Working Funerals - Neighbour calls police about body at funeral home

    Very recently I had a talk with the people at Divinity Funerals.  I was told a funny story about how one neighbour is reluctant to have a funeral home so close.

    One night there was a viewing in the funeral home chapel, nothing new.  After the viewing they were loading the coffin into the car to take back to the mortuary.  When suddenly "everything was blue and red" as police swamped them.

    It turned out the neighbour had seen them loading the coffin into the car, and called the police.  Saying how the neighbour was putting a dead body in a van.  Forgetting to mention that it was a funeral home and a coffin.  Naturally the police were not too impressed and quite apologetic to the funeral staff.  Saying how they would make a note in the system about that number, and they had told off the neighbour.

    It goes to show how reluctant some are to have a funeral home close to them.  Getting approval to build a new funeral home is incredibly difficult from councils and residents.

    My research is finding a main way people chose the funeral home is by how close it is to them.  When a death occurs people want the funeral place to be nearby, many say how this is convenient and nice.  Which is also evident by the way InvoCare spends so much to rent so many offices around Sydney.  Clearly they think it is financially worth it.

    Yet when there is no personal death most do not want the funeral home as a neighbour.  Other than when needed the funeral home should be distant to them, over there and not over here.  This is known as Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) to some.  How we want something close to us when we need it but distant when we don't.

    The funeral home is unfortunately stuck in this paradox.  The company needs to be close to residents and commercial areas for customers as this is a major decider for many customers.  But then the same people do not want the funeral home close when they are no longer customers.  Keeping the funeral home near but at arm's length.

    An unfortunate down side to this is it encourages superficial shop fronts and briefcase funeral directors.  The mortuary, where the dead are dealt with, are removed, confined to industrial areas.

An~~