About our funeral service

Ageing with Optimism is a funeral organiser and adviser we are not an undertaker. We are there to help you organise a memorable service. We can arrange an undertaker for you, or liaise with the undertaker you’ve chosen. To paraphrase Dave Allen, ‘death is part of life’. Despite this, it’s still a subject we prefer not to think about. This means, we’re often poorly prepared when it happens and in times of grief, it’s all too easy to adopt the ‘default position’ of wearing black and holding the ‘standard’ funeral in a lacklustre setting. How many of us want that to be the last memory of our time on earth? There are no rules when it comes to organising a funeral. You are free to choose whatever you consider to be appropriate. We will help you create a personalised funeral service that reflects the life of someone you love. Nigel George has spent almost 30 years as a solicitor acting for clients from all walks of life. He has a keen interest in people and “believes his glass is always half full”. He is passionate about good customer service. Nigel has been to many funerals and often found them perfunctory and impersonal. It was when dealing with his own father’s death, he realised how little he knew about the whole process and what the options were. He felt there had to be a better way of organising funerals, so that they could uplifting, personal and a fitting tribute to the person who had died. We want to improve the funeral experience and encourage people to talk more openly about death and their feelings about it. To quote the late Dave Allen again: A very important part of the Irish way of life is death. See, if anybody else anywhere else in the world dies that’s the end of it they’re dead. But in Ireland when somebody dies we lay them out and watch them for a couple of days. It’s called a wake. And it’s great, it’s a party, a send off. The fella is laid out on the table and there’s drinking and dancing and all the food you can eat. And all of your friends come from all over the place and they all stand around the wake table looking at you, with a glass in their hands and, they say “Here’s to your health”. The terrible thing about dying over there [Ireland], is you miss your own wake. It’s the best day of your life. You’ve paid for everything and you can’t join in. Mind you if you did you’d be drinking on your own. Of course a funeral is a sad occasion but it can also be a time for joy, thankfulness and celebration of a life. If done this way, it can help start the process of healing and recovery from loss. We want you to see a funeral service in a new light – we will help you create a send off that would make your loved one proud.