Why?

It is one of the most difficult questions I have encountered in my career as a funeral director.

I have heard it asked by grieving families countless times. I have sat with people in some of their deepest moments of pain and confusion as they searched for an answer that neither of us could find. It has sparked conversations between us that always end with many tears, and neither of us finding the answer.

Why?

Why has proven time after time to be one of life’s most difficult questions. It is almost like a riddle with no real answer.

Why do bad things happen? Why does tragedy exist? Why them? Why me?

The human brain wants an explanation. In the middle of tragedy and confusion, we search for something that makes sense—something we can hold onto. There has to be some reason why. Some reasonable explanation that speaks to logic and gives this pain a reason to exist.

Human life is so intricate and complex. Things don’t just happen for no reason. People don’t cross paths by mistake, and life is too precious to have it all be for nothing.

But then there are circumstances that force you to confront just how difficult—and sometimes impossible—it is to come up with an answer.

Why does a 7-year-old child become terminally ill with a rare and aggressive form of cancer?

Why does a young man with a family who loves him very much die from the cruel hands of addiction, never recovering and making it out?

Why do accidents happen to innocent people who are simply stopped at a red light, waiting to turn into work?

Why do loving spouses and parents get brain tumors, suffering in front of their families through a long, drawn-out illness?

Why do sweet, innocent babies die of SIDS?

And why do people choose to end their own lives and leave countless loved ones behind to forever suffer in their absence?

You can try different scenarios. You can try every possible outcome. You can sit for hours on end posing the why in these cases.

You can think you’ve found an answer, or at least a semi-answer. But saying it out loud can make that answer seem just as illogical as the question itself.

Wrong.

Insignificant.

Senseless.

One of the most cherished experiences of my career—and one I will never forget—was a conversation I had with a grieving mother.

This heartbroken and grief-stricken mother turned to me with tears streaming down her face and asked me why.

My eyes began to well with tears as I watched her look up toward the sky in pain and confusion, almost as if she were seeking an answer from God himself in real time.

The raw emotion between us in that room was so heavy.

She asked me for guidance. She asked me how I do this every day.

The tears began to fall freely down my face as my voice cracked.

“I want you to know that these are the days that I leave my office asking God why. I don’t understand, and I never will understand. I truly don’t believe that there is an answer to that question, and I struggle with that question daily. There is no reason why that is good enough to make this make sense.”

And that, I have come to realize, may be the real answer to the why.

There is no answer.

No answer is good enough. No answer that will suffice. No explanation that could possibly make these losses or these circumstances feel fair.

A well-known grief quote comes to mind when thinking about the why:

“I think I will ask God why for the rest of my life, and never will I come to understand it. Even if God himself came in front of me and told me the reason, I don’t think I would accept it. Some loves are too hard to bear, and with great love comes great pain. And with great loss comes the greatest pain of all. If love could have saved you, you would have lived forever.” —Unknown

That quote helped me realize something I had been struggling to accept.

I was chasing an answer that may not exist.

Many nights, I came home from work and sat in silence thinking about the why behind the cases I had seen. Other days, I would walk through the grocery store completely zoned out and lost in my own thoughts, looking for an answer while going through the motions of everyday life.

I carried these questions everywhere.

And eventually, they began to take their toll.

I felt depressed. I felt hopeless. I didn’t just carry the question with me for one person. I carried it with me, unanswered, for many.

Then someone close to me challenged me to change the question.

Instead of asking why, ask what.

At first, it puzzled me. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how different the two questions were and what that change meant.

“Why?” left me searching for an explanation I might never find.

“What?” gave me somewhere to go.

What did this person teach me?

What will I carry with me from knowing their story?

What can I learn from their life?

What can I do to honor them?

What can I carry forward?

What can I give to someone else because of what they gave to me?

The “what” was much more giving with its answers.

It didn’t leave me in an endless and hopeless rabbit hole. It gave me something tangible—something I could carry with me as I continued moving forward.

It became a way for me to process the things I had seen without feeling like I was staying stagnant in an endless and depressing cycle.

And I began to find answers.

One of my first answers to “what” came on the day of the funeral for the person I mentioned earlier.

Everyone seemed to have essentially the same thing to say about this person.

What a light they were. How welcome they made the people around them feel. How much they loved life. How they enjoyed every moment and spread joy to others everywhere they went.

It was evident to me what a light this person truly was, even though I had never met them.

They had left behind a wonderful legacy.

A light so bright that even death couldn’t dim it.

That light remained in every fond memory and every conversation. It had been passed on to everyone they came into contact with—people who would never forget how that person made them feel.

And those people could now carry that light with them, too.

They could become that same light for someone else.

That day, standing there in my suit, the lightbulb came on for me.

I could find a “what” from every single person I cared for.

Sometimes, I could find multiple whats.

And then I could spread those whats to other people.

Ever since that day, I think of that wonderful person’s life whenever an opportunity presents itself for me to be a light.

I carry that lesson with me as something I learned from that case—something I can keep with me and pass on to someone else.

In doing so, I keep their memory and the impact they had on me alive.

In my first post, “We Are Not Immune To Death,” I discussed a young woman who deeply touched me at the beginning of my career.

I have taken so much from her story, and it has brought me to where I am today.

The “what” I took from her was that it is okay to have emotions for people you care for in the death care industry, even when you have never met them before.

It is okay to show those emotions.

It is okay to allow those emotions to help you connect with special families.

It is okay to talk about them openly.

Without that “what,” I would not have half of the stories and connections I have formed today.

Without that “what,” I don’t believe I would have even pursued this platform.

And maybe that is the difference.

I now understand that I may never have the answers to those whys.

If the answers do exist, I truly do not believe they are good enough to make these tragedies make sense.

But I don’t have to understand the why to find something meaningful in the what.

I can find a million whats in the lives of the people I have been fortunate enough to care for.

A lesson.

A memory.

A reminder.

A piece of their story.

Something they taught me without ever knowing they were teaching me.

Something I can carry forward.

Something I can pass on to the next person.

That feeling gives me purpose.

It gives me something I can carry with me every day without allowing the unanswered questions to feel quite so heavy.

I may never understand why some people are taken too soon.

I may never understand why some families have to endure unimaginable pain.

I may never understand why some stories end the way they do.

But I have learned that I don’t need an answer to every why in order to find something worth carrying forward.

The why may always be there.

But so can the what.

And the “what” keeps my heart on its toes—always looking for something to carry with me, and hopefully, pass on to the next person.

Maybe I will never understand the “why.”

Maybe I don’t have to.

Maybe the most meaningful thing I can do is take the good that I can from the people I meet, carry their light with me, and make sure it doesn’t end with them.

And maybe that is enough.

The death care industry is one of the most misunderstood fields you will find. There are misconceptions from the general public about what funeral directors actually do, what the workload looks like, and what is expected of us. There are also misconceptions among the people who seek a job or career in funeral service. And, in my experience, those misconceptions are beginning to deeply affect the future of this profession.

I have helped guide many eager, yet not-so-willing, individuals to the conclusion that maybe this job was not for them. I have never taken offense to that. This was not done to discourage anyone who was truly following their heart or their passion. It was more often a matter of helping someone recognize that the job they imagined was very different from the job we actually do.

In a few of my previous posts, I touched on some of the most common questions I get when people learn what I do for a living. Questions like, “What is the worst thing you’ve seen?” People wonder if being around the dead scares me, if I have ever had any paranormal experiences, or how I bring myself to be alone with the dead on a daily basis. That is the part of the job that most people cannot imagine.

I have heard the phrase, “Well, at least your customers don’t talk back to you, so that part must be nice!” more times than I can count. That statement is one of the reasons I truly feel that the majority of people do not have a clear concept of what funeral directors do every day.

Because the truth is, working with the dead is only a very small portion of what funeral service really entails.

Yes, for a small part of my day, I am working with someone who is not going to carry on a two-way conversation with me. But for the majority of my day, it is just the opposite. I am working with people constantly.

I am calling florists, pastors, courthouses, doctors, and family members of the deceased. I am corresponding with multiple families from different cases throughout the day, either by phone, appointment, or email. I am designing service programs and printing stationery after getting orders of service and making sure the names of all 13 grandchildren are in order and correctly spelled. I am ordering catering and lining up help to make sure each service is set up to run smoothly, with as few hiccups as possible.

I am corresponding with the military for honors, working with my office manager on insurance claims, and helping a family who walked in with no appointment because they were so grief-stricken they didn’t know where else to go first.

I am proofreading and signing death certificates, filing stacks of paperwork, and obtaining signatures. I am explaining, very delicately but honestly, to a mother the injuries her child sustained during a tragic accident, and holding her while she falls apart. I am walking someone in to view their loved one for the last time, carefully watching to make sure I am there to catch them if their knees give out or offer them water before they lose consciousness.

I am standing in the blazing heat in a black suit for a graveside service, with sweat dripping down my forehead, waiting for my cue to play “Amazing Grace.” I am up for the third time in the middle of the night, either putting on my coat or corresponding with hospice nurses, family members, and our removal team to bring the deceased into our care.

I am telling my own friends or family, “I can’t go this weekend, I’m on call,” knowing I can’t be a certain distance away from the funeral home in case I need to go into the office. I am keeping my phone with me in the pool or at the dinner table, knowing my plans may shift in an instant. I may have to get up and excuse myself to speak with a family or leave for a last-minute appointment request.

This is the part of the job that people often do not understand.

I have found that many of those who express an interest in this profession are looking for a strict 9-to-5 job with no weekends. They don’t want to be bothered at 3:00 a.m. for a death call. They don’t want to be called just as they are sitting down for their Thanksgiving meal because someone has died and needs to be brought to the funeral home.

Some only have an interest in working “in the back” because they don’t want to deal with people or be the face of the funeral service. Others see the profession as a cool, hip, morbid career that will give them an interesting answer when someone at a social event inevitably asks, “What is the worst thing you’ve ever seen?”

There is nothing wrong with being fascinated by the death care industry. There is nothing wrong with being interested in embalming, cremation, or the science behind what we do. But if that is the extent of your interest, you are missing the heart of funeral service.

That is one of the reasons the funeral service industry is struggling to find and keep good help. Too many people entering the field have no real concept of the time, effort, flexibility, and sacrifice required to do this job—and to do it well.

It is also one of the reasons funeral directors who have been doing this job for 40-plus years are burnt out and tired. There are limited promising, up-and-coming funeral directors to pass the torch to or to share the workload with to lighten the load. There are people who walk through our doors eager to start, only to become much less eager once they see the amount of dedication required to be successful.

I understand why that happens. You cannot fully understand what this job asks of you until you experience it.

Thanksgiving a few years back, of course, fell on one of my nights to be on call and on standby for any removals. I was crossing my fingers all day, hoping and praying that the phone would never ring. First, so that a family would not have to experience losing a loved one on a major holiday, and second, so that I could be free to enjoy a meal with my own family.

Someone approached me after hearing the rest of the family discussing how I might have to leave if I got a call.

“Well, they won’t call you unless it’s an emergency, right? Can’t that wait until tomorrow?”

With a puzzled look on my face, I began to explain that someone dying was, in fact, an emergency.

“Can’t they just put them in the morgue for the night and you can go tomorrow?”

They slowly began to understand that while a hospital might have somewhere to keep a deceased person temporarily, people’s homes and most nursing homes do not have cold storage on standby to store a loved one until my Thanksgiving meal and holiday were over.

And that is another part of this job that can be difficult to explain to people who have never experienced it. When someone dies, their family doesn’t get to put the situation on hold because it is a holiday, because it is the middle of the night, or because the funeral director is having dinner with their own family.

Questions I do get, although very rarely, regarding the emotional aspect of this job often come from family members sitting across the table from me while they are grieving. They wonder how I do this job and deal with the constant sad undertone in the room, or how I handle constantly being around people who are grieving.

And I guess that just goes to show that people really don’t know until they are grieving or in need of a funeral director themselves.

Or until they are hired and their phone is ringing at 3:00 a.m. Or until they are juggling the many emails, phone calls, and accommodations needed for one service while they have four others they are actively planning. Or until their Thanksgiving meal is interrupted by the call that someone needs to be picked up and cared for, taking them out of dinner for an undisclosed amount of time.

Because despite my crossed fingers and that confused family member’s question that day, I did, in fact, answer that call 30 minutes before I was due to sit down and eat.

It was someone else’s emergency.

And it was someone else who not only lost their loved one that day, but whose own Thanksgiving dinner was ruined and out of the question.

That is the reality of this profession.

But there is another side to it that I think those who only want to “stay in the back” are missing.

Following a call from beginning to end is one of the most rewarding parts of being a funeral director. From that first call reporting a death, to the removal, to meeting with the family, performing the embalming or cremation, planning the funeral service, and working the funeral service, you get to watch everything come together. You get to see the end result and, hopefully, a family who feels that you helped them through one of the worst days of their lives.

The tears of gratitude in someone’s eyes as they tell you that their loved one looks beautiful and peaceful for their viewing, or the hug that you get at the end of a successfully run funeral service, makes those 3:00 a.m. calls and the workload completely worth it.

It is full circle.

You know that your efforts made a difference for someone else who is grieving. There is no do-over for funerals. That funeral or that viewing is a monumental event in so many lives, and you are directly responsible for helping shape that experience. When it is done well, that is the fulfillment you get at the end of the day: knowing that you served some sort of purpose and made some sort of difference.

That is why I believe the people who want to work in funeral service need to understand that this is not simply a job where you work with the dead.

It is a job where you work with the living.

It is a job where you answer the phone at 3:00 a.m. It is a job where you miss holidays, rearrange plans, carry your phone into the pool, and leave dinner when someone else’s family needs you. It is a job that requires patience, flexibility, emotional strength, attention to detail, and an enormous amount of compassion.

And yes, there are parts of the job that happen in the back. Those parts matter. The preparation of a loved one is an important responsibility, and it takes skill, care, and respect. But funeral service does not end there.

The most meaningful part of this profession, at least for me, is being able to follow that family through the entire process. To meet them at the beginning, help them make difficult decisions, care for their loved one, help create a meaningful service, and then stand beside them when it is all over.

You don’t get those full-circle moments when you never get to follow your work through every step of the way. You don’t get those experiences and connections with families. You don’t get to see the real difference you can make in the lives of others if you are only in it for easy work or morbid curiosity.

That is what I wish to tell anyone interested in this profession, or anyone who is simply curious about it.

I want to set the record straight about what we really do and pull the conversation away from what funeral service is not.

This is what the next generation of funeral directors needs to know before they go to school or seek out an apprenticeship.

This work requires dedication. It requires sacrifice. It requires you to give up some of your time, your holidays, your plans, and sometimes your sleep.

But if you know what to expect, and if you are willing to give this profession what it asks of you, it can also be one of the most rewarding and meaningful things you will ever experience.

Because at the end of the day, this job is not just about the dead.

It is also about the living who are left behind.

And if you can understand that, you understand what funeral service is really all about.

Five years ago, when I started my journey into Funeral Service, one of the first things I did was turn to the internet for resources. I wanted to know what to expect from my future day-to-day life. What would the workload look like? What would the job really entail? Were there tips, shared experiences, or other resources from people already working in the profession?

I was shocked to find that there were very few resources available.

When I did find something useful, it was often buried deep within a Reddit thread or an online conversation. Those candid, back-and-forth discussions became some of the most valuable sources of information I had. They gave me small pieces of insight into the details and logistics of the career I had been planning to pursue since middle school.

But there was one major part of the profession that I couldn’t find much information about. One part that I knew almost nothing about until I was knee-deep in the industry.

Arguably, one of the most important—and most difficult—parts of Funeral Service:

The emotional aspect.

The closest thing I could find that felt remotely applicable to the experience of being a funeral director was hearing the stories of first responders. The things they see. The things they experience behind the scenes. The moments they carry with them long after the call is over.

Much of the respect we have for first responders comes from the fact that they willingly face things most people never have to see. They witness trauma firsthand: suicides, car accidents, murders, overdoses, mass fatalities, and the aftermath of disasters.

And I want to be clear: I am not saying that my work as a funeral director is the same as the work of a police officer, EMT, or firefighter. There are aspects of those careers that I am not sure I would personally have the strength to do. I have an immense amount of respect for first responders and the strength they demonstrate every day. The way they put themselves directly in harm’s way to protect and serve others is truly admirable.

But I am posing a different question—one that I believe has a very important answer that is not recognized by many:

Where do the suicides, the car accidents, the murders, the overdoses, and the mass fatalities go once the first responders leave?

They come to us.

We are the people who show up behind the scenes and take over from there. We, too, face things most people never have to see.

We see the aftermath. We handle what is left behind. We work with families in the moments immediately following some of the worst experiences of their lives. We encounter trauma, sometimes repeatedly, while still being expected to remain composed, professional, and present for the people who need us.

And yet, when we talk about professions that are exposed to trauma, funeral directors are rarely part of the conversation.

We are not on the map.

That needs to change.

I remember a moment from a few years ago that still sticks with me, and I think it perfectly illustrates the point I’m trying to make.

It was around Christmas, and I found myself wandering through the personalized ornament aisle. As I looked around, I found nearly every profession represented. Nurses, police officers, firefighters, ambulances, doctors—you name it. I eagerly searched for something that represented my own profession.

I have so much pride in what I do, and it genuinely makes my day when I see something that represents Funeral Service out in the world. So I was excited to find something I could put on my own Christmas tree.

But that excitement quickly faded when I realized there was nothing for funeral directors.

Nothing.

That was nearly five years ago, and unfortunately, not much has changed. Every Christmas, I still find myself looking through those aisles. The difference is that I’m no longer disappointed when I don’t find anything that represents our profession. I’ve learned that if I want those things, I usually have two options: create them myself or order them from a niche website run by someone within the industry.

And while a Christmas ornament may seem like a small or insignificant example, to me, it represents something much bigger.

For the first time in 2024, the year I graduated from Mortuary School, our program director was excited to announce that the Funeral Service program would be getting a purple stole embroidered with “FS” for Funeral Service, to represent us on graduation day—to give us something that would set us apart from other programs and represent our field, just like the nursing program had theirs.

The Funeral Service program was started there in 1974.

That was 52 years ago, and 2024 was the first year someone had come up with something to represent our field on graduation day.

We aren’t represented in the places people expect us to be.

We aren’t always part of the conversation. We aren’t always included in the resources, recognition, or support that other professions receive. And sometimes, it feels like we have to create those things for ourselves simply because no one else has thought to put us there.

That is exactly what I mean when I say I want to put funeral directors on the map.

Funeral directors deserve to be on the map—not because we want to diminish the work of first responders, but because we need to acknowledge the work we do, the things we see, and the emotional weight that can come with this profession.

There are conversations happening about first responders. There are resources, support systems, research, and communities built around helping them process what they experience.

But where is that conversation for funeral directors?

Where are our resources?

What are we supposed to do with the weight of seeing those same suicides, car accidents, and murder victims?

There are times when our work requires us to be much more up close and personal with those cases. We don’t just encounter the circumstances surrounding someone’s death—we work directly with the person who died, while simultaneously supporting the family left behind and navigating the emotional weight of the situation ourselves.

There are cases that stay with us.

Cases we don’t forget.

Cases that sometimes follow us home at the end of the day.

We go back to our families, our homes, and our everyday lives carrying things that most people will never know we saw that day. And because we are funeral directors, there can be an expectation that we simply know how to handle it. That because being around death is part of the job, we should somehow be able to separate ourselves from it.

But being accustomed to death doesn’t make us immune to it.

We are human, too.

So who is checking on us?

Who is creating the resources we need?

Who is making space for funeral directors to talk honestly about the things we see, the things we carry, and the things this profession can take from us?

I don’t have all of those answers.

But I do know that the conversation needs to start somewhere.

Maybe putting funeral directors on the map doesn’t begin with recognition from everyone else. Maybe it begins with us recognizing that these conversations matter, creating the resources we wish we had, and making sure the next person entering this profession doesn’t have to search through hundreds of Reddit threads just to find someone willing to say:

“I’ve seen it too. And you’re not alone. What you’re feeling is not abnormal.”

This is the main reason I started this blog.

I want to be a resource for the next up-and-coming funeral director who is searching for the resources, honest conversations, and sense of community that I couldn’t find when I was starting out.

I want to be a resource for the spouse of a funeral director who wants to understand more about what their partner sees, experiences, and carries home with them.

I would love nothing more than to create a tight-knit community where funeral directors can have these conversations openly, share our very real experiences, and know that we don’t have to navigate them alone.

And maybe, just maybe, someone completely outside of the death care industry will read these words, share them with someone else, and start a conversation of their own.

Because awareness has to start somewhere.

Maybe this is where we start putting funeral directors on the map.

One of my main goals in starting this blog is to reach those directors who have experienced cases that have touched their hearts and left a lasting impact on them. The ones that invoke that strong emotion from within that almost feels wrong as a professional to feel. Those are the cases that most directors never talk about. At least, they don’t talk about them openly.

If you haven’t had this experience yet, I am almost certain that you will at some point in your career.

One of the worst and most insensitive questions that I get when people find out I am a funeral director is, “Wow, that is so cool. What is the worst thing you’ve seen?” as if someone’s worst imaginable tragedy is something to be collected for morbid curiosity or entertainment.

I do, in a sense, understand where this question is coming from, however. Some people really just don’t know or are under the impression that us funeral directors are strictly objective about death. Untouched by the sometimes harshness of its reality. Emotionally unattached and unbothered.

After all, how could you ever do this job if you aren’t?

What initially drew me to this field were two simple things.

The first was that I had an interest in the behind-the-scenes work that nobody else sees. There was an element of curiosity about anatomy, restorative arts, and the skill set that goes into that. This is a huge part of the reason why I feel I flourish when working in the preparation room.

I view embalming and restorative techniques as a true art, and it is definitely a topic I could discuss for hours on end. I enjoy being challenged by new techniques and attending conferences, learning new tricks of the trade from other skilled and experienced embalmers.

I was fairly confident that I might be able to stomach the reality of death very objectively in that aspect, with the goal of completing a job or a service to benefit others.

The second was that I knew I could be of service to others.

Another question I get often is what the schooling or other requirements are to become a funeral director.

I will never forget a visitation I worked a couple of years ago for a young man who had been in an accident. Someone attending this visitation approached me and asked me just that. What were the requirements, and was a drug test involved?

“I can’t remember. I would have to ask,” was my response.

“Awesome, so you are saying there’s a chance I could be high all day, AND play with dead bodies? I’m going to go and talk to the funeral people,” they said.

Not knowing it at the time, they had really just talked to one of the funeral people and sealed their fate with that simple statement by talking with me.

I was physically too stunned and offended to have any sort of response to that statement. Those who know me know that my face often reacts before my mouth does, or before my brain can tell it to change its expression to save face.

That completely callous, unemotional, and seemingly heartless statement is what a lot of people think about funeral directors. Maybe not that we “play with dead bodies all day,” but that we are completely emotionally unaffected and unfazed by death. With our only motivator for our work being a morbid curiosity and nothing more.

That conception is the farthest thing from the truth.

At least, the farthest thing from my truth.

I personally can remember every single small child I have cared for since I started my career. I carry the weight of knowing that I was the last one to look into their eyes before they were closed, and the last one to hold them before laying them down into their eternal bed.

That privilege is sometimes so heavy to carry and hold onto that it occupies permanent space in my mind.

I will never forget the first case that I genuinely connected with. Before I ever met with any of her family, there was a young girl around my age who had no business dying when she did.

That was the first case where the heaviness and raw emotion of the work followed me up the stairs and into my bedroom instead of staying with my shoes at the door when I came home from work that day.

I remember feeling so confused about why I was so bothered. I had seen tough cases before, including young people my age, and while those cases of course pulled at my heartstrings and my emotions, I was still able to move on to the next and perform my job.

But not after her.

The raw emotions I felt when caring for this case permanently changed the course of my career and many things in my life.

Years later, she still crosses my mind daily. She is actually a huge motivator for why I have chosen to pursue this blog and to connect with others who may have had, or who will have, similar experiences.

Because through her, I learned that those emotions are meant to be there.

They are not meant to be shied away from, and they are not wrong or abnormal. They make this work real and genuine. They help you to connect with families and the deceased and learn something from them.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions in Funeral Service is that being emotionally affected by our work means we aren’t cut out for it. I would argue the opposite.

Recognizing that a case affected you, acknowledging those feelings, and knowing when you need to talk about them is not weakness. It is part of taking care of yourself.

I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t shed a tear every once in a while.

Never once have I been void of emotion with what I do. Never once have I viewed this job as just a job and left my heart out of it when I come into the office each day.

My point is, those are the cases that shape you, humble you, and teach you what real empathy is. Those are the cases that give you the ability to connect with the families that you serve and meet them where they are at.

These families have no choice in those moments. They have no choice but to place their trust in someone because they have to. They are trusting us with one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

So if they sit across from a funeral director and see a person who genuinely cares—someone who recognizes that the person in front of them is not just a case, a task, or another name on a schedule—it can change their experience entirely.

Our empathy does not make us less professional. It makes us human. And sometimes, being human is exactly what the families in front of us need.

Feeling something doesn’t make you bad at this job. Pretending you don’t feel anything can actually prevent you from understanding what this job is doing to you, what it is teaching you, and the opportunities that it has for you.

My truth is that I went through some of these misconceptions myself—that having those emotions was wrong or unprofessional of me. I didn’t fully understand it because no one talked about it openly. I thought something was wrong with me.

And eventually, I realized that wasn’t true.

So, to that young woman who touched my heart, you taught me one of the most important lessons of this profession. And for that, I will always remember you.

I didn’t become a better funeral director by learning how not to feel, which is what I initially thought was how other, more experienced directors reached success.

I became a better funeral director by learning how to understand what I feel.

For anyone in this profession who might be sitting at home wondering, “Why can’t I just turn these feelings off and move on?”

Because you’re human.

And that doesn’t mean you’re not good at your job or that you aren’t cut out for the death care industry.

It actually means just the opposite.

You don’t have to become less human to be a better funeral director.

My name is Hannah, and I am a young funeral director based in North Carolina. I have five years of experience in the death care industry and have been licensed for two of those years.

My goal is to connect with other empathetic, like-minded directors while providing relatable resources on compassion fatigue, burnout, and self-care within the death care industry.

When I started my journey in this career, I was shocked to find that there were few to no resources available for our field. No one talked about what compassion fatigue really meant or what burnout actually looked like. No one openly discussed the very real—and oftentimes heavy—emotions and weight that come with being a funeral director in the death care industry.

My experience starting out was pretty much a “learn as you go” kind of experience. As a deeply empathetic person, I quickly realized that the emotions I experienced and the things I was exposed to as a funeral director were going to take a toll on me.

No one talked about the cases you connect with, whether it’s the deceased, their families, or both, and how much those connections can shape you moving forward. At first, I shied away from those feelings, wondering if I was supposed to feel so much emotion as a professional. After all, no one talked about it.

Now, I know that these experiences are part of what continues to make me a better funeral director as I grow in this field. Empathy is an important part of serving others in this industry, and I believe that the emotional side of this profession deserves to be talked about openly.

A Resource for More Than Just Funeral Directors

Not only do I have a desire to connect with others in this field, but I also want this space to be a resource for the families, spouses, partners, and loved ones of funeral directors. Working in death care can expose us to experiences, emotions, and situations that can be difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced them firsthand. Sometimes, we may not even know how to put those experiences into words ourselves.

I want to help the people closest to funeral directors better understand what we experience, how this work can affect us emotionally, and why we may sometimes come home carrying the weight of the day with us. My hope is that by creating more understanding around the realities of this profession, I can help foster greater compassion, patience, and support for the people behind the profession.

I also want to give the general public a better understanding of what being a funeral director really entails and what we experience in our day-to-day work. There is so much more to this profession than what happens during a funeral. Behind the scenes are long hours, difficult cases, emotional conversations, unexpected situations, and the responsibility of caring for people during some of the most painful moments of their lives.

There are some of us who truly do care and who don’t view this as simply a “job.” For many of us, it is truly a calling—and a passion.

I am excited to finally explore this long-awaited outlet, share my experiences, provide resources, and form genuine connections along the way. Whether you are a funeral director looking for someone who understands, a spouse or loved one trying to better understand the person behind the profession, or simply someone who wants to learn more about what we do, I hope you find something here that resonates with you.