Respirator recommendations??

-OSHA compliant for autopsied bodies

-Prolonged formaldehyde exposure

-Make & model, please!

I’ve finally landed my dream job. I’m a funeral attendant and when I save up the money I’ll be going to mortuary school for funeral directing.

My funeral home has an email list with obituary notices so that way and I signed up so I’m better prepared for work, I tend to watch the memorial videos of our clients so I can get a better feel for who they were and learn what family members were who so I can personalize my greetings to them.

This morning, I got two obituary notices - both for children 14 months and under.

I have 4 kids and I knew that my day would come where I would work a service for a child; but I have a service for an 8 month old tomorrow and on Tuesday for the 14 month old.

Is there any way to mentally prepare myself for a child’s service? All services are heart breaking, but so far I’ve only had men who lived full lives.

Our company is privately owned so the attendants do everything outside of embalming and directing/making arrangements. So I have to physically and mentally prepare myself for what I’m going to see when I get to work. The one tomorrow was a car crash victim and my boss said that they’re in pretty rough shape.

Any advice? Will a service for a child ever get easier to do?

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Hey, everyone! I'm a funeral director, embalmer, and comedy writer, and I've started a funeral humor newsletter on Substack called Mortified. If anyone is interested in reading stories from a guy who grew up in a funeral family and has worked in the business his entire adult life I'd love for you to check it out and maybe even subscribe. http://mortified.substack.com

How clean (free of other 'debris') are bodies kept separate (including pets) during the cremation process?

Hi all,

I am a funeral home consultant conducting some research on the biggest pains involved for high volume family-run funeral homes with multiple locations.

Would you be open to a filling out this quick questionnaire to help with my research? >>https://goo.gl/forms/yQFDlPmaqTth1ELL2

I’d like to understand the biggest pains and problems that top family-run funeral homes like yours are experiencing.

In exchange for your help, I can share my top tips from how other family-run funeral homes are solving their biggest pains once I’m complete. If you include your email in the questionnaire, I’ll send you the free report when my research is done.

It shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to complete.
Thanks so much, you’re helping more than you know!
Many thanks,
Devan Milo

A New York funeral director learned about the unique aspects of Japanese funerals during a recent visit. Stay tuned for Part II next week!

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Here is a career first. I had to explain to a family why mood changing lipstick would not work on a corpse. For those that are unaware, mood lipstick is activated by body heat. A family provided me with a tube to use on their loved one and they wouldn't accept when I told them that I couldn't use the lipstick due to the fact that a dead body no longer produces heat. I tried to replicate the color the best I could with the lipsticks I had but the family ended up filing a complaint against me to my manager. Needless to say, my manager and I had a good laugh over the absurdity of the whole situation.

When I was 15 I got a part time job at the cemetery. Now mostly this isn't a grizzly job, quite the contrary it's very peaceful, you're outside alot in nice surroundings, you mow lawns and trim hedges, collect dead flowers, plow the roads, smooth the roads. You did get used to the body smell from the crematorium after awhile but it's a very distinct smell and once you smell it you'll never forget it.

For those of you who don't know, you go in with a shovel and cut and take out the squared of grass to put back on later, but the grave is actually dug with machinery, a backho, and a cement vault is placed in it, in which the casket is later placed through straps and a crank system. MY job was to lay down plywood around the area, so when the machinery drove it didnt ruin the grass as it dug. I would then wait til the funeral was over, get on the casket, pull the straps out from around it, and fill in dirt on the sides of the vault and any minor areas, then you'd get out and the machine would fill and pack the hole. I'd then [ we had those gravestones that were just plates in the ground ] have to put in a block and a small chain connecting the stone, so it couldn't easily be pried out later.

So this is the story of my first burial, aged 15. It's a cold, rainy day, and I'm leaning against the barn break room and watching the funeral from afar, waiting for the people to leave. The service ends, I gather all the flowers and put them on a little cart driven by the mower. We pick up the wood and etc etc. So by the time all this was done, the hole had filled up with rain, so when i stood on the coffin, it was actually floating, it moved beneath me as I shoveled. One of my coworkers said " It's a real shame him committing suicide so young " or something to that effect. Suddenly it became very surreal, here's a man who killed himself, floating in a grave on a miserable day in a brackish graveyard, keep in mind this was my first. I remember being struck prolifically by it at the time.

One thing I will say however is I never found it creepy, and especially after you do it enough you don't even think about them as people, it's a box, you're putting it in the ground, and that's the end of it.

The Crematorium: I remember the first time I went in, there were cardboard boxes everywhere, a warehouse of bodies, well, 10 or 15 anyways, it was a small-ish building. I never worked IN the crematorium but they explained it to me anyways, just incase I guess. They showed me how to pull out the tray, lock it, how to prop the box and slide it on, how to run the dials, etc. Now how you do this is you slide the box in and burn it for awhile, but you have to keep pulling it out and raking it, basically like cooking a steak, there are hot spots on a pan and cold spots and you have to keep moving things around, raking the ash down through the grate holes. There's a slide out tray at the bottom that collects the ash, what people dont realize is there is always bones left, and you then have to take these fragments out, bag them, and smash them manually with a hammer. I remember one time I came in and there was a refrigerator box on the floor. I commented on how big the man must be. Later they told me they had to rake him alot more than the average body.

Another thing I learned, and I'm sure especially here people will disagree, undertakers are, generally terrible people. I've seen them talk with crying widows and people who have lost their children, and say like " oh well 'I' wouldn't put my loved ones in such a cheap casket, and things like that. They play on your sadness and survivor guilt. I also learned from one undertaker that when they display caskets, they put the most expensive near the front, and to the right, because when shopping most people tend to enter and turn right. If I learned anything its that a body is just a body, anything that was, no longer is, and I want MY loved ones to burn me and throw my ashes as cheap as possible.

I also learned, and this sounds really weird, to see it AS the dead. How do I explain what I mean...I realized if i were dead, none of this would matter, the flowers, the gravestone, the words spoken, this is ALL for the living and for them to cope with their unresolved issues, it's not for the dead person at all, a funeral really has nothing to do with the dead when you come right down to it.

Anyways that's my story, I hope you learned something or atleast mildly enjoyed it.