I went to a garden party on Sunday, and it was glorious. The sun was out, the ladies were in their floatiest dresses, the canapes were delicious, the Prosecco was flowing, and it was everything you’d expect from a garden party apart from one thing; the guest of honour knew it was the last party she’d ever go to.

Faye Yerbury is going to die. Not tomorrow, maybe not next week but definitely sometime soon. She has been living with one lung since the age of 12, and after being diagnosed some months ago with ovarian cancer, she knows her time is limited, which is why she’s taken steps to ensure that the end of her life is as painless as possible for everyone around her.

One of her first decisions was to donate her body to medical science, and as her wish has been granted by the School of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, a conventional funeral was out of the question.

Living funerals are not completely unknown in this country but they are very rare. I’ve never done one, and I’ve conducted literally hundreds of funerals since I became a humanist celebrant in 2005. To put that in a wider context, in that time, I’ve met fewer than a dozen people who felt able to tell me about their lives before they died, and Faye is one of them.

It takes courage to accept our own mortality. The Stoics were among the first people to get the paradox that the way to live a full and rewarding life is to embrace the fact that we are going to die, and the Roman philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius had lots of advice about how to do that. “Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favour; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills,” he wrote - or as the scriptwriter for “Gladiator” rephrased it, “Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.”

Faye Yerbury's living funeral (Image: Tim Maguire)

Most of us aren’t Stoics, and we find death scary because we don’t see it as part of our lives. 50 years ago, when your granny died, her body would have been laid out in its coffin in the front room where everyone would have come to pay their respects, and while that tradition continues in Ireland and the rest of Europe, here in the UK, death has become so medicalised and professionalised that it’s been removed from life, and because of that, death has become much more alien and frightening than it should be, which makes Faye’s decision to celebrate her life before it ends all the more courageous.

Because I’d never conducted a living funeral, Faye, her husband Trevor and I made it up as we went along. We agreed it should be a party first and a funeral second, and in the event, it had the best elements of both. Trevor spoke first, introducing their friend and colleague Kevin, who presented Faye with a Lifetime Achievement award from Master Photographers International; I talked about Faye’s life and career, and then four of her best friends paid their own tributes.

Wrapped in a shawl, Faye sat in the place of honour, beaming all over her face. She is frail now. Always petite, now she is tiny, and able to move only with the aid of a walker. Her voice, always gentle is barely more than a whisper, but her brain is as sharp as ever and she has lost none of her wit or her character.

An award-winning hairdresser when she met Trevor later in life, Faye changed careers and became a photographer, specialising in boudoir and classic nudes. Her models are noir goddesses, framed by classical architecture or poised and posed in a dark wood, where their alabaster bodies gleam like sculpture.

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Listening to her friends talk about who she was, and how she inspired them, it struck me how strange it is that we wait until someone has died before we say how much we love them.

There were around 70 guests on Sunday, some of whom had flown across the world to be with Faye for one last time, and those who didn’t speak brought letters for her to read later. Something else that made her ceremony very different from a conventional funeral was that social media has allowed me to read people’s reactions to it. Trevor’s Facebook page has been inundated with likes and comments from hundreds of people, and while their comments varied, the common theme was that her ceremony was not just fitting but moving, touching and inspiring.

That’s what Faye thought too. As she wrote, “It was a wonderful day, listening to kind words from friends and family. I also loved reading all the social media messages not realising how many people I had encouraged and influenced. It was very humbling. I hope that my decision will set a trend for others to feel that there is an alternative to a traditional funeral so they can celebrate their lives with family and friends before their life finally ends.” 

Tim Maguire is a celebrant with Celebrate People and the Honorary Humanist Chaplain to the University of Edinburgh and Napier University. Here he writes about conducting a living funeral