Beyond the hall. Where else a funeral can happen.
I’ve spent four posts on halls because they’re the option most people don’t know they have. But a hall is still a building. Some families want no building at all.
The graveside
The simplest funeral of all. Everyone meets at the cemetery. The coffin is there. Someone speaks, someone reads, someone sings. The coffin is lowered and people take it in turns to drop a handful of dirt.
A Graveside can be the entire funeral or the last ten minutes of a longer one. Warwick, Stanthorpe, Allora, Killarney, Yangan, Leyburn, Pratten and the little cemeteries in between. Most of them have a tree. You don’t need anything else.
At home
Yes, your person can come home. In many circumstances they can stay there before the funeral, with a cooling plate keeping them at the right temperature, while family sit with them.
And the funeral itself can be at home. On the verandah. In the lounge room with the furniture pushed back. Under a tree in the yard.
That’s how my own mum’s farewell happened. A cardboard coffin covered in lavender, on a table I’d made in the shed, under a gum tree on our property. It was the smallest of gatherings and it was exactly what she asked for. I wrote about it in How one can DIY a funeral in Queensland.
The club
Sometimes the right place is where they spent every Friday night.
Allora Sports Club, Killarney Recreation Club, Tannymorel Bowl Club, the Stanthorpe RSL. Clubs have function rooms, bars and their own catering, so the day is easier to run. Some are happy to have the coffin present for a service. Others are better suited to a memorial or the wake afterwards. We’ll ask on your behalf.
The property
Farms, sheds, the top paddock. Out here plenty of families have land, and plenty of people have asked to be farewelled on it.
There are practical things to think about. Access for the vehicle. Shade. Somewhere to sit. Whether the coffin will travel from there to a cemetery or crematorium the same day. None of it is hard. It just needs a plan.
Let’s see what can be done
Our starting point is never “that’s not how funerals are done.” It’s “let’s see what can be done.”
Some places will have limits. A cemetery has a clock. A club has a licence. A hall committee has a bond. We’ll tell you where the limits are and work inside them.
But the funeral home chapel is a default, not a requirement. If the right place for your person is a hall at The Summit, a hundred-year-old hall at Liston, a shady grave at Yangan, or their own back yard, then that’s where the funeral should be.
Tell us where. We’ll help you get there.
This is the last post in the series. Start again at Articles/A funeral doesn’t have to happen in a funeral home.