Roll End Credits

When I finished high school, I dived headlong into the world of broadcasting with all its glitz and glamour. Well, actually, I held a microphone on the end of a bamboo pole for 10 hours a day for the production of Playschool! Fortunately, over the years, things got a lot better, and I guess I thought I had ‘made it’ when my name started appearing in the end credits of various productions.

“Roll end credits” had a lot of meaning that people at home never quite appreciate; it’s their cue for going to the loo or putting the jug on.  But for those involved in the production, it was the moment where you could say, “That was great, I’m proud of myself for that one”. If things hadn’t gone so well, it was more a matter of “Thank God that’s over!”. The end credits cause different reactions for viewers; have you ever watched a movie and when the end credits start, your reaction is:

• ‘Is that it?
• ‘I didn’t think it would end so soon’, or
• ‘I didn’t think it would end like that…’

The end credits gave you time to digest the story, perhaps time to recover from the suspense or the emotions evoked, and it gave you time to ready yourself for the next programme.

Over time, long end credit sequences went out of favour with viewers, so they were sped up a bit, and then a lot, so that people wouldn’t be so annoyed, and a few more adverts or programme promotions could be squeezed in. And now, the end credits are often shrunk into a small box on screen and played so fast you can’t read them, and the promotion for the next programme is playing right over the top.

Where am I going with this? Funerals have been going out of favour in recent times, but having a funeral (or at least, a memorial service) is like rolling the end credits on a loved one’s life story, because we have the same reactions when a life comes to an end: “I wish it hadn’t finished yet”; “that didn’t end how I expected”. Having a funeral offers an opportunity to reflect on the life of the person, and provides a pause before you launch back into life.

The end credits were always an opportunity to acknowledge and thank the people who were involved in the production; at a funeral, people are there because they have been involved in the story of their loved one’s life, and it is a good thing for that to be acknowledged.

And of course, the end credits indicate that this really is the end of the movie; in the same way, a funeral ceremony of some kind can help with a sense of closure.

How important are the end credits? For the home viewer, probably not at all. But for the people involved in the production, it can mean a lot. Back in the day, when we first started speeding up the credits, a visiting BBC producer spotted it on one of their programmes, and it caused near enough to an ‘international incident’ !

Yes, times have changed, and it’s the same with funerals, along with quite a few other ‘rituals’. We used to have christenings or baptisms to mark the arrival of a child; not so much now. We would have 21^st celebrations where the young person was presented with a ceremonial ‘key to the door’; but when is it now? 20? 18? 16? At weddings the bride’s father would ‘give away’ the bride; nowadays the bride probably left home 5 to 10 years ago and would be offended to be treated as some ‘possession’ that could be given away. While some ceremonies may well have passed their ‘use-by’ date, the question is, what have we replaced them with? Is there any way to mark these kinds of milestones?

Some people won’t need anything; many people will. How important is it to mark these and other special occasions? I think you’d know the answer to that if you asked a couple who have suffered a miscarriage or a still birth and haven’t been able to have any kind of acknowledgement of the loss of the baby they already loved and were so looking forward to.

Having been involved in counselling and support for so many years, I believe that having some kind of ritual is still important for us, for the expression of emotions, to facilitate an acceptance of what has happened, and to provide a sense of closure. They don’t have to be a lavish production – but that may be what you want, and that’s your choice. It’s often said that funeral directors are just taking advantage of families and loved ones at their most vulnerable by pushing them to have a bigger, brighter funeral package just to make money; I am pleased to say I have not yet met a funeral director like that.

( “Stand by and…3-2-1, Roll End Credits”.)