“Isn’t it depressing being around grieving people all the time?” I get asked this question constantly whether I am telling somebody what I do for a living, have a new follower on Twitter, or even a curious family at the funeral home, and I completely understand why you would. You would assume everyone that comes in would be upset, crying, etc. which is usually the case, but often people are angry – angry the person died and left them, angry they are in charge of taking care of the planning and estate, angry they have to pay for the costs…angry for a number of reasons and unfortunately they usually take it out on the funeral director. They may not even realize how they are dealing with the loss; emotions run extremely high and some people deal with grief differently than others. It also comes with a lot of stress, anxiety and irritability. You also have people that don’t show much emotion, mostly because they haven’t come to terms with the death and sometimes this comes with indecisiveness and procrastination which can be very frustrating. No matter what kind of emotions you are dealing with, it does take a certain type of individual to handle the bereaved. For the most part we can set our personal emotions aside. There’s something in the back of our heads that say “Thank goodness I’m not in these peoples shoes… it’s not me going through this.” You can never start to think about ‘what if this was your child, your mother, your father, your husband, your wife, etc.’ because emotions will hit you like a ton of bricks and you won’t be able to do the job. Sure, we are human and sometimes it’s hard to hold it together, and I’ve seen the funeral directors shed a few tears for someone, especially if we can relate their loss to one of our own. But that’s a good thing, we haven’t become numb! And when someone is angry and taking it out on us, sure, we can slip and take it personally, but, to that one difficult person or family we have ten families that are so grateful that we are helping them through what is likely the most difficult time in their entire life. When we help with all their needs or put together a personalized funeral that exceeds their expectations, the rewarding feeling and is so worth the time spent (and perhaps the few tears we spilled in the background). It’s what makes us walk through the front doors of our funeral home every day.
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Tags: bereaved, crematorium, depressing, emotions, funeral director, funeral director emotions, funeral girl, funeral job, funeral planning, funeral profession, funeral service, grieving, interview, mortician, mourning, sad, the funeral girl, undertaker, upset
Caution: Contains graphic info and infant death.
I enter the prep room and see Lynn is leaning over a baby. I go stand next to her and look down. She is the most beautiful baby girl and immediately my heart sank for the parents of this little angel. All I could do was stare; she looked like a beautiful, healthy, peaceful, sleeping baby. The baby, who was a stillborn, was being prepared for the parents to view later that day. We cleaned the nose, set the eyelashes and took few other steps which I am going to withhold due to the graphic nature. A baby’s skin is very sensitive, as they are made up mostly of water, so the baby was washed carefully with sanitizing fluid and then we dressed her in a sleeper. We placed her in a small basket, and the embalmer, apprentice and I all swooned over her cuteness.
All the time I hear of the all the babies that come to our home and now I think of that little cupcake. It’s so unfair that a mother carries this life for 9 months, the parents plan and prepare and create a room for this life, they have a celebration, families are excited for the new addition, and at the end of it all they don’t get the chance to show off their little miracle and raise their child. I can’t even imagine the grieving one would go through – I would never wish this loss upon anyone.
After the baby I helped to prepare an elderly woman with Lynn. The woman’s face was heavily covered in face cream, which is often applied right after death to help preserve the skin. I wiped it off with a cotton cloth and disposed of it in one of our biohazard containers. (The hazardous waste company comes once a week and picks up multiple bins.) The eyes still had some cream in the corners but I was getting squeamish around them. Lynn tells me that the eyes need to be opened, and then proceeded to open and clean them – it completed grossed me out! Then she tells me it’s time to set the eyes. Suddenly I was nervous. She got out two plastic eye caps which were beige in color, rounded to the curve of the eye and had pin pricks in it where the plastic was pricked upwards. I started feeling faint so I told her to go ahead without me and describe what she was doing as I went and cleaned up a few things. “I’m dunking the top of the eye cap in the “stay-put” cream. Now I’m using a small hook to pull up the eyelid so I can get the eye cap underneath…I’ve now closed the eyelid overtop of the cap. With the prickles on the eye cap and the cream, the underside of eyelid will catch to the eye cap and the eye won’t open.” She proceeded to do the other one and then I came back to the table as she was arranging the eyelashes and wiping off leftover stay-put cream. Next she told me to grab the small metal rod and cotton pad. I wrapped the cotton pad over the tip and then as she instructed, cleaned out the nostrils. I had a moment where I thought, “I’m picking a dead persons nose… how the hell did I get here?” Next, I was told I had to clean out the mouth. Lynn and the embalmer both started to discuss their absolute disgust with the mouth cleaning and how each of them up-chucked the first few times they had to do it. I figured it couldn’t make me as squeamish as the eyes did and I was right, it didn’t but yes, it was nasty. I took a pair of tongs with a huge wad of cotton and wiped out the inside. The inside of the mouth starts to get soft and break down and often there’s fluid and whatnot left in the mouth. Out came some skin, mouth gunk and well…I didn’t really dissect it too much. Next we had to set the mouth. Lynn got out two little metals screw that had a long piece of wire hanging off each one, then a small metal piercing gun. She inserted the screw into the gun and pressed it firmly to the top gum and explained “the gums soften rapidly after death; it may take more than one time for the gums to implant the screw”. After a few shots she was able to implant the top screw and just one shot to implant the bottom screw to the gums on the bottom. This lady wore dentures so the dentures were cleaned and inserted and then she twisted the metal wires that were sticking out until the teeth were clenched together. She referenced the picture of the woman that was hanging on the cabinets above the table, “we need to check her jaw line and make sure we’re not too clenched or have an over/under bite, it needs to looks natural”. The setting was complete so we went on to the washing stage. Unfortunately, for us, she had pooped at some point so we lifted one leg at a time as we hosed her backside with water and wiped her down. Even more unfortunately, for us, she kept leaking feces. Lynn proceeded to grab the large metal rod and multiple sheets of cotton pads and then I started to feel faint again. As I quickly suspected she would, she wrapped cotton pad after cotton pad around the metal rod and stuffed them up her behind. My legs were so tightly crossed I started seeing black spots so I left the room. She explained afterward that some people just leak, sometimes women leak from the vagina as well, but all these areas need to be packed. If a penis is leaking, it must be tied off with a string. I said “what about butt plugs?” she said they use them all the time, for anal and vaginal but sometimes if the hole is stretch too much they will not work. She explained that the number one priority for embalmers is sanitization and anything leaking is not considering sanitary. Next, we put a large flat square cotton pad around her sort of like a diaper (just in case of anymore leaking we don’t want it to go through the clothes) and we dress her. Meanwhile, the apprentice, asks me to help her remove another lady from a cremation box to the prep table. As I open the lid this god awful smell comes from the box and the apprentice makes this sour face “oh, this one has gas”. “Oh lovely” I respond sarcastically, while I’m actually yelling in my head “Gross! Ew! I’m breathing in this dead lady’s fart!” I head back to the table to find Lynn getting out the makeup to cosmetize, and I chuckled out loud. “What?” asks Lynn. “Well, I was just thinking that these women would probably be mortified if they knew they pooped them self and was farting.” “Ha! Yep…” says Lynn, “…I don’t think anyone really thinks about that when they think about death.” We went on to choosing more makeup that would suit the woman and based on what she was wearing in her photo. There’s a combination of special embalmers makeup such as cover-up/foundation, as well as normal foundations and lipstick by Revlon, CoverGirl etc. Next thing you know, I’m called for a meeting with the funeral directors. I was actually really looking forward to the hair and makeup part but that’ll come again.
My morning in the prep room came to an end and after the impromptu funeral directors meeting I went back to the office to reflect on the experience. I firmly believe it has to be my determination to succeed in this field and my passion for this business that allowed me to get through those first couple days in the prep room. I realize there’ll be far more days like these and although some situations may make me squirm, at least for the first while, I have to focus on the fact that these deceased have no one else to take care of them and it’s a privilege to be trusted in their care.
Tags: a day in the life, baby, baby death, cremation, crematorium, dressing, embalmer, embalming, Funeral, funeral director, funeral girl, funeral job, funeral profession, funeral service, infant death, makeup on dead, mortician, mortician cosmetics, prep room, stillborn baby, the funeral girl, viewing
Caution: Contains some graphic info.
I spent a couple of mornings in the prep room and what I witnessed over those two days is too much for one post. As I write I’ll further be absorbing just what I was subjected to, which is never in my wildest dreams…or nightmares…what I ever believed I would see.
I met the prep room staff in the coffee room first thing in the morning and asked if there was something I could observe that day. As I think I mentioned in one of my last posts, it’s about taking some baby steps in the prep room to get me used to being around and handling the deceased to make sure this was a career I could deal with. The embalmer jokingly, or so I thought, said “yep you can observe the two decomposed bodies we had delivered this morning” and chuckled. I said sarcastically “oh perfect” not realizing she was completely serious…until I followed her into the prep room and was nearly knocked off my feet by the smell. She handed me a medical gown, medical cap, mask, two sets of rubber gloves (to double up on my hands,) a paper and a pen. I dressed up and took a look at the sheet of paper, it was to take down information about the deceased -checklists for what appeared (or didn’t appear) i.e. tattoos, teeth, clothing, decomposer…mold, signs of dehydration etc. The embalmer, Lynn, opened the first body bag and the smell was even more sickening then what was in the air. I could see the side of the body and it was covered in green fuzzy mold, exactly what you would see growing on really old food. The smell, as Lynn pointed out, did have a moldy scent to it, it was horrible to say the least. I didn’t want to get too close, so Lynn read out to me what I needed to mark down on the sheet. Tattoos, 4 of them but unrecognizable, autopsy had been performed, mold all over, eyes now non-existent, no teeth but in the body bag came a pair of dentures and a shirt, blanket, and pair of jeans. The body was arranged to be cremated so we transferred it to a box, marked the decedents name on it, and put it in the cooler until it would be time to have it transferred to the crematorium.
The second decomposed body was one that had been in a fire. The sight is so horrific yet at the same time it doesn’t even look like a human being anymore so somehow my brain put some emotion aside, it’s like it wasn’t real. There was no sign of skin, just a layer of what looked like thick black charcoal. I believe it was CSI or a similar show that I was once watching that had a burn victim, and now that I think about it, they were pretty bang-on. What really grossed me out was the fact it had been autopsied. The thick string that held the autopsy openings together were pulling apart and the inside was a gut soup that was leaking out. There wasn’t much to write on the information sheet – “autopsy performed”, and “piece of a shirt in the body bag.” Once again, the body was transferred to a cremation box and put in the cooler. “Well” says Lynn, “you okay?” I had to take a second and take in what I just saw, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t passed out or barfed but like I said, it was hard to think of them of once people, they were so far from looking human anymore. “It’s hard to focus with such an awful smell” I said and Lynn surprised me with a “Smell? That was nothing; I was actually surprised at how little they did smell!” I wish I could describe what the smell is like because so many people are curious but I honestly can’t, not yet.
The next task was to dress two decedents. They were washed and ready for dressing. Both were women and they were elderly. I looked for the clothes the family had brought for them in our closet. The bags were tagged with our inventory forms. I checked the clothes and accessories in the bags to the inventory forms to make sure it was all accounted for. Sometimes families ask “do we need socks and underwear too?” and we tell them that it’s great to provide anything the person would have worn normally. The embalming apprentice helped me with the first dressing and gave me tips along the way. He told me how to lift the legs, arms, what the best ways to get different kinds of shirts on, etc. Dressing the dead is not easy. They are cold, heavy and sometimes hard to bend. To be perfectly honest, I found fitting the bras the most difficult. Before you put it on, you hook it on the loosest loops then put it over the head, and then you put the arms through. Once the arms are through the arms holes, the band and cups are around the armpits to you have to try and yank it down below the breasts. The other problem though is that the breasts are settled to the sides of the body and they don’t fill the cups no matter how hard you try. Also, shoes can be tricky – the feet swell and they can be hard to fit.
After the dressings I was called from upstairs to help a funeral director with a service and I was happy to call that the end of my day in the prep room. I was cold and desperately felt like taking a shower.
That afternoon I reflected on my first surreal time in the prep room, I remembered how I previously feared that it could go very badly, and I felt proud that I got through it. Then I also remembered I had the next morning to experience it all over again, what surprises would tomorrow bring? I don’t think there’s any real way to prepare.
Tags: a day in the life, crematorium, dead, dead smell, death, decomposed, dressing, embalmer, Funeral, funeral director, funeral girl, funeral job, funeral profession, interview, mortician, the funeral girl, undertaker
I’ve been asked what happens if you can’t get the jewellery off the body and whether jewellery can be left on or not when it comes time to burial, cremation, etc .
It’s our policy that when we are picking up the body at the location to bring it back to our home, we check for jewellery. If there happens to be jewellery on the person we do try our best to get it off and then give it to the nurse, care home person, whomever, to make note it was removed and return it to the family. On the rare occasion where the jewellery doesn’t want to come off, we inform the appropriate person and make a note of it ourselves. Most of the time, it’s the rings that don’t want to come off swollen fingers. Sometimes the family is aware it’s been left on too; often the family has been with the person in their final days and does remove the jewellery or attempts to take it off. When we meet with the family back at the funeral home to make arrangements, we bring up specifically what was left on the body and we ask if they would like it removed. If so, with rings it’s a matter of some cold cream and a string. The cold cream is slippery and then you shimmy the ring off with the string. Worst case scenario, we have the tools to cut any jewellery off as well, but it’s all about communicating to the family first that it may be the only way.
A family can decide if they would like any jewellery to remain on the person when they are buried or cremated, it’s their decision. Sometimes they have jewellery kept on just for the viewing/visitation. It’s my understanding so far with cremation though, that some metals will not break down, the jewellery would be ruined though and possibly removed before the remains are grinded down – and they will not be returned. Another option is to place the jewellery in the cremated remains when transferred to the urn.
Tags: burial, cemetery, crematorium, embalmer, funeral director, funeral girl, funeral professional, funeral service interview, interview, jewellery on deceased, the funeral girl
Management figured they better get me more involved with the deceased to make sure I could handle things before it’s time to sign me up for the apprenticeship. Determining whether I can deal with the emotional and physical aspect that comes with being around the deceased will let us know for sure if I’m cut out for this profession. Anyway so we’re taking baby steps and I was asked to follow the caretaker around for a day to do some removals and transfers.
Removal refers to removing the deceased’s body from either the hospital whether that was the place of death or another place of death to our funeral home. Transfer has a broader definition. Some of our sister homes do not have a prep room or cremation. It can refer to bringing a prepared body for viewing to one of our sister homes or bringing it back to ours (usually to do the cremating since most of homes to do not crematoriums). Then transferring can also mean taking the cremated remains back to a home or even taking the deceased to the airport if they are going to another location. We have a care taker, Michael, we use to contact for all removals and transfers, we send him the appropriate paperwork (basic info…who, what, where) and then he prioritizes all the calls.
So we started off the day by heading to the local hospital to pick up a body from the morgue. We drove a van that has space for two gurneys in the back. When we arrived we pulled in front, reported to a small admin office, picked up the doctors paperwork and then headed in the van to the back of the hospital in a pick up/drop off zone. There are a few security guards there but they knew the care taker so no identification was asked for. We pulled one of the gurneys out of the back and headed to the morgue. It was just as you see it on tv, just a room with a wall of metal doors. Each door had a number and a small slot with ID tags. We showed the security guard the paperwork, then we looked in a file there that told us what spot body was in. We opened the door and slid the metal tray out, the body was in a white body bag. Mike explained that we have to open the bag, check the body for jewellery (the ears, wrists, fingers). This one was an older woman and there wasn’t really any smell. We didn’t find any jewellery on her but if we had we would give them to the admin office (the one we had checked in with and it would be there responsibility to take inventory and contact the family about the jewellery). When we open up the bag we also do a quick ID check, often they are still wearing the hospital bracelet or we do a quick comparison with the little information on Mike’s paperwork and the doctors. Then we tag them with our own bracelet and put it around the ankle. After that, we had to get the body on our gurney. Our gurneys have a fabric body bag that we place the entire body bag into, so we opened it up and there’s also a couple seatbelts to keep them strapped in. We pulled the gurney right up next to the tray used a pulley system to haul up the metal tray on an angle then just slid the body onto the gurney. There are no patients near the area so we didn’t have to watch out for anybody on our way out, we just wheeled it into the van and we were on our way back to the home.
The next trip was taking a body to the airport. The woman had lived here a number of years but the family wanted her buried in her hometown where most of the family still lives. The price on flying a body is based on the weight and dimension, since weight is such an issue, most of the time a family chooses not to fly it in a heavy casket, it’s done at the funeral home receiving them. So we simply put it on a wooden board with a special insulated cardboard top. There is some documentation that goes with it so we put it in an envelope and tape it on top. We dropped it off at a cargo area and that was it. Pretty simple. I wondered this, so I know some of you are…yes they fly on regular passenger planes, you’re probably flying with dead folks all the time and you had no idea!
The next trip was doing a transfer of a prepared body from our funeral home to another sister home because there was a viewing that afternoon. While we were there we picked up a person who had just been viewed that morning who had to be brought back to our crematorium, so we basically did a switch.
The final trip of the day was picking up a man from a care home. He was 90-something years old and his body had shut down, the nurses went to wake him in the morning and he had passed away through the night. Going to the care home was awkward. We reported to the front desk and it’s in a big open area where the residents dine and watch tv. They were all around us and I think they knew who we were…what our purpose was. I started reading their faces, I felt like they were judging me, I didn’t feel welcome. We went into the man’s room, thank goodness it didn’t smell. His mouth was wide open and his eyes were open. I thought the open eye thing would really bother me when I would see it but it was fine actually, they were still glossy and not frightened. There were a couple of rings and a watch left on him so it took a couple minutes to get them off, something the fingers swell up a bit. I started thinking about my grandmother and how her room was very similar when she was in a home and started to wonder if she looked like that when she died. Then I snapped to it…what was I thinking? I was mad at myself, you can’t go to that place in your head. When we were finished belting him on the gurney we told the nurse we would be making our way out. She cleared the hallway of any people (without letting them know what was going on although I’m sure most knew) and then she opened the elevator so we could get out as quickly as possible.
Mike and I headed back to the funeral home and it was nearing the end of the day. We figured since I was unfazed by the day’s events that we would take it one step further. The embalmer, Lynn, had just finished embalming so Lynn and Mike suggested I go in the prep/embalming room and have a look. There were two decedents completely uncovered on metal trays. Lynn was washing one down with some disinfectant soap and a cloth. She was dressed in scrubs from head to toe. There was just some blood on the underside and either than that I stood far enough back that I couldn’t really see the embalming openings. Although I was surprisingly fine with what most would normally consider a disturbing sight, I figured this was enough for one day.
Tags: a day in the life, body bag, crematorium, dead, dead body, death, decedent, embalmer, embalming, funeral job, funeral professional, hospital morgue, morgue, remove body, the funeral girl, transfer
More registering deaths and fraud prevention this week but there’s so much more paperwork I can’t do until I’m a practicing funeral director. The only other thing I’ve also learned to do is create burial or cremation permits. When performing a cremation or a burial in the cemetery, a permit has to be on hand.
I did finally see the prep room. I went with a funeral director too fetch Mr. Ferguson from there and wheel him up to our viewing/visitation room. I expected it to look like the ones I saw on TV…dark but a lot of white and stainless steel, bare counters… but it was much worse that I imagined. I didn’t have a good look around but it was dark, very cold, and containers and tubes were laying everywhere. To top off the experience, a body covered in a white sheet had some yellow and bloody fluid soaking through it, “oh looks like someone is leaking” say the funeral director.
Mr. Ferguson’s funeral went well. He was a man in his early 80’s and his body had just shut down. His family chose to have a viewing, so those who wanted to could see him and say their goodbyes and then have a service in the chapel. By the way, I did find out the large room where most services are held with the pews is in fact called the chapel. The family was pleased with the service. We had another funeral that same day, a young man with a young family. It was sad, but you just have to be grateful you aren’t in that families place, you can’t let yourself think “what if this was my husband, my brother, my dad” or you will break down. His family didn’t have a viewing, but the family requested he be cremated in time for the funeral so his ashes sat in front of the chapel as the service was held. Then afterwards everyone went to the reception room where there was catering and they all stayed for a few hours.
This was the first day a funeral director let me have a big hand in the services. Before a service we review the contract to see what type of service the requested (i.e. viewing/ service, traditional (service, then graveside etc.), service and reception) and get the box of items. (As a funeral is being planned we create a box labelled with the deceased last name and throw in items needed for the funeral as we go along i.e. service cards, signs, guest book etc.) Before anyone arrives, we turn on the microphones (if they are having a service in the large chapel room), we turn on the tv’s (if they are to show a video/slideshow), put the signs out with the deceased name and indicated where to go in the home, and other small tasks. Usually, the funeral director calls our Care Centre and arrange for an Attendant to come in and assist with these preparations. We gather the family when they arrive, or sometimes they request a family room to all wait together in until the service begins. Sometimes they bring items like pictures or the deceased favourite items and we set those out, or they bring music they want played during the funeral or their own dvd. Then the funeral director and clergy (if requested) will discuss the order of events. When family and guests arrived, I assisted by handing out the small service cards, hymn books, directing people and asking them to sign guest book. Also, during the second funeral I had to follow along with the funeral and play and stop music at the appropriate times.
I had to laugh the other day. We have a lot of funerals for old people and that means they usually have a lot of old friends and family and most of them are now familiar with our funeral home. One little old lady “Oh it isn’t in the chapel today?” Another one, “Is the reception in the downstairs tearoom, or that lovely room down the hall?”
Random Learning’s this week:
- Some people call wanting their loved one to be immediately transferred from the hospital but it takes 24 hours for them to be released.
- Walk slow, real slow around the funeral home. A fast pace makes people nervous and feel rushed…even if you aren’t rushed, you just have to slow the pace.
- Anything to do with choosing a resting place in the cemetery goes to cemetery staff, funeral directors do not deal with it, so a FSC (family service counsellor) from the cemetery staff will often join a funeral director when arranging with a family. Also if people are doing preplanning for their own funeral, it is done with a FSC. However, if it’s an imminent as discussed last week (where one is expected to die at any time so the informant or executor of their will), that family will meet with a funeral director.
- If someone has pre-planned and the executor doesn’t know, when we enter the contract online, we will see that they are registered. If it’s with a funeral home within our corporation, the planning can easily be transferred to our funeral home or a funeral home of their choice. Bigger problems arise though if it was down outside the country. Also, it’s hard to believe but sometimes people forgot they have already pre-planned their funeral and pre-plan again.
- Arranging the death of a stillborn baby is not cost to the family, the only thing I family has to pay for is a casket or urn if they choose to have one. Also depending on how long a baby dies after birth there is also considerable discounts for the family.
Tags: a day in the life, bloody, burial, chapel, crematorium, deat, embalming, executor, fraud, funeral chapel, funeral director, funeral director interview questions, funeral girl, funeral job, funeral preplanning, funeral profession, funeral reception, funeral service, permit, prep room, stillborn, the funeral girl, undertaker
Of course, that’s the way it goes – hire the new girl to assist the overwhelmed funeral directors and have the slowest week ever – even with a two funerals directors away. I learned some basic funeral office stuff like how to answer phones, which is different from your typical office; you need to know what to say if someone is balling their eyes out. I didn`t get any of those callers this week , although I did have one guy whose brother passed away who he was estranged from for the last 20 years and he was shopping around for the least expensive cremation service he could find. He was NOT happy that he was left in charge to take care of the arrangements and cost. He shouted the information to me and then when I passed him to a funeral director to speak to he yelled at her asking why he would have to give personal information to another person and demanded to know why we were so expensive…he ended up saying something nasty and hanging up on the funeral director. We had a few people come in to pick up remains, so I learned how to sign out the remains. I also did some paperwork including registering deaths (creating death certificates) and “fraud prevention” paperwork. Identity theft is common for those who have deceased so we offer optional fraud prevention coverage. This entails contacting all the necessary agencies (government agencies, credit card companies etc.) on behalf of the family to let them know the person has died.
I had a tour of the cemetery. There are areas outlined for certain religions, the Muslims purchased one area, Jewish another, Armenians another, etc. and there was several welfare areas, meaning those who were on welfare at time of death are buried in designated areas which are paid by for the government. We took a look at the private estates area. You could choose an area on the ground that has paver stones around it, or there were small gated areas that you could buy for just yourself, double plots, families up to 4 people, or with combinations of burials and cremated remains they can hold up to 20. The prices ranged from $75,000 to $110,000. Although they are beautiful, it’s too pricey for my liking (even with my 50% discount!) I’ll be happy to have my cremated remains in a public area or scattered somewhere. They also have a large natural, beautiful pond in the cemetery where ashes can be scattered. I also got to see the crematorium which is located within the cemetery. There was one large room with two cremation ovens; they are actually pretty new looking and sleek, they are like industrial stainless steel ovens with a bar on the door you pull up (there aren’t any windows on the doors though!) Also in the room were a couple of shelves for the bodies going in next. There were a couple of bodies waiting, one was in a plywood box and then there was one I didn’t even notice until my tour guide pointed it out, just a little baby, the box was hardly bigger then a shoebox, so sad. Only one person goes in an oven at a time. Then there was a refrigerated room, I believe we counted 19 boxes in there. Mostly made out of the basic plywood but there was one I hadn’t seen before, I can’t remember what they call it but it looks like a carpeted box with decorative handles around the side, I guess this would be considered the luxury burning box. I believe they said the typical person takes 2 to 2 ½ hours to break down. I saw what the remains look like once they are removed from the oven, there are some ashes but also big chunks of bone are left and nails and metal pieces from the box. They take a magnet and remove all metal remains then put the remains in a grinder to grind it down to ash. That was basically it for the crematorium beside an office and a bathroom. There are just two staff members at our location that take care of the cremations.
The most valuable information I took in this past week was when I got to sit in on one meeting with one of our funeral directors, it gave me a much better idea of the process. This particular meeting was for what we call an “Imminent” (planning for an imminent/expecting death). It was for a family whose father is in the hospital and he’s having good days and bad days, but he could pass at any moment and they are actually going on vacation. They wanted to take care of all the paperwork so if he passed while they were away, all the arrangements are already taken care of. The funeral director was caring but brought up questions in such a way that the conversation flowed but she could get through the massive amount of paperwork as they went. The family was able to answer every question but it would be difficult for some to think of the answers especially if they were in mourning. They were asked about the father`s parents (their full names, where they were born, the mother’s maiden name etc.) It turns out the wife had passed away 3 years earlier though so we pulled out the paperwork and discovered the father purchased a double urn at the time and requested that their ashes be co-mingled. Co-mingle means the ashes would be mixed together. She currently rests in a memorial wall, so we would take them out and mix them with the father’s and put them back in the niche.
The only other thing I could recall from this week which kind of surprised me was one family who came in that was arranging a funeral; they brought 12 people, including small children. Apparently this was the fourth time they had been in and even scheduled a dress rehearsal again for the day before the service. The funeral director assured me that this was not common. The kids were totally misbehaved, the parents let them run around the funeral home, but one family member got out his guitar and was playing songs, and they were all singing and laughing. A few staff joked that they must have a huge inheritance coming for them to all be so giddy…probably true. I think we had over 10 services throughout the week, some services with receptions, some just viewings (to view the prepared body) and some just burials (no service inside, just graveside). All went very smoothly and the families were pleased with the results which proved to be the result of good planning by the funeral directors.
Tags: a day in the life, body bag, burials, cemetery, cremation, crematorium, dead, directing, embalmer, embalming, estates, estranged, Funeral, funeral director, funeral girl, funeral job, funeral profession, funeral professional, funeral service, immenent death, imminent, inheritance, memorial, mortician, mourning, passed away, remains, service, undertaker, vacation, viewing, visitations
My tour guide was one of the managers, who I shall call Guido for the sake of this post, he greeted me as soon as I got in the door and we were on our way. We started by looking at the room where the services are held. There were about 15 lines of wooden benches/pews (are they still called pews if it’s not in a church?) on either side of the aisle and a couple of nice flat screen TV’s that hung at the front for videos or picture galleries. Next we went through the meeting rooms where the funeral directors sit down with the families, they had shelves and tables with some examples of keepsake memorabilia that families can purchase to commemorate their loved ones. Then there was the room with sample urns, and coffins. They only had a couple of full size coffins, all the rest were quarter coffins – just samples. Guido explained that you can buy packages, like the “full funeral service” package, one was labelled $9,945.00. Or, the other option is you buy a la carte, “Just like at McDonalds” Guido explained… “I don’t want a value meal, I just want some nuggets and a Coke”. He said it in a soft spoken almost serious tone, I guess he was used to that tone in this particular room but I had to laugh… “Yep, I get it Guido.”
He took me through a hall of waiting rooms, one for the clergy, a small reception room for the immediate family to gather prior to a service, and the funeral overflow room. Then we went to the reception room, it was one of the nicest I’d ever seen. There was a large, beautiful mahogany fireplace and mahogany accents throughout the room. There were a few wooden tables with seating for 4 along the back of the room, as well as oversized patterned arm chairs. In the centre of the room was a long table with pretty shiny silver antique platters. Two sets of French doors opened up to a large patio with lots of greenery. There was a kitchen off to the side, I asked who they contracted for catering and Guido said all of it’s done in-house.
Next we went to an area for the cemetery sales team, managers and admin staff. I hadn’t really thought of a cemetery sales team before but they do just that, find people interested in preplanning for their own funerals and buying plots. I learned that although the cemetery and funeral service staff team up, they are actually completely separate divisions.
Afterwards we headed down a hallway where the walls changed to white and the floor was no longer nice cushy carpet but white linoleum…and very clean, like a hospital, and I knew where we were heading.
The first door opened to a garage, inside was a limo, Guido mentioned they have two but one was out, and then there was a hurse and a van. They also have a couple of golf carts to get around the cemetery and to the crematorium down the way. The next door went to another garage room and I saw a couple of 6 foot boxes on trolleys. Guido said “Those are going to the embalming room today to be prepped then taken to the crematorium.” There was also a very, very large fridge. He asked if I wanted to see inside and I agreed. He opened the door and I saw 15 white body bags on metal sheets. The bags kind of formed around the bodies. It seemed unreal, something you would see on TV. My eyes went to one bag that was unzipped on top; I could see the top of a head and a mess of orangey-red tangled hair. That made it real. Guido closed the massive door and a smell wafted past my nose, definitely an unpleasant scent…one I wasn’t prepared to take in. I briefly had a moment where I thought to myself “What if I can’t handle the smells? The smell of death when the body isn’t in a fridge anymore and the chemicals…” *shudder*
“How bizarre” I mentioned to Guido, “hard to believe I’ll be lying in a fridge one day.” “Oh we don’t think about that here, we all seem to have this mentality that it’s never going to happened to us.” he says. “What? How can you not?” I was already thinking about it.
The embalming room was next but I couldn’t go in as an embalming was taking place. After my glimpse in the fridge I figured it might be a little too much for one day anyway. I was taken to one last room and it was somewhat like a prep room before the embalming room. Guido explained that some religions, such as Muslims and Sikh’s, often perform rituals to the bodies before it’s taken in for prep and this is where it would be done. It was a sterile room, with a large stainless steel sink and a curtain.
We made our way back to the nice carpeted area with warmly painted walls and we ended our tour with a view of the funeral directors office and a couple more managers’ offices.
It was a weird feeling the first time I went to the funeral home because nobody had died, I felt like I should be sad. After meeting several of the employees, most along this tour (about 20), I felt very comfortable – there’s a sense of family here. They aren’t what most would stereotype as funeral staff either, they aren’t morbid, they are happy, smiling, sincere, and have wonderful senses of humor. Another thing I have to mention is how young everyone looks, very young. Guido shared his age with me and he seriously looked 20 years younger, he mentioned a couple of other people that I had met that were just as old. I honestly believe it has to be the embalming fluids in the air – they are preserving everyone. Forget Botox, work for a funeral home. Hmmm, I should talk to their marketing team. Anyway, it was a great day. I am going to like it here.
Tags: a day in the life, bodies, body bag, cemetery, crematorium, diary, embalmer, embalming, Funeral, funeral director, funeral girl, funeral professional, funeral service, Guido. coffins, interview, mortician, the funeral girl, undertaker