Good Grief

When you graduate with a Funeral Service and Mortuary Science degree- you end up taking a lot of grief psychology classes. It's just one of the three things your teachers expect you to learn (along with embalming and business). Before taking these classes I, being one who has never and never will experience grief, though that grief was just sadness. I didn't believe the professor when he was telling us all the responses people have. I've been personally blamed for the situation, seen families turn quarrelsome against each other and staff, people having full breakdowns every time you try to discuss anything about the death, individuals who do nothing but make jokes, one who asked to watch the process and those who show no emotion about it whatsoever.

Last year, in early spring, I had a guy on my slab who had been in a hit and run accident. His skull was crushed as was most of his chest. I was thoroughly fascinated, but being the highly intuitive person I am (lol), I knew his family would not appreciate an open casket, so that was the recommendation I made. His wife... mother? Maybe it was his sister, I don't remember. Anyway, the person who was taking care of the arrangements flipped out and started throwing things when I said he was in no shape for an open casket funeral. She called me incompetent and a few other not so flattering things before I agreed to try to make him look a little more like a human and less like roadkill (which, in fact, he was). Three hours and several pounds of styrofoam, plaster and filler later, he looked pretty good. A few days later, after the embalming and cosmetics and blah blah blah, the whole family came in to view. The wife/mother/sister who had made the decision freaked out and swung her purse into his face, crushing it again, basically freaking out and saying it looked too much like him and she couldn't handle it. I had to restrain myself from beating the crap out of her...

Grief makes people react in strange ways, and I don't care how long I am in the business... I will never understand it.