Olympic cycling champion Dean Woods was farewelled by hundreds in his hometown of Wangaratta recently and to their surprise, he gave his own eulogy.

"I'm well prepared, even though I'm in the box in front of you," he said, looming large on a screen behind his coffin. "This will be the suit I'm put in the box in, even got the torch, a torch there just in case it gets dark," he joked.

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And Mr Woods is not alone. Wagga funeral Director Daniel Woods said he has had a few people deliver messages from beyond the grave over the past year.

"It's a bit disconcerting to a degree, the first time I heard it, because it's from the grave," he said.

But he believes that creative tributes can add another dimension to a funeral service. "It helps to bring out that emotion. The old days with the stiff upper-lip [are gone]," he said.

Alan Harris McDonald Lead funeral director Joshua Paul said seeing and hearing a loved one, one final time, can be incredibly moving.

"Some of the most special funerals that I've been involved in have been where people have delivered their own eulogy, or have planned their own funeral," he said.

Most of those cases have included people with a terminal diagnosis and planning their final hurrah is all part of the process. He said that eight out of every ten funerals now have some sort of "audio/visual aspect" to them.

And he even knows people who are so keen to have the final word, that they update their eulogies on a yearly basis, just in case the worst happens.

"Which I think is fantastic. When delivering your own eulogy, as [Dean Woods] did, it's the sound of someone's voice, and seeing them talking to us, it gives us such comfort knowing that they were so comfortable with their own mortality," he said.

For Mr Woods, funerals changed for the better with the advent of live streaming which allows eulogies to come in from around the globe. And these days the funeral director role can often feel more like an "event manager", he said.

He has also seen people move away from traditional liturgical services, allowing loved ones more freedom to mourn in their own way.

Both Mr Paul and Mr Woods credit technology, and the pandemic, with changing the way we discuss death and revolutionising the way we send people off.

"I think COVID has started a conversation ... we've had a little bit more time together with our families and started asking the important questions in our life," said Mr Paul.

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