Embarking on the journey of working in funeral service can be an emotionally charged and complex process. In this article, we’ve compiled 25 poignant questions sourced directly from a funeral director subreddit, offering an intimate look into the concerns and curiosities of those navigating the delicate world of funeral arrangements.

Drawing upon the expertise of our seasoned funeral directors, we provide their thoughtful answers to each query, aiming to shed light on the intricacies of the funeral industry and offer valuable guidance.

How did you study for the boards for applied sciences in mortuary school?

Emma’s answer: “I paid for the practice exams on the NBFS website and also ordered the study/prep book. I made thousands of flashcards and also created my own Quizlet to test myself. My particular class also got together for study groups in the library where we quizzed each other.”

How can a funeral director make more money?

Emma’s answer: “You can make more money by becoming a licensed life insurance producer and writing pre-need policies for individuals. You could also become certified as a celebrant to make extra money conducting the service. Some facilities are also open to letting their directors and embalming provide trade services on the side. Being licensed in more areas of the profession will also allow you to command a higher salary and will make it easier for you to move up into management positions.”

Are you ever too old to become a funeral director?

Emma’s answer: “No, you are never too old to be a funeral director! In fact, I have had several families that have found extra comfort in the fact that they are making arrangements with an older, “more seasoned” individual. When I went to mortuary school, more than half of my graduating class was over the age of 50 and looking to restart their careers/shift professions. I say go for it. Best of luck!”

Would anyone happen to know where I can obtain a practice head?

Emma’s answer: “The only place I’ve ever been able to find an extra practice skull is on Pierce’s website. One caveat – it seems that you’re required to have an account with them first before you can purchase anything, and usually have to be affiliated with a funeral home. You might try contacting your local mortuary school and see if they might be willing to sell a used one to you.”

How difficult is mortuary school for someone who struggles in math and/or science?

Emma’s answer: “Generally speaking, the best first step is to enroll in their AA Science program. This would allow you to complete all of the courses required to take the board exams and begin apprenticing. Once you are licensed and have passed the board exams, you could then enroll in the BA science program.

The BA program requires that you have an AA, and are either licensed or have passed your boards. I was an A/B student myself and found the general science courses to be fine. The upper-level chemistry courses were pretty difficult for me because there was a lot of math, but if you are good at memorizing concepts/terms, then microbiology, anatomy, and pathology are not that bad. When you enroll in the AA program, they’ll tell you what course to start with.”

For those who work and have children to take care of, how do you manage being a funeral director?

Emma’s answer: “The hours are absolutely demanding, and there are some times when others’ families get prioritized over yours. I found talking with your kids about it helps. My 6-year-old knows that I help people who have lost a loved one, and I have talked with him about how important my job is to others.

I have also brought my family to the funeral home to see *glimpses* of what I do. When I have time off with them, I make an effort to stay off my phone, live in the present, and be focused on my family. Great question! Hopefully this perspective helps a bit.”

Are you a successful funeral director as well as a crier, and know someone who is?

Emma’s answer: “Licensed funeral director here – I can be a crier also, but each family is different.

Maybe your dad is sick, and then you have to direct a funeral service for someone that reminds you of your dad. Or you just had a baby and have to direct a service for a young child.

There can always be a reason to cry, but I’ve learned it’s best to find a space to get the crying out in private (the equivalent of crying in the walk-in fridge at a restaurant/service industry job). You can either excuse yourself if it’s during an arrangement or find a place to step off to the side if it’s during the service itself.

Some families will appreciate that you care if they see your eyes get a little wet, and I think that’s okay. You don’t want to make it about yourself or draw attention away from their specific grief and the celebration of their loved one. This definitely shouldn’t prevent you from pursuing this as a career, but you’ll find your place and time when you can get in a good cry here and there and go back to doing a good job taking care of the family.”

What happens if there’s someone you genuinely just can’t emotionally handle embalming?

Emma’s answer: “Most often, and if you’re lucky, you’ll work with a supportive team that you can lean on in situations that you might not feel emotionally up to in handling a certain case.

I went on a first call for several kids that had been in a bad car accident, and the removal was tough enough on me that I asked a coworker if they’d be more comfortable to embalm them for me since he was more detached from the initial situation.

Additionally, your funeral home might have some trade embalmers that they know that can help. These might be retired funeral directors who still like to help out every once in a while, or just like to make a little extra money by embalming for some local funeral homes.

Usually, your funeral home will know someone like this who can be asked if no one else is available to take over for you.

There also might come a time when you do have to just do your best for the family if no one else is available.”

What are the best women’s shoes for the field of funeral service and/or removals?

Emma’s answer: “Clarks! They’re less chunky than Danskos, but offer the same support, and you can find them in cute styles. Always keep an eye out at Goodwill for brands like these, too, so you don’t have to spend too much all the time. If you’re going for heels, it’s nice to keep them shorter, and the wider the heel, the less hurt your feet will be!

This is for folks identifying as more feminine or just any folks that prefer heels, of course! There are plenty of options available for all, and I would still very much recommend Clarks, Danskos, or any strong industry shoes.”

What books do you recommend to learn about embalming?

Nancy’s answer: “I recommend the most updated edition of Embalming History, Theory, and Practice, it’s considered one of the “academic bibles” of embalming.”

How does a funeral director build confidence to talk to families during arrangements?

Emma’s answer: “I feel you! I’m a very soft-spoken person also, who had to work on confidence speaking with families myself.

One of the reasons I got into the funeral industry was because I am often more mellow and soft-spoken, and felt like I could relate to people on the level they were coming to us at. Don’t underestimate that as a positive!

With time, you will naturally grow confident in the way your funeral home does things, and you’ll be able to speak with more certainty when your families have questions. Every funeral home works differently, so some of these processes/pricing/etc. still have to be relearned if you switch locations, even as an experienced director.

Confidence will come with time and the more services you do with that firm. You’ll get to know the cemeteries, the clergy, the churches, and all the third parties that help make a funeral what it should be, and it’ll all add to that confidence in knowing what you’re doing.

Also, keep in mind – your families often have no idea what they’re doing. This is probably their first time making arrangements, and they’ll be looking to you for answers. This automatically puts you in charge, and if you speak like you’re sure, they will believe you! They’re there to look for answers, and they won’t know what the right or wrong answers are. If you say something mistakenly that’s maybe incorrect, you still have the opportunity to correct it, and that’s okay.

I worked with a director or two who were excellent at telling jokes in arrangements, and I knew that would never be me. But my families came back and requested me because of my attention to detail of their loved one, remembering the quiet care I gave them, remembering their favorite music to play at the viewing, or just knowing how to listen and talk less.

Sometimes just asking the right questions, or letting them talk about their loved one, is a good way to fill some quiet times and something they’ll never forget. Please don’t underestimate yourself for being quiet because you could be exactly what someone needs at that time, and you won’t even know it!”

How do crematories or funeral homes keep track of bodies in their care?

Chase’s answer: “Cremation tags or cremation discs are the move here. Shameless plug, but we’ve actually created an end-to-end tracking system that funeral homes and crematories are utilizing to help keep better track of every decedent (and belongings) in their care. Pretty nifty if you ever want to check it out. Funny enough, it’s called KeepTrack™.”

What are some of the phenomena of the funeral service trade that crack you up?

Emma’s answer: “One of my coworkers has a great one for this! She used to have a woman who always called the funeral home, and she would say, “I think you have my friend” a couple of times a month. This woman must have had a huge community because she found a way to be at almost every funeral!

And sometimes she would even call and say, “I think you have my friend,” before we had even gotten the first call that the person had passed away! This woman’s pulse on what was happening in her community was unmatched, no pun intended.

Morticians and people in the funeral industry have the best sense of humor, and a lot of our days together were spent trying to make each other laugh, playing pranks, etc., to make the heft of our day-to-day a little easier to bear. Working at a funeral home with a crematory is also a whole other set of funny and scary stories.”

How old were you when you became interested in death care?

Emma’s answer: “I was 25, and had been out of college for a while, but knew I wasn’t going to be using my degree how I had planned when I originally started school for Criminal Justice.

I knew what parts of Criminal Justice I was interested in, being a) helping people in times of trauma or grief and b) forensics. I happened upon an article in a local paper saying how the local community college was going to be opening to some two- and four-year degrees instead of just undergrad classes, with Mortuary Science being one of them.

It was like a lightbulb went off, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. I am also a pretty somber person, who can relate to people on the level that most families come to a funeral home, and knew this would be the perfect field for me.

It had the balance of helping families while still being able to work with bodies and get more involved in the sciences part of the industry.”

What advice do you have for a new office admin hire who is working at a funeral home?

Emma’s answer: “Definitely be prepared to expect the unexpected! You might be the only source of organization at the funeral home, depending on their previous processes.

Some funeral directors can be self-sufficient and keep themselves organized, but sometimes the Admin can be the superhero that will catch mistakes, make sure families get called and met when they’re supposed to, make sure open balances get paid, and really have that attention to detail that can get off track here and there in a really busy funeral home.

In my experience, having a morning “huddle” or morning meeting over coffee, no matter how long or short, can do wonders and go a super long way in keeping everyone on track for the day or week even. It will help everyone come together to disburse and chat about cases that might have come in over the weekend or the night before and make sure no one gets missed or any necessary details about the families get conveyed to their funeral director.

It might be as simple as “Treat this family with extra care – they’re having an especially hard time,” or “This family is out of town and won’t be able to meet until next week or over the phone,” or other things like that. It also helps bond your staff as a team, to do a little huddle together in the morning, to all get on the same page, see who needs help with what, etc. This was my favorite part of the day, and it was always led by our beloved Office Admin.”

What has been the most impactful feedback you’ve received from a family you’ve served?

Emma’s answer: “This one is tough. Naturally, my first instinct is to list all of the incredibly thoughtful things I’ve heard from families about the things myself and my team have done for them, the times they were able to achieve a semblance of peace and felt like everything went as well as they could have hoped.

But it almost feels more honest to speak about the times that families had a harder time. It’s important to remember that funeral directors are meeting families on what is possibly the worst day of their lives. If you think about yourself on what might have been the worst day of your life, you know the levels of emotion and irrationality that can follow grief, anger, confusion, frustration, and desperation.

During the pandemic, this was magnified immensely because we, as funeral directors, lost the ability to do business as usual, and our families lost a lot of chances for goodbyes, sometimes twice. Those who died from COVID-19 weren’t able to be with their loved ones as they passed, and then their families were deprived of the opportunity to say goodbye to them with friends and family the way they would have wanted to afterward.

We lost the ability to do half of our jobs – the important half that gives people the once-in-a-lifetime closure necessary when someone they love dies. Families were frustrated and devastated, and some understood the reasons for restrictions, while others just wanted to be the one exception. The desperation of families for us to do it “just for them, just this once” was real and understandable, but it was hard to handle the anger and fallout that would come from having to say no.

Funeral directors love being able to be there for people, and it was devastating to us to not be able to do this to the fullest extent of our capabilities. We couldn’t hug families or be close to them; we couldn’t come into their homes with the same comfort both sides were used to without being covered in protective gear. This was easily the hardest time I had being a mortician, but I do believe it made me a better and stronger one, and gave me a deeper appreciation for the practices that brought people together.”

Have any other funeral directors grown to experience a deep fear of death?

Emma’s answer: “Short answer is: yes and no. Part of the reason I wanted to get into death care was because I knew it would help me better understand what happens after our loved ones die, and release some of the anxiety of the unknown. But I soon came to realize that truly only covers the anxiety and unknown parts of the physical process after death, not the spiritual one.

I also realized I often associated the thought of dying as something that happens to other people, those that I love, and didn’t often think of it happening to myself. Some days and phases in the industry are worse than others in terms of the existential crisis that can be brought on by thinking too hard about what happens to us and our minds after we die.

The death care industry, especially during the pandemic, has definitely brought this bleak idea closer to home. During the peak of things, I was not only thinking of my family and friends, but I was also made very aware that I could be at risk of dying sooner than I had planned and had to think about what that would look like.

But it was the freak situations also – the car accidents, the death of a young person as the result of a completely avoidable situation, the sudden diseases that would take people in a matter of weeks, and especially when we would lose people we knew and worked with every day, or spouses of partners we had done services for just weeks or months before.

One moment, you’re planning a funeral for your wife, and the next moment, your kids are planning your funeral a few weeks later. To see them alive in our funeral home, joking, chatting, making the most of things, and then to see them in our cooler not too much later was too much at times.

All of that being said though, it’s not as bad as it sounds. At all. I’ve tried to think about death less, focus on the living, and celebrate the life lived before it was lost. There can also be a certain level of desensitization that comes with being in the funeral industry. Seeing similar things over and over again can help you realize that death is a part of life, but it doesn’t have to be scary. Being able to celebrate the lives of amazing people, laugh with coworkers, and enjoy the company of others can all help with that balance.”

What funeral trends have you noticed within the past 5 years?

Emma’s answer: “Trends in death care are definitely reflective of our awareness of being more environmentally conscious while still being fiscally conscious. The rise of interest in terramation, aquamation, and more natural or green burials is proof that people, especially younger generations, are looking for alternatives to traditional options.

People are looking for more customizable services and personalized options, as well, often leaning towards memorials and celebrations of life, done the way they want and often hosted by friends and family. I think a lot of folks think funeral directors are stuffy and stuck in their ways, and sometimes (only sometimes!) this can be true.

But I think if more people brought these unique and personal memorial ideas to their directors, they’d be more than happy (excited even) to help do something different. With the help of funeral directors, I know families can execute that personalized and organized celebration they’re looking for while still having professional help during a process to relieve a lot of burdens during a hard time.”

What does your funeral home or crematory do for community outreach every year?

Emma’s answer: “I’m such a fan of this idea, and we actually did something similar to this! There were local parades or events that we would bring the coach to. We had even planned a harvest festival of sorts at the funeral home to bring people in and make it seem like a less scary place, especially for kids and families.

The more you can be involved and show up in the community, the less afraid people will be about speaking with you all about pre-planning, and you’ll become more approachable in general as a business and a staff. People will also begin to recognize your name even more, so when the time comes, and they’re in need of a funeral home, yours will be on their mind.

There was a local coffee shop that had food and other items available daily for folks who were in need. They had a fridge with packed lunches, and their dry pantry consisted of feminine products, canned food, and other food that didn’t require a lot to cook (if at all) so that anyone in need could come to gather whatever was a necessity for them at the time.

I had always wanted to have a place at the funeral home where we could collect these items and donations to bring over to the coffee shop and contribute. You don’t have to have people come into your place to pick up stuff, but you can take donations if that’s something your location leader and team would be open to! Then you could take the donations where they’d be most needed and distribute them.”

How do your customers find you, or how do you find them?

Emma’s answer: “Word of mouth is definitely an irreplaceable form of connecting with the community. Another way is through community involvement, in the form of participating in local events, charity organizations, etc.

We had members of our funeral home in Rotary Club, Soroptimist, etc., to help out in the community. But this also made their faces and names more recognizable and approachable. We were lucky enough to have a beautiful reception area and a non-denominational chapel, so we were able to host events like local dance competitions, club receptions, and even a high school prom at our facility.

Not all funeral home staff are scary people who haven’t seen the sun in years! They’re just regular people, with regular likes and dislikes, families, hobbies, charitable goals, etc.

Getting out into the community physically, not just with advertising, will not only be an incredible blessing to your community, but will instill goodwill and likability in families that might not have been aware of your business in the first place.”

How much time do you actually spend at the funeral home on call?

Emma’s answer: “I would say, on average, it’s not uncommon to be at the funeral home from 7/8ish in the morning, to the same time at night. Obviously, not always! But I often was there for 10-12 hours a day or so, with no lunch break.

On average where we live, I went on about 0-2 calls a night, with 3 being the most I had in one night.

Like you said, it of course depends on where you live, and deaths will come in waves. But an average day is definitely about 10 hours or so.

I worked somewhere with an incredible staff, and we were able to handle things like champs – but sometimes you can’t control if families bring in photos at the last minute the night before a service, or clothing right before a viewing, etc.

You are welcome to draw boundaries, and I encourage it! But I always found it hard to say no, and you can’t always dictate a timeline for when families will take care of stuff, even if you try. Or when someone will pass away, for that matter!

You just have to be flexible, and as long as you love your job, you’ll be great.”

Is anyone offering any sort of grief aftercare at your funeral home?

Emma’s answer: “I think the idea of outings is a really good one, for a start. While I do think the idea of hosting a grief group at the funeral home is a fantastic one, it might be a struggle getting attendees at the beginning.

It could help to start with outings, so there’s no pressure on you to host, set up food and chairs, or stay late at the funeral home, and it might be a little more fun and less overwhelming for everyone to get out for an activity. It might break the ice to have something to do while chatting instead of feeling the pressure to come, sit, and talk right away.

If and when you get a solid group that starts to feel more comfortable and come together more regularly, you can always start hosting things at the funeral home. That way, some people will already know each other, and that overwhelming feeling might have dissipated a little bit by then. And then you know they’re not just there for the coffee and snacks!”

What’s something that people don’t understand about being a funeral director?

Nancy’s answer: “Oftentimes, people associate death care and death care professionals as having a dark or morbid fascination with dead bodies. While there is indeed a cloaked nuance to death care, it is out of a deep respect for the dead.

Providing service to surviving family members in the form of caring for the dead body of their loved one is an act of compassion. Funeral professionals are deeply compassionate individuals.

There is a scientific aspect of death care that is also fascinating.

Funeral directors and embalmers navigate these scenarios for families so that the family can move through grief and mourning processes. It takes quite a bit of energy, dedication, and compassion to be a great funeral director.”

What app or platform does your funeral home use for digital organization and case management?

Chase’s answer: “Hey there! Congrats on being fully licensed, and on starting with your new firm. Not sure if you’ve had a chance to dive into funeral management platforms out there, but there are tons of great options available to help you manage all of the things you’ve mentioned, and more.

I recommend taking a peek at Capterra or G2 if you ever have some free time to browse through some of the tools out there. Gather is one of those options if you’re ever interested in checking out our website.”

What is an alternative way to close a decedent’s lips instead of using glue?

Nancy’s answer: “Sometimes gluing lips is necessary, however, there are steps the embalmer can take to prevent having to use glue and risk cracking or residue from becoming visible. Remember, the embalming process continues to dry tissue over time, so if there is time between embalming and services you risk this unpleasant visual.

Of course closing the mouth securely with mouth former, suture or needle injector is primary to a solid closure where lips will close and look natural. When setting features I apply stay cream to weather lines to hold lips in place. Once I have cleaned, disinfected and shaved the decedent, I use Webril soaked with Restorative, by Dodge as a treatment to the lips and eyelids during embalming to make sure these delicate tissues do not dry and separate during embalming.

The inner eye canthus has the potential to dry and separate quickly. Once embalming is complete I will apply new Restorative patches to these areas, which allows for the skin to remain moisturized and keeps lips closed. This is also a great treatment for lips that are hard and dry after refrigeration. You can actually reverse this situation in many cases using this technique.

Glue may still be necessary in some cases, but be sure to place it just inside the weather line for best results and continue to use a massage cream or humectant treatment until the time of viewing.”

Gather Helps Funeral Homes and Funeral Directors

Gather is an innovative, all-in-one software company that helps hundreds of funeral homes with funeral management, live streaming, custom websites and body tracking. We love funeral directors and firmly believe that helping families through the loss of a loved one is one of the noblest professions. Our vision is to give funeral directors a seamless solution that helps both the funeral home and the families they serve.

To learn more about how Gather or to schedule your free demo please visit www.gather.app or call (866) 934-8948.