Hilary Walker - Civil Funeral Celebrant

21/05/2025

Please welcome Hilary, our next spotlight on our wonderful funeral celebrants

Hilary Walker is a trained Civil Funeral Celebrant available to conduct funeral services within the North-West area. With a career background within the Registration Service, she has spent many years delivering a variety of ceremonies including Weddings, Baby Naming, Renewal of Marriage Vows, British Citizenship ceremonies and Civil Funerals. She was trained and accredited with Civil Funerals Limited in 2004 and first offered funerals via Wigan Council. For the past nine years she has continued in this role on an independent basis.

Hilary believes the services she presents focus on celebrating, remembering and reflecting the life of your loved one and the tributes she creates are a respectful and highly bespoke memoir. On a personal note, she has found the level of satisfaction gained from being able to provide such services to families at their time of need to be immense and extremely worthwhile.

Because every life is unique, every funeral deserves to reflect this.

23/03/2025

A wonderful uplifting poem for a funeral service:

Poem: Raise a glass (James Mooney)

Do not mourn me.
Don’t drown me in black cloth and quiet whispers.
Laugh loud, drink deep,
Tell the stories that made me live.

Remember the bad jokes,
The nights that stretched into dawn,
The times we swore we’d never forget…
And don’t.

I was here
A life well-lived.
I want something more than tears.

So raise a glass,
And dance a little,
Let the wind take my name…
I’ll be listening.

Do not mourn me.
Celebrate me.

10/03/2025

Just realised that today would have been my mother's 110th birthday. She was born in 1915 and I came along later in life when my parents were in their forties. Although I experienced a wonderful childhood the downside to having older patents is that you may lose them earlier than expected and sadly she passed away when I was a young teenager. I wrote the poem below as an adult trying to make sense of this loss which, although it happened a lifetime ago, never goes away.

Conversation with my mother.

People play a game 'who would you invite for dinner, dead or alive, saint or sinner' impress with guests like Madonna, Marilyn or Mandela
For me there would only be one name on the list,
Marion, my mother.

Memories are childlike for I was always a child with her.
Now we'd meet through adult eyes and I'd learn so much about the woman who changed everything.

Recollections are sweet:
exotic skin, quick to darken in meagre sunlight,
the touch of soft flesh on her arms as we'd link each other,
mother and child sharing secrets, laughing in tandem
her serenity,
her scent,
how safe it was, my home within the centre of her world.

Over dinner I'd ask her why,
why she suffered,
why she didn't tell,
see a doctor, left it too late
and I would lie and sensitively say that I don't really remember her in that way.

Haunted by questions:
If she had lived, who would I be,
If she had lived, whose life would I be living.
A part of me is buried beside her, for children always blame themselves.

Sadly, there's no resemblance
but lately I learned a magical truth that warmed my soul.

My mother loved to write!

Throughout my adult life I've been fine for most of the time
but today I'm frozen,
finally realising how much
I lost.

31/12/2024

Endings & Beginnings

When all is said and done
And the light has finally dimmed
Send my soul to a higher dimension
Pay the ferryman for my sins.

At journey’s end we dream of tranquillity
A hollow chasm of contemplation and rest
A time for forgiveness, truth and redemption
A sense of knowing we were blessed.

And if someone’s God should greet me
As my loved ones gather by my bed
I will be grateful for this lifetime
When all is done, and all is said.

I long to sleep for centuries
Within an aura of wellness and light
To feel I’m floating timelessly
Out of body, out of mind, out of sight.

For if all there is, is nothing
And if all there is, is space
How fortunate, how lucky are we
To be part of the human race.

So, here’s to us, the survivors
The ones who’ve touched the sky
Who’ve endured through all the seasons
Without knowing how or why.

I ‘d like to think that at the end of our days
We’ve only just begun
We will live again, perpetually
When all is said and done.

11/11/2024

Love this poem

If Death is Kind (Sara Teasdale)

Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning,
We will come back to earth some fragrant night,
And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending
Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.

We will come down at night to these resounding beaches
And the long gentle thunder of the sea,
Here for a single hour in the wide starlight
We shall be happy, for the dead are free.

27/04/2024

Words to help during difficult days -

Tenderly may time heal your sorrow
Gently may friends share your pain
Softly may peace ease your heartache
May the warmest of memories remain

May the hope of the morning dawn, the strength of each new day and the peace of every dusk sustain you now and in the future.

06/01/2024

A moving poem chosen by a daughter for a mother suffering from dementia.

Poem: Two Mothers Remembered (Joann Snow Duncanson)

I had two mothers – two mothers I claim,
two different people, yet with the same name.
Two separate women, diverse by design,
but I loved them both because they were mine.

The first was the mother who carried me here,
gave birth and nurtured and launched my career.
She was the one whose features I bear,
complete with the facial expressions I wear.

She gave her love, which follows me yet,
along with examples in life that she set.
As I got older, she somehow younger grew,
and we’d laugh as just mothers and daughters do.

But then came the time that her mind clouded so,
and I sensed that the mother I knew would soon go.
So quickly she changed and turned into the other,
a stranger dressed in the clothes of my mother.

Oh, she looked the same, at least at arms length,
but now she was the child, and I was her strength.
We’d come full circle, we women three,
my mother the first, the second and me.

And if my own children should come to a day,
when a new mother comes and the old goes away,
I’d ask of them nothing that I didn’t do.
Love both of your mothers, as both loved you.

15/12/2023

A favourite poem

So many different lengths of time - Brian Patten

How long does a man live after all?
A thousand days or only one?
One week or a few centuries?
How long does a man spend living or dying
and what do we mean when we say gone forever?

Adrift in such preoccupations, we seek clarification.
We can go to the philosophers
but they will weary of our questions.
We can go to the priests and rabbis
but they might be busy with administrations.

So, how long does a man live after all?
And how much does he live while he lives?
We fret and ask so many questions –
then when it comes to us
the answer is so simple after all.

A man lives for as long as we carry him inside us,
for as long as we carry the harvest of his dreams,
for as long as we ourselves live,
holding memories in common, a man lives.

His lover will carry his man’s scent, his touch:
his children will carry the weight of his love.
One friend will carry his arguments,
another will hum his favourite tunes,
another will still share his terrors.

And the days will pass with baffled faces,
then the weeks, then the months,
then there will be a day when no question is asked,
and the knots of grief will loosen in the stomach
and the puffed faces will calm.
And on that day he will not have ceased
but will have ceased to be separated by death.

How long does a man live after all?
A man lives so many different lengths of time.

22/11/2023

Join us on Friday 15th December for our annual Christmas Carol and Memorial Service to honour our loved ones. It's a special evening of remembrance - bring your friends and family and share in the joy 🎄

Read more here: https://ow.ly/vnY050Q9MlW

12/11/2023

Today, we take a moment to remember and honour those who gave their lives in the service of their countries. Let us honour their memory with a moment of silence and respect.

21/10/2023

A poetry friend shared this poem written by Joseph O'Connor and read at the funeral of his sister, Sinead O'Connor.

Blackbird in Dun Laoghaire was read by Joseph O’Connor at the funeral of his sister Sinéad O’Connor

18/10/2023

Peace begins with a smile