Funeral

Today, my father-in-law was cremated. He had passed away the Friday prior.

Somehow, it fell to me to make a lot of the funeral arrangements. I was honoured to be able to contribute in some way to celebrating his life but I won't lie, it was stressful. I had to take the whole week off just to have time to grieve, process, and get on with the details.

He had only just remarried a little over a month ago. That side of his family was in such shock. One of his step-daughters was incredible and got on to doing the research straight away. By the time I arrived the Friday afternoon to come see them, she'd already done research on funeral homes. We all found the pricing structures very confusing but I'm grateful we had a place to start.

Even though he wasn't Māori, I decided it would be appropriate to have a version of tikanga Māori in the ceremony as his step-grandchildren are Māori. It wasn't full-on tangihanga, but I contributed a whaikōrero poroporoaki and the opening and closing prayers were in Māori. We sang Purea Nei as my waiata tautoko and there were few dry eyes in the chapel.

Like I say, I had assembled a lot of the arrangements, so I also put together the slideshows to show on the TVs and to be live streamed. I included a video of my father-in-law teaching his relatives how to sing Te Aroha. He was a music teacher. It became his final music lesson. The whole chapel knew exactly what to do and sang along with him.

Anyway, that's been my week.

Moe mai rā, Eddie.