Secular Memorial Card Template

What a secular card sounds like

A secular memorial card carries the same bones as any other, a photograph, a name, the dates, and a short text on the back. The difference is only in the register of the words. Instead of prayer, it reaches for poetry, or for a plain sentence in the family's own voice.

The temptation is to fill the space with something grand. Resist it. The cards people keep longest tend to say one true thing quietly. A line about being remembered, a line about a life well lived, a sentence the person actually used to say.

The poems below are all in the public domain, which means you may print them freely, in full or in part, on anything you make.

Remember, by Christina Rossetti

Rossetti's sonnet, published in 1862, is loved on memorial cards for its ending, which gives the living permission to go on living. The closing lines read,

"Better by far you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad."

Those two lines alone make a complete card text. The opening, Remember me when I am gone away, / Gone far away into the silent land, works equally well for a family that wants the poem's quieter beginning instead of its consolation.

Crossing the Bar, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Tennyson wrote Crossing the Bar in 1889, near the end of his life, and asked that it be placed at the end of every collection of his poems. It figures death as a ship putting out to sea, and it suits anyone who loved the water, and many who simply loved the image of a calm departure. Its final lines read,

"I hope to see my Pilot face to face / When I have crost the bar."

The poem is gentle about belief without being empty of it, which makes it a good bridge for families of mixed conviction. The single line, And may there be no sadness of farewell, / When I embark, is also often set alone on cards.

Death Is Nothing at All, by Henry Scott Holland

These words come from a sermon Henry Scott Holland preached in London in 1910, and they have become one of the most read texts at non religious funerals in the English speaking world. The familiar opening runs,

"Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still."

Honesty requires a note. In the sermon, Holland was describing one way grief can feel rather than declaring a settled truth, and some mourners find the passage too consoling for a raw loss. But for a card meant to comfort, the lines Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way which you always used, have steadied a great many rooms.

Writing your own two lines

Sometimes the best text on a secular card is not a poem at all. It is two lines the family writes themselves. If that feels beyond you in a hard week, it is more within reach than it seems, because the form is small and the standard is honesty, not literature.

Start with something the person said or did, not something about death. She fed everyone who walked through her door. He never once left a fishing trip early. Then add, if you want it, one line about what remains. We will keep the door open. The river will always be his.

Read the two lines aloud. If they make you nod rather than wince, they are done. A card that says something only your family could say is worth more than any anthology.

A few shapes that work

• A habit remembered, then what remains. She saved every letter. We will save hers.
• A saying of theirs, in quotes, with their name beneath it
• A single sentence of gratitude. Thank you for every ordinary day.
• A place and a promise. The garden was hers. We will keep it blooming.
• One line from a poem above, followed by one line of your own