Sample site. Carryline is a fictional business, designed by Alcor Industries to show the Death archetype. Nothing here can be booked, bought or sent.
Get this site: $250Funeral celebrants Wrenmoor & the Hollin Valley
We write and lead funerals that sound like the person. We help families keep someone at home for a few days. And we stay for what comes after.
If someone has died today, nothing needs deciding tonight. When you’re ready, call 555-0113. One of us will answer, at any hour.
If someone has just died
Nobody is expected to know this. Here is the usual order of things, one step at a time. Check off what’s done. Print the list if paper helps.
Carryline · What happens next · 555-0113, at any hour
Step 1 of 4 The first 24 hours
If they died at home, you can sit with them for as long as you need. The one call that matters is to their doctor or hospice nurse, who confirms the death. If they died in the hospital or a nursing home, the staff will guide this part. Eat something. Sleep if you can.
Step 2 of 4 Days two to seven
We come to your kitchen table, or you come to our front room. We ask who they were before we ask about arrangements. By the end of the second visit you’ll know the date, the place, and what kind of goodbye it will be.
Step 3 of 4 The day itself
We arrive an hour early. We lead the ceremony, keep time and hold the pauses, so you don’t have to. If a voice goes halfway through a reading, one of us is standing close enough to finish it.
Step 4 of 4 The weeks after
A month on, we send you the ceremony words, bound as a small book. When the ashes are ready, or everyone can finally be in one room, we can help with a second, smaller gathering. And the phone still gets answered.
How we help
Five things we do, in the order families usually need them. Our prices cover our time, travel within the Hollin Valley and the printed words. Burial, cremation and venue fees are separate, and we tell you them before you agree to anything.
Can’t afford it? Say so on the first call. Two ceremonies a month are pay-what-you-can, and we never ask anyone to prove anything.
Long before
No charge
An hour in our front room and a pot of tea. We write down what you want, and what you definitely don’t, and keep it on file for whoever will need it.
One visit a written plan kept on file
The first days
$780
For families who want to keep someone at home for a few days. We show you how to wash and dress them and keep them cool, lend the cooling plates, do the forms with you, and visit every morning.
Up to four days cooling plates on loan a visit each morning
The day
$1,150
Two long conversations, a ceremony written for one person, and one of us leading it: in a chapel, a hall, a garden or a field. You read every word before anyone hears it.
Two visits a draft you can change printed words for readers
Weeks later
from $640
When the ashes are ready, or when everyone can finally be in one room. A backyard, the upstairs room at the Fold Inn, the beach at Dunlin Point at low tide.
One visit a short ceremony help with the ashes
For keeps
from $45
The ceremony book: the words, the music and a few photographs, bound in gray linen, $120. Seed cards for the gathering, $45 for sixty. A fingerprint pendant cast in Wrenmoor, $95.
Before and after
Families rarely arrive with a speech. They arrive with fragments. Our work is to listen for a week, then give the fragments back as something that can be said out loud. Choose a note to see where it went.
Tom hummed. Through every job he ever did, and most of the ones he found reasons not to. He grew leeks in quantities no family could eat, and left them on doorsteps in grocery bags. He drove home the long way, past Stellmere Lake, because the short way had no view. He was stubborn in the good way: the way that fixes a gate at ten at night. And every Tuesday at seven, the phone rang, and it was him.
Tom is invented for this page. The method is real: two visits, one draft, and your changes until it sounds right.
A sample order of service
A ceremony at Hollin Chapel, from our side of it. The times move. The care doesn’t.
We arrive, set out the chairs and play the music through twice.
Doors open. One of us stands at the gate so nobody has to ask the way.
Welcome. The room settles. Phones go quiet.
Their life, told in order, with the funny parts left in.
A granddaughter reads, then a neighbor. We stand close in case a voice goes.
A few minutes of quiet, with a song they chose.
The goodbye. The casket is carried out or lowered, or everyone simply stands. We tell you which, beforehand.
Out into the air. Tea at the Fold Inn, two doors down.
Visit
Carryline works from a narrow house at 14 Wychgate Row in Wrenmoor. It has a red door, a front room with two sofas and no desk, and a garden with a bench under the pear tree.
There are three of us. Maren Aske and Idris Fenn write and lead the ceremonies. Pell Varga answers the phone, most nights included, and knows how everyone takes their tea.
The front room. Where we talk, with the door closed.
The quiet room, at the back. Sit with someone before a ceremony, for as long as you need. The door locks from inside.
The garden bench. Dogs are welcome, and so are children who need to run.
Parking behind, through the gate on Cobb Lane. No steps from the gate to the front room.
Practical things
Anything else, ask us on the phone. There are no silly questions here, only tired ones.
Sometimes. Someone has to move and care for the body, and many families use a funeral director for that and us for everything that is said. For a home funeral you can do much of it yourselves with our help, and we’ll tell you plainly where you need someone else.
Yes. In the Hollin Valley a family can care for their own dead at home and arrange the funeral themselves. Most keep someone home for two to four days. We lend cooling plates and show you what to do, one morning at a time.
We lead ceremonies with as much faith in them as the family wants: a hymn, a prayer said by a cousin, a reading from a holy book, or none of these. If you’d like a minister too, we work alongside them.
Say so on the first call. Two ceremonies a month are pay-what-you-can. We’ll also show you where the real costs are, and which of them you can leave out.
Usually one to three weeks after the death. Sooner if your faith asks for it, later if the family is scattered. There isn’t a wrong amount of time.
Yes, if they want to. Children can draw on the casket, choose a song or hand out the seed cards. We give them a way in, and a way out if it gets too much.
Talk to us
The phone is answered by one of us at any hour, including the ones that feel longest. If you’d rather not talk yet, leave a number and a time, and we’ll call you then. Nothing else: no brochure, no list.
555-0113Day or night
Or write to hello@carryline.example