Funeral Directing

One.  Did I bury that wedding ring?

I know the family wanted the ring taken off before their mom was buried.  They told me how important that ring is to them. And I’m almost certain I took the ring off after the service was over.  But did I?  It was all such a blur.

This question keeps me up for about an hour.

Two.  Did I cut that pacemaker out?

We don’t own our own crematory.  In our area, there are only about two funeral homes out of approximately 50 funerals that have their own oven.  When someone we’re serving wants their family cremated, we send the deceased to a lovely family owned retort that does most of the cremations in a 20 mile radius.

If I leave the pacemaker in, it will explode during the cremation process, potentially causing damage that can have a $10,000 price tag. Sometimes I forget.  Although rarely.

Keeps me up 20 minutes.

Three.  Is that family gonna beat us?

We pride ourselves on being one of the lowest priced funeral homes in our area.  And while this helps us sleep at night, the word has gotten around that not only are the Wildes inexpensive, but they don’t require payment up front.  Many funeral homes, in an effort to protect themselves from crooked customers who have no intention of paying their funeral bill, require the funeral payment — or a guarantee of payment by an insurance agency — at the end of funeral arrangements.  We give a 30 day payment period and we get swindled by about 10 to 15 families a year.

For the most part, we’ve become wise to the crooked families.  But every once in a while there’s a family that is so good at working us, it’s only afterward that we see the signs and we lay awake at night realizing that we’ve been hustled.

10 minutes.  It’s just money.

Four.  I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT FAMILY BEAT US!!!

And then there are the families we’ve known for ages.  The families who went to school with us.  Who lived next to us.  Who we played with as kids.  The families we trust.  Families that we never question.  Months and months go by and finally, we’re laying in bed and we realize: THEY’RE NOT GOING TO PAY THEIR BILL!

This can be upsetting, especially if we know the family.  It’s the broken trust part that can keep you up for two hours.

Five.  Is that body going to stink?

Sometimes bodies smell.  Sometimes embalming doesn’t stop the stink.  And even though we do everything we can to cover up the smell, we can’t help laying in bed at night and wondering, “Is John Smith going to smell up the funeral tomorrow?”

Try to go to sleep as fast as I can so I can wake up early, get to the funeral home and double check John’s b.o.

Six.  Twisted Visuals

I’ve been doing this for over a decade and I still see visuals that keep me up at night.

These kinds of visuals can keep me up AND find their way into my nightmares.

Seven.  Night Calls

Night calls obviously keep us up at night.  If someone dies at a nursing home or at their home in the middle of the night, we get up, suit ourselves up and off we go.  This is what I look like the day after a night call:

Eight.  How Long Can I Keep Doing this?

Career-doubt is a real thing.  For me, the pace and the drain of death care undergirds a good amount of career-doubt.  There are many times I miss my son’s life because I’m out at all hours of the day dealing with death.  Night calls, night viewings, and the like make me less the father I want to be.  I lay awake thinking about this.

This can keep me up for hours.

Nine.  Was That Joke Too Awkward?

Okay.  Maybe this is only me.  I’m the king of awkward jokes.  Sometimes the jokes are so awkward, I lay awake at night and repeatedly tell myself, “Caleb, you must never joke again. Caleb, you must never joke again ….”

Ten.  What Did I Forget to Do?

Some days the funeral home feels like the floor of NYSE in that it’s all crazy and hectic and movement.  The phone’s ringing with requests for reordered death certificates, the door bells ringing and there’s someone there who needs help with insurance policies, some of us are out picking up from a hospital, others are running around getting death certificates, and there’s a couple families are coming into the funeral home to make arrangements.  After a hectic day where your brain felt like a Gallagher watermelon, you’re laying in bed at night and remember, “there was that phone call where the family wanted me to add the deceased’s cat ‘Jinx’ to the obituary … damn it.”

*****

If you like my writing, consider buying my 2017 Nautilus Book Award Gold Winner, Confession of a Funeral Director (click the image to go to the Amazon page):

I’m coming up on 10 years licensed, a significant milestone considering that my embalming professor told me that 70% of funeral students never make it to the decade mark.  To be honest, I never thought I’d make it this far.  After I graduated mortuary school, I told my dad, “I think I’ve only got about 10 years for this business.”  At the time, the constant barrage of death and dying, the night calls that I was always running and the dynamics of death culture had me doubting my resiliency.  I also had aspirations of becoming an academic (something I’m still pursuing because I’m a nerd).  But, here I am 10 years later, more committed than ever to the funeral business, so I thought I’d list 10 reasons why I’ve been able to stay.  These reasons aren’t a catch-all for every funeral director, but they’re reasons why I’m still here.

Service.

Admittedly, I don’t wear a smile when my cell phone rings at 2 AM in the morning for a death call.  Although I’m eventually kind, courteous and congenial when I go on the midnight call, even after 10 years those midnight death calls still wear on my like a weight.  The chaos of death isn’t a healthy lifestyle with its unscheduled hours, its highly emotive culture and the demands that come with it.  I think most funeral directors will agree that this business is not easy.  But something happens to me when I see the family of the deceased.  One minute I’ll be tired, unhappy and beaten, and the next minute I’m full of compassion, energy, and resiliency.  There’s still something wonderful about the service aspect of this industry that keeps me here, that sustains me during the tough hours.

Our Associates.

Ten years ago I didn’t have enough appreciation for the people we rub elbows with.  Death has a way of drawing out the beauty in humanity, which is why funeral directors are privy to some of the most beautiful people in the world.  Whether it be the hospice nurses who give so unselfishly, the flower shops who help us out at the last minute, the sextons that waive fees for infants, the pastors who work tirelessly to help families, and any angel who has ever given us free coffee.  If I ever left the funeral business, I’d miss crossing paths with so many wonderful people.

Humor.

From tweets about tying shoestrings in preparation for the Zombie Apocolypse, to finding the lighter moments at funerals, I’ve managed to make a distinction between serious and solemn.  Death is a serious matter, but it doesn’t have to be solemn.  That permission to laugh and lighten the mood has been a key part of my resiliency in this business.

No

If there’s one word that is utter sacrilege in a smaller funeral home like ours, it’s this tiny two-letter word.  We simply don’t use it.  I mean, when can we ever say “no” to a family that just lost their loved one?

But if we’re to survive, we have to introduce it into our professional vocabulary.  Death has a way of being more demanding than life, especially the personal life of a funeral director.  Death constantly clears our personal schedule books.  We’re supposed to go to our son’s baseball game, but there’s an evening viewing.  We’re supposed to have Christmas dinner, but there’s a death call.  We’re supposed to go on a date, but there’s a family that wants to come in and make arrangements in the evening.

We have to find a way to allow ourselves to live our own lives in the midst of death.  Sometimes that means hiring others to do some of our work, and sometimes that means creating better organizational systems and sometimes it simply means saying “no.”  If I hadn’t learned to say “no”, I would have burnt out of this business years ago.

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 huge in sustaining those of us in the dismal trade.

The Calling

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t like the term “calling”.  I’ll also be the first to admit that I never felt called to this business.

Callings aren’t predetermined nor are they divinely ordained.  Neither are they mystical or set in stone.  They’re not our “dream jobs” that can only be obtained with supreme talent, intelligence and luck.

A calling is when we hear the voices of those needing our help.  Callings can arise in the darkest jobs, in the most monotonous of tasks and at the “lowest” positions.  Callings are something we learn to love.  Callings are something we choose to do because we develop an ear to hear and an eye to see.  A person who is “called” is a person who has seen a need and answered so many times that it becomes a part of who they are.

Now, more than a decade in, I’m staying in this business because this call is something I now answer so naturally that it’s become a part of who I am.

$$$

When I was younger, I thought money didn’t matter.  I’m older now.  Consistent paychecks are good.

The Stories.

I love hearing tales of death and dying.  Call me morbid, but I just find so much wonder, sacredness, spirituality and beauty in death stories.  The stories are my ballast.

Empathy Vs. Sympathy

There’s a saying in the funeral business that goes something like this, “treat every family as though they were your own family.”  That’s a nice sentiment, but it is not entirely practical.

There are times (at funerals especially) when all we can give is sympathy. When it’s outside of our ability to fully empathize with a person’s situation. After all, the person laying in the casket isn’t my father. This isn’t my daughter. This isn’t my family.

And that’s our job. You pay us to be directors. And we couldn’t handle much more. We have to maintain a certain level of objectivity because there’s only so much pain, grief, and heartache we can share until we too start to crash … burn out.

But, there are other times when you can’t help but be drawn into the narrative so that you enter the narrative and become a character in the story. Not just a director, but an actual character in the drama of life and death.

Sometimes all I can do is sympathize.  Other times, I empathize.  Allowing myself the permission to do both has been key.

Self-Care

I’ve been close to being burnt out.  Landed in the hospital.  Reevaluated life.  I started to seeing a psychologist.  I started anti-depressants.  I started writing more.  I started going to the gym more.  Saying “no” more often. I started to realize that if I wanted to take care of others, I had to take care of myself.  Self-care is the unselfish act of selfishness and I know for a fact that I’d be out of this business if I didn’t practice it.