I hear some wonderful stories of people’s lives that make me sit back in admiration at the things they have achieved or experienced in their lives.
Some stories are genuinely upsetting, tragic lives where someone’s greatest achievement has simply been to get through the next day.
What I have found is that is not the achievements or success in someone’s life that make people mourn them. It is their personality and their character that leaves their family and friends missing them… and that is how it should be.
We all have different paths in life, sometimes we know what we want from it but sometimes what we want is very different to what we need from it.
Working with families and hearing the very personal stories that made them love someone does make me reflect on my own life at times.
I have achieved a lot, I have lost a lot and at times I have had no idea what I wanted from life but I have been lucky, somehow fate has always taken me in a surprising direction, and my work as a Celebrant is one of these.
It has taken me a long, long time with successes and failures on my route to find what I think I was meant to do with my life, I have found my peace (which is something I did not always have), and more importantly, I have found me.
Don’t get me wrong.. I still have worries.. being a single, self employed woman, I do still have to worry about paying bills .. and that in a way annoys me, I wish I didn’t… but the reality of life means that it is something that we all have to do…. you just have to pull your belt in at times!
The rewards of this job are huge … there is no better feeling than knowing that you have let a family say goodbye to someone they love in exactly the way they wanted to.. it is the final gift that the family can give to someone. Beautiful tributes do not come from me .. they come from the memories and stories that people hold in their hearts … I am simply their voice… and there to wrap up “their gift” as beautifully as I can.
When I die … I know that I will leave a smile in a few people’s hearts and my epitaph will probably read “she tried” … and that, for me, is enough!
Jayne Johnson 