Memento mori

Everyone must die at some point. Unfortunately, school never taught us what to do when that time comes. Perhaps there's something I can do to give a little insight on death, grief, and the funeral industry.

[roninart-tactical]

[deathinquiries]

So I've been watching supernatural again and they keep going over to morgues and funeral homes to steal "dead man's blood" to chloroform vampires... So, how realistic is that? Like is there somewhere you could just go in and steal dead blood-- where does it go after you drain it and all that jazz?

SO I TOOK FOREVER to respond to this because I was going to sit down and watch an episode of Supernatural and see how they go about doing this for the sake of sedating my curiosity. And they do it off screen! No fun.

As one can guess, it’s a bit of movie magic, because getting into a funeral home or morgue isn’t exactly easy. Speaking on my funeral home’s behalf, we have cameras, alarms, bolt locks, and heavy doors to get pass. So if they managed to break in through several doors, they’d be caught on multiple cameras, and well, there’s still the bolted door to the temperature controlled room they’d have to go through. Sam and Dean may be able to handle vampires, but I’m sure that’d be harder with the police on them.

Unless that’s already happened. There’s 14 seasons, I’m sure that may have came up.

As for the blood, it’s possible to draw blood from someone who has passed away. If you’re hypothetically breaking into a morgue or funeral home, we’ll have to assume someone has been dead for a while, so it’s far easier to draw blood from between the ribs as the blood pools there. So if you were say, a vampire fighting mortician- or a vampire fighter who is friends with a mortician in need of dead man’s blood, it’s readily available. 

Where it goes is it all goes into the sewage system from there. Nothing magical on that.

[deathinquiries]

Tho now that we’ve opened that pandora’s box, everyone in the office is going back and forth with stories and asking if they’re odd, too morbid, or just boring.

[deathinquiries]

If you can share, what was your oddest experience working as a mortician?

Art by Lavvy: X, X

Putting under readmore so I can attach a warning. This goes into a weird territory of odd tattoos in weird places, and more harder topics of deaths that didn’t occur naturally. I don’t go into detail and keep it rather vague! But regardless, under a readmore it goes.

So we have plenty of people who come to us with tattoos that tell a story. Gorgeous pieces of work that were half finished and never to be completed, stories of loved ones they lost, or hardships they’ve endured. And. Sometimes they’re in the category of ‘Welp. That’s a tattoo they got alright.’

We had a gentleman with a mustache on his genitals. And. That’s not something we really look at often but sometimes when somethings really peculiar, things just happen to stand out to you.

We also had another gentleman with what we could only assume to be his favorite kama sutra positions tattooed all over.

I’m pretty young in my career, so I don’t have many experiences besides those, because most of the time ‘odd’ is just part of the job. So my gauge on what’s odd is different from most others. So! I asked my coworkers who’ve got far more years under their belts.

One of my coworkers said their oddest experience was embalming a case they were told before hand was ‘an accident’. Only if it was an accident, he’d have to fall on his face with a hatchet…. 35 times.

Another coworker said their oddest experience was walking through the prep room at night, in the dark, and finding a severed head from a decapitation case looking at him. Which he said the oddest part was just his reaction of ‘yep, that’s a thing’, before he kept going on with his job.

Aaand my embalming mentor said she’s still working on trying to think of an odd situation, because… all of us pretty agreed that we’re unsure if our stories are odd or not. It’s just the job for us. And then there is the juggling of, ‘Is this story too graphic, or is this fine to talk about?’– because we’re also rather desensitized unfortunately as it’s the job.

[deathinquiries]

My embalming mentor was kind enough to work on a little art project when I mentioned the lack of video for mouth closures. The Styrofoam head was meant to portray a human head, but I wouldn’t let her live down the fact it looked more like a tiger.

Do apologize for the phone quality video, but do hope this help explains mouth closure via suture method.

The one doing the explaining is my mentor, Shannon, and the voice at the end would be meeee!

[deathinquiries]

Do you suture or use a needle injector?

First to explain suture and needle injector. These are both methods in mouth closure, and I did a little hunting to find some videos because trying to explain this with words is well. It’s a trip.

Kari here explains how the needle injector works perfectly, and shows a great demonstration (On cardboard boxes and not a human people, not to worry!).

As for the suture method...

Caitlin does a good job at pantomiming how to suture if you skip ahead to 2:35. She also goes into detail on needle injector as well and how she handles her services.

(Would have loved to find a video that actually shows the nitty gritty details in practice, alas, I have found none.)

I don’t feel comfortable personally nailing a needle into someone’s gums. Plus once upon a time in school when I was using it, I failed to wear the proper protection and there was a bit of splash back on myself aaand. I got something in my mouth. So do as I say and not as I do, and wear the proper PPEs so you don’t spend forever in the bathroom washing your mouth out and questioning the life choice that got you to that moment.

As both videos explain, the needle injector also does a poor job on those who are elderly and have very brittle bones. There are family members I’ve met with who will tell me the last time they saw their loved one was eyes open and mouth gaped, and they’re concerned over seeing that again during their services. I have a lot of anxiety over the mouth popping open and scaring the family. You can’t redo a service and can’t erase a bad memory, and the suture method leaves me with less anxiety that that will happen.

Less-Anxiety-Suture-Method all the way.

[deathinquiries]

Embalming fluid bottles used to be so neat, and colorful, and look like something I’d collect and put on a SHELF.

Now they’re just boring plastic bottles that all look the same.

We have one glass bottle at the funeral home, but our crematory operator slaps my hand every time I try to take it.

Art by Mikkynga: X, X

[deathinquiries]

Okay then now I'm curious what is embalming? Is that all the dangerous chemicals? What is formaldehyde used for anyway?

Embalming is the sanitation and preservation of the body- though preservation doesn’t exactly promise that your loved one will always look how they will when you see them at a funeral, it’s more slowing the process of decomposition. And that would be where all the dangerous chemicals come in, yes!

Formaldehyde, plus a cacophony (Or rather a ca-coffin-y, nyehehe) of other chemicals, is what’s used to assist in the embalming process, helping the sanitizing and slowing the process of decomposition. 

Once upon a time I had someone ask if this is when we tie their loved one up by their ankles and drain the blood out, then embalm them and thankfully I didn’t laugh. I did stare at them like a deer in the headlights when I found out they were asking in all seriousness.

(The answer is, no we don’t. We just inject the embalming fluid into a main artery, and drain the blood via a main vein.)

[deathinquiries]

Cause of Death:  Zombie Bite

So I am forever curious about hypotheticals, and a coworker asked the medical examiner what the cause of death would say for a zombie bite, and there were two answers-

Answer One:  Since it would be considered an infectious disease, the pathologist would eventually figure out what to name said disease, and the cause of death would be whatever the named disease is, thus would reflect 'Natural' on the death certificate... Or possibly homicide, since bitten by someone else/assaulted by someone else (IE: The OG Zombie)

And then there was a debate if Crime Victims Compensation would cover that but that’s another story

Answer Two: There would be no cause of death, because zombies are ‘undead’ and not ‘dead dead’, and would not need a death certificate.

Anyway, enjoy that tiddlybit. 

[deathinquiries]

what exactly are a morticians responsibilities? I'm interested in being a mortician so I'd love to know more about what they do exactly lol. thanks.

Ahaha, just kidding. But boy at times does it feel like it.

As a mortician, we tend to wear a lot of hats in this field. Party planners, grief therapist, doctors*, errand runners, lawyers*, embalmers. *Not actual doctors or lawyers

Arguably, it does depend on where you are. What’s the religious demographic, what part of the country, and what your firm expects from you. Some funeral homes put you in one place in the funeral home, and expect you to just do that. Whether it’s arrangement with families, embalming, secretary work, you name it.

The funeral home I work for thankfully has me doing everything (thankfully, because I like doing A   L   L).

To break down what I do exactly:

I help plan the funerals with the families, whether that’ll be at a church, at the funeral home, at a house. If there’s military honors involved I get in contact with the specific military branch. Contacting the religious leader if needed, the florist, the cemetery- whatever is needed to plan this party.

Being in an arrangement, you’re the person in the lime light for these families just as much as they’re in the lime light for you. They’re going through the worst time in their life, and oof, when the death wasn’t expected, families can be truly devastated, and they look to you for some guidance. There’s no script, there’s nothing you can read off of, you’re always doing this by the seat of your pants, and sometimes you know just what to say to help them through the process, and unfortunately sometimes you don’t. 

Sometimes you’re a doctor, because the doctor will call YOU and ask YOU how the death happened because as someone who is the family physician who has spoken to this decedent for years of their life, you know their entire medical history and therefor know how the dea-- oh just kidding that’s the actual doctor’s job, just at times they’re not sure how to do their job and you have to walk them through it.(Admittedly, this is a ‘I’m super salty about this’ subject. Not all doctors are like this, just enough to have me groaning)

Errand runners is just... organizing the paperwork, cleaning the funeral home or the cars, dropping by the post office to mail cremated remains or whatever else is needed, get someone coffee, get yourself coffee so you can keep going and never stop going because your blood has been replaced by coffee and if you don’t like coffee now, you will like coffee because it is YOUR LIFE BLOOD NOW.

And lawyers, well. You don’t want to be a lawyer and you try avoiding this as much as possible, but sometimes families don’t know the law, and will argue you up, down, and sideways on what they believe you should do so. It’s handy to have every funeral related law memorized (Or at least bookmarked on your computer for easy access when you have to explain to families something they don’t like to hear.)

Not every mortician is an embalmer, but if you have a license for both, you may be working with the body and getting them ready for a funeral. I could go into a whole spiel on what an embalmer does exactly, but that’ll be for another post because I could go on forever.

Art by Pi3shark: X, X 

[deathinquiries]

Frustrated with USPS. 

We can only mail cremated remains via USPS, and the price varies depending on where we’re sending them and how much the cremated remains weighs, so we give a flat price that’ll cover the shipping and if it goes over the price, then we just cover it rather than asking for more.

But now USPS is requiring we use a specific box for this, which is far larger than the urns we use and the box we used to use, and due to the box being so large, the price for shipping has jumped up by far too much. I’m hoping with enough complaints they at the very least change the size of the boxes to something smaller, because we’re not happy about having to skyrocket the price of what we charge families to cover the costs.

Art by Lilypoo: X

[deathinquiries]

The night right after my uncle's funeral, my family and his went to visit his grave but his wife stayed behind and asked for someone to stay with her. I volunteered. While we waited, my aunt told me shes much too afraid to even visit his grave, and she feels like this is something wrong that she couldn't control. I told her it was completely ok to not do that at all. Afterwards I reflected and worried it was the wrong thing to say, I just would like to know. What would you have said in my place?

I think you did perfectly okay. Many people handle death and things surrounding it in different ways, and I see no reason why she should have to force herself to go if she fears it, though I do feel it may be a good thing for her in the future to visit his grave and confront that fear. At the same time, if it’s not something that weighs on her and if that is simply how she was coping and was able to find peace, then I suppose there’s no need.

If anything I suggest keeping an ear out and if it ever comes up again, perhaps offer to go with her? It may be easier for her to confront this when it’s not so fresh and there’s not as much pressure.

Art by Mikkynga: X, X

[deathinquiries]

My dad once called undertakers (might’ve also been funeral directors; it’s been a while) “the wedding planners of the death world”. Would you say that’s accurate? (This is actually what caused my short-lives idea of being an undertaker, I’m not gonna lie)

I’ve heard us called plenty of things! Death faeries and Sin eaters for starters. Though less of a dark title, ‘wedding planners for the death world’ wouldn’t be too far-fetched! You got your flowers, you got your person of faith speaking their religious bits, you got a bunch of people wearing suits. There’s just a bigger emphasis on ‘until death do we part’, ahah.

Art by Cuttleskulls: X, X

[deathinquiries]

Many find death to be a creepy and terrifying topic, and understandably so. It’s not a subject often touched on, and if anything it’s avoided all together. However I’ve heard ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’ so many times in the arrangement room that I’ve wanted to do something about it. Even if one person learns a thing, that’s a win in my book, and if you ask something I don’t know, I’ll find out and we’ll learn together.

My Ask Box is open, and don’t be shy to ask away! No question is a dumb question, and trust me. I’ve heard a lot of peculiar questions!

Art by Cuttleskulls: X, X