# 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](https://www.nfda.org/Portals/0/News%20Images/COVID-Stansbury.pdf?ver=2020-03-25-114238-990): 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?” --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://tools.virtualmemorialguide.org/memorial-elements/closing/letting-go.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.