Way To Go

Designer funerals, spiritual wills, #deathpositive. Could getting our heads around our demise be the secret to a happier life? The blossoming ‘death wellness’ movement says so.

- Tracey Withers

Let us slip quietly into a scene. It’s golden hour on a spring afternoon and a small procession of people are bush walking towards the sunset. The scent of eucalyptus and warm earth accompanies them along the well-worn track. There’s a sense of ceremony here, but easy conversation, too. Laughs burst through the hum of cicadas. The walkers reach a clearing — the kind of beauty spot where one comes to think — and, as twilight deepens, settle on bohemian rugs that are stretched across the grass, gin-and-tonics in hand. Fairy lights twinkle in the trees. A videographer tracks children playing. There are speeches — tear-jerkers and jokes — and then the live band begins.

It could be a wedding reception, really — except for the casket over there, illuminated by candles. This is what a designer funeral looks like — a new type of soulful send-off that is changing the way we think and talk about death. “In the services I do, I work with the family to really capture the essence of someone — their life — not just [mark] their passing,” says Yasemin Trollope, the vibrantly big-hearted 35-year-old founder and funeral director of Rite of Passage Funerals on the Gold Coast (riteofpassage funerals.com.au), one of a new generation of service planners that can create this kind of ‘holistic’, unique, even enlightened, exit. “I use sight, sound, smell, taste and touch to create a multisensory experience so that when guests arrive to a service they truly feel that essence,” Trollope explains.