Funeral Directing
Ten Reasons I’m a Funeral Director
Last week, a high schooler asked me, “Why are you a funeral director?” After a couple days of thinking about the question, here are ten reasons.
One: Service.
A couple years ago, a granddaughter was giving her grandmother’s eulogy at the funeral home. She shared that before she would take naps at her grandmother’s house, her grandmother would warm a blanket in the dryer, and as the granddaughter laid down, the grandma would drape the warm blanket over her.
After the service was over and before the family closed the lid on the casket, I grabbed the blanket that the family had laid in the casket and warmed the blanket. When I gave the warm blanket to the granddaughter, she couldn’t withhold her tears as now she draped it over her grandmother.
Situations like this arise regularly in the funeral profession. And, as a caregiver by nature, I find great satisfaction in seeing others have more meaningful death experiences because of my efforts. I enjoy serving.
Two: Perspective.
Emerson said, “When it is darkest men see the stars.” We try our best to deny the darkness of death by consciously and unconsciously building our immortality projects. We hope that we can live immortally through such projects.
And then death. Weeping. Our projects come tumbling down. And it’s in those ashes, in the pain, in the grief, through the tears, we see beauty in the darkness. This is a perspective that funeral directors are privy to view on a constant basis. And, in many cases, the darkness can be beautiful.
And it provides for my family.
Three: Affirmation.
Being told, “You’ve made this so much easier for us.” or, “Mom hasn’t looked this beautiful since she first battled cancer”, or “You guys are like family to us” means a lot to me. It’s important to know that what you’re doing is meaningful for the person you’re doing it for.
That verbal affirmation is a big reason why I continue to serve as a funeral director.
Four: Safe Death Confrontation.
When I was a child, I’d lay in bed and imagine myself dying at a young age. I imagined Death as a Monster. That fear, though, has dissipated as I’ve both worked around Death and I’ve grown to be comfortable with my own mortality and the mortality of those I love.
Perhaps there’s no greater freedom than to live life with a healthy relationship with Death. That healthy relationship allows you embracing each moment, realizing that we are not promised tomorrow. This good relationship with Death has been given to me by the funeral profession.
Five: Kisses.
From old(er) women. Big sloppy kisses from older women. And what makes it even better is if they follow up the kiss with a, “If only I was 50 years younger ….”
Six: Power and Obligation. You give us power every time you open up your family life and your grief to us. And when you give us that power, there’s a certain satisfaction that comes with treating that vulnerability with as much honor as we can.
We honor your loved one as we prepare them. We honor you as we serve you. The power you give us, and our obligation to that vulnerability is the grounds that produce honor.
Seven: Lack of the Superficial.
There’s so much BS in the world. We pursue bigger cars, bigger houses and bigger salaries that we become so materialized we can barely stand honesty, vulnerability and spirituality.
That all changes around death. Suddenly, you wish that the time you spent pursing that raise had been spent with your dad. Suddenly, you find some honesty about your life, some perspective and maybe even some spirituality.
I hate BS. I love honesty. I love spirituality. And I love watching as death helps us become human.
Eight: Informs my Perspective on God.
Whether or not funeral directors are religious, you’ll find that almost all are spiritual. Whether or not they believe in God, death has a way of making us look at the deep, the beyond and the transcendent.
For myself, so much of my faith has been informed by the doubt of death. I see God in a whole new dark. And it’s good. In fact, I’ve come to believe that God dwells with the broken because – it would seem – God too is broken.
Nine: Constant Challenge.
Somebody said, “It’s the perfect job for someone with ADHD because there is constant change.” Constant change and constant challenge.
Whether a call at 4 AM; or a particularly tragic death; this job is always pushing us and (hopefully) makes us into stronger people.
Ten: Our Associates.
Today, a nurse – on her own free time – tracked down the hospital release for us. I told her, “You’re wonderful.” Every time we interact with hospice nurses, I always praise them for their work, for their love towards the family. When a church provides a funeral luncheon, I try to tell the workers that they are providing grace in the form of food. When a pastor totally connects with the family, I tell him/her how great a job they’re doing.
When somebody dies – during the hardest moments of life – we see the best in people. As I said in the beginning, sometimes the darkness is beautiful; and, sometimes the darkness makes us beautiful.
There’s many a burden to be borne in this business; which is why I have to remind myself of the reasons I remain a funeral director.
Facing My Own Mortality
This week we’ve buried a 16 year old that died unexpectedly due to a heart problem that the doctors determined was “under control”; we buried a 32 year old who lost her three year fight with brain cancer; and, we buried two 50 year olds, one of which died in a tragic car accident, the other dying of cancer. All around Christmas.
Weeks like this make me stay up late at night.
They make me think about my own mortality.
Make me ask questions like, “Who will die first … my wife or me?”
Selfishly, I’d love to die first. But, it’s a 50/50 chance and I could be the one who closes my wife’s eye lids as she passes.
Realizing that a dying person’s hearing is the last sense to go before death, I lay in bed and think about what I’d say to her in her dying moments … I think about what she’d need to hear from me:
“I love you and want you to go rest with Jesus.”
Or
“You’re free to go to Jesus … just know that I love you … wait for me!”
Or
“Everybody is here with you. We all love you and we give you the freedom to go to Jesus.”
And all this assumes that I’ll have the privilege to be there when she dies. What if she dies tragically, like some of these people I’m burying this week who died alone, suddenly, without the loving words of their family being whispered to them while they pass from this world to whatever comes next?
“Damn it”, I think to myself, “I’ve been lying awake for an hour thinking about something I have very little control over.”
But I try to control it. I buy cars with a high safety rating. I push my wife to go to the doctors over the smallest ailment. I remind her to wear her seat belt … I often palpitate her breasts looking for those nightmarish lumps … and I make sure she eats well and buy her anything that promotes her health. A juicer. P90X. A Xbox Kinect that we can exercise with.
At times I feel like a tyrant with a benevolent heart.
It’s weeks like this that I’m fearful of the unknown inevitability of the necessary part of life: death.
And this fear, this benevolent tyranny, the late nights of worrying, of thinking about the different possibilities, etc. are all the occupational hazards of this business.
It’s the death that surrounds me that inhibits my living. That makes me the grumpy tyrant. The sleepless tyrant.
But … it’s also the death that surrounds me that encourages my living.
It encourages me to say “I love you” as often as I can.
It encourages me to forgive and extend grace to those I don’t think deserve it.
It encourages me to pursue my passions … to find what I love doing … and do it with all my heart … knowing that I’ll be the best person I can be when I’m doing what I love.
It encourages me to smile. To make friends. To dance even though I’m bad at dancing.
It encourages me to work less, live with less money so that I can pour more of the most precious asset called “time” into my friends and family.
Facing the mortality of my own life and of those I love is a dark reality.
But it’s a dark reality that I’m learning to lighten with every second I choose to live life to the fullest, so that when that time comes — whenever it may be — I’ll look it in the face with no regrets.
Clerical, White and Blue Collar
The funeral industry as we know it now in America allows for some of the greatest examples of both human graces and disgraces. The disgraces are all too publicized, and rightfully so. Most of us may remember the 334 bodies found in the back yard of the Tri-State Crematory in Georgia. Instead of fixing their retort, the crematory simply placed the bodies in the back yard to decompose and in place of the actual cremated remains, they gave the families boxes filled with wood chips, cement powder and wood ashes.
Many of us have seen the Nightline reports where funeral directors were caught bypassing laws on a regular basis, trying to scam money off of the elderly and acting more like greedy salesmen than compassionate professionals. Unfortunately, there are many funeral directors who are all too willing to use disadvantaged people to their own advantage. It’s ugly. It’s exploitation at its most base level. Yet, it happens. The unfortunate result of mixing grief clouded minds and greed poisoned hearts.
But, there are those of us who work hard, with undying honesty and integrity, sweating yellow tinged stains on our white collars. We withstand the sweat rolling down our backs into our cracks on the hot summer days as we stand in the caustic sun at the graveside. My great grandfather used to mow the funeral home yard in his shirt and tie. We’re probably still the only practitioners who ask for winter suits … they only make the medium grade suits today because white collar workers just aren’t out in the cold. Our backs are one of the main occupational hazards in this industry. And we get dirty too … crimson red on a bright white cotton shirt. Our collars may be white but our hearts are bleeding blue.
There are those funeral directors who see their profession as a calling; who find a sacredness to their calling, as though there was something spiritual about their work. As though they are more so ministers than death merchants. They are understanding, compassionate, hard-working, service oriented people who are more concerned about the richness of life in death then the wealth of their bank accounts. There are those who give their services for free to the less fortunate and downtrodden. Those of us who push families to buy caskets under their financial means instead of over. There are those of us who go above and beyond our contract expectations; who spend that extra five hours making the car accident victim viewable so that the family can see him one more time. There are those of us who offer more than just pre-need and at-need services … those of us who are there for the family months after the fact. There are those of us who understand that our integrity and honest direction can make Death a lot less hard for a whole lot of people.
The ancient and famed Egyptian embalmers understood that to be good death practitioners you also had to have religious and moral over and under tones in your life. And although we don’t divine like Egyptians, there are those of us who view this profession first as a practice of spirituality and secondly as a business; and, who do both with a strong work ethic. That’s the mold that I’m trying to fit into. A blue, white and clerical collar.
Lift & Roll
Today’s guest post comes from Celeste Donohue. Celeste is a writer/comedian who lives in Los Angeles and is also the daughter of a 3rd generation funeral director. Her blog “Death To Hollywood” is about her life growing up in a funeral home and her current life in Hollywood.
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The rear entrance of the funeral home.
The way we brought the bodies in to the morgue was through the alley (SEE PHOTO to the right). There were big white doors (with brass door knobs of course) that would open wide enough to bring the stretcher in. For everyone else on our street, it was their garage. So technically, the morgue was in the garage that was connected to the basement. After the person was embalmed and dressed, we had a motorized lift to take the dead people up from the basement to the first floor. My dad told me that before it was a lift, it was an electronic chair for my grandfather to go upstairs after he had a stroke. Once my dad built the morgue in the basement he took the chair off and replaced it with a piece of wood that he could lay the bodies on.
That lift was fun. When I was really little my dad would let me ride it. I’d sit on it and he would turn the switch on and I’d start to go up the stairs. There was a light bulb on the other side of the steps that I used to pretend was the moon and I was an astronaut on my way up to the moon. Normal kid stuff, if you consider riding a lift for dead bodies normal.
The front of the Donohue Funeral Home
That lift was later replaced with another one that was much more elaborate and cool. The new one actually came up through the floor of the parlor so that the body would already be in the casket and ready for their big day. The other lift couldn’t have held a casket, just a body. Once everything was in place; flowers, etc. no one would know that the lift was underneath the casket.
One time the body came up through the floor, was in the casket and everything seemed fine until the leg of the stand underneath the casket collapsed. We were upstairs watching TV when we heard a loud thud followed by my dad yelling a string a curse words. That may have been one of the few times I heard him say “fuck,” except he yelled it. The leg collapsed, the casket fell and the body rolled out. Luckily this didn’t happen during a funeral, it happened while he was setting up, but the family was due there soon so my dad was freaking out. Naturally, we ran downstairs and the dead lady was in the middle of the floor.
Dead bodies aren’t really fit for moving around once they’re in the casket because they’re so stiff. The body was facing down and when my dad rolled her over, her hands were still folded. Can you picture that? It was funny because people who are alive are just the opposite. My dad wasn’t able to laugh about that one right away, but we did.
Of course, my dad and brother got her back into the casket and everything was fine after she had a slight touch up. The family never knew that their loved one had been face down in the middle of the floor in her fancy dress a couple hours before that. And that’s for the best because there really isn’t room for a lot of error when it comes to a funeral. People are so distraught they probably wouldn’t find it funny to watch a dead body roll out of a casket.
Historical Quickie on Arterial Embalming Equipment
In the frustration of multitasking the details of four new calls, I decided to channel my angst into some spring cleaning. A new computer arrived yesterday, so in between the set up I threw all of our old lets-save-this-cause-we might-need-it tech in the dumpster.
After cleaning out the second floor of a tape player, two broken printers and a 30 pound monster monitor, I shifted my attention to the gallows of the basement … where ALL the old equipment goes to rest. After finding an 18 year old Compact monitor, I found the old embalming machines.
In our morgue today rests a Porti-Boy, the pinnacle of modern embalming tech.
With the Porti-Boy, you can control the pressure of the embalming fluid and the rate of flow via the little knobs on the left and right of the console.
The end of the rubber tube is where the arterial tube is inserted.
Once the incision on the deceased is made and the desired artery is raised (usually the carotid), the arterial tube is placed into the artery, the Porti-Boy is turned on and the fluid pushes out the blood via an open vein, replacing the blood with embalming fluid.
That’s how it’s done today.
Our funeral business is over 160 years old. And when we first started embalming, there was no electric Porti-Boy. In fact, there was no morgue to house the lovely embalming machine.
We came to your house. With our own equipment. By the time my grandfather was a teen, this tradition of embalming at the deceased’s house had waned. He remembers doing it a dozen times or so.
When I went down to the basement to clean out the old computers, I found the old embalming “machine” that my great grandfather would have used. It’s called an embalming gravity flask and stand … or something like that. I’ve actually used this contraption once when we lost electricity during a storm. And it worked.
You put the mixed embalming fluid in the flask, and raise the stand to find your desired pressure. The higher the flask, the more pressure it produced to push the blood out and the fluid in. My predecessors would lug this thing to the home of the deceased, put the body in the kitchen and try their best not to spill any blood. How they kept the blood from spilling (without the use of an embalming table), I have no idea.
My grandfather recounts that he and his dad used to play “who spills the least blood droplets on the floor” game. Apparently – per my grandfather’s selective memory – he would always win.
