Dying to Live

We recently came across this very moving documentary made in Western Austalia.  The ‘Dying To Live’ documentary series persuades members of 9 families, as well as several skilled and wise professionals to talk about:

• How the 9 families coped…or didnt cope…from day one
• The emotional rollercoaster associated with death in real life
• Why people who chose life over euthanasia are glad they didn’t ‘check out’ early
• The effect of what people said or did
• How to handle fear. The patients and the carers
• Leaving an inheritance thats more than just money
• Preparing for a funeral…Your own or for a loved one

We were very moved by this clip on YouTube.  For more information, you can visit the “Dying to Live’” site here.

What are the best songs for different funerals or memorial services?

Planning a funeral or memorial service can be difficult under the best of circumstances. Choosing the music will be just one of the many choices you need to make. While it might seem like an insignificant matter compared to some of the other decisions that need to be made, it should not be overlooked. Music is a way of focusing attention on the reality of the loss and can help begin the process of healing. However, selecting music that expresses your feelings about this monumental loss of that special person can sometimes be difficult.

The Best Songs.net have compiled several lists in order to help you make this decision easier, or at least provide you with several options that you may not have considered. They have also provided quick links to places where you can purchase the song, CD, or sheet music. The funeral songs have been broken down into several categories, depending on the type of funeral and the mood expressed by the music. If none of these categories seems to fit, a complete least of possible funeral songs is also available for you to browse at your leisure.

Selecting the right song can be tricky because you need to try to balance your feelings with the feelings of others, while find a song that reflects the person who has passed away. Below are a few guidelines to consider when selecting the right music for the funeral or memorial service that you are planning. While once hymns and other traditional funeral music were usually played, today music is often more of a reflection of the tastes of the person who has died or the family of that person.

1. Choose music that provides comfort and stimulates pleasant memories of the departed person. The song could reflect the person’s personality or be one that was a favorite of his or hers.
2. Consult with family members and friends of the deceased to see if they have any special music requests.
3. Don’t try to fill in every moment with music. A few moments of silence are also necessary to allow people to reflect on the occasion.
4. Remember that different people handle grief in different ways. When selecting a piece that is less traditional, you may want to explain your choice in the program or during the service.
5. Instrumental versions of secular music or hymns can be a nice way to incorporate special songs either before or during the service.
6. Most funeral homes have special licenses that allow them to play copyrighted music published by ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC. So, whether you decide to play the music or hire someone to sing or play it for you, you do not have to worry about copyright infringement.
7. If you are having trouble because there are too many songs that you want to include, consider playing the instrumental versions of the songs at other moments. Besides being included with the service, music can be played during the visitation, when people are arriving or leaving the church or funeral home, and during special moments such as when doves or balloons are released.
8. If all else fails, allow the funeral director, minister, or organist to choose the music. They have the experience and knowledge to make appropriate selections.

Best Generic Funeral Songs – Best Songs for a Friend’s Funeral
Best Songs for a Spouse’s Funeral – Best Songs for a Parent’s Funeral
Best Songs for a Child’s Funeral – Best Songs for a Sibling’s Funeral
Best Religious Songs for a Funeral – Best Traditional Funeral Songs
Best Celebration Songs Suitable for a Funeral – Best Coming to Terms Songs for a Funeral
Best Classical Music for a Funeral – Best Jazz Music for a Funeral
Best Country Music for a Funeral – Best Country Music for a Funeral
Other Funeral Songs Not Included in Lists Above

BOOK REVIEW: The Healing Book: Facing the Death, and Celebrating the Life, of Someone You Love

The Healing Book is a memory book that is designed to help children and teens who have experienced the death of someone close to them. It is a place to remember and celebrate the life of someone who has died, while at the same time exploring the complicated and often scary questions that kids have about death.

The Healing Book uses real language such as died and death, rather than euphemisms like loss or passed. This is very important because grieving children and teens need real words and real language to help them come to terms with the death of someone they love. This book is very hands on, with a lot of spaces for kids to write down how they’re feeling and what they’re experiencing.

It is very detailed, colorful and well written. It paves the way for children to have ongoing discussions about the person who died and also discussions about why people die in the first place.

You can buy The Healing Book from Amazon.com here.

Safire’s “Stranded on the Moon” Speech

William Safire, the inimitable wordsmith and pundit, died yesterday at the age of seventy-nine. To younger generations, Safire is most well-known for the three decades’ worth of columns he wrote for the New York Times. But before he was a columnist, he was a speechwriter for the Nixon Administration. One of the most intriguing speeches he ever wrote was one that—providentially—never had to be delivered by the President.

In 1999, a thirty year old speech was released that Safire had written in the event that Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, the first men to walk on the lunar surface, became stranded on the moon:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

If there is ever a collection of speeches for an alternative history, this will surely rank among the most concise and beautiful of eulogies for deaths that never had to be.

(with many thanks to First Things)

Quotes we love

Loss and grief workshops for farmers

A good friend of Living Years, Petrea King of the Quest for Life Foundation and author of Your Life Matters, will hold a number of workshops on Loss and Grief across north and north-western Victoria.  Here she will demonstrate that no matter what’s happening, health and happiness is possible.

She’s done similar workshops on health and happiness in western NSW, where she’s seen men in farming especially struggle because they see the inability to earn an income as a personal failing. “They’re taking climate change personally,” she says. “It’s not really until people get to that place of saying ‘this has happened and what are we going to do about it’ that they can move on.”

She says often this happens when we face the big Ds in life – disaster, despair, drought, debt, disability, divorce, disappointment, diagnosis and domestic violence. She says destructive self-doubt can be countered by the Four Cs or the “keys to peace”.

Health and Happiness workshops, organised by Loddon Mallee Integrated Cancer Services, will be held in Kyneton on Oct 5, Echuca on Oct 8, Bendigo on Oct 9-10, Kerang on Oct 14, Swan Hill on Oct 16 and Mildura on Oct 18-19.  To book or find out more phone 0413 057 879.

Story via Genevieve Barlow at The Weekly Times.

A very moving eulogy

We are often asked here at Living Years about eulogy’s.  One of the most recently moving addresses, we believe, was delivered by United States President Barack Obama’s for the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

In a poignant and affectionate address at Kennedy’s funeral, Obama dubbed Kennedy, who died aged 77, a “Happy Warrior” who triumphed over “more pain and tragedy than most of us will ever know”.

The veteran senator from Massachusetts, the last of a trio of brothers who defined a heady, tragic political age, was a “champion for those who had none, the soul of the Democratic Party and the lion of the US Senate,” Obama said.

The president was making his debut as the effective leader of national mourning – one of the ceremonial duties of the US president – since capturing the White House, after hefty assistance from his mentor Kennedy.

He spoke to mourners in a spectacular Catholic basilica in Boston, before Kennedy’s widow Vicki, members of the extended Kennedy dynasty and former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Describing the man who charged him with keeping the Kennedy flame of charismatic liberal politics alive, Obama said his friend had rare resilience and carved purpose from the trials of his family and his own troubled personal life.

“This spirit of resilience and good humour would see Ted Kennedy through more pain and tragedy than most of us will ever know,” Obama said, his words echoing through the cavernous and ornate Our Lady of Perpetual Help church.

“It is a string of events that would have broken a lesser man … but that was not Ted Kennedy,” Obama said, as some mourners daubed their eyes and others sniffed with emotion during an address that won a standing ovation.  Obama painted “the image of a man on a boat; white mane tousled, smiling broadly as he sails into the wind, ready for what storms may come, carrying on toward some new and wondrous place just beyond the horizon”.

To read the transcript in full, please click here.  Click on the picture above to take you to the video of the address.  Thanks also to ninemsn.com.au.

Using voice to ease the process of grief

Baby Boomers invented ‘the lifestyle choice’ but now they’re choosing a death style, the natural way of death.  Dr. Rachael Kohn interviews voice empowerment coach Ganga (Karen) Ashworth who uses voice training to ease the process of grief.

With her extensive background in teaching, Karen is highly sought after for her skills as a Conductor, Singer, Facilitator and Voice Empowerment Coach. Having discovered a passion for the music of other cultures whilst training as a classical singer and Music educator at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Karen blends the wisdom of Ancient traditions into her work with the voice. From her training as a yoga teacher, and experience with many different healing modalities, Karen enables participants to engage sound, Mantra, voice and vibration as powerful tools for healing and personal transformation.

This interview first aired on Radio National’s show “The Spirit of Things” in July 2009. If you are unable to listen to the podcast, you can read the full transcript on Radio National’s website here.

PROFILE: Heath Ledger

Australian television and film icon, Heath Ledger (4 April 1979 – 22 January 2008) moved to the United States during the 1990s to pursue what would become an outstanding career. Some of his 19 films include the Australian smash Two Hands, 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Monster’s Ball (2001), Brokeback Mountain (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008).

As Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, Ledger won the 2005 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and the 2006 Best Actor award from the Australian Film Institute. For the same role he was also nominated for Best Actor at the 2005 Academy Awards and the 2006 BAFTA Best Actor award.

Ledger will also no doubt be remembered for this mesmorising performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight which opened with the largest ever North American box office weekend figures, $US 155.3 million. Ledger was nominated and won awards for this role, including the Academy Award for the Best Supporting Actor, Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards, the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a motion picture and the 2009 BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actor.

At the age of 28 Ledger passed away from an accidental toxic combination of prescription drugs. The death came during the final stages of post-production of The Dark Knight and whilst Ledger was still filming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus directed by Terry Gilliam from Monty Python fame. Fellow actors Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell have since stepped in to complete the film and donated thier earnings to Heath’s daughter Matilda in remembrance to a great actor, father and an thespian.

Visit Heath Ledger’s LIFEBOOK here.

The Power of Gratitude

We come across a lot of blogs and websites that are dedicated to grief and healing.  One of our favourites is a blog called Heartache to Healing by the very wonderful JoAnne Funch.  I founded Heartache to Healing to  support and inspire those who are suffering through life transitions by sharing her personal story of surviving loss and learning to have a life of purpose and meaning.

One of the entries from her blog was particularly touching and we wanted to share it with you.

The power of gratitude is an amazing thing, when we focus on what we have instead of what we don’t it puts us into a total place of love and possibility.  Oh, I know some days its hard to find anything to be grateful for when you have experienced profound loss, but on the “better” days, I encourage you to write down what you are grateful for, as this will help with your grief recovery.

I believe that what we focus on expands and with that thought, I want to create more of what I am grateful for.  For more on JoAnne and her journey, you can visit her site here.