The Songs We Send Them Off With
They say music is the language of the soul. But I’ve seen it undo people. Unravel them at the altar of goodbye.
There’s a myth in the funeral industry, whispered behind satin curtains, between urn catalogues and condolence calls. If you keep it professional, you’ll make it through. Just hold the line. Keep your tie straight. Keep your gaze level. Learn to mute the mess.
But then the song starts. And sometimes, the song wins.
When I was a funeral director, I dressed a six-month-old boy in a blue-and-white striped sailor suit. The family chose it because it had been his favourite. As if babies know favourite clothes. But I didn’t argue. We grant such fiction at funerals. It’s one of the few mercies we’re allowed.
They played Fly by Celine Dion. A song written for her niece Karine, who died too young. "Fly, fly little wing / Fly beyond imagining"
I broke.
Not in front of the family. Never in front of them. But backstage, behind the velvet partition. I wept into the crook of my elbow while the chorus lifted the child out of language and into something else. I had dressed dozens of children before. I had carried white coffins. But that song split me open. There’s something particular about a grief that hasn’t even learned to speak yet.
Music does that. It doesn’t ask permission. It just opens the door.
Ask any celebrant, funeral attendant, or crematorium worker and they’ll tell you. The song is often the hardest part. Not the eulogy. Not the slideshow. The song.
You can stand beside a widow as she lists every way he failed her and still feel composed. But the moment Unchained Melody starts and she’s mouthing the words? You’re clutching your own ribs.
You can watch a family fall apart in silence. But when Supermarket Flowers by Ed Sheeran plays for a mum gone too soon, and her teenage son lip-syncs the line about angels, your throat closes.
There were songs I had to leave the chapel for. Who Wants to Live Forever by Queen. Everybody Hurts by R.E.M. Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton. With or Without You by U2. Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinéad O’Connor.
Each one a slow blade. They didn’t just accompany the grief, they amplified it. Turned memory into melody. Turned my chest into a cracked cathedral.
Sometimes the grief was too close. Sometimes it was theirs. Sometimes it was mine.
Music makes mourners of us all.
There’s research now. It confirms what we in the death trade already knew in our marrow. Funeral music helps. It can assist the grieving process by providing structure, catharsis, meaning. A 2021 study published in OMEGA, Journal of Death and Dying found that music during funerals can enhance the experience of remembrance, trigger healing tears, and facilitate emotional expression. Especially when words are impossible.
Songs bypass the cerebral. They speak to the limbic. A well-chosen song can feel like being held. A poorly chosen one can feel like betrayal.
I’ve seen it.
A man once requested Highway to Hell at his own funeral. His mother, a devout Catholic, hadn’t known. The moment the electric guitars kicked in, her face fell. Not in amusement. In horror. She thought we were mocking him. I remember thinking we should have prepared her. We should have warned her. Songs aren’t always just songs. Sometimes they are landmines. Sometimes they make the room burn.
There was another funeral. A woman who loved ABBA. The family chose Dancing Queen. I watched the entire front row sway along, laughing through tears. That was the magic version. Grief that moves the body. Grief that doesn’t sit still.
But funeral songs have their limits. They cannot undo regret. They cannot conjure connection where there was none.
I remember a son choosing Cats in the Cradle for his estranged father. A brutal, deliberate choice. He stood in the back of the room and didn’t cry. Just nodded, slowly, as the lyrics played. "My boy was just like me," the song said. I watched him fold his arms. I watched his mother glare.
Sometimes songs carry blame. Sometimes they tell truths too ugly to speak.
And yet. I believe in them.
I believe in the queer kid who slipped Born This Way into his estranged father’s service as a kind of final coming out. I believe in the man who played I Will Survive at his husband’s wake and made everyone get up and dance. I believe in the woman who recorded herself singing Amazing Grace before her death, to be played back as she was lowered into the earth. Her voice cracked. She missed a few notes. It didn’t matter. She sang herself out of this world.
What dignity. What defiance.
When people ask me what makes a good funeral, I never say a great speech or nice flowers. I say this. The right song. At the right time. For the right people.
Because music holds memory. It echoes long after the mourners have gone home. It becomes part of the ritual we replay in our minds.
But it is not neutral.
Choose it with care. Because once it plays, it lives in the grief. It becomes part of the ghost.
So what do we do with this? We honour it. We learn to hold both the healing and the hurt. We give people permission to choose well, or not at all. We remind them that silence is also sacred.
And for those of us who work behind the scenes, we grieve in private, sometimes in pieces. Sometimes in soundproofed rooms. Sometimes just outside the chapel doors, while a song about flying plays for a baby in a sailor suit.
And when they ask if we’re okay, we say Yes. We say It’s just a song.
But we know the truth. It never is.