Death isn’t something we like to talk about much.
But a relatively small group of professionals are given the daily task of navigating the often-overwhelming transition from life to death.
Funeral directors, morticians, embalmers, gravediggers and crematorium operators are just some of the people involved in caring for the deceased.
They are jobs that have all sorts of morbid connotations, and as a result few truly understand what life for these essential workers is like.
Alex Millar is one Canberran who is part of this unusual niche in the labour market.
As a funeral director and mortician at Grantley Perry & Sons, he is intimately acquainted with the aftermath of death.
The job Alex does is an essential one, despite its largely invisible status; most people don’t think about morticians until they have to, and then try to forget them as quickly as possible after the job is done.
But without them, things would become dire very quickly.
As you open the door to the small family-owned funeral parlour, you’re greeted with a white-walled, soft-carpeted liminal space that provides the beginning of an answer to one of the oldest and most confounding questions of the human experience: What happens to us after we die?
While Alex can’t give us the whole answer, he can certainly help us out.
If he’s not dealing with surprisingly large stacks of paperwork, he’s meeting with grieving families, preparing their loved one’s casket, bathing them, dressing them, or doing their hair and makeup.
With the generally quick turnaround for funerals, the job requires efficiency and organisation all while maintaining sensitivity to the families you’re working with.
When we’re presented with images of morticians in film, we’re usually greeted with a bizarre, older man with strange habits and possibly some dark secrets.
Meeting Alex, this image couldn’t be further from the truth.
Kind, personable and eloquent, you can understand why he is suited to dealing with people in grief; he seems like exactly the sort of person you would want around in such a crisis.
“You need that pastoral aspect of treating people gently, or understanding why they might be distressed even though in your mind you know what needs to be done,” he says.
You don’t rush people.”
Alex’s work plays a crucial role at many funeral services – the last time family members will physically see their loved one before their casket is closed.
Along with other funeral staff at Grantley Perry & Sons, he is tasked with cleaning and preparing the body of the deceased person, taking on the immense responsibility of replicating their likeness.
His work is often done with input from the family, which can help with the grieving process by allowing loved ones to remember the person at their best.
“We almost always don’t know the people who’ve passed away but we’re always aware that this is a person who is a son, daughter, mother, father or grandparent,” he says.
“That family has trusted us to take care of them and treat them with dignity and respect, so they’re not nothing to us.”
And preparing the bodies of those who have passed is delicate work and always done with the utmost care.
“When someone arrives and we haven’t met with the family yet or scheduled their preparation … what we want to do immediately is place them on one of our trays and make sure their hands are brought up – usually crossed across the belly, and that helps the blood not run into the fingernails” he says.
“When you die, your blood doesn’t just disappear, it kind of settles to the back where gravity is. So, if the hands are kept too low, you will get very dark purple fingernails.”
“That can be one of those things that someone immediately notices and will never forget.”
From there, Alex would place a headblock underneath a person to ensure their head is raised and blood is similarly not settling where it shouldn’t be.
The next step involves applying moisturiser to a person’s face, says Alex.
“When you die all the moisture goes and you can dry out, particularly on your eyes and lips. So, we need to keep the skin hydrated and that makes a tremendous difference.”
After using a preparation spray that kills all bacteria and germs on a person, a very gentle soap solution is applied to wash their skin.
People also sometimes need eye caps.
A small cap with divots built in, they are placed underneath a person’s eyelids so they stay shut.
“When people pass away often their eyes will sink because most of your eyes are made of fluid so they dry out,” he says.
“It just kind of shrivels like a sultana, so sometimes we need caps to give that lift back.”
Then, the very delicate process of closing a person’s mouth begins.
“Essentially, a needle goes through a person’s mouth, out around the jawline and through the nose, where the stitching is then tied together,” he says.
“It’s a very difficult thing to do. It’s quite a process to learning that.”
Once those steps have ben completed, the easier process of doing a person’s hair and makeup begins.
Sometimes families may even ask for a haircut for their loved one, says Alex.
“We have a casual at the moment who used to be a barber, so he’s been quite happy to do that,” Alex laughs.
While essential work, many people find the process of preparing a person after death confronting, and the question is inevitable: why would someone want to do this kind of work?
Unlike most people who pursue a career in the funeral business, Alex was not drawn in by familial ties.
Initially studying to become a Catholic priest, it seems Alex always found himself drawn to a profession rooted in community service.
“We’d be doing a lot of things like visiting nursing homes and talking to people who were sometimes in distress,” he says.
“So in a way it was kind of a natural fit to go from that to this.”
The intensity of such a career that forces you to deal with the grief of others, while important, is certainly not for everyone.
“It does take a particular kind of person. I’m not even sure I’m that kind of person,” he laughs.
“In some ways it is quite a solitary job, you do find yourself alone some of the time and dealing with quite heavy things … especially dealing with young people.”
“Dealing with young people is always so much different and harder, because people are mourning a potential that has been lost as opposed to someone who had a full life. So, it’s a different atmosphere to those funerals.”
But although the job can be hard at times, Alex also says there is also aspects of joy to be had with the job.
“We do have a lot of fun in the job,” he says.
“Often it’s dealing with an older family member who led a really good life, and that family member guided them through the whole process and were completely comfortable with their own death.”
“They just look back on their life with a lot of gratitude and respect and it turns out the day is more of a celebration of their life rather than the traditional sad thing,” he says.
The gratitude that professionals within the funeral industry receive is one of the most rewarding aspects of the job.
Skye Pollard is a Family Memorial and Family Services Manager at Norwood Park Crematorium and says one of the highlights of her job is giving grieving families a sense of peace.
“When families come back and thank you, that makes the difficult stuff that we do all worth it,” she says.
Part of her job involves helping families choose a place to lay their loved one’s ashes and putting together memorial plaques for them.
She says that making an extremely difficult period in a person’s life more bearable is one of the things that drives her to do her work.
“It’s a very special job to be able to do something for someone in that moment,” she says.
And certainly, being confronted with such harsh realities on a daily basis can change your perspective on life and death.
Alex says that his job has dramatically changed the way he thinks about dying.
“That’s why I think a lot of people are fascinated with the job, because everybody thinks a bit about death, even when we don’t want to,” he says.
Dealing with death every day is something that has made Alex less afraid of his own mortality.
“It’s made me more comfortable with the idea of passing away,” he says.
“You realise it’s a part of life. Everyone has to pass away, and nothing is guaranteed in life.”
“It’s fragile, it’s short, it’s not to be taken for granted, but it’s something we all have to find acceptance with and make a certain peace with.”
Alex says that the topic of death shouldn’t be swept under the rug. After all it’s the most certain thing to happen in our lives.
“I think it’s a bit sad sometimes when someone says they can’t think about death because its too overwhelming to consider,” he says.
“I think it’s part of our human makeup. We have these brains that are just so big that we don’t accept that we will just cease, that we’ll never be.”
“I often think that when someone passes away, the reality of us just being flesh and blood is so stark and confronting. But there’s also another side to things where you really wonder if that’s all we really were, or if there’s something bigger.”
But even as someone who deals with these confronting realities everyday, he is still no closer to a definitive answer.
“It forces you to come to terms with those kinds of questions which are kind of religious and philosophical, but it’s definitely something I wonder about.”
“I’m not sure we are just flesh and blood, that we are just a corpse when we die, that there’s nothing left. I think we have a kind of confidence that there’s something infinite in our brains that points to something that is so much more.
“And maybe that’s a delusion, maybe it’s not.”
“It’s the big human question isn’t it?”