LIFTING UP A LIFE CELEBRANT MAKES FUNERALS PERSONAL.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

When the time comes, I want Pam Vetter doing my eulogy.

I want her standing up there telling stories about my life, like the time my wife locked me out of the house while I was outside searching for a Peeping Tom, or the night I drove away from the Italian restaurant and left the pizza for the kids sitting on the roof of my car.

You know, silly, stupid stuff - the kind of things only your family and good friends laugh about and make fun of you for. Maybe even love you for.

If Pam wants to throw in a few poignant stories, so be it, but not too many. I want people smiling and laughing when my time comes. I don't want them crying.

And when all the talking is done, I want everybody filing out of the chapel to the sound of Frank Sinatra singing, ``The Best Is Yet To Come.''

There'll be a line of rented limos waiting to take everybody over to one of my favorite watering holes in the Valley where the drinks and food will be on me.

That's the way it's going to be when my time comes. Pam Vetter's promised me.

The West Hills mother of two is a certified funeral celebrant, and if you haven't heard about this movement yet, you will, because it makes too much sense not to work.

If death and taxes are the only two certainties in life, celebrants, like CPAs and funeral directors, are definitely in a growth industry.

Nationally, there are only about 700 certified, trained celebrants - people, like Vetter, who sit down with families prior to a loved one's funeral to mine the real nuggets of their lives so the celebrant can deliver a personal, funny and moving eulogy.

They tell the kinds of stories that made the person who they were, and why they were loved. Not the canned stuff spoken by someone who never knew the person, reading from a prepared script that says it's all for the better and that the love one has passed on to a better place.

Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. Either way, it doesn't get to the heart of celebrating a loved one's life.

That's what got Pam in this line of work a year ago. That, and a Josh Groban song.

Pam's 49-year-old sister, Diane, was dying in Pennsylvania, and she flew across the country to be with her during the final days. After she passed away, the family met to discuss funeral services.

``My sister wanted us to celebrate her life, and had made a videotaped final farewell to her high school students,'' Pam said. ``Her pastor did not embrace the idea of playing it at the funeral, or her wish to have an audiotape of Josh Groban singing `You Raise Me Up.''' At her sister's funeral, Pam sprinkled the eulogy with some funny stories from her sister's life, along with many of the things her sister did to make a difference in the world.

Then, she burst into singing Josh Groban's song for the 250 gathered mourners, who began applauding through their smiles and tears. Even the pastor clapped.

``Over the next year, I volunteered to do eulogies for friends or neighbors who were in need of help,'' she says. ``When someone is crying, saying they don't go to church, and they don't know who they'll get to talk at the funeral service, that's when I stepped in.''

By then she had heard about the celebrant movement in New Zealand and Australia for mainly nonreligious people who wanted funeral services to focus on the life and personality of the deceased.

Pam attended a course at the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science to become a Certified Funeral Celebrant with the In-Sight Institute, which sponsors the training.

``It's so important when people are bereaved that someone listen to them, and celebrants do that,'' says Anita Wallace, grief support coordinator at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, Hollywood Hills, herself a certified celebrant.

``Celebrants meet with the family for hours, and provide an ear for them, which is incredibly important. Because it's a fairly new movement, many families don't know about it.

``But we offer it to the families who don't have a minister, or want something more personal. It goes hand in hand with our idea about celebrating a life,'' she said.

Last week, Pam celebrated the life of Sandra Mayer's mother, Anna Marie Canzone, at Forest Lawn. On average, she spends 13 to 15 hours on a funeral and charges $425.

``Pam called cousins and uncles, and got so many different perspectives on my mother's life,'' Sandra said. ``She had stories about things I had forgotten about, things that made my mother the special person she was.

``At the end of the service, Pam had put together my mother's favorite music. It was like a miniproduction, a beautiful tribute to my mother. It was definitely not your typical, sedate eulogy.''

The figures don't lie, Pam says. More and more people are being cremated with no memorial service.

``Increasingly, people are moving away from traditional services,'' she says, citing figures from the Cremation Association of North America.

``If the services are trivialized, people aren't going to do them. Why spend an extra thousand dollars for something that isn't personal, and doesn't really celebrate a person's life?

``Every life is important and every life should be celebrated. If the person loved opera, like Sandra's mother did, we play opera.

``When I look out there and see people laughing or crying - showing real emotion from the stories I am telling them - I know I've done my job.

``I think my sister would be proud of my work.''

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

INFORMATION

The In-Sight Institute will hold celebrant training sessions Nov. 4-6 at the Pickwick Center in Burbank, 1001 Riverside Drive.

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Photo:

(color) As a celebrant for memorial services, Pam Vetter of West Hills gathers stories from friends and relatives and learns about the deceased to tailor a more personalized eulogy and add special touches to a funeral.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer

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INFORMATION (see text)