Poems for Funerals are a brilliant way of expressing your feelings about the person you have lost because they are very personal things – but where do you start to write one. It is so daunting when you have a blank piece of paper in front of you and you don’t know where to start.

I was given a very simple piece of advice – in fact so simple it had never occurred to me. Find a poem you like – and then adapt it. It can be as much or as little as you want. Just changing ‘she’ to ‘he’ can be sufficient. If you want to be a little more adventurous you could maybe add in something about the friend you have lost. If the poem refers to children or grandchildren you can make it more appropriate, putting in your relationship. You could put something about hobbies, or things you have shared together, a shared memory, anything you want to share with the people who are there to celebrate the life of your friend.

You don’t have to be too elaborate and it doesn’t have to be long, just enough to tell the world how you feel. It is so important to share our feelings at a time of loss or they can become an unbearable weight in our minds that we find it so hard to get away from.

I use a wonderful little book called ‘Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep’, which has a huge variety of things for me to draw on and I can generally find something that helps me say what needs to be said and gives me comfort at the same time. It’s also a huge comfort – just reading some of the poems and Readings helps me come to terms with the loss I have suffered.

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