Reflective Memo
The goal of my profile is to tell my fathers job description as a funeral director. This is a unique career and not many people know what the job entails. I want my audience to think how demanding it is to be a funeral director and how you need to be a very dedicated and hard working person, just like my father.
In order to complete my profile, I had to do some research on an actual funeral director. Since my father is a funeral director, I decided to spend a day with him and took notes on everything he did around the house, within the office and during an actual arrangement. After I spent the day with him, I started writing out my information in an outline. I wrote down a lot of information, so it was difficult to narrow down what was important and what was not. Once it came time to put it altogether in an essay, it was actually very easy. I had all my thoughts already, so the only thing I had to do was reword some of the phrases into complete sentences.
The problems that I encountered while writing my outline was I didn’t get enough information on a specific topic. Therefore, my father emailed me some funeral home documents that he uses so I can get a better understanding of making arrangements. Some problems that I encountered while writing my draft was I didn’t know how I wanted the beginning, middle, and end to all go together. After talking with Dr. Simon, I decided to start the beginning with my father, and the middle will be about what his job entails as a funeral director. Then, the end will tell about my father’s background and my personal thoughts and experience of having a father as a funeral director.
This writing has compared with other writings in the past because it is a profile on my father’s occupation. I never realized how much time and effort he puts into his job when he is actually in the funeral home. I believe that being a funeral director is not a common or normal profession, but it was very interesting learning about what he does with families to help them cope with their deceased loved ones.
During the drafting process, my peers have helped me improved my writing. Everyone in my group agreed that I need to condense my essay and make it shorter. Natalie and Brittany thought I should try to make my conclusion stronger and more forceful. Dr. Simon helped me rearrange the order of some of my paragraphs to make it flow better by adding some dialogue into my essay.
Funeral Director
On the wee hours of a Saturday morning, I hear my mother’s footsteps as she descends the stairs. In frustration, she goes to the front door and yells out to my father.
“Bruce, it’s three o’clock in the morning. Where are you going?”
I hear his faint reply.
“Just got another death call. I need to go pick up a body in Somerville.”
Thirty years in the funeral business is like fifty years in any other business. If you are willing to work at all times in an atmosphere of grief; if you are willing to be “on duty” 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year round; if you are willing to be called in by police and firemen to care for the disfigured victims of accidents or violence at any time of the day or night; and if you are willing to work always under the pressure of split-second timing, then being a funeral director is the answer.
Being the daughter of a funeral director is irritating because all you ever hear about is death, and nothing else. My father runs his own business with the help and support of my mother. I have watched them in action ever since I was a little girl. It is clear that a funeral director will not be successful if he or she cannot learn to compromise. Because morticians are workaholics, they have to accept reality and change their plans if they have to. With a business like this, it is nearly impossible to be able to play golf, see a movie, or even go on vacation for a few days. In another words, my dad is married to his business phone. He sits around and waits for the phone to ring every minute of the day. On a typical morning, I come downstairs and all I hear my parents talking about is who just died and who is waiting to get embalmed.
As I’m having breakfast, later that day, my dad returns from the morning house call. My mom’s sitting across from me at the table, and calls him into the kitchen.
“Bruce, you’ll never believe who I saw at the food store today,” exclaims Linda.
“I don’t have time for your nonsense right now, I am busy and I need to call back the hospital.” Bruce replies.
“Well I saw that lady, Mrs. Morris, that was diagnosed with stage five cancer and she seemed to be just fine!”
“Well good for her, but what a waste of my time. I could have been out on the golf course,” he responds.
My dad returns to his office to make the call and tries to finish the paperwork that’s piling up on his desk, and adding to his stress. On a regular day, my dad first gets the phone call that someone has passed away. Once the death has occurred, the family may demand immediate assistance for the body to be picked up or they may want to spend more time with the deceased to say goodbye. Then, my dad will take the deceased to the funeral home to begin the preparation for embalming. The restorative art needs to be finished after the embalming as well as the dressing of the body, hairdressing, and cosmetology.
While making arrangements, my dad tries to conduct a complete consultation with the family members to gather necessary information. It’s his job as a mortician to guide the family in the cost consideration of a funeral, and not allow anyone to go beyond their financial means in the selection of a funeral. Of course my dad suggests having a funeral with visitation hours, but many people choose to have cremations because they are cheaper. However, funerals help families deal with the grief process and allow them to see the deceased for one last time. During arrangements, my father will show the families a selection of prayer cards, caskets, vaults, and gravestones to choose for the deceased. He will additionally ask the family to bring in any pictures to be included in a picture slideshow during the visitation hours, and to choose an outfit for the body to be dressed in. At last, my dad will compile all the information that the family has given him and put it into an obituary that will be placed in the newspaper.
For my dad Bruce, it all started with one part time summer job at the family funeral home. In 1977, Bruce took the experience he had and the college credit he gained at the University of Maryland and enrolled in the Mercer County Community College Funeral Services program. In 1980, he graduated with an associate degree in Science. He subsequently received his state license as a Practitioner of Mortuary Science at the age of 20, and then began working full time as a funeral director. After twenty years of working at the family funeral home, in 2000, Bruce opened Somerville’s newest funeral home and continued to provide for the needs of families in the Somerville and surrounding neighborhoods. Lastly in 2005, my father’s dream came true. After five years of renting a funeral home, he was finally able to build his own state-of-the-art funeral home.
It is crazy how much stress a funeral director is under on a daily basis. Should we have the family come in the morning or afternoon? Wait, the other family isn’t going to be out in time. The flowers are not here yet. Can you call the florist? Is the death certificate signed yet? The phone is ringing, why is nobody answering it? Since my father is an undertaker, I hear him say these things or ask these questions constantly. I’m not even in the business and after spending a day with my father; I tend to have a massive headache.
