The Funeral Profession—Everything You Wanted to Know About the People Who Work There But Too Afraid to Ask

I was born a people person. I've been insatiably curious about what makes people tick for as long as I can remember. It's less about what they do and more about why. What are their thoughts and feelings behind the behavior? Were they born with a particular trait or did it stem from an emotional experience somewhere in childhood? If they could choose a different life path, would they? I love asking questions and listening to their stories.

Since losing my daughter I've often wondered about the men and women who serve the dead. Sounds macabre, and yet I'm curious. Why do people go into the funeral industry? How do they really feel when handling dead bodies? I wanted to know—and so I set my sights on doing a book for funeral directors. Today, I cross that off my bucket list with the release of Through the Eyes of a Funeral Director.

As I do with all my books, I asked the funeral directors 18 questions. This allows me to get to the meat of each story without the superficial fluff.

What I found in their answers was surprising. Shocking, really, but not in a macabre sense. It was quite the opposite actually, and totally unexpected. Today I'm thrilled to satisfy the curiosity of those like me who always wondered about the men and women who serve in the funeral industry.

One of the oldest and most sacred professions in the world, the funeral industry is a different sort of business, and it takes a special sort of person to work there. College educated men and women, each purposely choose a career based around caregiving.

Yes, funeral directors are caregivers at heart. Who knew?

As caregivers, they sacrifice sleep and precious family time to ensure that our need for loving guidance in our darkest hour is met, because death doesn’t always happen during banking hours. By laying loved ones to rest, they offer the living the first steps toward healing without any sort of recognition.

If the funeral industry is based around caregiving, then why do most clients walk away with sticker shock? How can they financially gouge us in our time of need?

When you eat in a restaurant, you pay for the food and the chef who prepared it. When you hire a doctor to tend to your wound, you pay for the care. When you hire a funeral home to help memorialize a loved one, it is no different. Funeral homes have codes to follow, equipment to maintain, staff to pay, and student loans to pay off. They are there around the clock to ensure your every wish is lovingly granted with kid gloves. If you don't pay for services rendered, the funeral equipment loans get behind and staff can't put food on the table.

Death is an inevitable part of life nobody gets to skip. But when you find yourself leaning on a funeral director in your darkest hour, it is comforting to know that he or she chose this career not as a business, but as a calling.

It is a calling that only the finest humanitarians answer.

One they wouldn’t change for the world.

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