The funeral as a task, not an event

Three days after my old man died I was sitting at his kitchen table in the house I grew up in, with my sister opposite me, with a yellow legal pad between us, and we were trying to decide whether to play Tom Waits or The Pogues at the funeral. Mum was in the bedroom on the phone to the funeral director. There was a casserole on the bench that someone had brought over. Nobody had eaten any of it. The clock above the stove ticked the way it had ticked when I was twelve.

My sister said "we are not going to get this right, are we." And I said "no, we are not. So let us just get it done."

That was the moment I understood the funeral was not the meaningful ritual I would somehow rise to. It was a logistics project. With dignity, but a project. And the trick was to approach it the way you would approach any project at work where the stakes were high and the timeline was short and the team was emotionally compromised. You make the list. You assign the items. You do not aim for perfect. You aim for done.

This piece is for the bloke whose father just died and who is sitting at a kitchen table in Adelaide or Bendigo or the inner west of Sydney, looking at a list, and feeling like he is going to fail at the most important task of his life. You are not. You are just managing a project in a state of grief, and that is allowed.

Why the "meaningful event" framing wrecks you

The reason men our age fall apart at the funeral planning is that we have been told, mostly by films and by our own imaginations, that the funeral is the great moment of meaning. The eulogy will be a definitive statement. The music will be perfect. The room will be full and everybody will leave changed. We will somehow honour the whole long shape of our father's life in the space of an hour.

Not happening. Not for anyone. Not even for the great writers and the great speakers. The funeral, on the day, is a blur. You will not remember most of it. The people in the room will not remember most of it either. What they will remember is whether they were welcomed at the door, whether the food was decent, whether the eulogy felt like it was from a real person, and how the family looked when they walked out.

So the brief gets simpler.

• Get them in the door warmly.
• Feed them adequately afterwards.
• Speak truthfully for ten minutes.
• Walk out together.

That is the whole job. Anything more is gravy.

The body metaphor I keep coming back to is moving a heavy piece of furniture down a narrow hallway. You do not need it to be elegant. You need it not to scratch the walls. You need it to arrive in the next room. You and your sister get on either end and you go slowly and you talk to each other about the corners. That is a funeral.

The decisions, in the order they actually arrive

The funeral director (and you will use one; the do-it-yourself funeral is theoretically legal in most Australian states but practically a bridge too far for a grieving family in week one) will walk you through the decisions in roughly this order. Knowing the order in advance saves about a day of confusion.

• Burial or cremation. Often the dead person has stated a preference; if not, ask Mum. If Mum is uncertain, default to cremation, which is roughly half the cost in most Australian capitals and gives you flexibility on the timing and location of the actual ceremony.
• The service venue. Three real options: a chapel at the crematorium or cemetery (cheapest, neutral, slightly bureaucratic feel), a parish church if the family is religious (warmest, most logistics around the priest's timetable), or a function venue or family home (most flexibility, most work for you).
• The day. You will be offered a choice. Do not pick the soonest day if it forces interstate family to skip. Do pick within ten days. The week-three-onward funeral starts to feel cruel to everyone.
• The casket or urn. Mid-range. Nobody will judge you. The expensive one is for guilt, not for Dad.
• The death notice. One paragraph. Mum's wording. Run it through the local paper if Mum wants and through Facebook if she doesn't.
• The order of service. A piece of folded A4 with photo, dates, song titles, and the reading. The funeral director will format it. You just need to send the photo and the words.

The cost in Australia in 2026 is roughly $7,000 to $14,000 for a standard cremation funeral with a service. Burial adds three to five thousand for the plot and stone. If money is tight, say so to the funeral director on day one. They have packages you do not have to fight for. They will not love you for asking, but they will not punish you. Centrelink also has a Bereavement Payment for low-income families that nobody tells you about; ask.

Music, who speaks, the wake

These are the three decisions that will eat the most kitchen-table time and matter the least, in retrospect. I will give you my hard opinions, take or leave.

• Music. Three pieces. One walking in (gentle; instrumental if possible; nothing with words at the start, because people are not ready for words). One in the middle (a song the dead person actually liked, even if it embarrasses you slightly; the more it sounds like them, the better). One walking out (uplifting but not jaunty; this is the song people will hum on the drive home). Total: three. Not seven. Not five. Three. Resist the playlist instinct.
• Who speaks. Two speakers, max three. One family member (you, if you can; your sister if she is the better speaker; alternate one of the two with a grandchild reading something short). One non-family member who knew him in a different register (a workmate, an old friend, a neighbour). That is it. The temptation to have six speakers is the temptation to share the burden, and what it actually does is dilute the room. Two voices land. Six blurs.
• The wake. At a pub or at the family home. The pub is easier on the family because somebody else is doing the food and the dishes; the family home is warmer because the house holds the man's memory. We did the family home. I would do the pub next time. There is a thing about coming back to the empty house after the wake that is harder than coming back to the empty house after a wake at the pub.

The food at the wake should be sandwiches, sausage rolls, a slab of beer, a cask of wine, tea and coffee, scones if Mum has a friend who bakes. Nothing fancy. The fancy food is for the lucky. The funeral food is the food of the held.

The eulogy: short, specific, one funny story, one true sentence

If you are giving the eulogy, here is the only template that works, near as I have seen.

• Length: ten minutes max. Eight is better. Six is fine. The eulogy that runs to twenty minutes is the eulogy of a man who has not been edited.
• Structure: who he was in one sentence. Where he came from in one paragraph. The relationship the two of you had in one paragraph. One specific funny story (true, not sanitised, with the actual words he used; the laugh in a funeral room is the medicine the room came for). One thing he taught you that you did not realise he taught you until this week. One true sentence at the end.
• The one true sentence is the line you will say at the end and then you will pause and then you will fold the paper and walk down. It should be eight to twelve words. It should be a thing you actually believe. Mine, for my old man, was "He was the kindest man I ever knew, and I am his son." I wrote it the night before. It was the truest thing I could write. People still mention it.
• Read it. Do not memorise it. The room does not want a performance. The room wants a son.
• Practise it three times alone, out loud, the night before. You will cry on the practice runs. That is correct. The crying will be 60% less on the day; the body has rehearsed.

The funny story is the one bit men our age try to skip because we feel it is undignified. It is not. The room needs to laugh at minute four or five or it will not be able to receive what comes after. Tell the story. The one about Dad and the lawn mower and the neighbour's cat. The one about Dad swearing at the sat-nav. Whatever the family story is, that one. It will land and the room will exhale and you will be able to keep going.

What you will remember and what you will not

I cannot remember the celebrant's name. I cannot remember which song we played walking in. I cannot remember what I had for lunch on the day. I cannot remember most of who was there.

I remember my niece holding my hand in the front pew when I sat down after the eulogy. I remember the way Mum stood up at the end and walked to the casket on her own. I remember a bloke I had not seen in twenty years coming up at the wake and saying "your old man taught me how to use a circular saw when I was sixteen and I have thought about him every time I have used one since" and I remember thinking that was a more accurate eulogy than the one I gave. I remember the sausage roll I ate at 4pm because I had not eaten all day and it tasted like the best sausage roll I have ever had.

The DETAILS are not the day. The day is in the moments. You will not be able to choose which moments stick. You can only show up well enough that there are some.

A short final list, the things I would say to myself if I could text back to that kitchen table.

• Do not over-plan the music. Three songs. Move on.
• Write the eulogy on Tuesday night, not Friday morning.
• Wear the suit that fits, not the suit you think looks better.
• Eat the sausage roll. Eat the second one too.
• Hold your mother's hand at the door. That is the photograph nobody will take and you will remember it for the rest of your life.

Slow down. Map first. Move later.