Celebrating the life of the deceased has quickly become a key part of many memorial services across the globe. Memorializing the life of a person can provide families and friends with a way to heal and have closure.
For some people, the traditional rites associated with funerals are often not enough of a tribute to the person they’ve lost. In recent years, more and more families are taking the option to add their unique spin on the memorial service for their loved ones, which make it as much a commemoration and celebration of the life of the deceased as it is a fond farewell.
Memorial services that serve as a celebration of life is generally focused on the individual stories of how the deceased person has touched the lives of the bereaved. The mourning friends and family congregate and tell personal stories of why their loved one was so important to them and can present mementoes and other tributes tailored to the personality of the deceased throughout the ceremony.
A celebration of life memorial can either be celebrated alongside a traditional funeral or in place of it. These ceremonies give a bit more leeway to be creative, and nonconventional tributes are common.
Make it Personal
The trappings of a memorial service that celebrates the life of the deceased should focus on making the event celebrate how the decedent was in life. Friends and family should work together to devise a theme that encapsulates how they knew the person. Things that the person enjoyed in life should be central to the theme.
Families can forego traditional mourning colors and formalwear in favor of casual dress codes that were more in-line with what the decedent enjoyed wearing in life. Friends and family commemorating a sports fan could wear the colors and jerseys of the deceased person’s favorite sports team.
In many respects, these turn out to be more like parties; however, even these otherwise festive memorials will not detract from the pain involved in remembering the person’s death. The casual atmosphere, however, can help people by taking out much of the stress involved in mourning and helps them remember their deceased loved ones more intimately.
Visual Tributes
The life of the decedent and the impact they had on the lives of their loved ones and friends can also be honored through decorations and videos. Home movies featuring them prominently can be played throughout the memorial service. Decorations and tributes can be built around the interests of the decedent and other things like life milestones. These can be presented through various creative items such as balloons or quilts. Pictures of the decedent and their families and friends, in particular, can be displayed in a prominent area in the viewing room.
Color schemes for funerary ceremonies are moving away from the exclusive whites and blacks of memorials. Today’s funerals can have many tastefully selected floral arrangements in vibrant colors, often those significant to the decedent in some way. This break from tradition can help create an atmosphere of rapport, which lets good friends and family share their happy memories of the decedent.
After the Service
Historically, people treated the passing of a loved one with great renown. Much has been said about the fancy mausoleums and grand tombs left behind by the who’s who. Most people are content, however, with simple headstones. In Ogden as in other places across the United States, simple memorial monuments such as these are often all the family would want to remember their loved ones. A well-designed headstone can be an eye-catching private memorial for the decedent and their family.
Other tributes to the decedent and their memory include well-written obituaries that can be posted either in an obituary or in a social media page.
