We are not dying like we used to.
August 26, 2013
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-23/undertakers-blame-mild-winter-for-slow-business/4907608
I have written before on how things are crook in the world of the dedicated undertaker.Now it is worldwide. Embalmers, grave diggers, crematorium sweepers, they are all huddled around street corners hoping for a body, shovels are going rusty and listless undertakers reduced to sipping buttermilk or lukewarm tea.
Some of the largest retorts have been switched off and lying idle, saving gas or electricity. These are hard times.
Unfortunately, the best of the undertakers etc will get out of the industry. Many embalmers already have taken up restoring cars, cane furniture or simply becoming panel beaters. The industry will find it hard to replace those that took pride in their work. Many were answering an almost sacred plea during the peak or heydays of the dying, few were chosen. The very best were artists in their own right and could name their price. It was as much a calling as becoming a bishop or a Venetian gondolier.
Many corpses were left with the signature of the embalmer as recognizable as a vintner could call his ‘vins de Bordeaux.’ The best of them clearly under emphasized their work, were modest and yet worked with much devotion and creativity.
It makes one wonder how the industry will fare in the future. I am pretty sure that, no matter what, the trade from ‘ashes to ashes’ will survive.
Already many of the smaller undertakers were taken over by the larger ones and with mass buying of coffins and introduction of solar heated crematoriums and retorts, costs were cut, prices lowered. Many are now corporate giants and listed on the Dow Jones, The FT100, and the AEX etc. Some of the smaller funeral directors tried double dipping with re-use of coffins, the introduction of flat pack carton coffins with Allen key, plastic re-usable flowers and introducing three for the price of one and other sustainable solutions.
The logistics of less numbers dying now seems a problem that will take innovative action. The larger corporate ones have taken to offering ‘Corpus-futures’ (CF’s) the same as already existing with pork bellies, soya beans etc. One has the option of going ‘short’ or ‘long’ on the dearly departed. Timing is of the essence though.
The experts can blame longevity on the mild weather or the habit of taking vitamins, exercise and tofu milk with cucumber but I wonder if people are cutting corners and doing a swifty and burying Aunt Agnes on the sly under Rufus the dog kennel? Are there economic reasons at play here? How does that stack up though against all those funereal insurance TV ads with so many of the ‘happy’ Rolfing around in the knowledge that for the cost of a mere weekly latte or sugar slushy they will get a nice warm cremation or a burial without having to worry afterwards and lying awake all night.
Anyway, you can get a decent funeral for less than an Mp with 5 Gigabytes; including a box of I love Lucy VD’s thrown in for niks.
The problem seems odd. On the one hand, robust health with longevity and mild weather is to be blamed, yet on the other side obesity and the Big quarter pounder Mac were seen by many as the savior for the industry. What is happening here? Is there some rort going on somewhere?
I am suspicious.
Tags: ABC.The Drum, Crematorium, Embalmers, Retort, Undertakers
Posted in Gerard Oosterman |
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
It’s just a seasonal downturn.
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The Global Funeral Crisis!
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There’ll be sceptics!
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Brilliant..Just brilliant. 🙂 🙂
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Gerard, I tried to get my youngest son into the funeral business. He’s tall, dark haired, moves pretty slowly, has a deep voice and a reassuring manner, Unfortunately they’re all either family businesses, or are looking for sombre, middle-aged women who look good in elbow length white gloves. What’s a lad to do?
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Go for work experience and hang around hospitals and morgues, follow ambulances and get some nice business cards. It’s a tough business and it has been known for funeral directors to muscle in on the weaker ones by offering low cost funerals only to jack their prices up with all sorts of extras the same as in marriages with; videos, flower pieces, ferry remembrances, horses, stretch limousines, live music with grand pianos, bottles of cognac , even cannons and send off rockets with fireworks, special urns for ashes with engraved poetry, gold embossed names. Mausoleums for ageing aunts, special stone masonry with pet facilities etc. Ash spreading on top of Mount Everest or Mon Blanc, mid ocean between Falkland Island and Tierra Del Fuego. Some people have ended up in law-courts suing funeral directors. It’s all so difficult now. 😉
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There was a student nurse, when I was training, who was trying to do just that, hang around the sick, and hopefully dying and bereaved in order to muscle in on the funeral business. She was tall, pale with long black hair, and, not surprisingly, was nicknamed ‘Morticia’.
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She did go very far and I remember her very well. She had a nose for business and an acute and well developed sense of decorum with a nice gardenia deodorant spray discretely hidden in her white blouse just in case of a corpse’s final wind during the bearing of the cask towards the eternal all consuming flame.
Morticia sadly came to an end when she was murdered by her husband who became enraged when she discovered him in the icy embrace of a dearly departed on top of the morticians table…
The trial of the husband was headline News in the Wagga Wagga Daily for weeks. He was sentenced for 12 years, showed genuine contrition and remorse which impressed the Judge.
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Yes, Gez, I guess there’s a fair amount of pressure, from the living and the dead…one can make the dear departed look too damned good. He should have stuck with the occasional grieving widow!
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Yes, at least she was above 13c and had moving parts.
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