Everything dies; it’s the living that counts

Why is it that so many of Ontario’s funeral directors hail from family farms?

“I’m not sure, exactly,” my interviewee scratched his head. “Maybe because to us death is just part of life. You live on a farm, every day you walk outside, something’s dead.”

Each year on the May long weekend, my mind wanders back to one of the first interviews I ever did, with a funeral director I will call Doug McKenzie.

I was just starting out as a writer, and had a job profiling business owners.  On a May long weekend, I was regretting having scheduled this interview. The weather was fantastic, blue skies and sunshine. Everybody else was gardening and barbecuing; I was going to sit inside a dark, depressing funeral home and talk to a man who embalmed bodies and sold over-priced caskets for a living.

Oh, well. This was the day he had available. I looked longingly at the blooming flower beds and hanging baskets outside the funeral home before I stepped inside.

The building was surprisingly inviting, a former family mansion converted into a funeral parlour. The gleaming woodwork and soaring window casements created a golden, airy atmosphere.

Doug approached me, hand extended to shake mine. “Thank you for coming,” he offered sincerely.

He was very proud to show me around the premise, which was well over a century old. There were several separate galleries on the first and second floor; the basement was dedicated to the administrative offices and of course, the embalming room. There was also the Showroom, in which were displayed about a dozen satin-lined caskets. The room in which Doug took the greatest pride was “The Family Room,” a big space on the second floor that looked more like a  banquet hall than a funeral parlour; adjacent to it was a fully functional kitchen.

Settling in his office for our interview, I led with what I imagined sounded like a business-oriented question: “I guess selling caskets is the largest part of your business?”

“Oh, gosh, no,” Doug disagreed vigorously. “That’s part of what we do, but not nearly the most important.”

“What IS the most important?” I asked, curious now.

“Creating an event that satisfies every family member,” he explained. “You see, it is not unusual for me to look across my desk at 4, 5, or 6 family members who all want the funeral to be exactly perfect. But, most of the time, they all have a different definition of what ‘perfect’ is. The risk that someone is going to end up upset is virtually guaranteed.

“That’s why I have to take the time to hear each person, what they want and what they are hoping for, and we come up with a plan that somehow takes into account what is most important to each person. We don’t often have members that want exact opposites; but frequently they have never even discussed what they want the event to be before they get to my office. I try to find a solution that will make everyone feel it was the best event it could be.”

The caring and concern in his answer took me totally by surprise. “But what about the $20,000 caskets? Isn’t that where most of your money comes from?”

“There are caskets in every price range,” he pointed out. “You can have a $2000 plain pine model, or a $20,000 mahogany work of art. We can even arrange to have your $20,000 casket encased in a concrete block. We can do any of those things – if that’s what you want. The challenge is in finding out what it is people want and ensuring all the family members are in agreement with it.”

“Children’s funerals,” he added sadly, “we do for free.”

We moved on to the topic of the Family Room and the kitchen.

“That is one of our best innovations,” Doug nodded with excitement and enthusiasm. “We do a lot of Buddhist funerals and one of the hallmarks of the community is that they are almost all immigrants, and they often have family members all over the globe.

“A few years ago, we noticed how stressful it was on family to travel days to get to Toronto, then two hours to get from the airport, to show up here at our premise just as we were closing for the night. Most of the time these were extended family members who only got to see each other every several years, or even decades. At such an emotional time, the most important thing to them is to spend time with each other.

“So we came up with the idea of the Family Room!” he announced with pride. “They can have food catered, or they can prepare their own food in the kitchen. We will keep it open all night long if they want, so everyone has a chance to visit the living relatives they miss, in addition to paying their respects to the departed one. Now, we do more Buddhist funerals than almost anybody else in Toronto.”

My original disdain for doing this interview was swept away by the kindness and compassion that simply flowed from this man, clearly a smart business man. My impression of Funeral Directors was changed forever.

“How do you become a Funeral Director?” I asked. “Was this your family business?”

“Oh no, I took a college program in Funeral Directing,” he explained. “My family is in farming; I was born on the farm. In fact, at college, about half of the people studying to be Funeral Directors were from farm families.”

“I’m not sure, exactly,” Doug replied in words that have stayed with me for 30 years. “Maybe because to us death is just part of life. You live on a farm, every day you walk outside, something’s dead.”

I had to laugh at his typically blunt, classic rural Ontario observation.

Dale Carnegie’s Principle #7 is “Listen.” “Be an attentive listener…encourage others to talk about themselves,” he wrote in Win Friends. Often when I consider this principle and its application, I think of Doug McKenzie and how his successful business is built almost entirely on listening – to the desires of families and the concerns of community.

And, what a valuable lesson I would have missed, had I not been listening on that beautiful May weekend: every living thing will die one day. It’s not the death that matters – it’s the living.