“This line of work isn’t for everyone,” says Sadie Whitelocks of Dailymail.com.
She points out that in the U.S., more than 23,000 morticians deal with death every day, but most people don’t really know what goes on behind the scenes.
Lately, some funeral workers have shared their stories anonymously, offering a glimpse into the unusual and sometimes heartbreaking realities of preparing people for their final farewells.
A young woman who runs a funeral home with her sister remembers losing her parents and great-grandmother within days during the COVID pandemic.
Despite this tragedy, she says, “Death isn’t always terrible… it can have moments of beauty.”
Still, those moments of beauty often come with scenes that are hard to face.
Morticians describe reattaching hands, fixing bodies after serious injuries, and using clothes and makeup so families can say goodbye at open-casket services.
Others talk about parts of the job most people never hear about, like using plastic caps to keep eyelids shut, stitching lips together, and replacing blood with embalming fluid during hours of careful work.
They admit the smell of death sticks to their clothes and skin, describing it as “like metallic meat, oddly sweet, but tinged with gas.”
Some experiences feel almost unreal. One undertaker recalls finding an elderly woman who had died peacefully in her walk-in closet, with ants crawling on her face.
Another says the hardest part isn’t handling injuries, but cleaning dried mucus from people who were bedridden at the end of their lives.
For these workers, dealing with death is just part of the job, but the stories they see are anything but ordinary.
Every person has a story, and each mortician carries memories that stay with them forever.
