‘Would you host a ‘living funeral?’ Woman who arranged party for her sister BEFORE her death says it was ‘magical’ but ‘pain filled’

• Jenna Satterthwaite discussed her sister Heidi’s living funeral on Women’s Hour
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Heidi Satterthwaite died last year, at the age of 34, after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer known as MDS in 2018.

Before her death, she made an uncommon choice. Heidi wanted to celebrate her life with her friends and family, and so she became one of a growing number of people to organise a living funeral.

With a military husband, Heidi lived in many places from Alaska to Hawaii, and thanks to her warmth and unusual ability to encourage people to open up to her, created a ‘beautiful community of friends’.

That’s according to her older sister Jenna Satterthwaite, who appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour yesterday, to talk about their experience of holding the event – and of celebrating Heidi’s life while she was there to celebrate with them. 

Jenna described the living funeral, which featured poignant moments like Heidi and her husband closing the event by dancing to their wedding song, as a ‘magical and pain filled celebration of her life’. 

Heidi Satterthwaite (pictured at her living funeral) died last year, at the age of 34, after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer several years earlier

Jenna compared the event to a wedding, describing how they incorporated many of the same elements like speeches, toasts, dancing, and an ‘explosive playlist’ that left them ‘sweat[ing] so hard on the dance floor’.

She also described one moment where they realised they had planned a huge event, including renting a hall and hiring catering, but they had no idea whether people would show up, at one point thinking they could end up hosting 10 guests. However, this was not the case.   

‘To our utter surprise and delight, 200 people showed up at the last minute, in the middle of the Summer, revealed Jenna.

‘People cancelled vacations, hopped on planes, rented cars, they made it happen, and they showed up for her to say their goodbyes.’

Asked about how the event compared to a traditional funeral, in terms of providing closure for attendees, Jenna said: ‘I would describe it as an exclamation point at the end of a sentence. The sentence of her life.’

Describing it further, Jenna said: ‘I guess you could call it closure. It was that moment when you pause to acknowledge a beautiful life. And we don’t do that often. 

‘We’re bad at celebrating. We’re always looking to the next thing and shifting goalposts. So it was really special to come together and kind of close that sentence as a group this and say this was her life. She lived at well. Exclamation point.’ 

She also discussed how while there was a lot of sadness and tears, there was ‘a bit of a surge of energy when we realised “now it’s time to die”…and there a bit of adrenaline to that, and so channeling that energy into a party really fit well with the process…and [Heidi] wanted to do it for herself, but also for the rest of us.’

Jenna Satterthwaite (pictured on Women’s Hour) spoke about her sister’s living funeral with incredible eloquence and poignancy

According to Jenna, while she was ill, Heidi had researched how best to organise the process of grief when it came to herself and her family. 

They had the living funeral, then also had an ‘at home funeral’ following Heidi’s death, after which they kept her body at home for three days.

This was less traumatic than ‘having strangers come in and wheel her out in a body bag’, said Jenna, who said her sister ‘belonged to us’. 

Jenna also read a poem she had written about the experience and posted on X (formerly Twitter), which opened with the lines: ‘If you have the curse of advance notice, throw a party. Don’t have a funeral – it’s not as fun.’

Another living funeral was held by Kris Hallenga, the founder of the CoppaFeel breast cancer awareness charity, who has stage 4 breast cancer and who held a living funeral for herself. 

Women’s Hour host Nuala McGovern (pictured) said she had been deeply moved by a poem Jenna’s wrote about her sister’s death

She organised the event in collaboration with Legacy of Lives, which helps people organise the right type of funeral for them.

CEO Rebecca Peach spoke on the show about living funerals, saying ‘we’re all about pushing the funeral of the person giving that person a voice giving that person legacy how they would like it’.

She also pointed out how few people make plans for the type of funerals they would want after their death.

According to Rebecca, whether people want to throw a living funeral or have a more traditional after death event, Legacy of Lives wants to provide free support when it comes to people deciding what kind of funeral they want.

She added that she is speaking out about it largely because death is such a taboo subject, and it is so hard to know what to do to support people when it comes to death – their own or a family’s members – and she wanted to offer help to people. 

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