In Act 5, Scene 1 of Hamlet, two gravediggers shovel out a grave for Ophelia as Hamlet and Horatio watch in the distance. Hamlet asks: “Has this fellow no feeling of his business that he sings at grave-making?” Horatio replies: “Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.”
The conversation around death and dying has been around since time immemorial. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, we have had to not only re-evaluate the way we live our lives but also the way we view death and how important it is to plan for the inevitable. Yet, the professionals behind such plans – the funeral directors and embalmers– are often overlooked. The biggest misconception in the industry is that to work within it; you need to be emotionally-detached so that it is a “property of easiness” – this could not be further from the truth.
The funeral director’s role is to act primarily as a “master of ceremonies”, but in smaller, family-run directories like M. Sillifant & Sons in Exeter, the director wears many hats – they are an arranger, a mortician, an embalmer and a confidant. “We do a bit of everything; we are 24/7, there to answer calls and queries night and day,” says Sillifant. “You deal with all walks of life – one second you’re dealing with a homeless person and the next you could be dealing with a Lord or Lady. Death is a big leveller – we all come into the world the same, we leave the same.”
In family-run directors like M. Sillifant & Sons, the job is often a ‘call-to-serve’ as it is all these firms have ever known: “I am a fourth-generation director who was born into the profession. My father passed onto me everything I know – like how important it is to treat people’s mums and dads as if they were your own. He said how the job would take over my life but that I had the knowledge and personality to make a difference, to provide relief for people who are grieving.”
In Derbyshire, W. Jones & Son is another family-run firm: “From the age of 11, I knew I wanted to be an embalmer,” says Karen Jones. “When I first started at 17, I was terrified of getting something wrong because you knew it was someone’s mum or dad. Attending to people who have been in accidents is horrendous, but you take comfort in knowing you have the ability to make a person look better, so they are remembered in the best way possible.”
Dealing with death is a 24/7 task for these directors, which makes you wonder about the emotional cost of it all and whether some cases can strike a raw nerve. Christine Parker’s family runs Abbey Funeral Services in Tonbridge, Kent. She is also a former National President of the Society of Allied & Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF). According to Parker, cases vary in emotional impact and you won’t know the effect until you get a call or someone walks through the door:
“Seventy per cent of the work we do is for older people where death was expected, but you do occasionally, get the odd child or suicide, and it’s those that have a real emotional impact. It can trouble the staff, so we make sure to watch out for signs of distress and offer support. When I worked as a student nurse, I was taught a vital lesson: if you spend too much emotion on one family, you will have nothing left to give to the next.”
Jones echoed Parker’s thoughts: “There are things that still get to you, for example, you dread having to deal with a baby or child’s funeral because it feels wrong. It’s a balancing act of cutting off emotions to a degree but also maintaining the compassion and care – if you’re not up to that, you couldn’t do the job.”
Does the nature of the job mean funeral directors are any better at dealing with grief? “No”, says Jones. “Losing someone important makes you just as upset as anybody else.”
Funeral directors are masters of resilience but they are only human. The difference is that they establish professional boundaries to get through the working day. If they were to cry on a shoulder and not be the shoulder to cry on, the emotional pillar of support they offer would collapse. Yet, you can’t help but thinking how mentally taxing it is to be so stoic all of the time. In a OnePoll of 2,000 UK adults, commissioned by The Centre for the Art of Dying Well at Queen Mary’s University, almost half of UK adults (44.9 per cent) think that funeral directors should have professional counselling. Yet despite some directors having access to professional support, the job’s round-the-clock nature leaves little time for self-care. For some, the importance of helping, family and faith are enough to keep them emotionally stable.
For Mr Sillifant, the way to cope is to help: “I imagine it’s like being a nurse or a doctor, you feel rewarded from helping people who are going through the worst time in their life.” For Jones, her family acts as her emotional rock: “We are lucky because we talk to each other about everything, and that helps a lot.” For Parker, it’s a matter of finding religious consolation: “I am a Christian with a strong faith that death is not the end but a start of a new beginning. Without my faith, I’m not sure I would have fared well.”
The Covid-19 pandemic has added extra pressure to the funeral industry, which has had to cope with an increase in deaths – there were more in England and Wales in 2020 than in any year since 1918. While there has been much talk of the NHS being at breaking point, little has been said about how funeral directories have been struggling to cope. Parker’s family firm operates in Kent, a county which has seen some of the highest coronavirus infection rates:
“Funeral directors are at breaking point too. Nationwide, businesses are just about keeping their heads above water due to the physical and emotional toll of coronavirus. Last week, I spoke to a man who had moved 17 people from the local hospital to the temporary mortuary in Maidstone. He got another call straight after saying 20 more needed to be moved. No one knows the tremendous stress we are under: we can’t cope – some firms have had to stop because their staff can’t cope. I worked through the flu epidemic in the 1980s, which was awful, but it was nowhere near as bad as this.”
The funeral director has one of the most physically and emotionally taxing jobs. Dealing with death on a day-to-day basis means dealing with nightmarish circumstances which can often involve murder, suicide and now, infectious disease. Yet in crises such as these, a funeral director’s emotions are often overlooked and their role is still characterised as sketchy or sinister – we are all guilty of walking past a funeral directory and feeling a slight shiver up our spine.
But what appears macabre is in fact a haven for so many at a time of loss. The role of the funeral director provides a valuable insight into stoicism; they balance compassion with professionalism and deliver closure to families that are grieving, thereby playing a crucial role in the lifecycle of the community. We all shuffle off this mortal coil at one stage or another, so it’s worth bearing in mind the players who are present for the final act. Acknowledgement of their role is long overdue.
