Yesterday started with a 6:30am Legals Only and finished with an 8:00pm deathbed commitment ceremony. It was a lesson in serendipity. A lesson in customer service and a lesson in what the modern, disconnected, secular society withholds from its citizens.

I had a Legals Only booked for 6pm, but the couple contacted me a couple of days ago asking if we could bring it forward.

“Is 8am too early?” they asked. Well it turned out that a cousin who was going to be a witness had to make a family emergency flight to India at 10am. I let them know that wasn’t early enough, explained why (I’m quite familiar with taking people to the airport in the morning) and we agreed on 6:30am. I had to get up at 4:45 because it takes me 90 minutes from alarm to leaving the house in a presentable fashion. I like to ease into the day so I give myself plenty of leeway; it would be TMI to go into the proclivities of my bowels here and now.

No problems. Did the gig, came home, got ready for “work” (today I was going into the accountant’s office I freelance for, to work on setting up bookkeeping for a new client, it’s easier to do the set up in the office). If the couple hadn’t changed the time, then what followed couldn’t have happened.

My phone is turned off at work. I just happened to be checking emails when it lit up with an “unknown number” so I answered. Alison, a social worker attached to the palliative care unit at the local hospital wanted to talk about “shortening of time”, or if a marriage was even possible, on behalf of a very distressed family.

Because I was speaking with a professional rather than the family, I could be as blunt as I needed to be and we established that there was no real possibility of me gaining informed consent, regardless of what her (it was a lady dying) wishes had been prior to slipping into that last coma. Alison said it was the two mums who had been most keen to see them married before the inevitable. I told her that it was possible to do a commitment ceremony if that would help the family.

His mum rang me. I said I could help, but I would have to speak to her later in the day, when I got home. I got home and spoke to Mark, who’s first question was “did I have an ethical problem with performing any sort of ritual where one of the participants wouldn’t know what was going on?”.

Maybe you would. I didn’t. I honestly thought “where’s the harm?”. At a funeral we express emotions and reflect on relationships that directly concern the deceased with or without their prior knowledge or consent of the content of the service.

So I got home and spoke to the two mums on speakerphone. I asked the sort of questions we’d ask at an initial wedding planning meeting.

How long have they been together? (26 years)

How long have they been engaged? (10 years)

Do they have children? (20, 18, 15 and 10 – so sad, right?)

She lived for her kids, he was very protective of his whole family. They loved camping. The illness had been recent and aggressive.  We agreed on 8pm to give the relevant family members time to assemble. It was now nearly 5pm.

So the challenge – design something that DOES NOT sound like a funeral, and DOES sound like a commitment ceremony but one where a participant can’t respond and won’t know what’s happening. FFS. OK.

I’m rarely nervous before a gig, but I was a little apprehensive on my way to this one. I’ve been around death. I was with both my ex-father-in-law and my (then) partner when they died. I know what it looks, sounds and feels like. It’s never any less confronting. This lady, B.....y, had hours left. The mums were correct when they said it shouldn’t wait until Saturday morning. He, C.....d, was in bits, but was definitely not being coerced by the parents.

I spoke about the ancient and timeless process of humans bonding for life pre-dating government records or Christian church rites. I acknowledged that B.....y couldn’t respond to a traditional “I do” scenario, but said that the beautiful family life she and C.....d had created together was testament to the those promises fulfilled.

I asked him to pledge to carry on her legacy of love moving forward without her.

I read a poem.

I did a handfasting. It was something that had been a legal marriage in Scotland right up until 1939 and I explained that – about “tying the knot”. I did it because he could hold her hand, and it brought her into the rite as much as possible.

I spoke to the children, letting them know that their parents’ relationship is as strong and as meaningful as any marriage could have been. I told them their parents’ love and commitment is not lessened by the fact that mum can’t put her arms around them anymore.

I concluded with asking the crowd (about 15 people in a small hospital room is a crowd) to give a (demure) round of applause to acknowledge the special relationship between B.....y and C....d.

It was the best I could do with only a few hours’ notice.

Did I do the right thing? I still believe I did because of the comfort I think it brought to those assembled, but there is also a nagging doubt about hollowness. I’d never met these people before. Was it meaningful? Was it relevant?

Here’s the thing about our society.

What this family needed was the vicar, or the shaman, or the village elder – the old chieftain of the tribe who’d known the family all their lives. The person who’d shared all the milestones and could comfort them with intimacy and authority. The person who could affirm that their lives and relationships had meaning because they’d known them from cradle to grave.

That person rarely exists in modern, western culture. That responsibility, a lot of the time, falls to us. We stumble into people’s lives with little or no background knowledge and perform sacred rituals that stay with families forever. It’s a big responsibility.

As much as people today shun religion (oft with good reason, I’m not defending modern Christianity here), when the rubber hits the road we are all looking for solace, meaning and affirmation. It’s why every culture on earth, since we first invented language, has invented ritual.

If Alison had phoned you at 1pm on a Friday afternoon, what would you have done?