Making Space for Every Goodbye
At Grave Expectations, we pride ourselves on being inclusive. We deal with each person as an individual, and our core value is that everyone should have a funeral representative of the life lived. Possibly because of our compassionate, flexible approach and our focus on humanity, we are often contacted by people with specific requirements.
We always try to ensure we can meet the needs of individual communities, and working with LGBTQIA+ people and their families made us want to learn more about their experiences of deathcare. To understand the specific lived – and died – experiences of queer people, which are rarely addressed within conventional funeral provision, we listened to the experts, read the research and carried out specialist training.
People who identify as queer may have a more complex relationship with funerals, for many different reasons. Family members may choose not to recognise a partner, or a transition. Valid fears arise around the handling and treatment of precious bodies. There can be discrepancies around the names and genders used on death certificates, or in eulogies. A lifetime of feeling judged or othered can create barriers, making discussions around death even more difficult.
So to the LGBTQIA+ community - we want you to know that we are here for you, and will support you to have your true legacy.
No conversation is off-limits, we don’t judge and we want to help, in whatever small way we can. We promise to treat your body, your sexual orientation and your gender identity with the privacy and respect they deserve.
If are planning your own funeral and have appointed someone you trust as your next-of-kin, we can work with them to help make important decisions. Would you prefer a holistic celebration, or would separate events for individual communities be more representative of your life? Our flexible approach to end-of-life care can characterise all the parts that make up your whole. Let’s have these conversations now, so we know what you need when the time comes.
And for those using other providers, familiarise yourself with current recommendations so you can advocate for yourself. New guidance from the Chief Coroner states that ‘Everyone is entitled to respect for their gender identity, private life and personal dignity’, and advises that the name and pronoun chosen by the deceased is used, rather than those stated on their birth certificate.
While we aren’t here exclusively for the LGBTQIA+ community, at Grave Expectations we want to celebrate each and every life as uniquely as the person honoured. But we also appreciate that for this group in particular, hard-fought identities and bodies need careful, compassionate consideration and care.
For further reading, we recommend The Queer Funeral Guide by Ash Hayhurst (queer-funeral-guide-2019.pdf), and for more detailed information on health inequalities for LGBTQIA+ people in the UK, The LGBT Foundation’s Hidden Figures (Hidden-figures-LGBT-health-inequalities-in-the-UK.pdf).