Have you ever considered working in funeral service? Funeral service is something most people
typically do not aspire to as a career.
This was certainly the case with me (even though I had curiousities about the profession which I am sure we all do).
Trust me, had you asked me 8 years ago if I would consider a career in funeral service, I would have likely told you I could see myself being a prostitute before I would become a funeral director. It was 2007 and I was 43 years old when I enrolled in the Funeral
Director/Embalmer program through Mount Royal
University in Calgary.
This blog describes the journey leading up to that decision.
I had attended funerals since I was a child
and in retrospect, there was something about funeral service that I was curious
about but left it at that curiosity. I
remember the first funeral I attended for some distant relative; I must have
been about 7 or 8 years old. It was a
bizarre experience and although I had a million questions, my parents were not
the type to talk about taboo subjects like death and funerals. I remember firing off a few questions before
leaving for the funeral that day and hearing that I would not be allowed to
attend if I kept asking questions.
Hence, I shut up and observed. I
remember being frightened by the big black hearse out front of the church; the
casket, the flowers, people crying who I never saw cry before; and the fact there was a dead body in our midst.
A few funerals later, I still had many
questions but never had the nerve to ask; for whom does one ask a question
about funerals? I had no clue. It seemed to be a topic not to be discussed
and in those days, there was no internet to Google 'dead bodies' or 'caskets'
or 'embalming' so I left it alone for years, assuming that whatever goes on
behind the doors of a funeral home was secretive and only to be known by the
people who worked there.
It was 1992 when
my world was rocked by the sudden death of my Mom who was 48 at the time. She had apparently had a massive heart attack
in her sleep one night and that was the end.
I was numb, distraught and angry…every emotion possible swirled through
me as we prepared to plan her funeral and try to come to grips with her sudden
death. Amid all this emotion, I seemed
to have a sense of calm about me (the neurotic one of three boys) and took it
upon myself to assist my grieving dad in contacting the Medical Examiner,
contacting the funeral home, contacting clergy and beginning the task of
planning a funeral during what was the worst experience of my then young life
(I was 28). Remember, I had no
experience with this; I was a health care administrator! Some days later we entered the small town
funeral home that would be entrusted with her care and to this day (20 years
later) I remember walking into the office of the funeral director and having a
seat with my Dad and two brothers. He
made small conversation with us, all I could hear was an old radiator heater
hissing and clunking; otherwise the building seemed exceptionally quiet except for his
occasional business-like chatter. He
made some comment about his trip to Red Deer to
retrieve her body from the hospital and quipped "trying to get her body
out of that hospital was like trying to get gold out of Fort Knox!" I will never forget that. He then went on to show us caskets and we
chose one (even though we were cremating her) and planned to view her body that
Friday evening. He said to my Dad,
"Fred, you remember the colour on her face and chest, black like barbeque
briquettes? I can get rid of that when I
massage her skin when the fluid is being pumped into her". I thought I was going to faint. It went from bad to worse when discussing her
hair, the fact that we did not bring undergarments with us…"well, I
suppose I can go buy a bra" said the funeral director, "I'll just add
it to your invoice". I remember
seeing her body for the first time and pulling a chair close to her casket and
not leaving her side that evening. It
was surreal. I held her hand; I smelled
her hair and face and kissed her cheek. She smelled of vinegar. I
was not scared at all. I just wanted my
"Mommy" to warm up and wake up!
In the back of my mind, I could not help but feel that this awful experience
was made worse by this man who seemed to be talking to us like we were
redecorating our house rather than saying good bye to our Mom. The actual funeral service is a
blur to me and yet clarity strikes again for when we came out of the church and her casket was placed in
the hearse I remember seeing booster cables and the hood of the
hearse being opened. Apparently it had
stalled during the service and he needed a boost. She was cremated shortly after and her
cremated remains were kept at the funeral home until we buried her next to her
parents the following spring. I had
helped my Dad in getting the plots and the day before we buried her, I went out
to that cemetery in the small farming district where she grew up and started to
dig her grave, in the pouring rain surrounded by the huge pine trees that grow
there. I remember vividly how I was
shaking and crying and digging in the pouring rain; the pine trees seemed to
whisper in the wind. I was cold, scared
and sad. I covered the small hole with a
piece of plywood and the next day my Dad and the rest of the family joined me
and we buried her in a simple ceremony with just the small group of us. Oddly, it was me who lead us in the Lord's
Prayer; never to think I would be doing ceremonies for families some 25 years down
the road. That was the end of that
experience but the beginning of something stirring in me. Something deep inside told me I would be very
good to people if this is what I did for a career. Of course, with three small children, it
would have been financially impossible to do at that time, but it was something
that never left me.
Some years later, I was living in Vancouver and was the
Director of Human Resources for a private business club and I also had a small consulting
company where I assisted clients with human resources issues, customer service
and business improvement strategies.
Life seemed ok albeit I missed being closer to my kids. Unfortunately, I was working 7 days a week;
sometimes 14 hours a day. I had a few
health issues going on and eventually got to the point where I could no longer
work at that job. My diabetes was
completely out of control, I had
been diagnosed with osteoporosis, I was completely depressed and anxious…the
list is long. I left my job at the
private business club and had applied for long term disability and was approved
under that employer's plan.
Two months
following my departure from that organization, my step son was killed in a car
accident back in Alberta. My ex wife had called me at 1:30 one morning
and relayed the news to me and I was on the next flight back to Calgary. We met with the investigating police officer
who told us to contact the funeral home as they had picked up his body. We did so and learned he was being taken to Calgary. I wanted to see him but the receptionist did
not know the whereabouts of the funeral director who had his body. She gave us his cell number which we called
and he didn't answer. We called her back
but she had left for the day (this was at noon on a Friday) and had the phones forwarded to an
answering service that could not provide us with any information. I was stunned at the actions of
that small town funeral home and we decided to contact a funeral home in Calgary to assist
us and to find out if I could see him that day. The funeral director we were put in
contact with was an angel sent to us from God that day. He explained that unfortunately the Medical
Examiner's office was closed for the weekend by this time but that he would have the body
transferred to the funeral home on Monday morning and we could come in and see
him that day. In the meantime, we
started to plan his funeral with the assistance of a friend who was a funeral
director in our small town and she guided us through what needed to
happen. Mostly, we did everything
ourselves. Everything that a funeral
home could have helped us with such as creating our own service folders, a
video tribute, planning what would be said, who would say what, the catering etc. We contacted a clergy in our town and he agreed to officiate at the service. It was ironic that we had a religious ceremony for Caleb however we did not think there were other options. Unbenounced to us, the pastor made some decisions to remove certain music from the service that he did not feel was appropriate for the service. Really? It was our kid's service not the pastor's! I composed and read Caleb's eulogy that day; trying to express messages of hope to those in attendance. When I flew back
to Vancouver
after his funeral, I knew that I wanted to enrol in the program and become a
funeral director. I discussed it with my
disability manager and the counsellor I was seeing at the time and we all
agreed this would be a good rehabilitative move on to new employment. I enrolled in the program and started the
course in January of 2007, taking most of it through correspondence and on line
studies as I was still living in Vancouver.
The next two years were filled with a lot of
study but it was a program I was fascinated with and I thoroughly enjoyed. And finally, some of these questions I had
all these years were being answered.
