Planning a Celebration of Life

There is no template. That is the point of it, and also the hard part.

A celebration of life gives a family room to do something true to the person, and then leaves them staring at a blank page. This is a place to start.

See also our Celebrations of Life page, or call (575) 342-1005 and think out loud at us.

Before venues, before food, before anything else, answer these three.

• Who has to be there? This sets the date more than any other factor. If the people who matter most are driving in from Albuquerque, El Paso, or further, work backward from what they can manage.
• What did they actually love? Not what people are supposed to love. The answer to this question is the whole event — the place, the food, the music, the shape of the afternoon.
• How long should it run? Ninety minutes with real warmth beats four hours of standing around. It is fine to have a clear beginning and a clear end.

Once those are settled, everything else is logistics, and logistics we can help with.

The gatherings people remember are made of specifics, not sentiments. A few that families have used:

• Ask everyone to bring one photograph, and put them all on one table
• A slideshow or video tribute assembled from family photographs
• The recipe. Whatever it was, made by whoever knows how
• A display of the things they used: tools, tack, uniforms, ribbons, quilts, rods, records
• A playlist that is genuinely theirs, including the songs everyone teased them about
• Memory cards on each table, collected at the end and given to the family
• Something for the children to do that is part of the day rather than apart from it

None of it needs to be expensive. It needs to be recognizable.

Somebody has to think about parking, chairs, sound, and whether the food arrives before the guests do. That somebody should generally not be the person closest to the loss.

• Ask two or three people outside the immediate family to run the day
• Decide who speaks, and ask them in advance rather than on the day
• Post an order of events, even a loose one, so nobody wonders what is next
• Set out a guest book. Families read those for years afterward
• Plan for weather. In Grant County that means shade in June and wind in spring
• If relatives cannot travel, tell us and we will look at what is possible for recording the service or sharing it with them

We can carry as much or as little of this as your family wants.