Can you sing hymns at funerals at the moment

[Soopermum1]

Dad's dying. He and Mum are planning a small but full-on Catholic funeral. Hymns are important in this planning but I don't know if they're allowed at the moment. It's breaking my heart at the thought they might not be allowed.

We've been told we can't sing anything at my Dad's funeral (crematorium) next week. It's so sad. We're having recordings instead. But things are changing all the time so hopefully they'll be allowed in your case x

Thanks, pretty green, I'm sorry for your loss. Think I'll keep this to myself at the moment, don't think either of them would fancy a recording and I think it will upset them. They're very traditional in that sense. We sang a hymn at the weekend, just a lighthearted moment, trying to remember the words and singing it badly, not specifically discussing it in the context of his funeral. It was a lovely moment that I'll remember forever. Mum wants me to be fully involved in the planning and I would love that hymn in there, even though it is about the month of May, but I quite like the slight subversion of including it, and I think Dad would too. If we can't sing it, I might include a reference to it elsewhere.

I am sorry your dad is dying, how very hard to go through

I think hymns will be a way off because signing is very high risk for transmission. I am sorry as I can understand how important they are in this time. If not possible now then maybe plan a hymn service for whenever it can be done, so you can know you will do it one day?

Could you help them plan the funeral that makes them happiest (happiest not being a great word, I'm sorry), and if it turns out at the time that hymns arent allowed, perhaps the organist could play the music and you can sing "in your heart" and then have those hymns with full gusto at a memorial later on?

We sang at a family funeral over a month ago.
Only 10 attendees, all seats 2 metres apart but a hymn was sung.
Call your local undertaker and ask.
Sorry you are going through this.

I’m sorry your going through this at such a difficult time to make things much more challenging

We didn’t have singing, we had music played through the service instead

What I will say is that although we had restricted numbers it made it have a very special feel to the funeral.

What was hard was to make sure people rsvp and understood if they couldn’t come to let us know as we had a waiting list

Hopefully your family can organise a beautiful service 🙏

That's a good point, IvyKate. Mum and Dad understand the lower numbers and I think it actually suits them. He has lots of friends and I know in other circumstances the church would be packed, but they want it small and I think that will be lovely. They're pretty religious though and will want as many Catholic bells and whistles as can be allowed. Will see what the situation is nearer the time. I'm hoping (against medical judgement) its a while away

So sorry about your dad, we had my nans cremation 10 days ago and we sang hymns, there was 10 people there
I hope you get to have the send off he would have liked

Soopermum1

Friends mum died during lockdown and they had a “route “ for the hearse, so friends and family that couldn’t be there could line the route & pay there respects in a different way

It is good that you can talk about your fathers wishes, hopefully this will enable you to know what he wants and give you peace of mind

I went to one at a crematorium on Thursday. Max 35 people allowed and we were asked to sit in households/bubbles. Some seats out of use to keep bubbles apart.
We sang two hymns and the service was around 30 minutes.

We sang a hymn at my Dads funeral yesterday (well, we tried to through the tears !)
The funeral director did check what the crem a few days before as she said things are changing so frequently.

It's my mum's funeral next week and we've been told we definitely can't sing the hymns, so we've found beautiful recordings of choirs instead. It's in a church but crematorium are allowing singing of hymns. CofE rules I suppose!

Maybe a cantor, away from everyone else singing the mass setting. My local catholic has a small group of 4 singing every Sunday now and prior to that one cantor/organist