Fashion & Beauty

A Glimpse Behind the Scenes at Funeral Home Challenges. It's Not Always Funerial.

We are here to serve families in time of need. One thing about the funeral home business: we have to get it right the first time. It’s not like a restaurant where we can comp you your dessert to make up for overcooking your steak. We’re close to having a no-fail mission.

But there are occasions where we can fix what isn’t right, or doesn’t look quite right when it comes to preparing your loved one for viewing. My staff can conjure up things better than Hogwarts. We’ll by golly figure something out, as we had to do this morning.

An 89 year old woman passed away yesterday and was left in our care. When we talked to family yesterday (three surviving daughters, as the woman was widowed), they wanted an open casket. The deceased lady had been ill for quite some time, and her appearance showed it. They brought in clothes for us to dress her in, her glasses, and bunch of rings, a watch, and a pretty matronly outfit. To top it off, they had purchased a dark-colored big hair wig for us to use, as her hair had thinned quite a bit. If you’re not healthy, your hair isn’t usually going to be healthy.

Fast forward to this morning. We notified the family their mother was ready for viewing, so the three daughters came in to see her laying quietly in repose in one of our more intimate rooms. We left them to be privately with their mother. They came out about half an hour later, stopped in front of my office, and spoke quietly among themselves. I could tell something was off, and it looked like they were trying to elect which one of them was going to say something to me. I walked up to them and asked if everything was okay. They looked at each other, then told me they appreciated everything we had done, how kind we had been, how professional, etc. However. Comma. Pause.

They had given me their elderly Midwest farmwoman mother, and in return I gave them what looked like a Jewish mother from New York City. Everything just seemed, well, off. I was a little confused by this, as I had not actually seen her once she’d been prepared, dressed, and casketed. So I left them and walked over to the room to have a look.

I took one look at her, and they could not have described it better. Nothing screams Jewish mother like an elderly woman with a dark-colored big hair wig, a brooch, a lot of rings on her fingers, and rimless glasses with a dummy chain. She looked pretty close to this picture of Mike Meyers from old Saturday Night Live skits. They had us dead to rights. Now as to how to fix this problem……

I asked the daughters if they had a recent photo of her mother, one before she became seriously ill perhaps? No, they didn’t. They had an awful photo of her on her death bed, totally unflattering and unrepresentative of what she looked like. The only others they had immediate access to were from like 1955 or so. I told them we would figure something out over the next few hours before the visitation and told them some of the things we planned to do, the first of which was to lose the big hair wig. I would get a copy of her driver’s license or ID photo from the police and we would work from that.

The daughters left. I got the photo from the police by e-mail. I got the mortuary staff in and handed them their mission: we have just over seven hours before this evening’s visitation to make her not look like a Jewish mother. They looked at me like I’d lost my mind (a pretty common look I get).

I handed them the driver’s license photo and told them to make her look more like the driver’s license photo, and less like Linda Richmond from Saturday Night Live’s Coffee talk skits (I’d taken the opportunity to look it up while I was waiting on staff to come in). Got it, they said, and they were on it. First thing, that wig has simply got to go, even though that’s what the family provided.

I found a beautician who was willing to come in on short notice and make some money off the clock. Even with unhealthy and thinning hair, some miracles are possible with a can of Aqua Net and a rat-tail comb. A few cosmetic changes later, a set of stock glasses with plano lenses minus the dummy chain later,

A Glimpse Behind the Scenes at Funeral Home Challenges. Its Not Always Funerial.

they were ready for the big reveal.

I went back, and the transformation was complete. They had transformed Linda Richmond into something more like Aunt Em from the Wizard of Oz. They were happy, I was happy, but the question remained: is the family going to be happy?

They came in a few hours later after lunch. I showed them to the visitation room; they took one look and said: PERFECT! I heaved a sigh of relief, as I’d dreaded the possibility of having to work up until visitation time to get it to their satisfaction.

As I was getting ready to leave them to be alone with their newly-refurbished mother, they started chuckling among themselves. They looked at me, and the eldest said: “Oh, Shirley (they never got my name right and probably never will), we are so. So. So. VERKLEMPT!” Then all three burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. But they were happy, and customer satisfaction is important.

Glad to be here, proud to serve.

But please don’t call me Shirley.

A Glimpse Behind the Scenes at Funeral Home Challenges. It's Not Always Funerial.
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