Maybe some of us have never been there, but I want to say we all or a large percentage of us on call have all fielded the random late night call with a question.

Here's the stage. It's after office hours and you're on call for the night. At some point you get a call, and your heart starts pounding—its gotta be a death call. Who else or why else would anyone call a business at 8pm, 9pm, 12am or even 2am? But then you answer the phone and it's a person who has a question. Could be about pre-needs. Could be they want a phone number for a recommended florist. Could be to just flat out shoot the breeze.

What's your response? What's the stance/policy of your funeral home? Do you gladly answer the 2am inquiry? Or do you have some other response, maybe that they may call back after the office opens for the day?

Perhaps there are two answers to this question: the response you give and the response that you think is deserved. Either way, please enlighten the chat with your input.

Edit: yes I know I misspelled "night" in the title and probably made multiple other errors. Love you, Felicia!

Hello, next week I will be carrying my recently deceased grandads coffin to his cremation service.

My question is really related as to what to expect in terms of weight? I suffer with disc issues in my lower back and I'm concerned my injury might cause issues on the day, he had lost a lot of weight towards the end of his life and had become quite skinny but I try to refrain from any heavy lifting in everyday life that may aggitate my back problems, and when I have to I wear a back support on my waist whilst lifting.

There will be 4 of us carrying his coffin I have been told, myself (m) another male and 2 female relatives.

There are other close family members who could take my place if I deem it to be necessary but I fear it might be a sort of find out at the time situation, or upon advice would it be better to back out now before the ceremony?

I would be devastated to not have the honour of carrying my grandad as he was like a father in many ways to me but I don't want to cause problems on his final send off.

Has anyone been through this first hand with back problems?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Hello dear FDs.

First, I have to say how much I respect you all for the care and compassion you put into this job. As a psychologist who has worked with a lot of grief (professionally and personally), I have nothing but to utmost respect for you.

My best friend is burnt out and borderline disabled from this career. We live in Ontario, and each FH seems worse than the next, with horrible pay and low key abusive expectations.

I want to support her the best I can, and help her see what her options are outside of this career. It sadly doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better (in our physical area) and she’s trying to figure out her next move.

Any help or guidance would be appreciated. Anyone who has changed careers or pivoted, please do let me know what you found.

I’ve always been curious to ask what sort of activities you avoid or think twice about as a Funeral Director?

Eg. motorcycles, horseback riding, etc?

Are there certain accidents / fatalities you see fairly regularly, that surprised you when you first started?

Sorry if this is too close to being jokey or off-topic.

I went to the funeral of an extended family member recently, and the preacher who was officiating started the eulogy by admitting that he was pretty new to this and "didn't do well in school" before proceeding to use the wrong name for the decedent throughout the eulogy.

I imagine that in this industry, you probably interface a lot with religious leaders or other ceremonial officiants. I want to hear your stories about the most eccentric, strange, off-the-wall pastor encounters you've had.

I’m wondering if they ever get over it eventually or if it stays there for long, like with a mother and father

I know this is a long shot, but for a school assignment I need to interview a licensed funeral director AND embalmer in California.

I’d only need 10-15 minutes of your time via phone call or zoom, a picture of your business card, and your license numbers to ensure their legitimacy.

I’d be asking you about changes/trends in funeral service, your daily responsibilities, and your overall experiences in the field.

I plan to write a short paper on my findings, but it won’t be published anywhere, just submitted to my professor. Thanks in advance if anyone can help!

Hello!

I have an interview over the phone next week for an apprenticeship position at a local funeral home and I just need some advice on what to expect.

I imagine my largest hindrance towards getting this position is the fact that I don't currently have a driver's license (though I am actively taking lessons and plan to get it asap). Will this realistically ruin any chance I have at getting the job right now?

My brother died 2 weeks ago on Monday and his viewing isn't until today. He's been at the mortuary most of that time and prior was at the hospital morgue. He's been in the refrigerator the whole time. Is it still safe to touch his hand? And do funeral homes generally make people wash hands after? My OCD is freaking out a bit. I wish the viewing were sooner, but I had no control over that.

Edited to add: he's not been embalmed, just refrigerated

Edit again: viewing is done. Hand sanitizer was provided, thankfully.

Thanks for all the responses!

Our 32 to healthy, beautiful and one of the best human beings to walk this earth lost his life while test driving a super Porsche. He was speeding, a car appeared from the adjacent street to make a left so he tried to swerve to avoid hitting the car and ended up hitting a cement pole. He died at the scene. It took hours for the coroners office people to come and get him out of the car and pick him up. It was even raining while he was still at the car. Which really saddens me, he was getting rained on( he had a plastic yellow bag covering his body). Since he was originally from abroad they had to wait for the parents to get here to move forward with whatever was decided to do with his body. Since he would be traveling back home he had to be embalmed. He had to have a closed casket because the guy who worked on him said he didn’t look like the guy in the pictures he was shown. The next week he traveled to his hometown where his friends including my boyfriend carried the casket to church. My boyfriend said it already smelled really bad which truly made it even worse for them, because they were carrying their perfectly healthy 32yo and he was already decaying. My question is if he was embalmed how come there was such strong odor of decay?
It has been like 2 and a half weeks since the accident

Edit: I just realized how terrible the grammar in this post is. Sorry for the hard read.

I’m an assistant at a funeral home and I work part time. I recently joined the funeral home I’m at a few months ago with the promise of more consistent work since my last funeral home could not support the hours I needed. At first my hours were really consistent but as time has passed my hours have gotten extremely inconsistent.

I am well aware of the ebb and flow of this line of work but the issue is mostly across our leading directors. we have two directors who swap scheduling responsibility weekly. Manager #1 gives me decently consistent hours and on call while manager #2 does not. On #2’s week I am likely to get two partial days if I’m lucky. I’m scared he thinks I’m unreliable due to very minor mishaps but manager #1 seems to be very pleased with my work ethic. I will tidy our prep room, run laundry, clean cots, etc when I am able and have gotten to where I can fully dress and do cosmetics independently (my previous job and role were not very back of the house intensive). My overall work quality has improved majorly and I’m working to better myself every shift.

I really like my job and don't want to jeopardize myself with pushing for more work or upsetting one of my managers but I cannot continue to work this little. I really need advice. Thank you!

Hello, everyone, I appreciate in advance any insight available. Being a long time peruser of this sub, I know this is near identical to other posts, but please just bear with me.

I recently relocated to Florida a couple weeks after finishing mortuary school (FD and Embalmer) at DIFS in September. I am taking both NBE's within the next 2 weeks and I am still looking for a concurrent internship for my license with no success. (Context: The state of Florida's "internship" is equivalent to Texas' "apprenticeship" which is essentially a position to supervisedly practice as a funeral director/embalmer.)

Despite moving here only a few weeks ago, I've been on the hunt for an internship in this area for over six months as I visited all the "Registered Training Agency" funeral homes in the area in the spring. Although I reached out periodically to these funeral homes all this time, I consistently get the "oh, so-and-so isn't available right now, can I have them call you?", with the call back never happening and the same verbatim coversation happening again when I call to follow up. This seeming disregard is nothing new to me; this is my fourth year of "knocking on doors" in the industry and it's been the same the whole time. Even visiting the funeral home in person is to no avail; the FDIC or whomever I'd need to speak with is unavailable at most funeral homes, or I always seem to "just miss" them.

The main sticking point with all the funeral directors I've been able to get ahold of is the paid 40-hour/week minimum requirement as per the Florida Division of Funeral, Cemetery, and Consumer services. Every time I bring it up, they mention how the requirement "seems new" and how it wasn't that way when they were in mortuary school. I've been rejected time and time again regarding the internship and told over and over how the FH "can't guarantee" availability of employment. I can concede with this point, if anything, because I know that you can't control when people die.

I did have a job here in Florida at a 5th generation funeral home in which I wasn't ever explicitly told I'd be a full-time intern but it was implied and I operated as one. A week later, I was told I wasn't able to be full time due to the lack of volume and revenue in the funeral home. I would be restricted to part-time at half the hours, but with opportunities to be on-call for removals and help with services on the weekend. Moving to part time was a concession on my part as 20 hours/week is definitely better than 0 hours/week. However, today; I was texted today by the funeral home owner that my employment simply wasn't in the budget and that I was let go. Meanwhile, they have a whole unlicensed person that makes arrangements weekly.

Overall, I've reached a state of disappointment/jadedness towards the industry, which I hate because I love everything about working in funeral homes. Each similar interaction just makes me more disgruntled towards everything funeral-service related because they all tend to go the same direction.

I'm only 21, so switching careers isn't outside the realm of possibility, especially knowing the general attitude in this sub towards joining the industry. I do have a career backup plan in place if it calls for it, but I really love the industry and would hate to have my schooling be wasted if I do a career 180. Thank y'all for sticking with me, sorry for the rambling. If there are any current or former interns or recently licensed funeral director/embalmers in Florida with some insight, I'd greatly appreciate it. If anyone has any advice for how to proceed, I'd also really appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

I am not a funeral director, but have followed and appreciated this sub for awhile. I hope it's OK to share this.

A father posted himself rocking his child who burned to death in a crash. He stated that he had to fight for 10 days to be able to hold his deceased child. The video has loud crackling plastic sounds. Is this something anyone can explain? Is that a sealed pouch that the funeral home then wrapped in blankets? I would assume the blanket idea was the funeral homes, so they didn’t have to hand him his child in just a bag? Would there be any chance of an odor? What would it even feel like holding her? Like a stiff mannequin? He had his face as close as possible to her and sobbing in the video. It was devastating to see.

My uncle passed away from multiple, consecutive heart attacks around 9:30 am this past friday. My aunt came home from work and found him, and I got a call around 4 pm. My mom and I arrived around 7 pm, and he was still there, with a sheet draped over him. The funeral home came to pick him up around 9:30, I wasn't able to move away from next to him in time, so I saw them lift his sheet up and even smelled him, and saw some fluid coming out from his head area. His expression was very peaceful, he just looked like he was resting, but his body was really stiff as they moved him and it was really weird to witness. The process of removing him from the home was really upsetting as well, maneuvering him into the bag and all of that. I wasn't mentally prepared to still have him be at home, let alone actually see his dead body, so I'm not really sure how to process this. I have previously watched videos explaining different steps in the whole death care process, so I knew about some things but actually seeing them has been a lot. I am a very analytical person with my feelings, but also really sensitive so I'm not sure how to deal. I have been to a viewing before, when I was little but it was from far away so this is brand new to me.

I've always been interested in how whalefalls provide such an important source of nutrition for animals at the bottom of the ocean. I was wondering if there was a way for a human to be "buried" like this. I'm well aware of creation and spreading ashes, so my question is more like- can a whole human body be sunk into the deepest part of the ocean? Is it an ethical option, or is there too much grossness in a human for it to be eco-friendly? What are the laws around it? Could my loved ones just tie a couple cinderblocks to my body and dump me overboard?

Extra context: I live in California, USA

I have only been working in funeral services for over a year. I have worked services many times and numerous religions, but I still have a hard time speaking in front of families at the podium. Stemming from a place of not wanting to disappoint the families and also worrying about my own performance, even though I know it’s not about me. I tend to wanna apologize if I have a hiccup when opening and closing and feel I make it awkward.

How do you guys navigate this feeling if you’ve felt that way before?

I just moved out of my grandpa’s house and he let me take my mom’s ashes with me. She’s been in this bag for almost 15 years as the anniversary is coming up this month.

I think I’d really like to finally upgrade her quarters lol.
Does anyone know if a 156 cu in urn would be enough? I did the LxWxH calculation based off the size of the bag and it’s about 150 cu in (6x5x5).

Urns are pricey and I’d like to avoid the process of returning the wrong size so just double checking for help. I do plan on taking some along somewhere I find nice enough for her to lay as well.

Anyways, here’s a pic of her with a banana

Im new to this thread and have been reading a lot. Im going to mention how my dad was found and context to the lead up.

My dad passed June this year age 63, he wasnt the healthiest but had been very diligent over the past decade in making sure all his meds were taken, attended all doctors and specialists appts, my dad had 5 heart attacks from age 35 onwards, resulting in a quadruple heart bypass 10 years ago. My dad passed at home unexpectedly, he was found laying on the floor between his recliner and coffee table with 1 arm on the coffee table, now before this for a cpl of weeks my dad had fallen down randomly and had dizzy spells the doctors were trying to work out the cause, we never got to the cause as he passed while they were trying to figure it out. Part of me still stresses that he fell down and knew he had and was trying to get back up again, we estimate he had only been gone maybe 10 minutes or so before my cousin found him. Dads coffee was still warm, and dad was so excited my twin nephews were having a sleepover with him that night as he called me the night before to tell me, as my dad lived with me and I was away that night. His GP wrote his death off as a cardiac event, so coroner didnt perform an autopsy, which I requested be done but because doctor said basically given his history it was a heart attack...it may have been but I just dont know because of how his arm was on the coffee table....I know May sound silly...but it was just so sudden, apart from falling down and getting dizzy he was fine, his usual self, my sister and I did find paperwork on how to live with heart failure which we hadn't seen before, I dont really know exactly what answers im looking for, im just so lost without my dad :( and I worry so much that he was aware he was about to die and was alone as he passed :(

Trigger warning ‼️ I will be explaining how my dad was found.

My dad was 75, and he passed on Friday. My mom said the whole day Thursday, he complained that he was nauseated which wasn’t normal for him. He had been having problems with constipation for a long time, and was hospitalized because of it in July. He slept off and on, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary when he wasn’t feeling well. My dad had COPD, cancer (a small amount in his lungs that they could not operate on and it was stable, but before this he survived cancer three times), three heart attacks (the last one in 2009), low iron, and low blood pressure. His oxygen levels would dip at night, so he was on oxygen at night. Over the past year, he lost so much weight even though he was eating and eating more than before. They put a GTube in and he was tube fed along with eating meals a year ago. He gained a pound back about two weeks ago, and he was looking so good. His color was better. BP and Iron were coming up to reasonable levels with the help of medication. I saw him Wednesday. He looked good. Thursday he wasn’t feeling well. Friday morning at 7:30 my mom called my husband and told him to get me over there. My dad passed. EMS was hard on my mom because she didn’t do CPR, but my dad was cold and had no color. She found him with his legs hanging off the side of the bed like he started to get up, and his head closer to the corner of the bed across from that. His oxygen was not on. She told me that when he went to bed at 10:30, his oxygen was on. I’m scared that he was getting up because he knew something was wrong.. but when she found him, he was peaceful. Eyes closed, mouth closed, looked like he was sleeping. Was he getting up or starting to lay back down? Was he in pain? These things are haunting me, but even if it hurts, I want closure. I think they’re going to say “natural causes” whenever we get the death certificate back.

I’m curious what funeral professionals think about this. I’m looking for insight into whether this is something you encounter, rather than legal advice.

My father-in-law passed away in California. His sister—my husband’s aunt—was his health care agent. After he died, the aunt told my husband and his sister, the deceased’s daughter, that the funeral home would contact the daughter to pick up their dad’s ashes.

Weeks later, my sister-in-law called to check on her dad’s ashes and learned that her aunt had already picked them up. Neither my husband nor my sister-in-law had been told. The manager has since told my sister-in-law that their aunt specifically instructed the funeral home not to tell anyone the ashes were ready or that she had collected them.

I understand only notifying the authorized contact is this funeral home’s normal policy. But specifically asking the funeral home to keep both the availability and pickup secret from his children feels like a very different thing.

Is this something you encounter? Are there circumstances where it makes sense, or would it raise concerns and prompt you to ask more questions?