For Peace of Mind: Volume 8 - Possibilities…

A Proper Send-off

I laughed as Byrnesy sang one of his nonsense songs. He and the hand puppet were running through a routine from his ‘Magic Music Show’ as I imagined a roomful of children roaring at his party antics.

It was pretty much in character with the warm, genial, Falstaffian figure I remembered. Then he had been a musician and compare at wedding receptions, quite capable of getting a guest up to perform tragically on the tuba to the amusement of their friends and the accompaniment of Byrnesy’s wisecracks. Now he was telling me he’d moved sideways to become a children’s entertainer and a marriage and funeral celebrant. John Byrne, a funeral celebrant? You’re kidding! That’s like getting Billy Connolly to lead mass! What’s the story, John? In the 1980s, he told me, in his role as MC at wedding receptions, he often caught the tail end of ceremonies in the garden and heard some ‘doddery old celebrant’ mixing up the names and falling over the phrases.

He soon started to think ‘I could do better than that!’ He became aware, too, that celebrants worked shorter hours than he did for considerably better pay; their day finished as his long night’s work started. John quickly got the message and applied to the Attorney General’s Department for a licence. There are Government accredited courses now but at that time no particular qualifications were required. John just had to ‘show he had two arms and legs and had done some community work.’ People with an interest in the‘wedding industry’ – drivers, florists,musicians etc – are ineligible for appointment as celebrants, so John had to wait till 1995 to be appointed, when he was no longer compering. Fortuitously, just at that time, Michael Lavarch, the Attorney General in the Keating Government, appointed everyone on the waiting list, “…seven, eight hundred of ‘em! They appointed one bloke in Queensland who was 93 years old.

They just whacked ‘em all on. You got some good people on and you got some bloody duds!” The good people, including John, prospered and his former employers in reception centres were happy to use and recommend his services. He settled comfortably into the new role; not a far cry from his well-practised MC routines – telling the stories, making people laugh and feel at ease while adding the legal requirements for a wedding ceremony.

The first request to do a funeral came out of the blue. “A bloke I went to school with says, ‘Aw, Mum’s died, I’ll get JB, he’s a celebrant.’ I said ‘But I’ve never done a funeral.’ ‘Well, here’s your first one!’” Thus John started doing funerals in 1999 mainly for friends. “I’d deliver the eulogy in the manner I think it should be delivered and knowing the bloke made it easier to make it special for the family.” Funeral Directors noticed his warm and homely style and would recommend him to clients. Funerals for people he didn’t know brought different demands and John, with the help of the network of civil celebrants, found his own way of meeting them. He produced a set of templates and pro-forma’s that ask the family about the characteristics and interests of the deceased.

The detailed information these elicit helps to build a profile and trigger memories which can be woven into a meaningful and appropriate eulogy. John likes to tell it as it was. He’ll include funny stories and if ‘old George was a cantankerous old bugger
at times’ he’ll say so. The family and friends recognise the person they knew and loved. Accuracy is vital – John dreads becoming one of those ‘doddery old celebrants’ of yesterday calling Kerryn, Kerrie and Peter, Paul. Once he’s finished the eulogy a couple of nights before the funeral, he reads it back to the family to make sure all the detail is correct and the picture properly focussed. “You can deliver the most beautiful eulogy in the world but if you get the wife’s name wrong once, they’ll remember that more than anything else.” But the result can be very satisfying. John recalls that once, as he concluded the service, “300 people stood up and clapped. I nailed the bloke – everyone came up and said ‘How long have you known him ‘cause that was him to a T,’ and, of course I didn’t know him at all.” John had done his homework and caught the essence of a man’s life in a way that resonated with the family and friends.

He doesn’t do infant deaths and teenage suicides; he found them too stressful and emotionally draining.“There are some beautiful people aroundwho can handle those,” he says with admiration. “Give me a sixty-year old, seventy-year old, whatever – a digger– I’ll play The Last Post on me trumpet and give ‘em a good send-off!” “I’ve buried some wonderful people, too,” he says. “Girls, 35 years old with multiple sclerosis. What did they say every night to her husband as he put her to bed? You’ve got to say it – ‘This f- ----- disease’ – you’ve got to say it.” All the family knows and they remember lovingly when John whispers the words during the service.

He loves the job and laughs when I remind him he got into it for the short hours and good money compared to the old four-hour band gig.“Yeah of course,” he admits “and job satisfaction. It’s still a bit like doing a gig though – the old ego still plays a part. You finish a funeral and wait for someone to come up and say ‘Mate, that’s the best funeral I’ve ever been to– that’s how it should be – you spoke about the man I knew and came to remember today.” He hopes to continue for many years yet – he’s only 62 – but says the time will come when Diane, his wife, will say, “Give it away, John. You mucked up the names twice today.” He wants to keep ‘sending them off properly’ and to never become one of those‘doddery old celebrants’ who first inspired him to think ‘I can do better than that!’

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