh’s life which not only helps us to come to terms with what has happened but that can possibly help others too.

We decided to interview key people in the weeks after the funeral and that was also very therapeutic (both for us and for them).  Hearing what Josh’s friends had taken from the day was heartwarming.  For example one of Josh’s  friends talked about it being a day that had changed her  life and another said he had realized that you have to experience death to experience life.

Jimmy: We have now spent the last six months or so shaping that film in the edit suite. At some point during the day, I've sat down at the computer and fiddled away with the material - making this bit work a little better, changing the order here or there, putting new stuff in, taking other stuff out, but all the time being with Josh and I guess stringing out and delaying the moment of really saying goodbye.  Being able to do this has been a really important part of coming to terms with his death.  But making the film is only the beginning of the life of that film – and impact it has for other people and the way it then helps me is yet to be seen.

Jane: I cannot begin to imagine how I would cope for the rest of my life without this record of Joshua’s life which I can look at whenever I like.  My grieving journey has been hugely helped because we have made a film. Our daughter Rosa has also found having a record of the event helpful.  If she wants to share it with people who didn’t know Josh she can do so and they in turn will get to know something about her beloved brother.  It was also very important for friends and family who could not attend to be able to share something of the day as well.

Pat: Some parts of the service were invented, some were borrowed from other traditions, some were perhaps traditions from your own cultural legacy.  Did you envision a multitude of messages, or perhaps one dominant overarching message from the service?  What was it like to mix these elements together?

Jimmy: That’s a really hard question.  Our family is not religious and I don’t think there was any conscious attempt to build on any traditional form of funeral.  That said,  in recent decades the AIDS epidemic has changed the way we as a society, approach death and funerals and they have become, I guess, more flamboyant.  In the UK the death of Princess Diana seemed to give people permission for a much freer and more public display of grief.  Nowadays unusual or more personal funerals are not uncommon.  So in a way I suppose we were building on current trends.  Of Josh’s funeral I think that the way we organized a sort of viral candle lighting ceremony at the end of the day was particularly special and something that was possibly “invented”.   It symbolized the way in which we had given a little a bit of Josh to each other which we could then carry away for the rest of our lives.     

Jane: Cultural legacy was important to me and I felt the accordian captured that beautifully.  I was so driven by the wish not to be afraid that Josh was dead but had no idea how to do that but by the end of the celebration of his life I somehow felt a lot less afraid than I had done. One of the most important elements of the day was that Josh was in the room …. He even received a standing ovation……which I think he would have liked enormously!

Pat:  What do you think you have experienced and accomplished through this process that you would have missed with a conventional service?

Jimmy:  It wasn’t so much a conventional service that we were trying to avoid.  More, the idea that it would be a complete stranger showing us how best to mourn for our son, felt wrong.  At the time we wouldn’t have thought of it this way, but we didn’t need professional help to manage our feelings.   But neither did we realize that creating our own funeral rite would be so valuable for the remainder of our grieving.  What we did was to respond as honestly and as intuitively as we could to how we all felt about Josh, how conflicted and confused we felt, how insecure his death made us.  We needed to construct a ceremony that was of our making and therefore personal, but that other people could recognize and join in with.  Its still too early to say but I think its that highly personalized but public sharing of grief in a ritual made possible by a collective will,  that has helped us get grounded again and to feel better about the life ahead.  

Jane: The day was very personal in every way and people had their voices heard …..we had no rules except honesty of emotion…….and no pressure of time.

Thank you both so much for sharing your experience, your work and your thoughts with us.  I know that many families, celebrants and undertakers will be inspired by what you have done.  The film can be viewed at the end of this post via Vimeo.   Also available, through Blurb, is Jimmy Edmonds' beautiful and compelling photo book about his experience with 

Joshua's death, Released.  Currently, the book may be viewed in its entirety online.  It is also available as a download and in hard copy.  I hope to have a post focused on Released one day soon. 

REMEMBERING JOSH from JIMMY Edmonds on Vimeo.