Mortician, embalmer, funeral director, oh my!

In this blog you will most often hear me reference my job title as a mortician. I want to explain to you some of the different lingo that is used to describe what I do. I say mortician because this means I am both a funeral director and an embalmer. A funeral director is some who essential, directs funerals. These people sit down with families and plan out what is going to be done with their loved one. Whether that be the whole 9 yards with casket, hearse, procession, burial, etc. or if that simply means we are going to cremate them and place them in a cardboard urn. An embalmer is someone who does just that, embalms. These individuals rid the body of as much of its natural fluids as possible and replace these fluids with preserving chemicals in order to make the body presentable to the public. They also get the body ready in other ways but, I'll save that for another post. I am licensed to do both of these jobs. I can be a funeral director or an embalmer. I also carry a special license that allows me to cremate individuals. In the olden days people who refer to me an an undertaker. That word sounds dirty and I don't like it. I am not the lord of the underworld and I did not decide that it was your loved ones time to die. To me, the word undertaker is reserved for Hades in Hercules. I will never call myself an undertaker. Some people who work in the death care industry do call themselves that. To each their own. I prefer mortician. 

As a mortician, I am both center stage and a behind the scenes director. I am sometimes the face of the company, set out to take your loved one into our care from where they have passed and also the one who your family will spend hours with deciding if Dad liked purple or green better for your flower arrangement. Other times I am in the background, washing your loved one in order to make them presentable for a viewing or cremating someone who wishes to scattered in Lake Michigan. Both of these aspects of my job are important and I enjoy playing both roles. Some of my colleagues prefer to only be in the background, while some prefer to be in the foreground. In my opinion you should excell at both. To be an excellent mortician is to understand how to treat the dead and the living with respect. If I can't trust you to be civil to a family that is grieving, how can I trust you to respect a body as it is being embalmed? This is the stance I take but I know there are others in this field who would disagree with me.

So am I a funeral director? Yes. Am I am embalmer? Yes. To encompass them both I call myself a mortician. Am I an undertaker? Only if you think I'm the lord of the underworld (which I am sure there are individuals out there who do).

This is the undertaker..... Not me.