Last Responders: A Bastion of Optimism

When I first got the call to work with a group of funeral homes, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Having online content, especially in the era of COVID-19 is a smart thing for any business, but what could a bunch of funeral directors possibly want to talk about on camera? I thought it would be a challenge and it was something that I wanted to do.

The company was new to video content, so we decided that we would improvise a little to begin with, in order to truly figure out what they wanted to show the rest of the world.

For me, that meant interviewing all the staff in order to find out what inspired them to be in this field, and to get a general understanding of what it was like to work with death on a near daily basis.

Let me be clear, the funeral directors and staff of the company I was working with might be an exceptional bunch, who knows. I don’t really have any other experience with funeral homes to go by so this is not scientific in any sense, but I was blown away with what I found out.

After interviewing nearly ever person that worked within the company, I was in awe of their very real belief that what they were doing was a calling. A few of them had me in tears.

I pride myself on being able to see past people’s lack of authenticity, so it surprised me when I believed every word that these individuals had to say about how much they enjoyed the work that they do. “Enjoy” might be the wrong word because they never denied that their job is a hard one, but they were all very adamant that this was what they were supposed to be doing in life. They do this job for the human connection. Surprising right?

What I couldn’t understand is they were all sincere and empathic people. How can you be that way when you deal with death on a daily basis?

I realized that I had thought of funeral directors all wrong: they weren’t in this business to just take care of the dead. They weren’t creepy old men, in fact there were several people younger than me.

They do what they do in order to take care of the living. They know that the dead are gone, at peace. It is those left behind that need the comfort of saying goodbye.

Before this job, I hadn’t realized the ritualistic importance of saying goodbye to loved ones. The importance of creating a setting of community and support in order to help those that are left behind to process and work with their grief.

For thousands of years, we have used ritual to mark important events in our lives: birth, marriage, death. No matter your culture, creed or lack there of, we find comfort in ritual.

It is built into us.

My initial unease of shooting interviews in a funeral home soon passed, and was replaced by a sense of comfort: it was a safe space where the world of the living could mix with the memories of those who have left.

To take a deep dive into what funeral directors do and how they help people live with their grief was even more poignant considering the world that we live in today. We are grieving the loss of loved ones by the thousands due to COVID-19 and we are grieving the loss of community and the world as we knew it, especially during this holiday season. There is a sense of collectivity in our experience of loss this year, and some sense of comfort can be drawn from that, but then there is the question of how to we handle that grief?

Thanks to this project, I have learned that grief doesn’t disappear and we certainly don’t have “stages” of grief. It is messy and none-sequential. It is there and we need to recognize it and honor it when the wave comes.

One thing is certain, the beautiful people that I met during this project will continue to do their work, although it has become a lot harder with the reduction in how many people can attend a service as well as with the ever increasing number of people dying from this virus still. They have turned to virtual ceremonies and other ways of doing what they were called to do: help the living say goodbye.