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is needed, get someone coffee, get yourself coffee so you can keep going and never stop going because your blood has been replaced by coffee and if you don’t like coffee now, you will like coffee because it is YOUR LIFE BLOOD NOW.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.
