I offer a heartfelt, Nondenominational Funeral,
and can even play "Amazing Grace" or other special music on the guitar.

I'll travel to your funeral home for the service, and then to the cemetery for the graveside burial.

Areas covered:
North/Central NJ, NY (Rockland County, Westchester, & NYC).

"I Am Not There" (Mary Elizabeth Frye)

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sunlit-ripened grain,
I am the gentle Autumn's rain.
When you awake in the morning hush
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight,
I am the stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I did not die.


"All Life Is Life After Death" (Philip Kaplan)

What can we say about the possibility of life in some form continuing after death?
One can only wonder how it could be doubted!
Birth, growth, decay, disintegration, rebecoming -
Isn't this the cycle of natural events?
Anyone who doubts it
Denies the evidence of his/her own senses and intellect,
His/her deepest intuitions.
Have you ever asked yourself, 
'What happens to the life force,
The energy behind the activities constituting "ME"
After disintegration of my body?'
The law of the conservation of energy states that
Energy is never lost, only transformed,
So how is it possible for this life force permanently to disappear?
The Bottom Line Is:
There isn't anyone HERE who hasn't come back from the dead -
Thousands of times.
All life is life after death.


From "Song of Myself" (Walt Whitman)

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and
    children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
    at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
    luckier.

  
"The Gifts of Death" (Connie Barlow)

Without the death of stars, there would be no planets and no life.
Without the death of creatures, there would be no evolution.

Without the death of elders, there would be no room for children.
Without the death of fetal cells, we would all be spheres.

Without the death of neurons, wisdom and creativity would not blossom.
Without the death of cells in woody plants, there would be no trees.

Without the death of forests by Ice Age advance, there would be no northern lakes.
Without the death of mountains, there would be no sand or soil.

Without the death of plants and animals, there would be no food.
Without the death of old ways of thinking, there would be no room for the new.

Without death, there would be no ancestors.
Without death, time would not be precious.

ALL: What, then, are the gifts of death?

The gifts of death are Mars and Mercury, Saturn and Earth.
The gifts of death are the atoms of stardust within our bodies.

The gifts of death are the splendors of shape and form and color.
The gifts of death are diversity, the immense journey of life.

The gifts of death are woodlands and soils, ponds and lakes.
The gifts of death are food: the sustenance of life.

The gifts of death are seeing, hearing, feeling — deeply feeling.
The gifts of death are wisdom, creativity, and the flow of cultural change.

The gifts of death are the urgency to act, the desire to fully be and become.
The gifts of death are joy and sorrow, laughter and tears.

ALL: The gifts of death are lives that are fully and exuberantly lived, and then graciously and gratefully given up, for now and forevermore. Amen.