Working Without A Net

Thursday, April 2, 2009 was a very interesting day for me. For the last two hours of the day, I was left alone at the funeral home. The one thing I hoped would not happen, of course, happened. We got a death call at 15 minutes before closing. I called the boss and was told to just lock up the building and take care of it. So I did. I went to the house and talked to the family, and set up an appointment for the next morning. Then the family tells me they have a daughter who's still an hour away, could I wait until she gets there? The sheriff's deputy that was on scene (the person was found dead at home) did not want to wait around that long, so she asked me if we could handle that at the funeral home. I agreed, so after taking care of the removal and getting back to the funeral home, I put the body in the chapel, still on the stretcher, and waited for the family.

They came in about 20 minutes later, and they decided they wanted to handle the arrangements right then and there. So after they had a few minutes with their loved one, I took them into the office and we handled the arrangements. It was a direct cremation, but they also had family coming from out of state that would want to see the deceased. So I set up what we call a cot view, where the body is arranged for viewing, but without embalming or the use of a casket. We set up a time and date, and today they showed up for their viewing. It went well, but it was just a little bit on the intimidating side not having any backup at the funeral home when the arrangements were made. All in all, though, it went very well.