Summary:
You’re not looking for a church service. You already know that much. What you’re looking for is something that actually sounds like the person you lost — their sense of humor, their love of the water, their lifelong disinterest in organized religion. You want a ceremony that tells the truth about who they were.
That’s not a small ask. And it’s not as rare as it used to be. Nearly 30 percent of American adults now identify as religiously unaffiliated — and the generation currently planning funerals for aging parents is driving most of that shift. If you’re here, you’re probably already past the “should we?” stage. This is about the “how.”
What a Secular Funeral Service Actually Looks Like
A secular funeral service is simply a ceremony that doesn’t rely on religious doctrine, prayer, or scripture as its backbone. That’s the whole definition. Everything else — the music, the readings, the location, the tone — is up to you.
What surprises most Nassau County families is how much structure a secular ceremony still has. There’s still a gathering. Still a moment of recognition that someone important is gone. Still space for grief, for laughter, for stories that only the people in that room would understand. The difference is that none of it has to be filtered through a religious framework the person never actually held.
For families across Nassau County, that often means looking beyond the funeral home chapel entirely. The south shore — the water off Freeport, Long Beach, Oceanside, and Point Lookout — offers something a land-based service rarely can: a setting that carries its own weight without asking anyone to believe anything.
Secular Funeral Readings That Actually Feel Right
One of the first things families ask when they start planning a secular service is: what do we read? If there’s no scripture, no psalm, no standard liturgical text to fall back on, where do you start?
The honest answer is that secular readings tend to land harder than religious ones — because they were chosen deliberately, not by default. Families often turn to poetry, literature, or even a passage from something the person loved. Mary Oliver’s work appears constantly at secular memorials, particularly poems that center on the natural world and the act of paying attention to a life well-lived. Rainer Maria Rilke, Walt Whitman, and Pablo Neruda are common choices. So are excerpts from novels, letters the person wrote, or something as simple as a favorite quote they kept on their desk.
What matters more than the source is the fit. A reading should sound like the person being remembered — or like the people doing the remembering. If your family is funny, the ceremony can be funny. If the person spent every summer weekend on the water off Long Beach or Freeport, a reading about the sea isn’t a cliché — it’s accurate.
At a ceremony held on the Atlantic, the setting itself does a lot of the work. Families often find that they need fewer words than they expected. Being three nautical miles offshore, watching ashes meet the water near the coast of Point Lookout, tends to create the kind of silence that no reading can manufacture. The readings that work best in that context are ones that don’t try to fill the space — they open it.
If you’re not sure where to start, our Burial Coordinator Maria Brusalis can point you toward options other families have used. There’s no required script. The ceremony is yours to shape.
What Happens During a Secular Sea Burial Ceremony
If you’ve never been to a sea burial — secular or otherwise — it helps to know what the day actually looks like before you commit to anything.
We depart from our marina at 1 Anchorage Way, Slip A23, in Freeport, NY. The vessel is the Seaspray, a Coast Guard-inspected boat captained by Master Captain Scott Schafer. The cabin is heated, which matters more than people expect — year-round operation means you’re not waiting for a warm Saturday in May to hold the ceremony. Families come in January. They come in March. The water doesn’t care about the calendar, and neither do we.
Once we reach the required distance offshore — at least three nautical miles, as required by EPA regulations — the ceremony begins. What happens next is entirely up to your family. Some gather on deck for a reading or a few words. Some play a song. Some simply stand together and let the moment be what it is. The Seaspray sits low in the water, so families can release ashes directly at the surface — not from a height, not at arm’s length. It’s a more immediate, more connected experience than most people anticipate.
Catering is available if your family wants to gather around food and drink after the committal — breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever fits the tone you’re going for. Pets are welcome on board, which matters to more families than you might think. If there are family members who do want a prayer or a brief religious element, we can accommodate that too. A priest can be present if the family wants one. A secular service doesn’t have to mean a divided family — it just means the ceremony isn’t built around religion as its foundation.
After the ceremony, every family receives documentation of the service, including the GPS coordinates of the scattering location. That detail tends to mean more than people expect. Knowing the exact place — being able to say “there, that spot, that’s where we said goodbye” — gives families something real to hold onto.
Planning a Non-Religious Celebration of Life Program
“Celebration of life” has become a catch-all phrase, but it points at something real: a ceremony organized around the specific person who lived, rather than a standard format applied to everyone who dies. For families planning a secular service, it’s often the more accurate term.
The structure of a non-religious celebration of life program looks different from a traditional funeral order of service, but it’s not formless. Most run 45 minutes to an hour and include a welcome, a few personal tributes or stories, one or two readings or pieces of music, a moment for the committal itself, and time afterward for the family to simply be together. What’s absent is the liturgical scaffolding — the responsive readings, the hymns, the homily. What fills that space is the actual person.
How to Build a Secular Celebration of Life Around a Real Person
The most common mistake families make when planning a secular service is treating it like a religious service with the religion removed. Strip out the prayers, keep everything else — and you end up with a ceremony that feels hollow without quite knowing why. A secular celebration of life works best when it’s built from scratch around the individual.
Start with the person. What did they actually care about? What did they do on weekends? What did they find funny? What would they have been embarrassed by? Those answers should shape every element of the program — the music, the tone of the tributes, even the food if you’re gathering afterward. A man who spent forty years fishing off the south shore of Nassau County deserves a different ceremony than a woman who ran a bookshop in Garden City, NY. Both deserve a ceremony that tells the truth about who they were.
For a sea-based ceremony, the location itself becomes part of the program. Families who grew up near the water — in Freeport, Long Beach, Oceanside, Baldwin, or anywhere along Nassau County’s south shore — often find that being back on the Atlantic is enough to anchor the entire ceremony. The setting carries meaning they didn’t have to manufacture.
Tributes work better when they’re specific. “He was a good man” lands flat. “He made the same terrible pun every single time we passed the Meadowbrook” lands. Encourage the people speaking to bring a specific memory, not a general assessment. That specificity is what makes a secular ceremony feel full rather than sparse.
If you’re not sure how to sequence the program, Maria Brusalis can walk you through what other Nassau County families have done. There’s no formula, but there is experience — and the families who’ve been through it tend to say the same thing afterward: it felt like him. It felt like her. That’s the goal.
FAQs Nassau County Families Ask About Secular Sea Burials
**Is scattering ashes at sea legal in Nassau County, NY?**
Yes. Burial at sea is federally regulated under the EPA’s Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act. The general permit requires that cremated remains be scattered at least three nautical miles from shore. We handle all permits, documentation, and the required EPA reporting on your behalf — every family receives a Certificate of Burial at Sea with the date, time, and GPS coordinates of the ceremony. You don’t need to file anything or navigate any paperwork on your own.
**Does a secular ceremony mean no religious elements at all?**
Not necessarily. A secular funeral service means the ceremony isn’t built around religious doctrine — but if members of your family want a prayer or a blessing, we can accommodate that. We offer the option to have a priest present for families who want one. Mixed-belief families navigate this more often than you’d think, and the sea setting tends to create enough common ground that the ceremony feels whole rather than divided.
**Can we hold a ceremony in winter on Long Island?**
Yes, and Nassau County families do it regularly. The Seaspray has a heated cabin, which means the ceremony isn’t weather-dependent in the way an outdoor land service would be. If your family is ready in December or January, we can go then. Grief doesn’t wait for spring, and neither do we.
**What if we want to bring our dog?**
Bring the dog. Pets are welcome on board. For families whose animals were central to daily life — and whose loss the pet is also navigating — having them present at the ceremony is something we’re glad to accommodate.
**How far offshore do we go?**
At minimum, three nautical miles — that’s the federal requirement. In practice, we travel to open Atlantic waters off the south shore, in the area near Point Lookout, NY. Families from throughout Nassau County — Long Beach, Oceanside, Freeport, Valley Stream, Great Neck — make the trip to our Freeport marina, and the journey itself tends to feel like part of the ceremony.
How to Start Planning a Secular Funeral Service in Nassau County
If you’ve read this far, you probably already know what you’re looking for. A ceremony that’s honest. That fits the person. That doesn’t require anyone to pretend.
A sea burial off the Nassau County coast isn’t the right choice for every family — but for families who want something genuinely different, something rooted in nature rather than doctrine, it tends to be the one that feels most true. The Atlantic doesn’t ask you to believe anything. It just holds the moment.
When you’re ready to talk through what the ceremony could look like, reach out to us at Eternal Peace Sea Burials. Our Burial Coordinator Maria Brusalis can walk you through the process, answer any questions about what the day actually involves, and help you build something that sounds like the person you lost. You can reach us directly at 631-668-5800.