Does This Mean You'll See Me Naked?

by Robert D. Webster

  I encourage everyone to make a decision and then act on it. If ground burial is desired, select cemetery property and purchase it—and be sure to inform your family members. My first experiences with pre-need in the 1970s entailed payable-on-death accounts set up at a local bank. In one case, a retired schoolteacher was widowed and had no children. Upon her death there would be no one to carry out her wishes. So she arranged for her funeral service, selected the appropriate merchandise, and paid for everything in advance. She placed the money in a bank account in both her name and the funeral home’s name, not to be touched until appropriate proof of death was provided. Yearly interest more than compensated for inflation.

  But in the 1970s, banks were paying up to 9 percent interest, so pre-need accounts only two or three years old accrued far more interest than necessary. That windfall was supposed to be returned to the surviving family or to the deceased’s estate, and in most cases, that was done. But one former boss used to instruct me to attempt to “upgrade” whenever a large amount of interest had accumulated in a pre-need account.

  The 1970s and 1980s were dark periods for abuse in the burgeoning pre-need arena. Detailed reports of funeral directors pocketing pre-need money filled funeral industry publications. They deposited funds into the funeral home’s checking account instead of a separate account and then used them for day-to-day expenses. Upon the purchaser’s death, the funeral home would perform the service and provide the merchandise, with no one the wiser.

  Problems occurred when a purchaser decided to cancel the prearrangement or wished to transfer the account to another funeral home. The original director struggled to come up with the money, an investigation ensued, and the scam was exposed. Funeral homes received quite a black eye. Insurance-based funding and removal of the funeral director from the mix eventually repaired a lot of the damage. Nowadays, if a consumer has a savings account of $10,000 or a like-value life insurance policy, funding a pre-need through a funeral home is totally unnecessary. Going to a home and prearranging wishes and merchandise and then putting such wishes in writing is an excellent idea to save surviving family members from answering tough questions at a time of grief and stress.

  Yet many prearrangement clients prefer to pay up front just so they know that their wishes will be met in the future, and also so that the surviving children cannot deviate from the parent’s wishes.

  My parting thought on the subject of prearrangements is simple. If you pay in advance, make sure the funds are deposited into an insurance product. Don’t let a funeral director or pre-need salesperson talk you into placing funds in the funeral home’s savings account. With the onslaught of corporate buyouts, many homes will no longer be privately owned in years to come. Funeral home consolidators are buying out one another’s assets constantly—and that includes all current pre-need accounts.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Claire’s mode of transportation was only one aspect of HBO’s award-winning series that everyone grilled me about. Would I let my daughter drive a lime-green hearse? Would I let my daughter drive a hearse to school? Probably not—but it certainly made a terrific visual. And as a funeral director, I must congratulate the writers and the technical adviser for having presented a largely accurate picture of a family-owned funeral operation, complete with dizzying dynamics and relationship subplots never before explored on television—along with a small but realistic peek inside a mysterious and fascinating vocation.

  As I watched many episodes in the company of fellow funeral directors, we often exchanged knowing glances. Whether a scene concerned feuding families, people on modest budgets insisting on the most expensive caskets, or heartfelt sympathy expressed to the bereaved by Nate and David Fisher, we all agreed: “Been there, done that.”

  Some of the grittiest details were things that only we would notice. One episode from the fifth season, for example, featured an irate Vanessa storming into the prep room to confront Federico. He was in the process of raising a decedent’s leg high in the air with his left hand and holding in his right a set of forceps grasping a white plastic AV plug. Its purpose? To be twisted into the anus and/or vagina of the deceased to seal the orifice, thus avoiding any embarrassing leaks or discharges while reposing. Too graphic, you say, even for HBO? Not at all. First, most viewers had no idea what was going on. Second, for those of us in the trade, it provided a riveting touch of authenticity.

  Before Six Feet Under, most movies and television episodes depicting funeral services seemed eager to portray their directors as pale, somber, black-garbed super-salesmen far more intent on separating consumers from their wallets than on consoling them. Perhaps that’s one reason our image still suffers at times; why people are shocked to learn that we actually have a sense of humor; and why we still deal constantly with absurd questions about whether dead bodies truly sit up, make noises, or continue to grow hair and fingernails. Six Feet Under made tremendous strides in not only humanizing us but also conveying to the public our proper place in society as providing a much-needed service.

  Nate’s poignant conversation with the elderly gentleman who did not want to leave the funeral home after his wife’s visitation had concluded was very typical, and a classic scene from the show. Older couples may have lived together for decades. When one of them is gone, the other faces a dreadful emptiness. Nate showed compassion toward someone unwilling to return to a silent house; he simply sat down next to the grieving man and let him talk. Any funeral director worth his salt is, above all, a good listener.

  There are comical aspects to our business as well that the show has shown. In one episode, a stripper who was electrocuted when her cat pushed electric rollers into her bathtub tested Federico’s breast-positioning skills. Her friends were duly impressed with the lifelike uplift of her assets as she lay in the casket. When questioned, Federico admitted he’d placed a cat food can under each breast. While the idea was intriguing, I’ll probably stick to my own tried-and-true method, filling brassieres with cotton. On occasion I’ve overdone it, but each time, the surviving husband has expressed approval with a hearty thumbs-up or even a wink through tear-soaked eyes.

  The series included only a couple of misleading embellishments. First, the Fisher and Sons Funeral Home, like many older establishments, was situated in what was once a grand old residence, complete with its outdated basement prep room where embalming and dressing took place. But the home always seemed to acquire its bodies with amazing speed. In reality, the Los Angeles County coroner performs such a staggering number of autopsies and examinations that releasing even a single body could take several days to a week. Nate, David, or Federico would not likely drop by on the very day of someone’s death and return home that evening with the decedent already in tow.

  Also, David’s fear that Mitzi, representing the scary, deep-pocketed corporation, might buy out the competitor down the street and eventually put the Fishers out of business was probably regional. Perhaps in Southern California there is less personalization and therefore less loyalty. In the East and Midwest, however, funeral directors are often trusted friends who secure much of their continued business through word of mouth. If a family-owned home sells to a faceless, out-of-state consolidator, then area consumers hear about it and become understandably skittish about handing over their beloved family members to total strangers.

  I would have enjoyed seeing at least one episode that dealt with the inevitable hustle and bustle of a funeral home’s busy streak. Several days filled with nonstop and breakneck arrangements, embalming, dressing bodies and placing them in caskets, and then hoping everything had been attended to properly and would run smoothly. Oddly, no one ever seemed to be fully present at what eventually became the Fisher and Diaz Home. I can’t help wondering who answered the telephone, who greeted walk-ins, and who sat down with those wishing to learn more about pre-need contracts.

  Years ago, some of my friends expressed horror at the prospect of a television series dealing with the death-care industry. Four
seasons later, those same people couldn’t get enough of it. Creatively, you could hardly do better than to begin each episode with a death—followed by a conference with the decedent’s family and some sort of off-the-wall request or unique confrontation. Thanks to Six Feet Under, no individual’s preference will ever again seem too bizarre. No flare-up among relatives will ever take anyone by surprise. And best of all, every viewing room will forever be known as Casketeria.

  The final episode was surprisingly disturbing to some of my friends and family members, but I found the scenes depicting how each main character died both touching and reassuring. After all, we can’t deny the fact that each of us will someday expire, and we can’t possibly know when. Most reassuring of all was that several earlier episodes made clear the possibility that the main characters might not survive Nate’s death. For weeks it seemed apparent that Ruth, David, Claire, George, and Brenda were all losing their grips on reality.

  But just as in the many thousands of cases that I have observed, they peered over that cliff into an emotional abyss and decided not to jump. Instead, they backed away and reclaimed their inherent strength, along with their own lives. Finally, they united to toast Nate rather than continue to mourn him.

  Life went on. Just as it does, however miraculously, for most of us grieving for those we love and have lost.

  AFTERWORD

  One day when I was about twelve, my dad came home boasting of a pocketful of change he had won at poker. Apparently, when there was nothing to do at the funeral home where he was employed, he and his coworkers would while away the afternoon playing cards. As he described the various hands that had made him that day’s “big wiener,” as he put it, I couldn’t help thinking that anyone who played games while on the clock must have one terrific deal. “That,” I told myself, “is the job for me.”

  More seeds were planted each time Dad brought home yet another gruesome tale of unidentifiable remains and proceeded to tell it at our dinner table. Although he had my rapt attention, my mom wasn’t exactly thrilled. As I grew older, Dad began taking me outside on the porch whenever he felt the urge to describe one more eyebrow-raising story about his day.

  Around the time I decided to attend college to major in mortuary science, my dad was experiencing the itch to stop working for the man and become the man himself. In 2001, he opened his own funeral home and was finally able to run things as he saw fit. By then, I was completely aware that history would repeat itself. I would, like him, set myself up for years, perhaps decades, of working for somebody else—but at least it would be my own father. How hard could it be?

  What I didn’t yet realize, of course, was that Dad would hold me to far higher standards than he would any other employee. Even today, regardless of whether we’re embalming, dressing, or just cleaning up, if things do not take place in the manner or sequence that my father expects, then everything I have done is for naught. I’ve wasted my time—and far more important, I’ve wasted his. His voice rises to an outside level, even though its only destination is my ears, a mere two feet away.

  I have to admit that, on a few occasions, the yelling was justified. My thought process, which darts from one end of the spectrum to the other in the wink of an eye, might sometimes be described as scattered.

  A woman phoned our funeral home one day to inquire as to where she might send flowers for an upcoming service. I told her she could just send them to the church of her choice, not realizing that the deceased’s family wasn’t holding a church service, only brief remarks following a visitation. Of course Dad used his outside voice to proclaim that it was always my responsibility to find out what was going on without assuming anything.

  Another time a young woman had passed from cancer, and her cemetery procession of devoted friends and loved ones was extremely long, about seventy-five cars. The first half of the line pulled out of the church’s parking lot successfully. But then one car made the mistake of stopping, and oncoming traffic began whizzing by—a serious breach of funeral etiquette, but that’s a whole other story. By the time the latter half of the line attempted to get moving, each vehicle had to wait for a traffic lull.

  I sprinted down to the highway’s nearby intersection and stopped the oncoming cars to keep the rest of the procession together. But I again had made the mistake of assuming wrong. I thought Dad had made a right turn out of the lot instead of going left. So I sent the second half to the right, and nobody who headed in that direction ever made it to the cemetery. Several family members called the funeral home over the next half hour to locate the grave site, and one man in particular returned in person to insist that it was our home’s fault he couldn’t find it. He kept saying, “Now, I am not blaming y’all, but I don’t know who else’s fault it could be.”

  After hearing that about ten times, I’d had enough. Loudly and harshly, I blurted, “Sir, you are blaming me!” He fired back, “Boy, I’ll whoop you right where you stand! Don’t you get tough with me!” I snickered, wondering if he was planning to hit me over the head with his AARP membership card.

  Needless to say, my dad was not thrilled. Even my mom was upset. And it pains me to confess that both of them were legitimately peeved. Tolerance back then was not my strong suit. I hadn’t been seeking a way to resolve the problem so that all of us could walk away happy; instead, I’d taken a defensive stance, ready to step outside and engage in fisticuffs if needed. I clearly had a lot to learn.

  Gradually things got better. One day after lunch, a gentleman came in and told me that his father was being cared for in hospice and had only a few days left. I suggested a prearrangement and filled out biographical information for the impending death certificate. We chatted for another fifteen minutes, and he agreed to call us when the time came.

  A few days later when we got the notification, I was out securing a doctor’s signature on another death certificate and braving the icy personality of his receptionist. (Medical receptionists generally consider people like me total nuisances.) When I returned to the funeral home, Mom told me that Dad had already left to pick up the body, but the son and his wife were waiting.

  I sat down with them; discussed merchandise and services; and before I knew it, all arrangements had been completed. Everything had gone smoothly. The following day, after I’d made my usual rounds, Mom told me the gentleman had just dropped off his father’s clothing and paid the bill in full. He’d also told her what a nice person I was and how calm, professional, and knowledgeable I’d been. I’d never expected that kind of a compliment so early in my career, particularly since during the entire meeting I’d been telling myself, “Don’t screw this up. Give him the correct price, and calculate the sales tax accurately.”

  What have I learned over the years from my father? That being a renowned and respected funeral director with a sterling reputation for treating other people well requires constant effort and attention to detail. It’s about far more than just working visitations, keeping up on paperwork, missing your son’s baseball game, or leaving a holiday party early. It’s also about compassionately helping another family from beginning to end through one of the toughest ordeals that life inevitably hands us.

  Dad has also taught me that, in most cases, the customer is right. Sometimes, regardless of the business you’re in, whatever you do will never be enough. So Dad has repeatedly stressed the virtue of patience and the need not to get worked up over uncontrollable variables. Patience was apparently not a gift that God ever thought Websters should have. I’ve had to work at it. But I’ve learned that with patience comes experience and with experience comes confidence.

  So much of this job involves waiting. When things are slow, we wait for the phone to ring. When a death occurs, we wait for a son who lives twenty-five miles away to come to view his mom before we can carry her away. All of the puzzle pieces must line up and fit together, and some outward force is needed to push them in the right direction. In every case, once I figure out how to harness that force, then apply it appr
opriately, this business becomes the most rewarding, fulfilling thing I could ever imagine.

  I’ve seen the way people greet my father at a visitation, or anywhere in public for that matter. They’re so warm and friendly, so genuinely glad to see him. They really want to hear about his business and about how our family is doing. And we know they’ll call us whenever the death of a loved one occurs because of the kindness and concern that my dad has always projected.

  What’s comical, though, is how often we are mistaken for each other. Over the phone our voices sound nearly identical. Whenever I answer with a hearty “Webster Funeral Home,” the response is almost always, “Bob?”

  “No. Michael.”

  “You sound just like him.”

  “I know. Please don’t hold that against me.”

  At visitations I often hear, “Ahh, so you are Bob’s boy,” or, “OK, now I can put a face with the voice.” Soon I hope it will be, “Hey, good to see you, Michael. You keeping that old man of yours out of trouble?”

  Yes, I am—just as soon as I can find him a hobby.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Robert D. Webster has been a licensed embalmer and funeral director in the state of Ohio since 1977. As a teenager he was initiated into the funeral home business by mowing the grass, washing the cars, and performing other menial, yet important at the time, duties that served as a springboard for his eventual chosen profession. He completed grade school, junior high, and high school in Hamilton, Ohio, and graduated from Miami University and the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science. Upon licensure, he worked for other funeral homes in the area for twenty-four years. He opened The Webster Funeral Home in 2001 in Fairfield, Ohio.