Review of the wonderful service of Simple Cremations Hull. I would like to award 5 stars and more to Leanne and her husband, for being the brightest stars at a very dark time for myself and my family.

My father died suddenly of unexpected heart failure, in tragic circumstances at sea. He was a very active man of 74, so we were thrown into shock and confusion. My father had always been clear that he wanted a party when he died, and not a funeral. I felt that I would be unable to look at my father’s coffin. The typical lugubrious and pompous funeral arrangements would be macabre and make us feel we were on set in a horror movie. There are various views on faith within the family, but my father was a humanist, and wanted to avoid any fuss at his death.

We shipped up in deep grief on Leanne’s doorstep and were brought into an ordinary sunny sitting room, with boxes of children’s toys and beautiful photographs of her sons.

Leanne turned out to be a very calm, empathetic, serene and beautiful soul. She made us a cup of tea, and we felt so soothed and healed. Because she had worked with the dead and the bereaved for so long, in addition to her own experience of bereavement, she was able to answer all our questions about how to cope and what to expect emotionally.

She calmly explained that she and her husband would arrange everything. They would collect my dad’s body from the hospital, settle mortuary fees, talk to him and treat him with respect. Leanne told us that she and her husband would accompany Dad quietly through the chapel and into the crematorium and collect the ashes a day or so later if we wished to retain them for our own ceremony.

Furthermore, she looked after the ashes in her home until we felt able to face them, a period of several weeks. Leanne and her husband then brought the ashes all the way to my Mother’s house on the east Lincolnshire coast.

We primarily chose direct cremation because we felt it gave Dad the private dignity with which he wanted his death to be treated. Furthermore, the £2000 that we saved on conventional crematorium services was put, last night, into the most wonderful party for about 90 of his friends, with delicious food and drink all provided. Many friends and family were musicians, so we had lots of jigs and reels and everyone sang sea shanties. We had huge boards of photographs celebrating all the wonderful things dad had done in his life, and we took turns to read out or tell our own stories and memories of him.

The services of Simple Cremations thus enabled us to be able to afford the most personal and meaningful memorial for my Dad, and also to feel joyful because we had been able to treat his mortal remains in a way he would very much have wished for. Thank you Simple Cremations, from the bottom of my heart. Nicky Lodge (Daughter of Bill Hather)