Letting go ceremony

Purpose

By inviting others to participate during the service, you allow mourners to transform pain and sadness into something beautiful, loving, and cathartic.

Mourning is the outward expression of our inward grief. To move others toward healing, invite them to act. Provide a symbolic way to let love and grief through and out.

Consider asking attendees to do something offline and at the same time. If you used a collective act in the beginning of the service, this may be a good time to complete that act. For example, if you opened the service with a collective candle lighting, this is the time to collectively blow out the candle.

If you are religious, this might be the place to have a religious officiant share a closing ritual.

Ideas

• Everybody does the same action together, e.g. lighting a candle, pouring water out. Irreversible actions have a strong symbolism here

  • Some examples: Candles (pg 15), Water (pg 16), Words (pg 17)

• Send everyone seeds of a plant, have them plant it at this point

• Screen capture of everyone holding a word, or an object or keepsake that reminds them of the deceased

• Everyone finds a space in their house that will represent that person

• Everybody writes down a message to the departed, and reads it out. Give them a prompt like “What would you like [name of departed] to know?”