Finding Comfort in the Unlikeliest of Places: A Funeral Home Story

Kathy and I walked through the funeral home's door. Out of seemingly nowhere, this lady rushes to us. She greets us with a big smile, leans in, and gives me a long, warm hug. She then steps aside and hugs Kathy. We were both stunned.

“What a welcome from someone I have never met before,” I thought.

She showed us to a conference room and asked us if we wanted a beverage. We declined. She told us she needed to get my late sister’s paperwork and would return shortly.

She sat across from me. Kathy sat next to me. I must confess that I operate in life applying stereotypes. This young woman was not what I expected to find in a funeral home. She did not look like a mortician to me.

My first question was, “Are you a mortician?”

“Yes,” she said, “I am fully licensed and have been practicing for the last twenty years.”

Because her occupation and my stereotype didn’t match (at all), I had to ask her, “When did you decide to become a mortician?”

She said, without any hesitation, “I knew I was going to work with the dead from six years old.”

I reacted to this bizarre statement by saying, “No way, that is true?”

She said, “Really, it’s true.” Then she told us the story.

Her elementary school was next to the town cemetery. One day, her teacher took all the kids on a class trip to this cemetery. She told me she wasn’t weirded out by the experience. Instead, she took writing paper from gravestone to gravestone and created an impression image of the pictures and writing on the gravestones.

When she got home, she showed her mom all she had done and told her all about the class trip to the cemetery. She then told her mom, “When I grow up, I am going to work with the dead.”

Her mom let this comment pass by with a simple, “Ok?”

Years later, as a freshman in high school, there was a job fair to get the kids thinking about making a living someday. There was a funeral director at the job fair, and this woman told us, “I made a beeline right for him. We talked for a long time about all he did, and I knew I wanted to be a mortician for sure.

“As soon as I graduated from High School, I entered a three-year certification and training program to become a mortician. I have been doing it ever since. I am now forty-two years old. I love every day of it.”

We then got down to business. This included signing all the cremation documents. It also included the required information for my sister’s death certificate.

With this completed, Kathy and I were shown into a room for one last viewing of my sister before she was cremated. I was dreading the thought of seeing my sister “prepped and ready” for viewing and then cremation. I wasn’t sure how I would handle this emotionally.

We then went back to the conference room. We had a couple of next step questions. She answered all my questions. We thanked her and stood to leave.

She said, “Wait. I have a gift for you.”

She stood quickly and returned with a black shopping bag. There was something big and awkward in the bag from what I could see.

She said, “This is for you. It’s a frozen Stouffer’s frozen lasagna.”

I was stunned. I asked, “A what?”

“Yes. I do this for clients. I am the only mortician who works here who does this.”

“Thank you?” I said, quizzically.

She hugged me and Kathy goodbye. She said, “I am sorry for your loss.” She turned and headed to her office and was gone.

I looked at Kathy as I held my black bag with the lasagna and asked her, “Did that just happen?”

We went home, and Kathy cooked the lasagna. We ate it while remembering my sister. She had an adventurous life that is now being remembered over a lasagna from a funeral home.

This really happened!