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The Prep Room – Day 1

April 12, 2010 in Funeral by admin | 1 comment

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.

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A Day of Removals and Transfers

March 20, 2010 in Funeral by admin | 2 comments

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.

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My First Real Arrangement

March 8, 2010 in Funeral, Uncategorized by admin | No comments

I sat in on my first arrangement with a funeral director.  The last one was an Imminent but this one was for a man who had just passed away after a short battle with cancer and his two daughters were making the arrangements.  The funeral director, Cameron, started off by offering his condolences and I knew by their responses this probably wasn’t going to be a typical arrangement.  One lady just starred, the other one said “K” and shook her head, as if she was annoyed.  As the funeral director went through all the steps of asking questions and getting, well, some of the information he needed, I learned a ton about the first steps in organizing a funeral and a lot of the options we offer. Unfortunately, they didn’t bring a lot of information that was originally requested when they first called (Dad’s sin card, copy of the will etc.) and they were very indecisive on what they wanted.  Also they wanted the funeral in two days so even though I wasn’t the funeral director I started thinking “Is Cameron stressed? How’s he going to pull all the information he needs from these women in less than two days?” At the end of the meeting, he made a list for them of all the stuff they needed to email him.  He told me that it’s not that common to have such a difficult family but reminded me, as I felt I already knew, that it’s not him, or us that they are frustrated or angry with but it’s the way they are coping with the death of their father.  A few hours later they called with only one minor decision made. Somehow it came together in time for the funeral but there was still information we needed for death certificates etc. At the end of the funeral, I was there when Cameron reminded them and one lady raised her voice and asked why he didn’t tell them that before the funeral. He said quite nicely that he had and it was on the list he gave them and went over, she shut up but I was in disbelief.  Are these the types of people I have to look forward to? At least they did thank him before they left and said the funeral went really well.

Random learning’s from the last couple weeks:

  • Identifying- Although there are plenty of steps to help ensure the body is in fact the correct person prior to it arriving at our home, there is one additional step we take with the family. When arranging with the family we give them a choice 1) They can give us a photo where we can do a match with the deceased or 2) They can do a an ID View. If they choose an ID view the body is not embalmed, (if it is the wrong body there could be legal action if an embalming took place without the right families authority), the body is washed and it can be dressed in their clothes if the family wishes. Personally, I think it’s strange that some people would want them naked or with just a white sheet around them but sometimes people are thinking differently when their loved ones die.  Anyway, we place them in our comfortable viewing room and the family can identify. Sometimes the family chooses to do this to also say their goodbyes, usually in replacement of a viewing, but they are limited in the number of people they can bring to do this “ID”. Whereas, viewing although they can be private, are usually open to all the family and friends.  There have been stories, from recent years, where a viewing took place and it was the wrong person who was prepared – yikes! We would rather take an extra step and avoid that from ever happening.  
  • In The Tour, I discussed a prep room before the actual prep/embalming room and it’s where rituals take place.  We call it though the wash/dress room. When we just have to wash and dress a body that’s where we take them, no actual chemicals or tools are in this room. 
  • Cremated remains often range in grey shades. The color depends on the material of the casket that was chosen for the body to be burned in and the volume of the casket compared to the volume of the body. The more casket and less body there is, the darker they tend to be.
  • We remove pacemakers but nothing else.  We ask the family to list any other artificial parts but artificial hips, knees, you name it are kept in as well as any implants – they just melt away.  Any remaining artificial parts are kept and every so many years a mass burial is done.

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FG Answers: The Interview Questions

January 24, 2010 in Funeral by thefuneralgirl | No comments

So some people have asked me why the interviews took so long and what kinds of questions were asked.  First I was briefly interviewed by two individuals then had interviews with them both.  I was asked why I wanted to get into this career (See ABOUT) and then about my expectations. Next, they wanted to know all about me.  I told them where I lived, went to school, and they pressed on for more info…what do your parents do, what are they like, do you have any siblings, what are they like, what does your husband do, what does he think of you in this profession? etc.  They said it was important for them to get to know me as much as possible to get to know what kind of person I am. Then the formal interview questions came: Tell us about a time you were under a lot of pressure, what type of work environment to do you prefer to work in, tell about a time someone confided in you, what would you say to a family that looked at the cost of a funeral and said “that’s just too expensive!”, did you handle any adverse situations in your last job, have you ever faced an ethical dilemma, when did you exceed expectations? The list went on and on, and they even asked some of the same questions more than once, but they wanted me to give them another example. My favourite question had to be from John, “Let’s say there was a employee…let’s say a female, who was very opinionated, thought she knew the answer to everything, thought her way was the only and best way, and always needed to be the center of attention…how would you handle her?”  I laughed and at this point we were quite comfortable in the interview and I said “John, is there somebody, let’s say a female, that you want to give me the head’s up about?” “You’re perceptive!” he says. I have to say, I even surprised myself at how well I did and they said they saw me in management in 5 years.  I felt terrific but as I drove home after the first interview I couldn’t help but think about the one question specific to this profession that shouldn’t have caught me off guard but did, “Tell us about the most difficult death you’ve had to deal with.” It’s a question we rarely ask one another so it was surprising how awkward it was to give a response but as far as answers go, who’s to judge?

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