A very special tree planting and dedication

A couple of summers ago I received a call from the son of a couple who had died a few months apart, the previous year. Both had had a long slow decline through dementia and had lived their last years in separate nursing homes. Theirs was a small family, with some members living abroad and, for a variety of other reasons, their two sons took the decision to have unattended cremations with the intention of having some kind of ceremony for them both in the following summer, when the family could all come together.

The couple’s granddaughter had bought a house with a lot of land and thoughts had turned to planting an oak tree and scattering their ashes at its foot, but they were finding it difficult to visualise what could take place, and how far they should go with the formalities. I was happy to talk him through the various possibilities over the phone - from keeping it completely informal without the need for a celebrant, to holding a full, life-centred ceremony similar to that which might have been held at their funerals had they been attended. I was delighted when the son called me back a couple of weeks later and asked me to write and lead a full ceremony.

The first step was to meet at his daughter’s house so they could show me where the tree was to be planted, and we could talk about the logistics of the day and the content for the ceremony. It was decided to hold the ceremony at the planting site, but with a gazebo as insurance against the British weather. No music was to be included so there was no need for any audio equipment, and they were going to be able to rustle up enough chairs for the family to be mostly seated for the duration of the ceremony.

We continued the meeting inside, where he told me about his parents’ lives and what they had meant to their family. It was clear to see how the process of planning the ceremony was already helping him process his feelings around their loss, and I hoped that the ceremony itself was going to bring the resolution the family had so far been denied. Over the next couple of weeks poems were chosen, tributes were written, and the grandchildren shared their memories with me. All the contributions were crafted into a twenty-minute ceremony, remembering and celebrating the lives of two special people and culminating in the planting of the tree with the combination of the couple’s ashes at its roots. Memories and messages were written by every family member and enclosed in a bio-degradable box, buried at the foot of the tree that everyone hoped would now grow into a lasting memorial, a symbol of the strength and resilience they had shown in life and the shelter and protection they had provided their family.

It was such a wonderful thing to be a part of and when we said an emotional goodbye after the ceremony, the healing benefit that their ceremony had given them was palpable. The picture is of their memorial tree a year later, last summer, already bursting with the promise of new life.

I hope that more and more families who have experienced an unattended or direct cremation will contact me in the future. If you think you would find a ceremony helpful, with or without a tree planting, ash scattering or other act of remembrance, please do get in touch for an informal chat.