David Williamson, the Spiritual Care Lead at St Leonards Hospice in York, is planning to introduce living funerals as a service to patients later this year. “I’m ordained in the Church of England and I’ve done funerals for 30 years,” he says. “I've always been amazed at the tributes that friends and relatives give to the person who's died and I often ask them, ‘Did you ever say that to the person when they were alive?’. And quite often they'll say no. So I've always wondered, is there a better way we can express what we think and feel about people when they are alive?”