One call can change your whole day
When David Simmons explains his profession to people, they usually respond with a thousand questions or never talk to him again.
It may be because they don’t want to know, are afraid or simply don’t understand why Simmons works with the deceased. As a mortician, he meets with families whose loved ones have passed away and picks up bodies that have to be treated so they can lie in open caskets during a viewing.
“Taking care of the dead dates way back to the Egyptians and is largely an outward expression of an inward feeling,” Simmons said. “It’s a tradition that is a very healing and helpful thing.”
Every day is different for
Simmons, who wanted to be a mortician since he was about 5 years old and now works at Nelson Funeral Home in Logan. It isn’t surprising for him to receive phone calls in the middle of the night to pick up bodies as far away as Salt Lake.
One phone call can change your whole day, said Michael Chatterton, who also works as a mortician at Nelson Funeral Home. It could mean making arrangements for a cremation, driving to the hospital to pick up a body or meeting with a grieving family who will end up coming in to sit on the funeral home couches and shed tears with the funeral directors.
One phone call could lead to ordering caskets, sending obituaries to newspapers or holding viewings.
From day to day, morticians may be embalming, which involves cleaning and sanitizing the deceased as well as replacing their body fluids with formaldehyde, a colorless gaseous compound which will preserve the body for days.
When a body comes into the funeral home, it is laid on a porcelain table where embalming takes place, Simmons said.
The corpse must be sanitized so that it will be safe in public.
Then the mortician attempts to restore the person’s appearance, which may mean shaving the face, putting in fake teeth and applying makeup, Simmons said.
“We try to make the body look as natural as possible,” he said. “If a person lost a lot of weight before death, we try to add a little weight to them. Or if they became extremely swollen, we try to decrease that.”
Makeup may also be applied to cover bruising from hospital IVs on the hands or arms. Chatterton said everything that is done to a body at the funeral home is to preserve and slow down decomposition.
Between taking care of bodies and making funeral arrangements, morticians have to possess a certain type of personality to deal with heartache and sorrow as well.
“To be a mortician, you’ve got to be a person that can show compassion and cry for a family when you have to,” Chatterton said in his calm voice while sitting on a couch shared by many who have entered the building with pain. “You’ve got to be able to roll with the punches.”
Morticians have to be understanding and able to deal with people and their emotions, said John Stevenson, a mortician at Allen-Cranney and Allen-Hall mortuaries.
“To me, it’s never been something difficult to deal with,” he said. “It’s been something I’ve been around my whole life.”
Both of Stevenson’s parents were morticians, his mother being the first woman in the state of Utah to receive an embalming license.
When he was young, his family lived in the basement of a mortuary and was used to being quiet when viewings were going on. His family would postpone meals until after services so that the smells of food wouldn’t drift upstairs.
When he was about 13 years old, he went with his mother to do his first removal of a body and helped bring it back to the mortuary. As a junior in high school, Stevenson assisted with an actual service by moving flowers and caskets of a family of four who had all died in a car accident.
Even on and LDS mission in Guatemala, Stevenson couldn’t get away from the funeral home atmosphere as he lived in a mortuary for a while there, too.
Now Stevenson said people ask him how he does it. They wonder how he can deal with so much tragedy, sadness and fatality. He says he just tries to leave it all at work.
When days get really hard for Chatterton, it may mean going for a drive.
“Sometimes I take the long way home. We have feelings too,” he said.
It’s the unexpected deaths that are the most difficult to deal with, Simmons said, like the children that die soon after they are born after their parents have been waiting for nine months to receive them. He added that embalming babies and young children is really tough and can be very emotional.
But not matter the circumstance, it seems there is always at least a little pain or fear.
“It seems like even if they anticipate death or if there’s a tragic accident, almost everyone is ill-prepared,” Simmons said. “They don’t know what to do or where to turn next.”
Most families aren’t thinking clearly right after a loved one dies and morticians have to be willing to try to understand what they are going through. But it’s not all tears, he said. Laughter isn’t uncommon in the funeral home as family members tell stories and reminisce of people they were close to.
Throughout the years, morticians will see all different funerals because of the different religions and backgrounds. Stevenson said he’s seen some strange things such as a gypsy service where members of the family had to stay with the body at all times.
“There were a ton of flowers and the catering and partying went on for three days,” he said. “We had coffee and punch spills and infants holding Coor’s beer cans.”
He said every culture deals with death differently and as a mortician, he tries to just take it all in.
There are plenty of misconceptions about death, funerals and morticians, Stevenson said.
“You know the stories about people twitching or sitting up in their graves after they die,” he said. “I’ve never seen any of that in all my years. I think it’s just a good way to sell books and movies.”
As for what morticians get out of their job, he said mostly it’s just knowing they’ve helped people in their time of need.
“What do I like most? I like taking care of the bodies,” Stevenson said. “I like doing their makeup, getting them dressed, putting them in the caskets and seeing how much better they look from the time they came here.
“I like when a family member comes up to me afterward and says, ‘We appreciate what you’ve done. You made it easier.’ That’s the icing on the cake,” he said. “Without that, it would be hard to come to work.”
The gratification comes without a doubt from working with the families, Simmons said.
“When it’s all over they may come up and thank you and give you a hug,” he said. “That’s where the joy comes from.”
-mnewbold@cc.usu.edu