The Lost Art Of Caring For Our Dead
Often, when we bring someone into our care who died at home, they are still warm.
When you quit your creative career of 12+ years to start over as a funeral worker, people look at you funny.
“You’re gonna waste creativity on dead people?”
“But…you struggled touching your eye when you first started wearing contact lenses.”
“Is this just because you like Caitlin Doughty?”
Valid points. But amazingly, I’m not an anomaly. The students in my Apprentice Class were a mixed bag of professionals looking for deeper purpose, or at least different purpose – a family physician, Delta flight attendant, construction worker, gang mediator, homicide investigator, and me, a cagey creative director. It was our own morbid version of The Breakfast Club.
The point of my pilgrimage is not to exploit death (reverence is everything in the funeral industry), but rather to pull the curtain back on what can be learned from death before it arrives at our doorsteps.
Join me in learning how to truly live!
xoxo
Graveyard Girl
Often, when we bring someone into our care who died at home, they are still warm.
I went into my apprenticeship preparing for the worst.
If you’ve never operated a crematory, here’s a crash course.
“I never got to know him like I wanted to. I don’t know how I’m going to drive away from him.”
A number of people were concerned about my emotional reaction to grieving families. I was one of those people.
Peeping inside a prepared casket or cremation container is like looking into Ariel’s secret grotto.