Thirty-eight years ago—June 1, 1978 to be exact—I walked through the doors of the old funeral home on Main Street. It wasn’t like I hadn’t done that at least a million times before, but this time I came as a full time employee, hired by my father to assist my mother with the bookkeeping.  It was an area in which I had been educated, having just spent four years in college learning a whole bunch of stuff, none of which turned out to be very helpful.  As a matter of fact, most of my education proved enlightening but useless—except for debits on the left, credits on the right, and all entries must balance.  Pretty much everything else had no real world application.

As the businesses grew so did my responsibilities. My father wanted me to get my funeral director’s license so I registered as an apprentice and he put me to work.  (I balked, however, at becoming an EMT so I could ride the ambulance.)  I remember one particularly busy day when we tag-teamed our way through six families.  I would take the personal information and cover the Federal Trade Commission required disclosures then he would step in to set funeral times and assist with merchandise selections.  By the end of the day, everyone had been cared for and my head was trying to explode.

I started in the days of giant journals with handwritten entries and ledger books with page after page of transferred numerical data. And lots and lots of adding ‘cause if your fingers didn’t pay attention, you got to hunt the mistakes.  Reading back over that, I feel like something out of a Dickens novel, say Bob Cratchit from “A Christmas Carol”.  All I needed was a coal oil lamp and a little visor.  As much writing as there was, it was all relatively simple.  Nothing crashed, if I got an entry in the wrong account I could easily find it . . . there were just days I thought my hand would fall off.

But life is unpredictable, which is a gross understatement. The coming of my children put a stop to becoming a funeral director, at least for a decade or two, but when my father’s health began to fail, I could see the handwriting on the wall.  In Tennessee one cannot manage a funeral home unless one is a licensed funeral director.  So little by little, I ceded my accounting duties to others and assumed a role I never dreamed would be mine.  I went from being an accounting major to being an accounting major with a funeral director’s license and the need for a sign that said “The Buck Stops Here”.

I would like to say that it has been smooth sailing and the world at large has been cooperative, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. Grief and loss do not always bring out the best in people, and when they are annoyed or angry they generally will settle for no less than “the person in charge”. That doesn’t always make for pleasant days but it can make for churning stomachs and racing hearts.  And headaches.  Lots and lots of headaches.  Accountants don’t have to deal with angry people.  They get to hide in tiny rooms and have little or no real interaction with the public.  Funeral directors are like anti-accountants.

I have awarded myself several titles over the years—“Handler of Miscellaneous Mess”, “General Flunkie”, and “Fire Fighter” to name a few. But you know, despite the ups and downs, despite those days when it seems as though you can do nothing right, I would not change who I have become over the last 38 years.  This profession is one of the few where we are allowed to be servants on a daily basis, ministering to those who often cannot find their way through the fog that is grief, guiding them along the path until they can hopefully see the light of day.  Yes, there are sleepless nights and hectic days and times when you feel helpless in the face of Death, but there is also a sense of peace that comes when you know you have made a positive difference at a devastating time.

So here I am, and here I will probably stay for at least another year or two. In celebration of my 38 year milestone, my daughter brought a Peanut Butter and Banana Cake with Nutella Glaze which we all promptly devoured . . . and then the phone rang . . . and the office grew quiet in the knowledge that another family had been given a burden too great to bear alone  . . . a burden that we will do our best to help them carry.   Everyone who works here arrived by very different paths, but we are all here for the same reason.  We are here . . . I am here . . . because we care.

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