People often look at a funeral director and wonder what in the world would possess someone to want to be surrounded by death every day. They assume that funeral directors are morbid, weird people and often avoid them once they find out what they do for a living. The only time the average person wants to be around a funeral director is if someone close to them dies.
Well, I thought I would give you a different perspective of who funeral directors are so that the next time you come across one you will give them a second chance. I worked as funeral director for 10 mostly wonderful years, it was one of the happiest times of my life. I trained in Florida and worked there for a while before moving to Winnipeg and working for a while as a funeral director in Manitoba.
One of my favourite memories of being a funeral director was not long after I had graduated from college and was working for a corporate funeral home. I had met a family who had lost someone very dear to them. The lady was a wife, mother, and friend who had lost her life at a reasonably young age. When I met with the family, I asked them to tell a little about her and what was important to her. While we were planning her funeral her husband had mentioned that she was always so proud of how she looked, especially her nails. He said she always had beautifully manicured nails, but that at the end of her life her nails were broken and unkept.
While I was preparing her for her viewing, I remembered her husband’s words and went to the local store and bought some false nails. I came back to the funeral home and after I had dressed her and done her makeup, I applied the false nails and painted them a soft color to match her outfit. Unsure as to how the family would react, I nervously placed her in her casket and waited for the evening of her visitation. The family are always the first to have a private time with their loved one just to make sure everything is ok. When her husband and children walked up to the casket the first thing her husband said was oh my god look at her nails, they look so beautiful and started to cry. It was at that moment that I knew I was where I was supposed to be.
Another memory that comes to mind is when I met another family, but this time it was the husband who had died. During the arrangement conference with the family planning the funeral the wife had mentioned that she would not be able to sit for a long period of time in the hard chairs at the graveside and she wasn’t sure how she would get through. During the viewing at the funeral home, we had put a wingback chair close to the head of the casket so that she could sit close to her husband and greet friends and family paying their respects. As we prepared the next morning for the church, I asked one of my attendants to take the wingback chair that the wife had been sitting in the night before out to the cemetery so that she had something comfortable to sit in at graveside. They looked at me little funny but did as I asked. After the church service we made out way out to the cemetery and the family followed the casket to the graveside and then the wife saw the chair. After the service she came to me and told me how very grateful she was that we had gone to the trouble of making sure she was comfortable for the final goodbye to her husband. It was a story that followed me through my time at that funeral home and was used as an example of how the smallest things can make a difference with a family’s experience. funeral directors, like death doulas, only get one chance to do a good job, there unfortunately are no do-overs.
My point to both these stories is that during my career I met some very thoughtful and caring funeral directors who were not weird or morbid, they were happy, compassionate people who had found a career where they could make a difference in someone’s life.
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