Members of the funeral industry are united by the caring of the deceased. We take care of those who have died, and in doing so, we help those left behind grieve, mourn and accept their loss. It is a stable occupation, though most refer to it as a “calling”. The funeral industry accepts all most everyone. In the United States, there are more than 22,000 funeral homes. Amongst those funeral homes, there are approximately 102,877 workers. Of those 102,887 workers, there is estimated that there are 25,820 funeral directors and 8,190 embalming specialists. Most funeral homes are independent cells, unless they are part of a chain or a corporation. That said, each state has a board that oversees that state’s requirements for license and regulations, with a national board to rule of law and requirements. These boards usually hold conventions yearly to spread knowledge and draw attention to upcoming issues. To work as a funeral director or embalmer, someone must pass both their chosen state requirements and the national requirements. My personal connection to the funeral industry is that I am a funeral service intern, or a funeral director apprentice. I have worked at a funeral home for over two years. The major costs of working in the funeral industry are for those that own their own funeral home. The average funeral home handles about 100 calls per year and has around three full-time and three part-time employees. So, there is a difference in wealth between the full-time and part-time employees and difference between those that own their own funeral home against those that just work at a funeral home. Since each funeral home is for the majority independent, the “leader” is either the owner or the manager. The position is achieved th... ... middle of paper ... ... dress or business suit. However, we do what the family requests. So if the family requests t-shirts and jeans for the funeral, no suit will be in sight. Though, traditionally we look very professional and somber. Outside of the funeral home, we look no different than anyone else. Each person has their own reason why the work in the funeral industry. Some people find it a “calling”. Others see it as a job only they can do. I do it because I enjoy helping people during a dark time and I don’t feel squeamish or sick when I handle remains. This is an occupation that is needed. People do not like to be reminded of their mortality, and when they experience death, it is shocking. We are here so that we can help them move past that shock and understand and accept their loss. We’re here to care for the deceased with the respect and dignity that everyone deserves in death.
Morbid Funeral Home, Inc. is an accrual basis taxpayer who sells preneed funeral contracts. Customers pay Morbid in advance for goods and services to be provided at the contract beneficiary’s death. Under state law the payments are refundable if the contract purchaser requests them any time until the goods and services are furnished. Morbid, for both financial and tax accounting purposes, includes the payments in income for the year the funeral service is provided. Morbid insists that the amounts it receives under the contracts are customer deposits. The IRS agent insists that the payments are prepaid income that is subject to tax in the year of receipt.
She opens up her essay by saying “How surprised [Yorick] would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged, and neatly dressed transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.”(Mitford) Funerals are meant to protect people from seeing what kind of toll death has on their loved one; to remove the scars of being human. Kubler-Ross touches on this when she says “The more we are making advancements in science, the more we seem to fear and deny the reality of death. How is this possible? We use euphemisms, we make the dead look as if they were asleep” (Kubler-Ross) which connects to her opinion that death is feared and people take responsibility when a loved one dies, even if they had no impact on their death. The eradication of the sense of death is the key reason why the deceased are embalmed. Clifton Bryant discusses that the reason why people want to have their dead embalmed is because of “death anxiety”, that it is the collective phrase for all the different and complex fears of death. He later states that death anxiety is why we tend to have “death denial” and why we tend to avoid it wholly. “Likewise, the use of metaphors or euphemisms that serve to soften the harshness of death (e.g., passed away, deceased, expired) clearly represents a culturally approved attempt to deny or camouflage death's impact on our daily lives.”(Bryant) This reflects well on the point Mitford makes, when she says “[The funeral director] put on a well-oiled performance in which the concept of death played no part whatsoever” (Mitford) Kubler-Ross feels that death being ever increasingly more taboo the more
In the past four decades the cost of a funeral service has risen 1,328% (Boring) and that’s not just because Morticians wanted to out of pure greed. One must take into account that modern mortuaries are much more of a business than before. Prior to 1970, the majority of funeral homes were were independent, family run. Today about 14% of funeral homes are run by a publicly traded corporation (Boring) meaning there’s a plethora of capital involved in these businesses now. The homes are built better and by professionals rather than by individuals with some tools, the home’s are extremely more sanitary since there’s more than likely no one living in these funeral homes unlike before, and the quality of the products these services are providing is greater than before.
To better understand if these numbers represent commonalities in the funeral services industry it is essential to compare SCI to its closest market
African-American is a politically correct term used to refer to blacks within the United States. The roots of many African-American rites can be traced back to African cultural rites. However, it is important to note that not all blacks in America identify with African cultural roots. Therefore, some of the rites found within what many in the United States call African-American culture stem from Caribbean and other cultural traditions. For this reason, when making end of life decisions or funeral arrangements the “cultural identification, spirituality and the social class” the individual identifies with must be taken into account. The black majority within the United States identifies with Afrocentric traditions and perspectives. For this reason the term African-American will be used within this paper to denote the black population found in America as comparisons are made regarding how end of life decisions are viewed and made by African-American culture verses the traditional western European beliefs of American culture (Barrett, 2002).
In Sandy Hingston’s “The death of the funeral business”, the story motivates people into moving into different sets of values or beliefs that weren’t acquainted in their previous ideas. I feel the understanding of change in culture is motivating the author. The time that she is living a time and era in which we as the people search for many ways to have freedom. This includes freedom of choice from the restraints of our own minds such as culture and beliefs we are so accustomed to. Hingston is seeing as a change on how we perceive our body because of the time and era it occurs in. One of the the biggest change in history is the since 1884 which introduced the use cremation. This later rose in popularity overtime in which it finally reached
The other way the families tried to maintain the Good Death was through embalming. “Embalming offered families a way to combat at least some the threats the war posed to the principles of the Good Death (Faust 93).” The undertakers during the Civil War took advantage of the grieving families in search of the Good Death for their soldiers. Not every family received a letter, not every family knew when or where their soldier died, and not every family had comfort that their soldier received the Good Death. Families then took the initiative into their own hands, and they went to search for their fallen soldiers. Undertakers would travel through battle ground and embalm any bodies that they could, so that families could bring their soldiers home
the size of the funeral home at which you work and the number of cases handled.
Imagine yourself as a mortician, certified as an embalmer, retort operator, funeral director, and a funeral cosmetologist. You get a call late at night, there’s been a terrible accident and someone has died. You arrive at the hospital and are directed to a small room where the body of the deceased is being held. There’s blood all over the sheets as the doctor and coronary assistant zip up the body bag and inform you the body was badly mangled in a car accident, which is going to make reconstructing the deceased very difficult. Your assistant puts the body on the stretcher and loads it into the hearse while you talk to the wife of the deceased man. She tells you they plan to have a funeral so you give her your card and a reassuring word before leaving the hospital and driving back to the funeral home. Now your job begins, not only will you have to reconstruct this man’s disfigured body, but you must meet with the family, discuss funeral arrangements, and deal with the family’s emotional trauma that comes with losing a loved one. Although working in the funeral business can be emotionally draining, it’s a satisfying feeling to see mourning families able to say goodbye to their loved ones. Despite the fact that working so closely with the deceased can be chilling, Mortuary science can be a thrilling field to work in.
How much a person in the funeral service industry could make varies depending on experience, schooling, job choice, and location. A mortician in the top 10% of morticians could make over $100,000; the bottom 10% of morticians makes less than $30,000. On average morticians make about $26 an hour (“Mortician” para. 11).
Without advanced medicine, Americans were familiar with death, as the common cold could easily turn fatal. After the death of a loved one, the family members would give the body a bath and store it in the coldest room of the house to prevent immediate decomposing. The body would only stay in the house until people had time to visit and say their goodbyes. The smell was unpleasant, so flowers would be brought in. This initiated the tradition of having flowers at a funeral. After that, the body would be buried next to other deceased family members in a simple, wooden coffin. For those that could afford it, an undertaker was hired to take away the body and hold a formal funeral. The undertaker would store bodies on blocks of
To “live as fully and comfortably as possible” is a key phrase in the care and treatment of a patient under hospice care. Hospice care focuses on the comfort and quality of life for a person with a terminal illness. The focus is not on a cure. A hospice care provider wants to help the patient be as pain free and comfortable as they can be, so that they can live the rest of their life as fully as possible. Unfortunately, more often than not, patients with terminal illnesses are viewed to be too frail to participate in occupations (Russell, M., & Bauh-Lampe, A., 20016). It is also true that people facing the end of their life feel helpless or depressed, lose their ability to participate in a lot of the daily activities they once enjoyed, and experience a loss of dignity. (Badger, S., Macleod, R., & Honey, A. 2016). However, with hospice care, many patients are able to find some degree of comfort, safety and control over their lives during their final days.
While reviewing "The Funeral" the first thing that became apparent was the title. A funeral is ceremony held in connection with the burial of a dead person. So already just by looking at the title we become aware that we are dealing with a dead body. Death, in some cultures, is the separation of the body from the soul. The soul continues to live and may even find shelter in another body.
I have decided to do my Career Research Paper on Fish and Game Warden. Fish and Game Warden involve being with people and with the environment and trying to keep bad people from doing bad things. I have thought about becoming a Fish and Game Warden for about 3 to 4 years now. The reason I researched it was because I like to hunt and fish and be outdoors and I think this job would be perfect for me. After researching the career of a funeral direction, I have not decided to pursue this career.
A funeral is an important event that should be planned with careful consideration, as each person only gets one to celebrate his or her life. People often die expectantly and suddenly leaving any funeral and burial arrangements in the hands of friends or relatives. These friends or family of the deceased may or may not have a good understanding of what the deceased would have preferred in his or her post death arrangements. A person planning his or her own funeral can prevent this guessing game and insure the arrangements are to their specifications.