“Some funerals deserve a very obviously gay celebrant – and that was me...”

"I found that it taught me about death"

I'm an out and proud gay man and I became a humanist funeral celebrant   for two reasons. Firstly, it was a way of coping with the impending death of my sister, who had terminal cancer. I realised I was in my early 60s, that none of us get any younger, and at some point we all die.

I found that doing this work was a good way of getting to understand more about death. I've become much more familiar with death and with grieving, and I think it's made me much more relaxed in confronting the possibility, which becomes statistically more likely the older you get, that life could end at any minute.

"It was the absolute opposite of what he would've wanted"

The other reason I went into this work was that I went to some funerals that I thought weren't very well handled. I saw a need, really. In one of them, a guy who had been gay all his life had died. But his sister organised a very religious funeral, and the family didn't recognise the man's partner. His partner sat in the second row on the other side to the family, and wasn't acknowledged. Sadly I think that's been the experience of lots of gay people.

I know of another man whose family were very religious and when he died, they just took the body away, went off and had a funeral in a completely different part of the country. It was a very fundamentalist Christian funeral, and it excluded almost all his friends, who lived elsewhere.

It was the absolute opposite of what he would have wanted because he'd left Christianity, and was very clear about that. If you'll pardon the expression, he would've died if he'd known they were going to do that!

To me, the funeral is about mourners coming to terms with their loss. But when the person you're mourning isn't properly described, it's very difficult to do that because the celebrant is describing someone that isn't the person you knew.

So I started doing funerals partly because sometimes in death, sexuality becomes whitewashed, and I don't believe it should be.

"You don't want people to be sheepish"

I noticed after I'd been a celebrant for a while that the undertakers were actively recommending me because they knew I was gay. They hadn't talked to the family about the dead person's sexuality, but they knew I would. There's still a mood among some undertakers that you don't mention these very private things.

Actually, if you're gay, it's not very private. It's usually pretty obvious – very obvious to your friends – and you're very happy about it. And you don't want people to be sheepish or apologetic or embarrassed about it.

"We had a trapeze artist at one service"

I've had people say they were dreading it, they thought it was going to be miserable and boring and desperately sad. Especially for people where there was a feeling they'd died well before their time. And unfortunately over the years, lots of queer people have died well before their time for a whole variety of reasons.

So those funerals need to be appropriate. The only thing worse than dying young is dying young and having a funeral at which the things that were important to you are hidden away.

Some of the funerals I've done for younger people have been quite dramatic. We had one where a trapeze artist performed as the service ended because the guy had been a circus performer.

Lots of others we just had a very flamboyant, very obviously gay crowd and therefore they deserved a very obviously gay celebrant – yours truly – and celebration.

"Of course it's fine to have the Pet Shop Boys!"

For most of the people I was a celebrant for, the most important thing was simply to make sure the funeral really reflected the kind of person their loved one had been. They also wanted to feel in control of things. And I think a lot of people were simply fed up with kind of formulaic, traditional funerals.

I remember music was often something where people wanted to be a bit different, but were still sometimes quite tentative, saying things like, "Oh, do you think it would be alright to have The Pet Shop Boys?" And I'd always say that of course it's alright to have The Pet Shop Boys if they were important to the person who's died! If God Save the Queen by The Sex Pistols was a big part of their life then great – that's what we're celebrating.

LGBTQ+ people, like everyone else, have the right to be treated with dignity and respect, and to spend their last months, weeks, and days with the people they love. Marie Curie wants to ensure anyone from the LGBTQ+ community receives the best possible care and support from us. That they feel safe to be who they are when using our nursing, hospice and patient-facing volunteer-led services. There's more information and support on our LGBTQ+ resources page  .