So what have you done about it?

Just over two years ago, in January, I was visiting my mother’s brother — my famous Uncle Laurie. And I can call him famous because he’s made the Newcastle Herald twice!

Over the years Laurie and I have had some wonderful, sometimes quite philosophical conversations about life. Somewhere in amongst one of those conversations, I happened to mention that I’d been thinking I might like to become a Funeral Celebrant.

Laurie looked at me and said, quite simply:

“So, what have you done about it?”

Well… nothing.

At that point it really was just a thought.

Laurie then told me about neighbours of his, one of whom had been a funeral celebrant and had offered to conduct his service when the time came. Circumstances had changed, though, and she was no longer around.

So Laurie told me that if I actually did something about this idea of mine, the job was mine.

I told him that meant I’d have to come back and have some proper conversations with him about his life. I knew a lot of his story, of course, but I certainly didn’t know all of it.

In true Uncle Laurie fashion, he later wrote it himself.

And what a story. There are some cracking pieces in there — parts of a life that ran parallel with my mother’s, yet in many ways was lived in a completely different dimension.

I went home from that January visit with Laurie’s question still sitting in my head.

What was I going to do about it?

The following month I attended a Storytelling Summit with the Funeral Fix. That was the impetus I needed. I signed up for funeral celebrant training and began turning the thought into something real. I I even attended one of their in-person events later that June.

It wasn’t exactly a straight road from there. Life happened. We sold our house. We moved. I registered my business but didn’t really get it off the ground. Eventually, in typical Margie fashion, I did things slightly back to front and walked into Kell Funerals in St Arnaud, introduced myself as a Funeral Celebrant who hadn’t actually conducted a service yet, told them I had plenty of life experience and was also studying funeral directing, and asked if they’d consider giving me some work experience.

That conversation led to another, and another.

Work experience became holiday relief. I began conducting services. And then came the responsibility of helping organise and put together the funeral of a young girl killed in our district.

Somewhere along the way, the thing I’d been thinking about doing became something I was doing.

And now, just over two years after Uncle Laurie asked me that very simple question, I’ve found myself coming full circle.

I’ve realised that perhaps the storytelling doesn’t always have to begin after someone has died.

Perhaps there’s also a place for sitting down — in person, over the phone or by video — and helping someone tell their story while they’re still very much here to tell it.

They might arrive with a lifetime of memories.

They might have no idea where to begin.

Or they might arrive with a bag full of notes.

That’s okay.

I rather like finding the thread.

So, Uncle Laurie, I suppose the answer to your question is:

Quite a bit, actually.

And now we’ll see where the next adventure takes me.