Funerals mean many things to every mourner, Graham Redding writes. In 35 years of ministry, I have taken many funerals. Many for those who died gracefully in old age, many for those whose lives were tragically cut short and whose deaths felt unbearably wrong, and some for those who had slipped from public notice long before they died. One of the hardest funerals I ever took was for a man widely admired, a pillar of the local community. Reliable, generous in public, well known. The chapel was full. But there was another truth. Within the family was a dark secret long kept from public view: the deceased had been a violent and abusive man, sexually and psychologically. There were, in effect, two sets of mourners present that day: those who came to celebrate a life of public esteem, and those who came only out of familial obligation, carrying wounds no speech could honour and no hymn could erase. What does a funeral do with that? Many funeral services today are described as "celebrations of life".…