Funeral for a Course

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Woman dressed as a Victorian Funeral Director gives committal

Once upon a time, in what feels like another lifetime, but was actually less than a year ago, I was an academic, a lecturer in Social Policy, dwelling in an ivory tower with some heroes, a fair few villains, and a lot of wonderful students. Then a dragon, or rather a series of dragons, came and burnt it all down, and, from those ashes, I rose as The Death Coach, and started a whole new life, and here we are.

Before I got to this point though, there were battles to fight and wars to wage, and from one of those came this wonderful night, the Funeral of BSc Social Policy, where I and my students celebrated what we had achieved, cried for what we'd lost, and danced together for the future.

A decision was made to close the programme I worked on, BSc Social Policy. It was a huge shock to staff and students, and caused a great deal of distress. A group of us, staff and students, started creating a magazine to commemorate the programme, and were busy interviewing our success stories and collating as many celebratory stories as we could for it, and we decided that we should hold a big event to launch the publication. Then, the students decided it should have a funeral theme, and booked me to officiate.

While the course wasn't a person (obviously), it meant an awful lot to us all, and many of us, staff and students, had realised that we were experiencing a loss, and felt genuinely bereaved. Most of us weren't strangers to grief, so we recognised what was happening and concluded that we needed a ceremony to mark it, and that a deliberate act of collective mourning was exactly what was required.

One of the things a funeral can do is to give focus during those first days of total shock after a death, and that's exactly what this event did for us. Having something to plan and arrange gave us somewhere to put our feelings and helped us feel that we were creating something positive from the horrible thing we were going through, finding that light in the darkness.

There were moments when I wondered what the hell I was doing--painting a full size, cardboard coffin in my kitchen was one of those moments, but I always came back to the sense that the students needed this. They needed acknowledgment that there had been a loss, while staff tried to manage upset students as well as our own emotional reaction to the closure of something we had thrown our heart and souls into for years, making a difference to so many lives over the years, and dedicating ourselves to this course which we truly believed mattered.

The week leading up to the event was a nightmare. The magazine wasn't ready, the Flash Mob refused point blank to even attempt a human pyramid, and then the colleague I was working with on it dropped out unexpectedly, which caused all kinds of unanticipated issues.

On the day, the magazines didn't arrive from the printers, all the other speakers pulled out, and I sat on my own at home wondering what the hell I was doing and why. And then I dried my eyes, put my big girl Victorian Funeral Director Costume on, and went to do something I believed would help my students, past and present.

And it was magnificent! What a night! We laughed, we cried, we ate jollof rice, drank special cocktails created for the night, caught up with ex students from long ago and more recently, missed those who couldn't be there, and hugged those who could. The ceremony was surreal but it did the job. It gave everyone a moment to really sit with the enormity of their loss, with others doing the same, and then we rounded it off with a flash mob dance to the Final Countdown, wearing gold top hats, and if that isn't going to lift the mood, then what is?

So many people needed that space, and it gave them what they needed that night, and I am so proud of us all for making it happen, against the odds.

The whole experience solidified my sense that ceremony is important. Marking things matters. Letting them slip by unacknowledged doesn't make things easier. Denying the pain doesn't help in the long term, but owning that pain, standing shoulder to shoulder with others going through the same pain, holding it up to the light together: that makes a difference. Nothing can make the pain of loss go away. What happened still hurts, but I also smile when I remember that night. The programme wasn't a person, but we didn't let it die with a whimper, and that made a difference. Je ne regrette rien.