Are there any undertakers here?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Or people from families who operated a funeral home?

I’m just curious what would attract someone to that profession, apart from the obvious steady work, well-compensated. Since I lost my husband I absolutely understand the huge support that the funeral home provides, so that’s not what I’m wondering about.

I’m thinking of the nitty-gritty of mortuary science, embalming, etc., how one makes the decision to pursue this profession, what was/is the best/worst thing about it, how difficult is the licensing process. Did you join a family business or take a big detour from what your family expected? Stuff like that.

Do you see trends in the funeral business that you like or that bother you?

2

I’m not an undertaker, but I did watch all 6 seasons of 6 Feet Under twice.

My unsupported opinion about funeral homes is that they stay in the same family for generations. If you want to read more about the whole industry, you might pick up Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death. It’s informative, interesting, and in many places darkly hilarious. It’s written from a very negative viewpoint of the industry but she doesn’t make it hard to see the other side.

I’m so sorry about the loss of your husband.

3

IIRC, Guinastasia’s family run a funeral home, so she might have some info for you.

4

No, you ARE an undertaker. Didn’t you see the fine print where it says you’re licensed now? In fact, you might have two licenses, since you watched it twice.

No, I just want to hear from a Doper.

Thank you. :slight_smile:

5

I was recently at one, for the funeral of a relative.

It’s a large operation, now in the 5th generation of their family. Still family owned & operated. Locations in several communities in the area. Many of the family members go into the family business. But not all of them. (Some have become doctors & surgeons – they joke that their mistakes provide business for the rest of the family.)

Their operation is big enough that family members can choose the part of the business that fits their personality. Besides those downstairs doing the actual embalming & preparing of the body, there are the ‘front of house’ people who deal with the public at the reviewal & funeral, the ‘sales’ people who work fith the family in selecting caskets/urns, etc., and the office staff, bookkeeping, accounting, secretarial, etc. So really a wide variety of ‘jobs’ within the family business.

6

I grew up with, and am still friends with, someone like that but on a smaller scale. He’s 4th generation and 2 locations. Another family has the Big Industrial Funeral Chain around here; they go back to the 1850s. Much of what the above poster said applies to my friend as well. Even those “outside the business” play a part here and there. A cousin who is a CPA keeps their books (although he has his own practice/business) and a lot of other relatives are called on part time as drivers, greeters or whatever else is needed.

One trend (I guess you would call it) that he sort of bitches about is the super-elaborate headstones and the money some people put into them. And we aren’t talking wealthy people - some are surviving as families on $20k a year and putting $10k into a stone. One a client he got lately has all the grandchildrens pictures etched into it like one of those “Pappap’s Crew” t-shirts. Lots of elaborate etchings and carvings of cars and motorcycles too. Something in all that bothers him the way tattoos bother some people.

7

I have a friend who is a hospital liaison to the funeral homes, and we’ve had this conversation before, because she knows all the funeral home people quite well. She always says not to pick a funeral home without consulting her. I say that I’d pick the one in town that works with the synagogue chevra kaddisha, and as it happens, the one that allows members of the shul to come in and prepare a body (something which must be done by other Jews) for burial, and orders the kosher coffin for us, is one she says is especially ethical, and recommends to people who ask her for a recommendation. They don’t try to push the most expensive caskets on people, don’t insist on having the funeral in-house, to make it more expensive, but are happy to accommodate church funerals, cremations, services from the home, and let people know it.

It’s her opinion that the people at this funeral home really want to “Help people through a bad time,” and not “Squeeze money out of people when they are vulnerable.”

She has a good opinion of embalmers. She says it’s something that takes time and practice to get right, and that people who get comfort from having a viewing, or want to fly the body out-of-state, are being well-served by good embalmers, who are usually the least weird of the people in the funeral home. They usually fall into it not because they are eager to do it, but because somebody has to, and they understand that, so they’re usually people with a sense of duty. She says the creepiest people there are usually the salespeople in the less nice funeral homes who are trying to pad the bill by convincing people that it shows love for the dead person to buy the flashiest coffin, and the biggest funeral package.

Fact is, most churches have a drape for caskets, so no one will see how expensive (or not) a coffin was, and Jewish caskets are not allowed to have adornments, so people who don’t use the funeral home for the service are more likely to spend less on the coffin. Likewise, people who don’t have a viewing buy cheaper caskets, don’t use the funeral home for the viewing, don’t embalm, etc., so the sleazy ones try to talk people into a viewing when they hadn’t intended to have one, and it isn’t something their family normally does.

Yes, funeral homes do tend to be family businesses. Someone may have opened one in a small town once, because there was a need, and the person saw an opportunity, and it’s been the family business ever since.

If your kid came home and announced he wanted to go to mortuary sciences school (where he’d learn embalming, among other things), a lot of parents would balk, but if your family already owns a funeral home, they are more than happy to pay for your schooling. That’s one way it stays in the family.

That’s all I got. If you have more specific questions, I can ask my friend.

BTW: through her job, she met, and ended up dating, the guy in the police department who trains the cadaver dogs, and she has great stories from him.

8

Not an undertaker, but my intended was a coroner before his own untimely death. All jokes about “they don’t lie to you and they don’t complain” aside, he basically wanted to help people who couldn’t speak for themselves.

I think the same desire and ability to help people cope with the end of the life of a loved one’s must be there in undertakers.

Responding to RivkahChaya; I apologize if this is a hijack:

I agree.

My grandmother had always told us not to waste money on an expensive coffin and to “bury me in a Wheeling can!” (garbage cans made in her home state of WV).

So when she died, my dad and I horrified the sales guy who was trying to sell us a flashy coffin by saying, “Nope, doesn’t look like a trash can.”

Yup, true. I’d think it was really interesting, but I’m weird that way. Same grandmother above was a beautician and often did hair and makeup for people who’d died in her small town in WV.

I can imagine.

9

My first job in college was in a funeral home. (I got it at the student employment office on the Berkeley campus.) It was in nearby Oakland, down the street from Mounatin View Cemetary. I have to say: the OP’s question was running through my mind the whole time I worked there, so I have some thoughts on it.

I would say–at this place, at least–it was more than just a family business. The actual funeral home is no longer there–they were bought by another funeral home nearby–so I guess I can talk about it frankly without upsetting anyone.

I was working there when they sold it, and that ended my job. The member of the family who was (supposed to be) overseeing it (and who has since passed away), didn’t really seem to be that interested in the actual business of “undertaking.” What I gathered over time was that, instead, this funeral home was, for her, more a connection and gateway into the society of nearyby Piedmont, a rich municipality completely surrounded by the city of Oakland, and essentially a bastion of old, white money. Our funeral home mostly served people from Piedmont, and this gave that family member a certain status.

When they shut down the physical site, this family member decided to throw a big party–in the mortuary. It was quite an affair, attended by a lot of the high society of Piedmont. They cleared out most of the salable items of the facility (pews in the chapel, the organ, office equipment, etc.), and had live music. The caterers actually set up in the morgue (the “embalming room”), which made perfect sense, because the place didn’t have a kitchen.

The building itself isn’t there anymore. And that makes sense, too, now that I think about it, because a funeral home isn’t really the kind of structure that can be used for much else. It’s not really a “home” in terms of it’s infrastructure, and it looks too weird to be remade into an office.

Our funeral home didn’t have its own embalmer. There were a couple of freelancers who did all of that. One of them was pretty strange, I must say. He took as many jobs as he could, and so he often was working in the night shift, when I was there, constantly carrying a large cup of coffee, as though he never slept. I often talked with him as he worked, so I learned a thing or two about embalming.

So it’s not like you even have to go to mortuary sciences school to have a funeral home. Most of what you do—apart from the embalming—is pretty basic coordination of sundried services, record keeping, and selling coffins (where the most profit comes from). Our onsite director was an ex-cop, I think. He didn’t have any special training or education. I often helped him carry in the heavier dead bodies (who’d died under the care of a physician, and didn’t have to go to a coroner). One I remember wasn’t even cold yet.

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(Fixed link):

11

There was a funeral home in Wellington NZ which was turned into a dessert restaurant. Perhaps its first name was Death by Chocolate (there was certainly one in Wellington a number of years ago) - the current restaurant is Strawberry Fare. We all know what it was, no big deal, the food was great (used to be anyhow, don’t know now).

12

In my parents’ town, the one there had been turned into a resale shop with a macabre flair. Now at Halloween, they also run a haunted house out of it. It’s been going strong for almost three years and no one seems to mind. It’s called Back to Life.

13

Castle Blood, a year-round haunt near here, is set up in and old funeral home; works well for them. A friend of a friend from college bought a closed one and converted it back into a regular house; 25 years now and still nothing creepy going on. Dang it.

14

Grumpy Bunny, you might particularly enjoy the book I recommended, but really for anyone who likes nonfiction and anyone with an interest in the funeral industry, Jessica Mitford’s THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH is considered one of the finest pieces of nonfiction ever written. Take a look–you won’t regret it. And talk about dry, dark humor. I rolled on the floor at times, reading it. Sories like yours about Wheeling Trashcans abound in this. (By the way, I’'m from there and know what your grandma was meaning.) /dialect off