Posted by In the Netherlands, when a person dies with no family or friends to attend the funeral, the ceremony is not left to silence. A civil servant is present, representing the community. And beside them stands a poet. The idea was born to prevent the final farewell from becoming a purely bureaucratic act. The poet receives the few available details: a name, a date, perhaps a job, an address—sometimes only a single, minimal fact. From these fragments, a text is written especially for that life. During the ceremony, the poem is read aloud. It does not celebrate achievements, nor does it invent affections. It carefully gathers what remains. It turns an anonymous goodbye into a human gesture. It is not a grand public ritual. It is something simple, almost invisible. Yet in that moment, the deceased is no longer alone. Someone speaks their name. Someone acknowledges them. And perhaps this is the deepest meaning of the initiative: to remind us that a life, even when it ends in silence, deserves to be farewelled by a voice.
Who Watches the Watchers? 