06 - A Conversation with David Billington - Funeral Director

Young, Brave, and Beside the Dying: A Funeral Director’s Unexpected Journey

In this special episode, Kay is joined by David Billington, a funeral director who found his calling at an unusually young age. With warmth and honesty, David shares the story behind his vocation, the emotional depth of his daily work, and what it means to walk alongside others in their moments of deepest loss.

Together, they explore the quiet humanity of funeral care, the misconceptions people often carry, and the unexpected beauty that can be found in grief. This is a conversation about purpose, presence, and finding meaning in the spaces we often avoid.

Whether you're navigating your own grief or simply curious about the life of someone who works so closely with death, this episode offers tenderness, insight, and a deep respect for the sacredness of saying goodbye.

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Transcript

Hello. Today's conversation is one I hope will gently open up a space we don't often enter, at least not willingly. I'm speaking with David Billington, a young funeral director who's chosen a path most of us avoid thinking about, and yet his work is full of life, meaning and surprising beauty. 

So David, can you describe where you are right now? I think honestly I'm in a place that is a bit of a mixed bag, as we were discussing previously before we started recording. I have a very young family at the moment and my days start incredibly early and are generally full of a massive mixture of joy and chaos. And so I think my sort of headspace, if you like, is a constant flux between being extremely tired, very happy, and wondering what's going to happen next, particularly in my life.

And in your role, I suppose, you never know how much work will be coming your way as well, because it's so unpredictable. Tell me what led you to become a funeral director? Oh, it depends how far you want to go back, okay. So I suppose my life has always been a mixture of my professional life, and I suppose my hobbies as well, has been a mixture of caring creativity. 

So initially I had a really big interest in music as a younger person, and I went to music college, and I was in various bands, played various instruments, and just really enjoyed that side of things. But very quickly found out that that career path is extremely difficult to get into. And in between my university years, I sort of stumbled into looking after children, because a friend of mine had said, why don't you try Camp America? Because it means you don't have to go home in between university years, you can be paid for your time, and you get to have a bit of an experience. 

And so I thought, you know what, I'd like to give that a go. And so I sort of naively wandered across to Kansas, was the first place I went to, and spent the summer looking after kids from all different types of backgrounds, and just absolutely loved it. Honestly, it hit, it struck a chord with me that I can still feel now. 

And I just really, really enjoyed all the different personalities and the stories, and just the impact that you could have on all of the families that we got to connect with over that period of time. And I went again the next summer. And then after that summer, I suppose my boss over there basically said, would you be interested in coming to live in the States full-time and working full-time for Campfire USA? And so at this point, I'd realized that the music thing probably wasn't going to pan out. 

And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to do it. And so I went across the States, it was Minnesota this time, and lived in Minnesota for a couple of years, kind of working on the camps in the summer. And I do after-school programs during the winter periods. 

It was outside of like Minneapolis and St. Paul. And really, really enjoyed the experience. And then ended up doing a little bit more world traveling. 

But to cut a long story short, eventually came back to England after about four and a half years, because my sister was getting married and she was adamant that I could not miss it. And I agreed I needed to be in the country for this rather big event. And so I came back in my kind of early 20s and I was a bit lost at this point. 

I didn't really know what to do. I just knew that I soon as I touched down in Heathrow, it was raining as most English kind of days are during the winter time. And yeah, I just had this huge sense of relief that I was back in the country.

And I just couldn't wait to see my family because I hadn't seen them for such a long period of time. But I didn't know what I wanted to do. And my brother's partner at the time suggested, why don't I work with adults with learning disabilities? Because it's similar to what I'd been doing previously and really enjoyed. 

And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to find someone I'm going to apply. And so I ended up applying for a support worker's role to help adults with learning disabilities, but in the challenging behavior sector and support them with kind of daily tasks, essentially. So it might be personal care, it could be helping them with like finances, going out to the community, all sorts of different circumstances. 

And it depended upon the capacity level of the person that I was working with as to what we actually did. Really enjoyed that work and kind of over the next 10 years, sort of slowly worked my way up to being the manager of a care home in Leeds. And then that's where I met a lady called Sarah Jones. 

Sarah Jones was one of the directors of the company that I worked for and her family owned the company. And we just got on really well. And we started to see more of each other during manager's meetings. 

And then when that company kind of slowly started to come to a close in 2014, that's when she approached me and said, we'd really like to start something new and we'd like you to come across and help us start it and run it. And it's going to be funerals. And at the time I was a bit like, Oh, okay. 

A bit out of left field, but I had had some contact with funerals through my professional roles because once I got into the kind of managerial side of stuff, unfortunately a couple of the people that we were caring for had died in different circumstances because there was all sorts of health complications with these adults. And so we had been an executor for a couple of people. And so I've got to go through the kind of arrangement process with funeral directors. 

And then I've been on the other side of it where a friend of mine had died during our sort of mid twenties and I'd attended a funeral, which was in my opinion, just so far removed from his character and personality. It couldn't be more kind of chalk and cheese scenario. And that really sat with me as an experience that didn't feel right. 

And I suppose all of this combined once I'd had a chance to process it, I thought, you know what, I'd like to do this and I'd like to explore it. And so we then spent the next, this is so big, about 2014, 2015 era, we spent the next year basically doing work experience up and down the country to see how funeral directors worked. Because at this point, none of us had ever been behind the scenes of a funeral directors. 

We just experienced it on the periphery. And initially a lot of the phone calls that I made to kind of local funeral directors around Yorkshire were all met with a lot of scepticism. And I can understand it. 

I think they were probably thinking like, who is this guy? Like, why is he wanting to come spend time with us? Because it's not typically done that work experience is offered in this area. And I think they were understandably like a little bit like, I'm not too sure about that. So a few people did let me in the door, but it was just for an initial chat. 

And a lot of people said a polite no, to be fair. And then a few very key people who I'm still friends with now allowed us essentially to just go completely behind the scenes. And we got to help on all sorts of funerals from more sort of religious funerals that were very traditional in kind of how they were presented aesthetically to more left field kind of natural burials and people that were being a lot more kind of creative with some of the choices around what they were building for themselves. 

To more kind of like, I suppose, I don't know another way to say it, but like run of the mill type cremation services that were very templated. We got to do a few different types of funeral directors as well. So I spent time with a gentleman in Cambridge called Andrew. 

So Kingfisher Funerals, if anyone's around that part of the world. And Andrew probably holds a lot of the same values as to what we do in full circle as well. And he was, in my opinion, quite modern in the way that he was looking after the families that he supported. 

And then I randomly bumped into the funeral director in my village, in MZ, in the pub, because she overheard a conversation that I was having with one of my friends and she tapped me on the shoulder and said, I'm a funeral director. Would you like to spend some time with me? And I'd never met her before. She called Wendy Clarkson. 

She's now retired, but Wendy's lovely. And she, when she was active as a funeral director, she ran the whole funeral directors out of the house. And so she had a mortuary set up in her garage. 

She cared for a maximum of two people at any one time. And she did all of the arrangements in her living room. And a lot of the time she was essentially just serving our village and then the immediate surrounding area. 

And it was just extremely personal. And then I also spent some time with a gentleman called Lee in Halifax, who's still going. He's called Springfield Funerals. 

And these guys are probably more on the traditional end of the spectrum. So it was good to see that kind of breadth of different approaches. And what did your family think when you decided to become a funeral director? To be honest, I still think this is a work in progress.

My wife has always been really supportive. She's a community nurse and she actually deals with a lot of end of life questions and scenarios. And so actually, we've had hundreds of conversations through years that really dovetail in terms of what we do and the care that we provide.

And how, in my opinion, the lack of continuum in terms of the healthcare from where people are cared for through the NHS or privately towards end of life, moving into what happens after somebody dies is a huge missing piece of the puzzle as to how people can be supported well. And I think we've actually improved both of our practices because of the conversations that we've had. My mom has always been supportive, but very quietly supportive around it. 

And I'd say that as time's gone on, she'd become a little bit more interested year upon year. And now that we're into the 10th year, I think both my parents are very comfortable with it. But understandably, as with everybody, questions around death and conversations around death, they instantly bring up the sense of mortality for your own self. 

And so that can be quite challenging. I think I've got two brothers and a sister and they've always been very supportive, but I wouldn't say they've been particularly, they've not asked a lot of questions around it. And then I've got a couple of really good friends who I think were surprised at first, because it's never something that I, as a younger person, said, I'm going to be a funeral director when I grow up.

But they, as the years have ticked on, they're just kind of asked their own questions around things which obviously they've been thinking about, but in very private scenarios. And that tends to be the way I've found with a lot of people. If it's in group settings, I think a lot of people really struggle to talk about this subject in a way which is probably beneficial to the group. 

I found with a lot, there's a bit of male bravado side of things. So if I'd been in a group of men, tends to be a lot of jokes about what I do. And I think that's a protective mechanism more than anything. 

Whereas if it's a one-on-one scenario, that's when people tend to ask things which actually they really want to know. I think part of that is cultural. We have a very much a kind of dynamic going on that it's something we want to avoid at all costs. 

We don't want to look into our deaths. We don't want to think about it. It's almost as if it was a morbid subject. 

And certainly when I was doing my training, I decided to train to be a wedding celebrant on the back of a friend really guiding me that way. And on the first day of the training, which was during the pandemic and it was over Zoom, I said to Veronica, right, I'm ready. And she said, right, well, we'll start with funerals. 

And I said, but I don't want to do funerals. I just want to do weddings. She said, you've paid for the course and you will do it. 

So that was me told. But you know what, what an incredible privilege it has been, you know, walking alongside people. And at times I have accompanied them in the last few weeks of life, sat with them, chatted with them, reminded them of wonderful memories they've told me about. 

And it's been the most surprising gift. And I don't think in our society, we see it as a gift, but it's going to happen to us all. So the best thing to do is to make some kind of provision for what you want in terms of a funeral, in my view, and let people know. 

And then nobody's having to say at a time of grief and sorrow and sadness and shock, I wonder what they would have wanted. What surprised you the most about your journey with being a funeral director? I mean, there's so many different aspects of it, to be honest. I think, I suppose to start with one of the things that was most surprising when we first kind of went into this world was that just the lack of regulation. 

So there is no governmental body which oversees the funeral industry. So you don't have an Ofsted, a CQC, nothing which controls kind of the quality of the output of all of the services around the caring for people that not only have died and have zero capacity at all because they are dead, but all of the bereaved families who are in a very vulnerable position when it comes to their own mental health and in some cases, financial circumstances in a really sensitive subject. And so that was the most surprising thing to me. 

And I think we will see this change over the coming years because Scotland already have a code of practice, which we've actually brought into our practice at Full Circle, but they have a Scottish funeral inspector, kind of like the CQC has inspectors that go around that can essentially shut down care homes. It's a similar model in Scotland. And so I think we're going to start to see something like that in England, probably in the next five to 10 years. 

But at the moment it is very much anyone can be a funeral director, open funeral director services, and you don't need any training or qualifications. You don't need any mortuary equipment. You don't need any vehicles, a staff team, nothing. 

And you can call yourself a funeral director. And that has advantages and disadvantages because it means that you have this wonderful spectrum of different approaches and it can be really unique and you can find a funeral director, which really suits your values and ethics. But also provides a lot of challenges because there's a whole host of different approaches in terms of how you price this product and service. 

And that can be very confusing, I think, to the public, because they might look at one funeral director and think everyone's doing the same thing. So why are these people charging more than these people? And why is this item listed as more with these people, but less with others? And so that whole world, I think, it just needs tidying up slightly. But I suppose on a personal side of things, is one of the things that I found most surprising is just how much joy there is in the job. 

And I can't imagine myself doing anything else in my life. Like this has become, and I never thought I would say the sentence, but this has become my vocation. And I really believe in what we do and the work that we provide to people and the services that we create can be incredibly meaningful. 

And if we're allowed to help people kind of engage that creativity side of things, I really think that it makes a massive difference to people's grief journey. And I didn't ever think this would be something that would even cross my path in terms of life. And there's just so many different avenues I've been able to kind of provide that, I suppose, like sense of what I would class as like a continued bond. 

So there's something called continuing bonds theory, which is the idea very simply that after somebody has died, this doesn't need to be the end of your relationship with that person. And in fact, the relationship is ongoing, but it has just shifted. And that will continue to shift over time as it does with all relationships, even with people as they're alive and finding a way to keep that connection in a kind of positive framing is incredibly important for, I think your own kind of wellbeing. 

And this is something that I didn't know existed. I always just assumed that when somebody died, that was it, you moved on, you just got on with life. But that is not realistic in terms of staying healthy.

And so I suppose that the big surprise to me is that those connections are incredibly important. And there are ways and means to be able to do that. That mean that actually, it becomes quite a healthy relationship. 

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So thank you truly from my heart. It's amazing really, when I didn't know that at all, that there is no sort of overseeing body. But when you think of all the preparation that goes into bringing a baby into the world, how the mother is prepared, how the aftercare is all in place, and, you know, regular checks, it seems a bit farcical that the end of life is sort of almost dismissed in a way.

So what does a typical day look like or isn't there one? Because of my role, my typical day is very untypical. So I am a funeral director, first and foremost, but I'm also the community engagement lead for Full Circle. And my role has shifted through the years as well. 

So when we first started, basically me, Sarah and Jay just did everything. So we were bringing people into care that had died from hospitals and hospices, from private residential homes, wherever people needed to come from. I'd be doing personal care for people, which I still do now. 

So this might involve washing and dressing somebody. It might be that I'm doing that with a colleague of mine, or it could be I'm doing it with family members if they want to be involved in that aspect of care. It could be that I am arranging a funeral and I'm talking through all the different kind of options and choices that are available around that. 

It might be I'm interacting with local bereavement services to kind of further those arrangements to get things cemented. And then I suppose the community aspect of my job is very varied. So something that we've always been very passionate about is this idea of improving death literacy within our communities, because this is something that I feel is a real weakness within our society is actually the knowledge around death and dying is incredibly low at this point in time. 

And it's due to a number of factors. Death has become very medicalised over the past 100 years. And a lot more people are dying in hospices and hospitals and people aren't having contact with that kind of end of life part. 

And I think that's not done out of any sort of malice, it's done out of protection and had the best of intentions at the time. But unfortunately, a ramification of that is that people have become quite separated from death. Whereas if you go back further in history, people died at home a lot more often.

And so it was more normal to be able to see this and be in contact with death more regularly. And therefore it was a subject that was probably easier addressed. Whereas now, because it's happening behind closed doors a lot, I think it's more difficult to be able to engage in these conversations. 

And it's not younger people aren't being kind of shown this. So actually, a lot of people only really have full contact with death and dying probably when it's their parents, or if they're unlucky, maybe a partner or a child. But the idea of kind of improving death literacy in the communities comes in a number of different fashions for us. 

So we deliver loads of different talks. So I go out and speak to sometimes it might be district nurse teams, or it could be wills and probate solicitors, or members of the public. So it might be like a local WI, or it could be for the Rotary Club or something like that. 

And we tend to do a couple of different types of talks. So we've got one all about environmentally friendly funerals, because this is a real personal passion of mine. And we're a registered B Corp. 

So it's a big part of what we do. And then a bit of a supposed a glimpse behind the scenes, if you like, of what a funeral director does, and kind of how all of the ins and outs of that work to dispel some myths. So a lot of the time I'm delivering that sort of talk to care home staff or hospice teams and things like that. 

Because it's surprising how many of the people that are in situations that actually are experiencing death and dying quite frequently, know absolutely nothing about what happens after somebody dies. And so we try and fill in the gaps a little bit. And so if they are getting asked by questions from friends and family members, then hopefully they feel a bit more knowledgeable to be able to answer those. 

So we've got the kind of education pieces that we do in person. We also have regular webinars, which we deliver monthly on a whole host of different subjects. And so I tend to arrange those, but we don't actually speak anymore, because we found ages ago, okay, that we're not the most interesting people we know. 

And actually, there's way, way better speakers than us. And so I tend to just network quite a lot with different people who I think would be able to add a real kind of key source of information to our overall portfolio of kind of info that we're giving out to our networks. And so for example, the next webinar coming up, which might have already happened by the time this comes out, is this gentleman called Ash Hayhurst, who is transitioning at the moment, but he is essentially going to be delivering a talk on LGBTQ plus, and how actually their perspective on death and dying is quite different from the heterosexual perspective, and how the approach in terms of that type of choice of life in terms of sexuality can affect all of their decisions around funeral process. 

And so he's delivering talk all about the queer funeral guide. So everything that we do is always recorded and put on our YouTube channel. So if anyone is listening to this and thinks, oh, that's quite interesting.

If you could just go to YouTube, type in full circle funerals, it'll come up with all of the list of the different webinars we've done in the past, and Ashton's will be in there. So we've got that side of things. And then another kind of, I suppose, pet project of mine that I've pushed through over the years is that I like to do a lot of in-person community events, because I feel like if funeral directors aren't present in the community, then we're never going to be accepted as a real part of that community. 

And so actually being at events, organizing events, which are community led and focused is the best way for the public to get access. So then hopefully they get to know people that are funeral directors personally, and then they can ask if they've got questions. And so an example of this is we do kindness festivals. 

And so we've just done one here in Harrogate recently, which is going through the next iteration of it. So the next kindness festival in Harrogate is going to be on the 17th of January, 2026. It's going to be at St Aidan's school. 

So it's a Saturday and it'll run from 11 till 3 PM. And the idea behind this is that we want to bring together loads of organizations all over the district and bring a space where everyone can kind of showcase what they're doing to make the world a better place. And we've got three key themes for the day.

So it's environmental wellbeing, financial wellbeing, and then mental and physical wellbeing. And if you happen to fit in any of those categories, then you are welcome to come along and kind of essentially tell the world about what you're doing. And a nice kind of extra bonus of this is that all of those organizations get to network with each other, and then hopefully find ways of connecting and collaborating in the future.

So my role is very varied. I'm always looking for extra bits and pieces to do. But essentially, I want to be getting out into the community, improving people's kind of education levels and knowledge around death and dying and bereavement, and then offering opportunities for kind of extra connections. 

And then one of the most important parts is bereavement support. So we believe that a funeral director has, I suppose, as part of the role, we shouldn't just drop people after the event has happened. And there should be opportunities for people to look into ways and means that are going to help them in a grief journey.

And so we've got free bereavement support group that happens every month on Wednesday between 5.30 and 7, and that's completely online. So no matter where you are in the world, you can kind of come along to that and that move from in-person to online during COVID actually, for obvious reasons. And then because of the benefit of the wider range of people that can come, it stayed online. 

But because we were missing that in-person side of stuff, we decided to start doing what I refer to as like creative bereavement workshops. So these are a much more relaxed version of the bereavement support group, but generally have a really creative medium attached. So we've done things like watercolour sessions, jewellery making, floristry workshops, all sorts of stuff. 

We've got one coming up later this year that's going to be a calligraphy workshop. And so the idea is that you can kind of write letters to people that have died. And then we've got a little post box outside of our place in Guiseley where you can post your letter. 

And later on in that year, we do a kind of ceremonial birding of all the letters. But yeah, I found these creative bereavement workshops to be very enlightening actually, because you get people coming from all sorts of backgrounds. Sometimes it's a very historical bereavement from maybe 15, 20 years ago that they just never felt like they've had the chance to speak about.

So here again and again, people don't want to upset other people. So they just don't talk about it. But then actually they're stuck in a little cycle themselves of really being in quite a lot of mental pain and fatigue around this, but not feeling like they've got an outlet for it.

And then other times we'll get people that are coming up to their own end of life experience, or it might be that they are supporting somebody else on an end of life pathway, or it might be that they're really recently bereaved. And so we just get a whole mishmash of people coming. It's always the same. 

First five minutes, no one says anything. Everyone's terrified. And then as soon as you kind of start the creative thing, whatever it is, then you can slowly introduce questions into the group. 

And before you know it, 10, 15 minutes in, everybody's really chatting and engaged and just having lovely open conversations. I would imagine one of the hardest deaths to deal with would be the death of a child. Do you have special training for that? Do you just use shared knowledge and experience to deal with that? Because that's very confronting. 

It is. We've got a number of different things that we found through the years. It's not something that we would force on any of our Funeral Director team. 

So we always give people the opportunity basically to say no, because you don't really always know what life circumstance someone's in. And so for example, for me personally, I've got two children now who are happy and healthy. But a couple of years ago, we were not so fortunate. 

And we were in a position where we were having continued miscarriages. And this had happened for a number of years. And I was not in a great place to be honest, okay. 

And I remember once there's a gentleman that walked in. He was in floods of tears. We'd not had any sort of phone call prior. 

So I didn't know he was coming in. And I just happened to be in this office at this point when he walked in off the street. Once I'd managed to kind of calm him down and ask, how can I help? It turned out his wife had died in childbirth recently. 

At this point in time, my wife was pregnant again. And so understandably, that pushed loads of internal triggers for me. And so I was very open and honest once we'd kind of gotten past the initial parts of this conversation with my team and said, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this on my own, but I really want to do it.

And so it felt very important to me that I did support this family. And for lots of different personal reasons, but I didn't feel completely able to do it without help from our team. So we just worked together. 

And in terms of that, I suppose, like training aspect, because there isn't this lack of regulation, there's no kind of recognised training, which you must do to become a funeral director. So everything that we've done has been by, I suppose, well, it's been self-taught as we've just gone through the years. And then we've passed on our experience to the new members of the team that have come in. 

And so when children's funerals come in, we really look at the circumstances, like who is the family? Who are the people involved in this? What was the age of the child? Who is the funeral director? Who's met them initially? Are they the right person to support them in this process? And a lot of the time, because our team are obviously biased, but I think they're awesome. Like they are the right person pretty much straight off the bat, but occasionally because of personal circumstances, they might not be. So we try and look at a number of different factors and then figure out who's going to be the best place to do that. 

Do they need any support? And how are we going to give this family the best possible outcome? Because I've done a number of children's funerals through the years, and I don't think everyone probably view this on the outside, but they can be extremely poignant and special events. So there was a family that I supported probably about seven years ago now. The family that came in had an older child and they were happy and healthy, but unfortunately the baby that they just had had died during the birth.

And it was unexpected, and so understandably they were extremely upset. And once we'd had time to chat to them and kind of talk through different processes, they decided to make a couple of decisions, which have stayed with me actually. And now I kind of offer out quite routinely.

So the baby was being cared for in a place called Martin House Hospice, which is a specific children's hospice, which is just outside of Wetherby. And I was having all the conversations in this location. And one of the things that we talked about was that transition from going from Martin House to Full Circle, how's that going to happen? What are they comfortable with? And what they described to me, I now offer as like a routine, do you want this to happen? So they said they want to be there throughout the journey. 

I was like, oh, okay. That makes complete sense. Like if it was my child, no one else is doing that journey. 

I am looking after my child in every step of the way. And so I ended up picking up in one of our electric vehicles, which was a lot smaller and gentler than a private ambulance. And because obviously the baby was so small, we got a Moses basket and baby was just wrapped very carefully in the Moses basket. 

And then the parents could sit on the back seat. And then that way they got to really like be part of that journey. And then when we got to Full Circle, they came into the mortuary with us. 

They were the one that placed the Moses basket into our temperature controlled unit. And then from there, every time there was any sort of personal care that was carried out, they were part of it in some format, whether it was dressing the baby or changing the sheets that we were using, or just spending a little bit of time. No one else ever removed the Moses basket without them being present essentially.

So they were just part of that daily level of care. And now this is something that has like informed my practice. And it's not something that everybody wants, don't get me wrong.

For some people, they just don't want that level of connection. But for other people, it can be incredibly important that they're offered that. And I don't think everybody realizes that that is something that they can do. 

And then in terms of the service themselves, they decided to go about this in a way which allowed a few more people to engage, but on a level that was comfortable to them. So they wanted to have a really private cremation service where literally just the parents and their parents were invited, nobody else. But because they were part of a wider community of young families or from local place, they wanted to give them the chance to kind of be part of this as well.

And so they ended up going to, there's a place called Tarnmore Natural Burial Ground, which is just outside of Skipton. For anyone who doesn't know, a natural burial ground is like a cemetery, but without headstones. So essentially if you are buried there, then you do not have any sort of physical marking at the place of burial. 

There are some inscription stones that you can have an inscription put on if you want to. But this wasn't a traditional burial in the sense that it would always be the cremation that had happened. So we have ashes to bury, but prior to that, they decided to have this little service in the pub next door, which unfortunately doesn't exist anymore. 

But they had a celebrant come across, it was a Saturday morning, I think we did it on. And Andy Ison, lovely man from Knaresborough, he is a humanist celebrant and he delivered this service where with the family's kind of, I suppose, consent, he has essentially created this really beautiful ceremony. It was like a storybook. 

And so he got members of the small congregation to come and flip the pages of the storybook as we were going through. And it just allowed lots of different people on a very small level to just physically be involved and engaged in a way that I hadn't seen before. And then we moved across to Tarn Law, which was just across there, about 500 metres walk away. 

And then we did a really short kind of ceremonial burial of the ashes there. There's been lots of other different children's funerals that we've been involved in through the years. And I guess where I'm going with this is that you don't need to follow a template. 

You just need to find something that you feel that's going to fit you. I think that's one of the things that has most surprised me. Is how unique and different, whether it's a burial or cremation, how they can be and how they how they can be so tailored in a way that really supports those that are mourning. 

And I think that's been fascinating. So how do you look after your own well-being then? There's a lot of output here. You know, there's a lot of giving. 

But how do you how do you come back to yourself after a hard day? What do you do? Yeah, I mean, a whole mixture of things. Yoga has always been very helpful to me. I find it really centering and I don't do as much of it as I should do, to be honest.

I need to bring my practice levels up a little bit. But just that sense of breathing and quiet when I can fit it in around the kids is really, really beneficial for my own mental health. I've always been a very active person, so running feels really cathartic at times when I feel like my head's a bit full. 

If I can just get out and run, that tends to really kind of center me. Climbing is a big part of I find it a bit of a mixture of kind of like a yoga style movements almost, because you are having to breathe very carefully and place your hands and feet in very specific way. But it can also be quite physical. 

And I find I really hit that flow state in climbing because you don't think about anything else. You're just feeling it. You're staying on the wall. 

You're staying on the rock. And if you do think about something else, you're probably falling off, to be honest. So that all I find extremely helpful. 

And then I suppose internally, like within the company, we have all the usual kind of supervisions and we've done reflective practices through the years. And yeah, there's all sorts of different tools that we would use internally to be able to kind of keep each other well. But I suppose one of the main things is just having open and honest conversations about where you're at, because you're probably not always going to be in a good place. 

And there is going to be times of when you're struggling, whether it's personally or professionally. And because of the nature of what we do, I found quite a lot through the years that there are certain situations that push internal buttons for me. And I didn't know what they were going to be. 

And I didn't realize how regular they were going to be pushed when we first kind of started this journey 10 years ago. But now I am well aware of where those buttons are. And so more easily able to kind of put things into place, which are going to keep me well. 

And so I would encourage anyone that's kind of moving into an industry that's connected to death and dying to really figure out where those internal buttons are for you, because everyone's got them. And they're going to be different with everybody. But when they are pushed, it can be quite an experience.

I can believe it. So do you feel that being so close to death in your working life has changed your view on life in any way? It's made me appreciate my relationships a lot more. And I don't know whether that's just because that is the natural way of things as you get older and I'm in my 40s now. 

But yeah, I feel like my friendships, my family, whether that's kind of extended family to brothers and sisters and mum and dad, to my kids and my wife, everything just feels a lot more precious because it is bleating. And it sounds like a massive cliche, but just no one knows when actually that relationship is going to dramatically change. And so I try to stay a lot more present and I don't always achieve it. 

But I find myself having, I had a moment this morning, so my youngest is one and a half and he got up at 5am or somewhere around that time. And we were sat reading a book. And yeah, I just found myself being really grateful for having that moment in time. 

And I don't know whether I would have had that same kind of insight had I not moved into this field. Do you think you've learned that from walking alongside people in grief? I think it's definitely had an impact because grief is incredibly complex and it's just so different for everybody. But I see how different people deal with grief and how different people frame that situation. 

And I find that that framing is incredibly important to people's own wellbeing. And if somebody frames the grief in a way which is, this is all-encompassing and actually it's completely taken over my life and there's no way out of this, that is understandably a very tricky place to be. And sometimes that's unavoidable because of the circumstances of how somebody's died. 

And if it is extremely traumatic or sudden and unexpected, I can completely understand why they would end up being there. But for the people that do manage to frame their grief in a way which they're grateful for the gifts that they've had in terms of that connections, that relationship, they're already in a place of, I suppose, being very just happy that they've had those experiences and they're sad at the same time that they're not going to be able to have that same connection. But I suppose, as we talked about earlier, that idea of continuing bonds, it already slightly opens the door on, I'm really grateful for those experiences. 

How can I now move this relationship forward into a place which is going to be helpful to me rather than something which is going to drag me down? I think that I was given a book after my husband died and it told me about, I think it was something like the five stages of grief. You will feel this, you will feel that. I read it. 

But in this book, the implication was that within two years, you would be over it. And there's one thing that I thought about, there is no timetable for the human heart. And in my view or my way of dealing with loss and death is not to fail to acknowledge you have a gap inside. 

You've got like a hole inside you. But over time, that hole never goes away. But over time, what you do is you learn to grow around it.

You find ways of being because it would be intolerable to be in that state of grief for the rest of your life. So it's how you manage to get that sort of soft landing. And that just takes time and lots of love and lots of support. 

And for many people, a lot of talking. I think we all have different ways of meeting it, but you're right. To fail to talk about it, to not say the of somebody who's died is actually really harmful in its own way. 

So you've obviously had lots of moments that have touched you deeply. My word, that must be an understatement. But what about joy and lightness? I mean, there's been so many through the years, whether it's someone delivering a kind of a last act of personal care for somebody. 

There was a family a number of years ago that it's a mother and daughter who had been caring for their husband slash dad for about five years previous because he'd had Parkinson's. And they, once we'd sort of chatted through kind of all the different options in terms of what you could do, they didn't realize that they could be involved in the personal care side of things for this gentleman. And once they realized that they could, they were just incredibly grateful for that experience. 

And I can still remember now, they didn't want us to leave the room because they wanted some physical support there, but they wanted to deliver that last act of care. And those, the tears that were coming from them that day were a mixture of relief and joy and gratitude, just being able to be part of his journey right up until that end point of his body. And then the ceremony that they created, I just thought was lovely as well. 

And it was just an extension of how much they loved this guy. And I suppose that's the underlying point is that massive part of my job is an expression of love from all the people that are creating these services is they are just wanting to express their love for people. And that's what I view my job as is we are creating events and ceremonies and rituals that are an expression of love for people. 

And yes, there are some really difficult conversations that have and difficult scenarios that we come across, but that's what it's always rooted in. And so that's actually the huge part of joy that I find in my job is how are we going to express the love within this service? And it's amazing how creative people can be when it comes to this. I think you must meet some very interesting people working life and professional life.

I can't think of a better emotion to bring this to a close other than talking about love. And for those who grieve, it's because they've known a deep love, a real love. And I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to join me. 

I really do deeply appreciate your willingness to share your insights and experiences with such honesty and compassion. Your presence brought a thoughtful and grounding perspective to the conversation. And I know listeners will be touched by the care and dignity that you bring to your work.

I love the idea of kindness festivals, by the way. I think that's beautiful. It's been an absolute privilege and a joy to have you on my podcast. 

Thank you. I know you have a very busy schedule. Thank you for making time to join me. 

So I appreciate all of you who are listening and hope that you too can find some information in this podcast that will help you with any decisions that you're making or with any path of loss that you're experiencing. Go gently and take care. Bye-bye. 

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Your feedback really helps shape future episodes.

Don't forget to subscribe and share it with family and friends who might benefit too. If you've any questions or if you'd like to be a guest on the podcast, I'd be delighted to hear from you. Until next time, take good care and thank you again for being here.