What's the best approach to learning about the funeral industry?

I am part of a good yahoo groups on this subject if you are interested. They are very nice and often helpful.

New Death Group

BTW I applaud you for your career consideration. After having a tragic loss I thought myself this might be a good choice. I think providing people with a way of honoring their dead is very honorable.

maybe see if you can intern at a funeral home.

You can go to school for it. Lots of community colleges offer degree programs in it.

I believe it was Whoopie Goldberg who mentioned that, long before becoming famous, she once worked as the person who does makeup for corpses prior to the viewing.

If you are halfway decent with makeup for your own self, I can’t imagine it would be too terribly difficult to get a job doing this.

I’m reasonably sure that’s it’s not a crowded field for a job like that. It will give you plenty of opportunity to see how you handle being around the deceased without jumping into some of the more medically daunting aspects such as draining the bodies etc.

If you are OK with the makeup part, it gets your foot in the door and would enable you to explore the rest of what’s required as time goes on.

@johnpowell is quite correct about the availability of programs at community colleges. Here is a complete list of schools offering a mortuary science program.

I was also interested in this career and went and interviewed a local funeral director to learn more about the profession—not my thing exactly. I am very interested in the funeral director part of it (front of the house) and less interested in the mortician (back of the house) aspects of the profession.

I used to teach a college course (in social work) and my students wanted a behind-the-scenes tour of a funeral home and in one case I was able to set that up, in another, I interviewed a funeral director on videotape and he did a great job of explaining the goals of the profession, showing and explaining the use of various pieces of equipment, etc.

In addition, have a small collection of simple things used in preparing the deceased—like plastic eye caps (to keep the lids down), trochar buttons (to seal the hole in the belly they make draining fluids from major organs), the nails and wire they use to close the mouth, etc. I am able to show the video to my students and then pass around the small parts for people to see and touch in a non-threatening environment.

I have also gone to the state association of funeral directors in my locale where they have an extensive video library of a variety of related topics. Some are educational regarding the industry (as a business), others were fascinating to me. Funeral directors in my state are part of the response team to large disasters in which many people are killed. One of the videos explained their role in DMort so local funeral directors would know how they needed to prepare to work in this vital role.

In every case, I have found funeral directors to be very willing to talk to me, to share information and to explain things. It is probably one of the few remaining businesses where they hope to garner YOUR family’s business across the generations. As a result, I find that they are hard-wired to be contributing members of a community and more than willing to share information with interested others.

Thanks everyone.

@redpowerlady thanks for sharing. I’ll definitely check that out.

@kayak8 I’m glad you shared your experience. I have wanted to ask funeral directors about their work but always thought they wouldn’t too much be interested or might tell me they can’t show me anything for respect of the dead. Maybe I’ll get the courage to contact a local funeral home.

@lunabean Because of privacy concerns, they certainly may not be able to show you their actual work process with the deceased, but just looking at some of the tools of the trade and understanding how they are used is enough to help many people decide if this career might warrant further exploration!