Does This Mean You'll See Me Naked?

by Robert D. Webster

  People should know that funeral directors take legitimate complaints very seriously. Immediate damage control is of utmost importance, since a family who feels slighted or mistreated in any way will surely call on a competing funeral home for service in the future.

  I’D LIKE TO TALK TO THE BOSS

  Most complaints, thank goodness, are minor, usually the result of some miscommunication. Obituaries are the most common snags, as when a family member has gone unmentioned or a name has been incorrectly spelled. Such incidences can be smoothed over quickly with no lasting severe effects.

  But it’s not always that simple. After I conducted funeral services for a deceased friend, I was delighted when my employer handed me a letter from my friend’s spouse. I assumed it would be congratulatory, perhaps lauding me for my fine job of caring for her family’s needs. But as I read the letter I slowly became shocked at its contents. She was terribly upset over “many” incidents taking place at both the funeral home and the cemetery. I pored over her list of infractions and decided to call her to go over each one.

  She was angry about late arrivals being allowed to enter the chapel. I explained that letting people in after the funeral had begun was customary. She was angry about the chapel door squeaking every time it was opened. I assured her that I would spray WD-40 on the hinges. She was angry about two babies crying throughout most of the service. I explained that such disturbances were common at both weddings and funerals, and it wasn’t my place to order young mothers to leave. Her next problem was with the lounge—she was upset that a place where small children played might be filled with cigarette smoke. She was also appalled that a funeral home would charge fifty cents for a can of soda at her husband’s visitation and funeral, thereby profiting further at her expense. I happened to agree about the lounge complaints—since then there’s no smoking inside my funeral home and I don’t charge for coffee or soft drinks. Her next problem was with the cemetery and that there were not enough chairs graveside; typically, cemeteries set up only a dozen. She also disliked the large pile of dirt next to her husband’s grave—it’s easier to fill the grave this way after everyone leaves.

  After several minutes, I realized that no matter what I said, she was not about to be satisfied. I expressed my regret and hung up with a sinking feeling of failure. However, a few weeks later, another letter arrived. Expecting an additional litany of dissatisfactions, I opened it to find a letter of apology. The woman thanked me for everything I had done and admitted that her previous venting was her way of dispensing her anger over her husband’s early death. I had just happened to be the target.

  THEIR MISTAKE IS MY BUSINESS

  As much as I try to rectify my own mistakes, fixing the mistakes of other funeral home directors has meant boons for my business. I am constantly amazed at the number of occasions on which I am asked to remove a body from a competing funeral home to my own. Once in a great while, it is merely a case of forgetfulness on the part of the bereaved family. In a time of immense grief, family members may request that a hospital or nursing home call a certain funeral home and then remember that they had meant to call someone else. Most times families change funeral homes because of cost. Unsuspecting family members are confronted by a high price at a funeral home and decide to halt the arrangement process and go back home to regroup and reconsider their options. Since I pride myself on offering the best price and value, and I heavily advertise that fact, I receive a huge amount of price shoppers—both before and after a death. But price is not always the motivating factor to change funeral homes.

  One day, a large contingent of nearly twenty family members came into my office and asked me to quote for them the cost of the least expensive funeral services and merchandise that I offered. I gave them the price and they happily agreed. The person in charge was the son of the deceased, and he asked me to remove his father’s body from a competing funeral home to mine. I asked why, and he explained that the original funeral home director that they had met with scolded them for being cheap and told them the casket they had selected was not suitable even for a dead dog. I provided the family with affordable service and merchandise for their loved one.

  In another example, the funeral home telephone rang at three o’clock one recent morning. The caller said that her mother was deceased at her residence and asked how soon we could make the removal. I informed the caller that as soon as one of my sons and I dressed and drove to the funeral home to retrieve the hearse, we would be at the nearby residence within thirty-five minutes. That seemed to please the caller, and she handed the telephone off to a hospice nurse who was at the residence. The nurse gave me certain required information and then lowered her voice to a whisper. She thought that I should know that the deceased had died at eleven-thirty in the evening and the family had originally called a competing funeral home for service. Two hours passed and the original funeral home personnel had still not arrived at the residence. The family called the funeral home again, and the answering service said they were on the way. Another hour passed, and still no funeral home. The hospice nurse knew me and suggested to the family that they might want to call me. The funeral home they first called uses a trade service company that performs body removals for funeral homes in the area. The company must have been very busy that night, so busy that it didn’t consider a residence call a top priority. We arrived at the residence, made the removal, and were backing out of the family residence driveway when the company’s van was pulling into the same driveway.

  I don’t use an answering service unless it is absolutely necessary. I have a funeral home telephone installed in my home, and with the popularity of cell phones, any phone call can be forwarded to a cell phone. The funeral home telephone never goes unanswered. If I step outside for any reason, the cordless is in my pocket. If I cut the grass, my wife takes over phone duties. When we go out of town, my sons forward the funeral home calls to their cell phones. Phone duty is an inescapable fact of a 24/7 operation.

  Cutting corners in the preparation process can have big repercussions. Two elderly sisters came to my door one afternoon and said they had a strange request. Their brother had passed away two days earlier and had been taken to a funeral home that had served their family in the past, but that funeral home had changed hands recently and was now owned by an out-of-state corporation. The two ladies had gone to the funeral home to make the arrangements and had asked to view their brother’s body. The funeral director agreed and explained that their brother had just been embalmed and was not dressed, but he offered to allow the sisters to view him in the preparation room. The sisters agreed, and they asked to see their brother’s hands. When the funeral director moved the deceased gentleman’s hands from under the sheet, the women pointed out that the man’s fingernails were just as filthy as they had been two days earlier. They commented to the funeral director that they had assumed such grooming details would be attended to before the body was dressed and placed into the casket. Incredibly, the funeral director took offense and crassly admonished them for telling him “his business.” He said he thought the deceased looked fine and that “nobody looks at fingernails anyway.”

  The sisters left in a huff and came to my funeral home and requested that I retrieve their brother’s body from the other funeral home. When I called the funeral director, he protested and told me not to come until he had a chance to speak with the sisters for an opportunity to smooth things over with them. The sisters told him that he had missed his chance to serve them.

  Another time, a distraught young lady who had just seen my television commercial called one afternoon to ask me a strange question. She wanted to know whether it was possible to insert dentures into the mouth of someone who had been embalmed. Although slightly difficult, it is possible. She then asked if I would be willing to retrieve her late father from another funeral home, place his dentures into his mouth, and conduct the funeral services. She explained that her father had died in a hospital the night before, and she waited in
the hospital room for the funeral home personnel to arrive to make the removal. The personnel arrived and she related that they were not very compassionate and pretty much hustled her out of the room without giving her a chance to kiss her father good-bye. The next day she went to the funeral home to make the arrangements and handed the funeral director a plastic bag containing her late father’s dentures. She told the funeral director that her father was very adamant about having his dentures in his mouth and she wanted to make sure that it was done. The funeral director scoffed at her request and said it was too late—her father had already been embalmed and the dentures should have been given to the funeral home personnel at the hospital.

  The daughter protested that she was not given a chance to hand over the dentures because she was practically pushed out of the hospital room the night before. The funeral director held fast, telling the daughter it was impossible to insert the dentures now, but he would be glad to see that the dentures went with her father by placing them in the foot end of his casket. The dentures are usually positioned into the decedent’s mouth soon after the embalming process begins. The embalming process firms the facial features thereby holding the mouth firmly closed. It is a bit of a chore to re-open the mouth after embalming has been completed.

  The daughter repeated her important request again. She told me that the funeral director raised his voice and bellowed that he would not put the dentures in her father’s mouth. She went home to collect her thoughts and she saw my commercial when she turned on the television.

  I called the funeral home to say that I was on the way to pick up the deceased. The funeral director who had met with the daughter was greatly enraged at the thought of losing her family’s business. He told me not to come, that he would call the daughter immediately and place the dentures in her father’s mouth.

  I agreed to hold off until I heard from the daughter—she called shortly thereafter and informed me that the original funeral director had missed his chance to serve her family’s needs. She wanted me to take care of her father’s services. I removed her father’s body from the original funeral home and complied with the daughter’s wishes—I carefully placed her father’s dentures into his mouth with no problem at all.

  Not treating families with dignity and respect can spell a huge loss of business. One morning, a woman called the funeral home and asked if it was possible for me to go to a competing funeral home and retrieve her mother’s body so that I could complete the funeral arrangements. I questioned her about changing funeral homes. She said that her mother had died in bed on the second floor of her residence. The funeral home was called to the scene, and two gentlemen arrived to make the removal. The daughter stated that the house was full of family members, including small children and a few neighbors who had come over to express their sympathy. The daughter asked one of the funeral home’s personnel about the cost of a funeral and was told, “If you have to ask the price, then maybe you should just cremate your mother.”

  That comment obviously did not sit well. The mortuary cot would not fit up the narrow staircase, so the funeral home personnel left the cot at the bottom of the stairs and proceeded to the bedroom with a sheet. Instead of wrapping the nude deceased in the available bedding, they merely placed a sheet on her and began to carry her to the cot.

  As they made their way down the stairs, one of them accidentally stepped on the sheet and totally exposed the deceased to all who had assembled in the home, small children and neighbors alike. That was the last straw for the daughter. She ordered the funeral home personnel to immediately cover her deceased mother and take her back upstairs and place her back into her bed. They refused and said that, since they were almost out the door, they would take her to the funeral home and call the family later. One of the neighbors knew me and suggested that the family call me and that I would handle the situation with dignity and respect. I did just that.

  Of course, dignity and respect mean nothing if you don’t have the right body. A young lady called the funeral home one morning and explained that her twenty-three-year-old sister had tragically died and that the body was located in the county morgue. The young lady further explained that the family was of limited means and requested the best possible price I could offer.

  After supplying her many service options, we agreed on a suitable arrangement. I assured the woman that I would ask the county morgue about her late sister’s release time and meet with her family within the hour. I called the coroner’s office to arrange for the proper time to remove the deceased from the facility and was told that no one by that name was there, that perhaps another funeral home had already made the removal.

  I replied that the family of the deceased was in my presence, and that they hadn’t called another funeral home. “She must be lost,” said the representative, in an attempt at some humor. I was assured that the coroner’s office would “keep looking.” The family left, not knowing where their deceased sister might be and left me wondering the same.

  In the meantime, a woman in her fifties was being disinterred from a cemetery only hours after she had been buried that same day. A man who lived next door to the cemetery, and coincidentally had just attended the woman’s burial service, noticed the disinterment process, walked over to the grave site, and questioned the cemetery personnel. The gravedigger informed the neighbor that they had buried the wrong person and were digging that person up so the coroner’s office could come to the scene and take the body back to their facility. How such news travels so fast, and how the twenty-three-year-old’s family heard about the disinterment, I’ll never know.

  Yet the young woman’s sister called me and began to tell me that she knew it was her sister who had been mistakenly buried. I found her story extremely hard to fathom, so I told her I would look into the situation right away. I called the cemetery and was in fact informed that another funeral home had mistakenly retrieved the body of the twenty-three-year-old from the morgue. The other funeral home had been contacted to provide funeral services for the lady in her fifties, but the morgue personnel had mislabeled the pouch that contained the body. The other funeral home did not unzip that pouch to verify identification. So the deceased twenty-three year-old had in fact been mistakenly buried in the cemetery, disinterred, and returned to the morgue.

  One of the ways I guard against mistakes is continuity. The funeral process goes like this: the disposition arrangements for a visitation and funeral service or cremation are made; the service takes place, and we head for the cemetery. Myself or my immediate family arranges all the links in this chain. At some of my previous places of employment, the same person didn’t even handle certain key events. One person might make the removal, another might arrange services, another might attend the visitation, and yet another might drive the lead car to the cemetery. When several providers attend to events with no continuity, I’m sure the family feels shortchanged and dehumanized. That is why I see to it that either myself or a family member attends personally to all death-care details with any bereaved family.

  WHAT IF YOU’RE HIT BY A BUS ON THE WAY HOME?

  The funeral industry, like all enterprises, definitely has its share of bad apples. Terrible scenarios abound—from cremating the wrong body to cremating more than one body at a time or even cremating a human and a pet in the same retort and clear cases of taking financial advantage of vulnerable elderly.

  A close competitor was caught off guard by a local television news team working on an undercover story about price gouging. The team had caught dubious acts on tape, an inadvertent demonstration of how the funeral director intentionally steered consumers toward expensive high-end caskets in his display room.

  Some operators write down license-plate numbers of cemetery visitors, then call them later to sell grave spaces, burial vaults, caskets, or markers. Another ploy is to insist that the entire family of the deceased come to the cemetery and sign a form to verify the grave, even if it has already been owned for many years. Once the family arr
ives, they attempt to hawk additional graves, mausoleum crypts, markers, vaults, and caskets. In cases of immediate or direct cremation, families are often told that they must purchase expensive hardwood versions—which is not true. Some operators introduce high-pressure, commissioned salespeople as grief or family-service counselors in an attempt to sanitize their image. In reality, they are more like used-car salesmen, and their pitches border on the unbelievable: “Since we are all going to die, you had better buy from us today,” or “What if you get hit by a bus on the way home, and you aren’t prepared?” Those present might also be encouraged to purchase their own graves right on the spot, so they can “enjoy eternal rest together as a family.” If they meet that suggestion with resistance, the “counselor” then scolds the family and acts surprised that they would want their loved ones “buried next to a bunch of strangers.”

  A memorial park operation in my area has put on some memorable sales-generating events, offering a free Butterball frozen turkey to anyone who comes by to view the property or restaurant gift cards to those willing to listen to pitches describing the newest sections. (As with any major purchase, do not go to a cemetery sales conference alone.) Since people are always happy to accept freebies, another ploy that has worked well is to offer a free grave for any veteran whose spouse has paid full price. Of course, after fees and taxes, full price for the second grave is the price of two graves anyway. The most targeted group is senior citizens, who already are hit hard by phone solicitations for replacement windows, credit cards, and new mortgages—and now cold-calling cemeteries.

  The mean-spirited news media love to rake the funeral industry over the coals, and many national headlines are sordid enough to justify scrutiny. The recent crematory scandal in Georgia is one example. An operator was found to be leaving bodies to rot in sheds instead of cremating them because the cremation chamber was allegedly inoperable. He kept the scam going by presenting people with containers of dirt rather than the cremains of their loved ones.