the technical adviser for having presented a largely accurate picture of a family-owned funeral operation, complete with dizzying dynamics and relationship subplots never before explored on television—along with a small but realistic peek inside a mysterious and fascinating vocation.
As I watched many episodes in the company of fellow funeral directors, we often exchanged knowing glances. Whether a scene concerned feuding families, people on modest budgets insisting on the most expensive caskets, or heartfelt sympathy expressed to the bereaved by Nate and David Fisher, we all agreed: “Been there, done that.”
Some of the grittiest details were things that only we would notice. One episode from the fifth season, for example, featured an irate Vanessa storming into the prep room to confront Federico. He was in the process of raising a decedent’s leg high in the air with his left hand and holding in his right a set of forceps grasping a white plastic AV plug. Its purpose? To be twisted into the anus and/or vagina of the deceased to seal the orifice, thus avoiding any embarrassing leaks or discharges while reposing. Too graphic, you say, even for HBO? Not at all. First, most viewers had no idea what was going on. Second, for those of us in the trade, it provided a riveting touch of authenticity.
Before
Nate’s poignant conversation with the elderly gentleman who did not want to leave the funeral home after his wife’s visitation had concluded was very typical, and a classic scene from the show. Older couples may have lived together for decades. When one of them is gone, the other faces a dreadful emptiness. Nate showed compassion toward someone unwilling to return to a silent house; he simply sat down next to the grieving man and let him talk. Any funeral director worth his salt is, above all, a good listener.
There are comical aspects to our business as well that the show has shown. In one episode, a stripper who was electrocuted when her cat pushed electric rollers into her bathtub tested Federico’s breast-positioning skills. Her friends were duly impressed with the lifelike uplift of her assets as she lay in the casket. When questioned, Federico admitted he’d placed a cat food can under each breast. While the idea was intriguing, I’ll probably stick to my own tried-and-true method, filling brassieres with cotton. On occasion I’ve overdone it, but each time, the surviving husband has expressed approval with a hearty thumbs-up or even a wink through tear-soaked eyes.
The series included only a couple of misleading embellishments. First, the Fisher and Sons Funeral Home, like many older establishments, was situated in what was once a grand old residence, complete with its outdated basement prep room where embalming and dressing took place. But the home always seemed to acquire its bodies with amazing speed. In reality, the Los Angeles County coroner performs such a staggering number of autopsies and examinations that releasing even a single body could take several days to a week. Nate, David, or Federico would not likely drop by on the very day of someone’s death and return home that evening with the decedent already in tow.
Also, David’s fear that Mitzi, representing the scary, deep-pocketed corporation, might buy out the competitor down the street and eventually put the Fishers out of business was probably regional. Perhaps in Southern California there is less personalization and therefore less loyalty. In the East and Midwest, however, funeral directors are often trusted friends who secure much of their continued business through word of mouth. If a family-owned home sells to a faceless, out-of-state consolidator, then area consumers hear about it and become understandably skittish about handing over their beloved family members to total strangers.
I would have enjoyed seeing at least one episode that dealt with the inevitable hustle and bustle of a funeral home’s busy streak. Several days filled with nonstop and breakneck arrangements, embalming, dressing bodies and placing them in caskets, and then hoping everything had been attended to properly and would run smoothly. Oddly, no one ever seemed to be fully present at what eventually became the Fisher and Diaz Home. I can’t help wondering who answered the telephone, who greeted walk-ins, and who sat down with those wishing to learn more about pre-need contracts.
Years ago, some of my friends expressed horror at the prospect of a television series dealing with the death-care industry. Four seasons later, those same people couldn’t get enough of it. Creatively, you could hardly do better than to begin each episode with a death—followed by a conference with the decedent’s family and some sort of off-the-wall request or unique confrontation. Thanks to
The final episode was surprisingly disturbing to some of my friends and family members, but I found the scenes depicting how each main character died both touching and reassuring. After all, we can’t deny the fact that each of us will someday expire, and we can’t possibly know when. Most reassuring of all was that several earlier episodes made clear the possibility that the main characters might not survive Nate’s death. For weeks it seemed apparent that Ruth, David, Claire, George, and Brenda were all losing their grips on reality.
But just as in the many thousands of cases that I have observed, they peered over that cliff into an emotional abyss and decided not to jump. Instead, they backed away and reclaimed their inherent strength, along with their own lives. Finally, they united to toast Nate rather than continue to mourn him.
Life went on. Just as it does, however miraculously, for most of us grieving for those we love and have lost.
AFTERWORD
One day when I was about twelve, my dad came home boasting of a pocketful of change he had won at poker. Apparently, when there was nothing to do at the funeral home where he was employed, he and his coworkers would while away the afternoon playing cards. As he described the various hands that had made him that day’s “big wiener,” as he put it, I couldn’t help thinking that anyone who played games while on the clock must have one terrific deal. “That,” I told myself, “is the job for me.”
More seeds were planted each time Dad brought home yet another gruesome tale of unidentifiable remains and proceeded to tell it at our dinner table. Although he had my rapt attention, my mom wasn’t exactly thrilled. As I grew older, Dad began taking me outside on the porch whenever he felt the urge to describe one more eyebrow-raising story about his day.
Around the time I decided to attend college to major in mortuary science, my dad was experiencing the itch to stop working for the man and become the man himself. In 2001, he opened his own funeral home and was finally able to run things as he saw fit. By then, I was completely aware that history would repeat itself. I would, like him, set myself up for years, perhaps decades, of working for somebody else—but at least it would be my own father. How hard could it be?
What I didn’t yet realize, of course, was that Dad would hold me to far higher standards than he would any other employee. Even today, regardless of whether we’re embalming, dressing, or just cleaning up, if things do not take place in the manner or sequence that my father expects, then everything I have done is for naught. I’ve wasted my time—and far more important, I’ve wasted his. His voice rises to an outside level, even though its only destination is my ears, a mere two feet away.
I have to admit that, on a few occasions, the yelling was justified. My thought process, which darts from one end of the spectrum to the other in the wink of an eye, might sometimes be described as scattered.
A woman phoned our funeral home one day to inquire as to where she might send flowers for an upcoming service. I told her she could just send them to the church of her choice, not realizing that the deceased’s family wasn’t holding a church service, only brief remarks following a visitation. Of course Dad used his outside voice to proclaim that it was always my responsibility to find out what was going on without assuming anything.
Another time a young woman had passed from cancer, and her cemetery procession of devoted friends and
