TIME TO SAY GOODBYE, BETTER

When it comes to choosing the flowers for a loved one's funeral, we play it safe, but Gill Hodgson says you can now be more personal, creative and eco-friendly

- Gill Hodgson

I wish I could redo Dad's funeral flowers. He died years before flowers recruited me, and I just obediently pointed to one of the standard photos on the funeral director's laminated sheet. It might as well have been a box of washing powder for all the relevance it had to him.

If I were to do it now, he would have barley and potatoes in a pair of wellies, and there would be a copy of the Racing Post tucked into a corner, as well as a cricket ball and a wicket. It would all be held together with baler twine and probably smell faintly of Labrador. It couldn't belong to anyone else.

I've been wondering what started the unhappy shift from individuality to a state where families ask me to tell them what flowers most people have. When did we decide that if stiff lilies and Colombian roses weren't on a coffin, it wasn't good enough?

The fear of not conforming is real. I see true worry in people's eyes. “We don't know what they would have wanted” is a wail I hear often and would rather not again. Even those who had 50 years together seem stricken and frozen with indecision about whether their partner wanted to be cremated or buried, let alone what blooms to choose.