Ramnani: Hi, I am Dr Sapna Ramnani, and you're listening to share it with me and the journalist living with a speech impairment, and that means my voice is a little more difficult to understand. But I didn't want that to stop me from asking the questions that matter. In this podcast, I use an AI voice to help me bring those questions to life. The voice is synthetic with the thoughts, the emotions and the intent behind every question and comment are completely my old you'll hear that AI voice throughout the interview, but know that I'm here guiding every moment of the conversation, I guess today, is Phil Wilder, a humanist celebrant who has spent over eight years leading weddings, funerals and naming ceremonies. His work has brought him face to face with some of the most profound moments of human life, joy, lust, love and grief. Phil has a rare ability to make ceremonies equally personal, but also to ask the bigger questions that so many of us quietly carry. One of those is death and why it frightens us. In this conversation, he talks openly about why we fear death, what it means for how we live, and how humanism can help us find meaning without the need for promises of an afterlife. It's a thoughtful, moving and deeply human conversation. Please welcome. Phil Walder, hi, Phil. How are you?

Walder: I'm okay. Thanks. How are you?

Ramnani: Yeah, I'm good. Thank you for doing this interview today. I know you are a humanist Celebrant for a few years. So can you explain what you do?

Walder: I've been a humanist celebrant now for over eight years, eight and a half years, I think doing funerals, weddings and namings, inevitably you do a lot more funerals than you do weddings or namings, because there are a lot more funerals. Everybody has one. And the history of them is that they've been going since the well, officially, since the 19th century, when the British Ethical Society was set up and lots of people wanted to have non religious ceremonies because they were non religious people, but they wanted to still have a ceremony. And in fact, British Ethical Society used to do weddings, but then it was pointed out that they weren't legal. The law on weddings in in this country is a complete and utter shamble. They tried to sort it out under the Cameron government, and messed it up because they would wanted to legalize same sex marriages, but they got some opposition, so they then invented the civil partnership, but then which was designed for same sex couples, it was then pointed out that that was prejudicial, because you can't have something that's just for same sex couples. It's got to be available to people from different genders. And so we now have two different types of marriages. We have civil partnerships, our marriages, and we have for the last 22 years, I think now humanist marriages have been legal in Scotland, and in fact, I performed a legal one in Scotland, but they're not legal in England and Wales. And many people don't realize that there are very few types of marriage that are actually legal in England and Wales. You can have a registrar's marriages are pretty perfunctory, and they can include no statements of a belief system, you know, any web, any religion, or anything like that. And I have to say that the standard of the people performing them is incredibly variable. You'll get some good registrars, but you will get some absolutely awful ones. I have witnessed one who, to be honest, she might as well have been reading at the special offers at stainsbury. She was reading out the school registration because it was so boring. It got to the point where the guests were just laughing every time she spoke. And then last year, at my nephew's wedding, the registrar couldn't pronounce his name, which admittedly, you know, my sister's married to an Italian so my nephew's surname is piccariello, which is not easy to say, but as a registrar or anyone performing a ceremony, you've got one job above all else, and that is to get the name right. If you can't do that, you shouldn't be doing the job. And so you get really, really poor registrars. And it's, it's a fairly perfunctory ceremony, as I say, and it's not personalized at all. You know, we when you come to doing humanist ceremonies and and the beauty of them is that every time you do it. And it is different because it is written specifically for the couple that are getting married the child or children that are getting named, or the person who's died. And what else would you want but a personalized ceremony? I remember very early on, when I was doing a funeral, someone came up to me and said, Oh, that was so lovely. It was all about so and so. And I thought, Well, who else would you want it to be about? But the thing is, if you go to a standard religious ceremony, 95% of it is hogwash about something that many of the people in the room don't believe I remember going to an in laws funeral ceremony at Mortlake, and I timed how long it took. It took 18 minutes before they mentioned him specifically, 18 minutes. And the ceremonies at Mortlake are only 30 minutes long. So you've gone nearly two thirds of the way through the ceremony before you've even mentioned the person that you're there for. Yeah, I just find that ridiculous. Now I'm not really answering your question. I'm telling you what being a human celebrant is all about. But um, why I did it? Well, I've been a member of humanist UK for a long, long time, and I wanted to do something that was more proactive. You know, we do lots of protests, and we have meetings with each other, but meetings with each other, whilst very nice socially, isn't spreading the word of humanism, you know, because we're just talking to each other, singing to the choir, if you like. So I wanted to do something that demonstrated. To people more practically and positively, the benefits and the and the the ideals of being a humanist. You know, the simple idea that you can be good and you can be ethical without needing a god or a special book or a man in a pointed hat to tell you what to do. You can work it out for yourself, and you can add meaning to life. And to Sarah about what it's like to be a human, you don't have to bring in spiritual nonsense. And so that's why I did it. And as I've said, and I know you've heard me say before, it is the least rewarding thing I've ever done in my life, financially, but the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life personally. And I have met remarkable people, beautiful people, lovely people. Some not so lovely, but mostly lovely people. I've heard fantastic stories of all sorts of people from all around the world with incredible backgrounds and life stories. I've shed a lot of tears doing ceremonies for people who are victims of suicide, for young people who've died suddenly, for babies, I mean, it is, it's a real challenge. It's hard. It's hard doing that. Very, very hard, probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. But I I do it, and I keep doing it, even though I could probably spend my time on more lucrative things, because, and this is going to sound very, very conceited, but I know I'm very good at it, and I know that people take a lot of comfort from me doing it, and and They feel relaxed and cared for. I did a wedding on Saturday, and the guy from the organizing company was there talking to the bride and groom and said, Doesn't Phil make you feel relaxed and like he's in control, and there isn't anything that I do to do that. I think it's just because I'm quite a big bloke, I've got a deep voice, I'm old, and I give people a sense of being at ease. They feel that I can cope. They don't have to worry anymore. And I like that. I like that people feel like that when I'm doing it, because I want them to feel relaxed. You know, the woman whose wedding it was on Saturday, she's a very, very well known actress, and, you know, so she is used to being in the public eye, but she it was her very special day, and she was incredibly nervous, and I just wanted her. I said to her, Look, I'm in control. Don't worry about anything. It's going to be, it's going to be a beautiful day, and I want you to focus on enjoying yourself and enjoying it, taking it all in. Leave it to me to worry about the ceremony. And I think if I've got any skill, that's my skill is being able to put people at ease. And I love doing it. I love doing it, and doing it without having to use any of the wooju of of the religious spiritual practitioners. Is why I think we ultimately are better than they are, because ours is all coming from the heart, coming from us as individuals. Anyway. That was a very, very, very, very long

Ramnani: I definitely agree, because I have seen you at work.

Walder: I mean, you know me, Sapna, and you know that I am not really that person. When you're performing the role of a celebrant, to an extent, you're acting. I'm not saying that I'm not genuine. Everything I say is genuine, everything I do is is genuine. But you are performing a role, and people project onto you what they want to see and what they want to hear and what they want to feel they I mean, I've often said that it doesn't matter really what I say, it's the way that I say it. And people get this kind of feeling of comfort. I've listened to a lot of celebrants, you know, because obviously I arrive at crematoriums when other people are still working, and I listen to them and I think, Oh, my Goodness me. How on earth are they doing this job with a voice like that? I mean, some people have got a voice that would could save the NHS millions of pounds a year, if they just used it as a as an alternative to Mogadon or of other drugs to put people to sleep, because you get the most boring people doing doing this job, or people who have squeaky, horrible voices, and you think or don't, don't understand how to use inflection. Don't understand how to use emphasis. You know, I mean, quite, quite a few of my colleagues are actors or ex actors, because they know how to speak properly. And it's really important.

Ramnani: I could never do that job.

Walder: I don't know about that. I mean, you, you said you'd never be able to do stand up comedy, and you're doing it. So never say never, Sapna.

Ramnani: So why do you think that people fear death?

Walder: It's a really good question, and one that all human beings have thought about and tried to answer for themselves for as long as human beings have been around and great philosophers have tried to answer it, I think people fear it because they fear the end of everything that they have experienced and enjoyed, and life is about trying to enjoy yourself. And I mean, it isn't all a bed of roses, as we both know, but it is. It's an enjoyable and interesting experience, and people fear the loss of that, but I've always imagined it to be exactly as Mark Twain put it, you know, when asked about fear of death, he said that he didn't see any point in being afraid of it, because he wasn't alive for a long time before he was born, and that didn't seem to inconvenience him at all. And that's, you know, that's obviously exactly what will happen. I I didn't exist, then I did, and then I'll stop existing. And this tiny little bit of life in between is the thing that you have a responsibility to make the most of. And, you know, Epicurus said, I'm paraphrasing, obviously, that whilst I am alive, death does not exist for me, and when death exists for me, I won't be alive. So you don't experience death because you're dead. But I think when you know the great poet, Philip Larkin, in his poem, O Bard, which is about the impending inevitable death, and thinking about it, he, he wrote that, that incredible poem, and I, I look at it quite often, you know, if I've just brought it up on my phone to read a little bit of it for you, because he's lying there in his room in the dark. And then the light starts to come in to the curtains, and it says, slowly, light strengthens and the room takes shape. It stands playing as a wardrobe. What we know, have always known, know that we can't escape, yet can't accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile, telephones crouch, getting ready to ring in locked offices and all the uncaring, intricate, rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay with no sun and. Work has to be done. Postman, like doctors, go from house to house, and I think the point of of his poem is that we know it's inevitable. We know it's coming. We don't like to think about it, and the way we avoid thinking about it is to get on with everything else that we've got to do, our work and our lives, and we just don't think about it. But I don't really think that that's a healthy state to be in. I think that the advent of lots of other initiatives like that, where people are beginning to talk about death, not because it's going to happen soon, but because it's a healthy thing to talk about. You know, death is an inevitable part of life, of all life, whether you live five years, 50 years, or you're a sequoia tree and you live for 500 or 5000 years, it doesn't matter. It's coming. It's built into, into your organic process. You can't help it. So I've, I've used the analogy of of a holiday really. As you get older, obviously, you tend to think, well, I've got less time left. But if you worry about that, that's a bit like spoiling the last day of your holiday by worrying about the fact that you've got to go home you're still on holiday. Enjoy the holiday. And I think about life that way. There's no point in worrying about death while I'm still alive.

Ramnani: Why do you think most people worry?

Walder: Well, as I say, I think it's because they see an end to everything that they've enjoyed doing, the loss of all the people that they have loved, and possibly a little bit of fear of the unknown. But I don't have any fear of the unknown, because there isn't anything. There is not going to be anything. The universe has been around for around 14 billion years, or something like that. This Earth has been around for 4.6 billion years. We are a tiny scratch in the dirt of endless time, and the sand will blow us over as surely as every other organism that's been on the earth before us. It's 65 million years since the dinosaurs died out, and they were around for a lot longer than we've been around. And each of us individually will go just in the way that we as a species will go, you know, the idea that we are the end of evolution on this planet is is a joke. You know, of course, we're not. We're just the ultimate step at the moment. But the only difference is, we may be the first organism to actually create our own successes, our own evolutionary superiors, if we create some sort of cyber being or enhanced human being that evolves us, who knows it's not going to happen in my lifetime or your lifetime, that I think people who worry about Death, and let's face it, we all do are just wasting their time. There is nothing you can do about nothing you can say, nothing you can do is ever going to change the fact that you're going to die. So why even spend any time worrying about it? Because that is doing the opposite of what you should be doing, because you have a limited amount of time. Of that time, and thinking about something that you cannot change is a pointless waste of that limited time. Just don't do it.

Ramnani: What is your definition of a good death?

Walder: Well, a good death would be one that you don't have any pain, that comes after a life well lived for a long time and with no pain. That's it. You know, live as long as you can, but life span is not the most important thing. Health span is really important too. So keep yourself as fit as possible for as long as possible, and try and die without any pain, that would be my advice. But of course, we don't. We don't have any choice in that necessarily. I've got a reading that I think is a very beautiful exposition of the inevitability of death by Sir Herbert read and he said, The Death of each of us is in the order of things, it follows life as surely as night follows day. We can take the tree of life as a symbol the human race is the trunk and branches of this tree. And individual men and women are the leaves which appear one season, flourish for a summer and then die, I too am like a leaf of this tree, and one day I will be torn off by a storm or simply decay and fall and become part of the earth about its roots. But while I live, I am conscious of the trees flowing Sapna. Up and steadfast strength deep down in my consciousness is the consciousness of life of which I am a part and to which I make a minute but unique contribution. When I die and fall, the tree remains nourished to some small degree by my manifestation of life, millions of leaves have preceded me, and millions will follow me, but the tree itself grows and endures really nice. It is. I wish I didn't know myself, but it is, and I as an exposition of my position on life, I can think of no better word.

Ramnani: How do you cope with your emotions after a difficult funeral?

Walder: I used to really struggle. When I first started, I would come home and Lucy, my partner at the time, used to say, you need to stop doing this. It's upsetting you too much, and it did upset me. It really, really did. But then I found a way to cope with the mechanism of allowing myself a certain amount of emotion, but not too much. I was told by one of my trainers on the original course to be a funeral celebrant, not to steal other people's grief, which I thought was a very good line, and I try and tell myself that, but in order to be a really good celebrant, I think you have to be genuine, genuine and credible, and that means you have to empathize and sympathize with your client, and you have to be there with them, but you Can't go all the way, because if you did, you'd be a gibbering wreck. And I describe it as like surfing a wave of emotion, and you surf on the edge of that way, not going too far, because if you do, you'll fall in, but just keeping yourself on the edge of that so that. And sometimes, you know people can hear it in your voice, and you know I have broken down at ceremonies, particularly baby ceremony I did one couple of years ago at Norwood West Norwood crematorium, little baby of just over a year old. And whenever they bring those tiny little coffins in it's it's really hard to bear, and it was there. And of course, baby ceremonies are usually just the immediate family. We were about halfway through it, and we had a period of reflection to think about her and about what she meant to the family and paternal grandmother that just came forward and knelt in front of the coffin and put her hand on it, and just started to sob uncontrollably. And her son didn't quite know what to do, and eventually he came and knelt next to him, put his arms around her, and everybody was crying. And I mean, even now it's it's making me feel emotional. And I managed to get to the end of the ceremony, but I just had to go straight out. And the chapel attendant down there is a huge bear of a man called Sam. I would there were tears rolling down my face, and Sam just put his arm around me and gave me a big bear hug, and that's what happens, is the professionals, because, you know, they're doing lots of funerals every day, but the professionals recognize the difficult ones as well, difficult for the funeral staff, the funeral directors, the chapel attendants, and we just all support each other, because if you don't feel emotion when you're doing a child's funeral, then you probably shouldn't be doing the job, but you just have to find a way of coping with that emotion. Yes, it's not easy, but one thing it teaches me at Sapna is, even if I didn't before, is to value every minute of your life, every interaction with and tell my then wife, I loved her, first thing I would say is I walked in the door because you know that you will be a day when you won't be able to say that, when you won't be able to do that. I know I've told you this story before, and it's one of the most incredible and moving stories I picked from a funeral ceremony. I did a ceremony for a guy in Battersea, just down the road from where I am now, and he was in his 70s, a lovely granddad, lovely husband, lovely father. In his 50s, he had had a heart attack and almost killed him and his wife. As he had the heart attack while he was driving up the A two and his wife managed to steer the car to the hard shoulder, and they got an ambulance and saved him. And he spoke to the consultants and said, What can I do? And the consultant said, Eat less, stop smoking, drink less, do exercise. And he did all of those things. Took. Playing golf with his grandson, and, you know, got himself fit. Then a few years later, in his early 70s, he got cancer, and he went to see the consultant, and he said to the consultant, what can I do? And I've always thought this was amazing, the consultant said to him, never miss an opportunity to tell your family you love and his family told me this story, and they said that every time he left the house, or if one of them left the house, or at the end of every phone call, he said, I love you, which, for a man of his generation, you know, he was born in the 1930s so he went through the war years in the Blitz, years in London. He's a working class bloke from South London. Wasn't the kind of thing he was brought up to do, but he did. And so I'm standing in the chapel, and I said, and because of that, I know that Jim, the last words he said to everybody in this chapel is, I love you. And that is a beautiful thing to be able to say. I've done a lot of funerals, you know, many, many hundreds of them. It's my favorite story, because that's all you can hope for as a human being, is to remember for the fact that the last thing you said to everybody who knew you is, I love you.

Ramnani: This is one of my favorite stories that you have told me over the years. Do you have any final thoughts?

Walder: My final thoughts on celebrancy or on funerals or on death?

Ramnani: On death.

Walder: On death, I think that it is part of the human condition to constantly and increasingly, as you get older, think about your own. But I think that the advantage that humanists have is that we do not expect anything after we are dead. I mean, I'm constantly amused by the religious ceremonies the Well, certainly the Church of England, one where they talk about the vicar, say in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life, I have no idea what a sure and certain hope is, because if it's sure and certain, you don't have to hope for It surely. But they they have platitudes, they have Scott with which they cope with the grief and just awful, awful sadness of death, and they think that that is better, but conversely, I think that is really of little use when it comes to appreciating life. I've often thought that if you really believed that you were going to a better place, why don't you f off and go there now, then, if it's that much better, if you're certain that it's going to be that much better than what you're in now, why are you here? It's like having a free, free ticket to Disneyland and staying in Croydon. You know, why would you do that? And I understand why people believe this when you know most of human life was pretty arduous and painful. I mean, it's, as Hobbs put it, you know, life is nasty brutish and short for the vast majority of creatures on this earth and for the vast majority of humans who've ever lived, because it was but we live in a time when human beings, on average, certainly in this country, you know, live into their 70s and have pretty much pain free and enjoyable existences. Why do they need to be told life will be better once you're dead? And that's why I think being a humanist is an advantage, because we know that we just get this one chat that we need to find our own joy, our own meaning, our own point to life. And there is only one point to life, and that is happiness, the pursuit of happiness. Of course, you can't be happy all of the time. You can't it's impossible, because happiness is a measure. Happiness is better than normal if you are happy all the time, but you can strive towards happiness, but you've got to look to be content and enjoy life. And you know, the great American Humanist, Robert Green Ingersoll, said, happiness is the only joy. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here, and the way to be happy is to make others so and I've never heard anything more true in my life. You know that if you make the people around you happy, you'll be happy. So go and try and do that, you'll fail, as I do every single day. But if you can try and make the people around you happy, then when you die, they're really going to miss you because you made them happy. So that's, that's what I think. Give them something to cry about at your funeral. That's my advice.

Ramnani: Thank you so much, Phil. You've been listening to Share It With Me. If this episode offers clarity or connection consider sharing it. The right story at the right time can change everything. The music you hear is "A Perfect Day" by IROS Young, courtesy of Uppbeat.