Funeral Fun - Holding hands

    Recently I was at a funeral when something rather amusing happened at the graveside.  It's about time I did a 'funeral fun' anyway!

Funeral Fun - Uncle Arthur

    Funerals are seen as a sad or depressing event.  But this is often not the case, especially for the staff work work funeral every day.  Undertakers learn to make jokes in almost every situation, the job is just that, a job.

Funeral Fun - A close call

    Working in the funeral industry is often rather amusing.  Yet it can also be a bit dangerous.  I remember one occasion where it was a combination of 'funny' and 'danger'.  The time someone nearly pulled another undertaker into a grave.

Funeral Fun - Broken down in the cemetery

    A breakdown is never a fun thing.  Especially in the funeral industry.  Even more so in a cemetery during a funeral!  But this is exactly what happened one hot summer day.

    This is the story of how our hearse broke down in a cemetery, during a funeral, and how a gravedigger came to our rescue.

Funeral Fun - Leaky coffin

    We set off to the crematorium, the regular driver of this hearse was on another job as a car driver.  So today two conductors were in the hearse with me.  Upon arriving at the crematorium we got the coffin out, carried it inside and puit it on the catafalque.

     After placing the coffin down I turned around and saw one or two pinky splash marks on the floor.  I instantly knew they were most likely from the coffin.  They looked fresh and where right where we had carried the coffin.  I immediately told the conductor, who then very subtly went up and felt the coffin.  It was dry around all sides, so if it had leaked it was not still leaking.  Next we went to inspect the hearse.

    Sure enough there was a small puddle in the back where the coffin had been.  The pink and sticky fluid sat there proudly.  Better still it had also slipped through the rollers into the underneath of the hearse (where we kept many handy things such as tables, umbrellas, chairs, and so on).  In other words this fluid was all through his hearse.

    Due to the schedule this hearse then spent the rest of the day sitting in the summer sun.  Nobody had time to clean the fluids out, so they baked on.  When we brought the hearse back to the garage and informed the driver he was not happy.  He always tried to take care of his hearse, always looked after it and felt for it.  So to find it with sticky and not hard pinkish fluids all through made him upset.

    Naturally we all suddenly had lots of work to do and were unable to help him clean the fluids.  But we did pop by every now and then to tell him if he had missed a spot.

    Overall it was a rather funny and unusual event.  Well, funny for everyone except the hearse driver, although even he saw the humour.

~~

Funeral Fun - Emptying the crypt

Gates into Waverley Cemetery.

    This was perhaps my favourite day at W.N.Bull.  It was also one of the hardest and dirtiest and even somewhat dangerous.

    Basically the job was to move five coffins in a crypt so it could be renovated.  I had never been in a crypt before but had heard stories.  People described them as dark, damp, dirty, small, boring and slippery.  So I  was actually rather excited and looking forward to it.

The day before we took the stretchers out of the transfer van and filled it with things we might need.  Such as boards, ropes, torches and so on.  Just a variety of things that might be handy if needed.  I was put in the van and sent on a funeral first.  This meant I had to bring a more 'practical' set of cloths as my three piece funeral suit would not be suitable for pulling coffins out of a crypt.

    After the funeral I made my way over to Waverley Cemetery where the crypt was.  As usual I was the first to arrive and so I had plenty of time to sit and eat my lunch.  After all I would soon need my energy.  I sat near the gate so that it was in sight but I was hidden.  It was starting to turn into a miserable day,  it was cold, overcast and looked like rain.  Hardly the sort of weather we wanted.

    Not too much later everyone else started to arrive and we made our way to the crypt.  As they set up I changed into the more suitable work clothes.  It had started to spit rain very lightly and then stopped, I remember one of the other undertakers commenting that he hopped the rain would keep away, even for a little bit.

    When they had opened the door and set up we went inside to assess the situation.  The job involved taking four adult coffins and one baby coffin off shelves and then taking them down one level into a room underneath the crypt.  Unfortunately the door to the basement room under the crypt was directly infront of the door to the crypt itself and actually very small.  It was not so much a 'door' as a small and steep hole with some stairs.  Even better this hole was right in front of the door to the upper level.  So we had to cover it up with boards to be able to get in and out of the upper level.  Then we would have to uncover it to get to the bottom level.

Three crypts at Waverley, the one of the right is very
similar to the one we worked out of.

    The room with the coffins was fairly small, there was not much standing room at all.  And two of the coffins were quite high, at about my head height.  The coffins themselves were also quite heavy, they were solid timber or oak and had an inch of lead lining inside.  Plus half of them had no handels and thus had nothing to tie ropes to.  All of this meant it would be a difficult and somewhat dangerous job.  We had to drag heavy coffins off high shelves in a dark and slippery stone room.  Then we had to slid them through a step hole not much bigger than the coffins themselves.  Finally we would have to lift these heavy coffin up above our heads and onto the shelves in another small and even darker room.

    And there were only four of us.  The grave diggers were not allowed to help due to OH&S issues.  They obviously felt sorry for us and helped how they could, in fact a couple got quite actively involved.  But they were council employees and council diggers cannot by law do certain things.  Such as move coffins (like lowering or carrying them) and so on.  All due to OH&S and insurance issues.

    But what could we do?  There were only four of us and the poor family had waited months for the job to be done.  But our boss had been putting it off.  And a family member was present through the job, he was obviously very upset at seeing his family being moved about but he was also extremely grateful.

    We set to work and moved the two easiest coffins out first.  I remember thinking how difficult it was, that these two coffins were so heavy and how little room there was.  Little did I know that this would be the easiest part of the job.  After taking the  two coffins out we loaded them into the back of the van.  Then we uncovered the hole to the bottom level and started to take the coffins down.

    Here was the trouble, the hole was just big enough to fit the coffins and very step.  We had to tie the coffin with rops, lower it foot first down the hole, then send the smaller person to squeeze between the coffin and the hole and direct it as the others continued to lower.  Guess who was the 'smaller' person, me!  I was to squeeze myself down the hole and direct the coffin until there was enough room for the others to come down and help me.

    This is how we got the first coffin into the room.  But then we had to get it on a shelf.  Because of the lack of room and steepness of the hole we could barely raise the foot end of the coffin to get it onto the shelf.  It kept getting caught on the walls, and with its heavy weight we had a lot of trouble.  But we did it, the first two coffins were on the shelves and done.

    Now it got hard.  The next two coffins were bigger, heavier, had no handels and were higher.  We lifted them up onto sticks while still on the shelves, then we tied ropes around them.  Next I climbed up to the top shelf of the crypt (which had nothing on it except debris and dirt).  I had to lie on this shelf as it was close to the roof and then take a rope to help swing the coffin out.  So there I lay, in the dirt on a cold shelf in a crypt.  All while swinging a heavy coffin down.

    With a lot of trouble and effort we got the last two coffins out.  But they were larger, so getting them down the hole was more difficult.  I remember at one point another undertaker getting his pants caught on the coffin as he tried to squeeze past it to get down the hole.  It was quite funny actually, seing him stuck there by his pants to a coffin!  Even he thought it was funny.  But then the supervisor reminded us that the family was watching and we had to stop giggling.

    In the end we got the job done, but it was very dirty and a lot of work.  When we finished the family member thanked us all personally, he was very grateful for the job and thought we had done well.  And I had so much fun doing it, we all did.  As difficult and dirty as it was it was also very rewarding and seing the job finished was so satisfying.  I really enjoyed the day and the job with good people.

~~

Funeral Fun - The attack

The garage at Newtown.

    It was a late night, just three of us were to work back after hours for a vigil when one of us was almost attacked.  This incident was perhaps one of the funniest things that has ever happened to me, I ended up laughing so much and so hard that I actually hurt my lungs a little.  I may sound a little strange or mean to laugh so much at the attack of another employee, but read on and see why.

Funeral Fun - Smashing a Tree

    This is not my story but a story that was told to me by a co-worker about an od accident he witnessed while on a funeral.

Funeral Fun - The cheese incident

    It was during the WNBull Christmas party that a rather funny and strange incident occurred.  The party was in the company chapel at Newtown, a small but rather nice and cosy place.  We were all seated in little groups around the room with a large buffet table in the centre.  We had all kinds of delicious food, honey ham, potato salad, sandwiches, brad rolls and butter cut into thinnish triangles to put on the rolles and so on.  There was more than enough yummy food to go around.  Everyone was having a great time, both the food and the company were nice.  Nobody was drinking particularly much alcohol as most of us had to drive home.  So nobody was expecting anything too wild or out of the ordinary (at least for funeral directors who are an odd bunch).

    Mid-way through the evening someone came up to me and asked if I had heard about the cheese issue with another co-worker.  I was rather puzzled, how can an incident occur with cheese, especially when nobody is drunk?  He explained that the other co-worker had grabbed a piece of butter from the buffet table and put it in his moth.  Then he complained that the cheese wasn't any good.  He had mistaken the butter for slices of cheese.

    Naturally the news of his adventure with the butter spread, partially because this sort of thing was not out of the ordinary for him.  He once asked "what's this?" while pointing at the spare tire in a car.  Another time I washed the shammy he cleaned his hearse with for him.  He had asked me as I was cleaning mine at the same time so he knew I was cleaning it.  Yet when I handed back he looked at it, paused for a bit and then said it wasn't his shammy, that it was the wrong colour.

    I will say that this co-worker was not stupid or even unpleasant.  With him I never knew when he was serious or joking about this kind of thing.  He would say the strangest stuff, knowing it was a joke but do so with a straight face.  Not someone to play poker with.  The funeral industry is full of people like this, wonderfully strange.  Because of this it makes the whole job and industry so much more fun and interesting.

~~

Funeral Fun - Whale of a Transfer

    This is not my story, and I was not even in the industry when it happened, someone I use to work with told me this story as a cautionary tale on why to never keep things in pockets higher than your waist.  But it is such an odd and amusing story I thought it worth telling here.

Funeral Fun - Accident on the Harbour Bridge!

    Breaking down or having an accident in a funeral car is often a little more serious than with most other cars.  Mainly because the funeral car will probably have a body or two onboard which always grabs attention.  And this attention is really unwanted for the funeral homes as it makes them look bad.  So you can imagine how bad it was when a hearse had an accident almost right ON the Harbour Bridge.  A classic Sydney icon that is a major link between two sides of the city.

    The hearse was driving along, headed to a funeral in North Sydney, so it had a coffin onboard.  It was only a small funeral so the hearse only had a conductor and driver, no cars following and nobody else inside.  It was also late afternoon and getting close to rush hour.  As they made their way onto the Harbour Bridge there was a sudden and loud bang, as thought the hearse had slamed into something.  They paused for a moment but continued on when smoke started pouring out of the engine.  They immediately pulled over and jumped out as it looked like it a fire was starting.  The engine looked totaled at the front, fluids and smoke were pouring out form underneath.  Of course the conductor grabbed his mobile and started calling the relative people, such as roadside assistance, and the office.

  Once the office found out about the accident they scrambled another hearse to go and collect the body so they could continue with the funeral, and also because they did not want to make the news with a body in a hearse having an accident.  The RTA (road maintenance people) were very quick to arrive as they had seen the accident on their cameras and promptly started diverting traffic and organising a tow truck.  Not long after the second rescue hearse arrived and they were about to get the coffin out of the first, broken hearse when the RTA stopped them.  They refused to let them move the coffin until after the broken hearse was towed off.  To the RTA the priority was on getting the road clear, which is their job.  Looking at the time the funeral staff knew they would not make the funeral in time if they waited.  So as soon as the RTA had turned their backs the funeral staff grabbed the coffin out, jogged it over to the other hearse, threw it in and sped off before anyone could stop them.

The hearse involved, much later

    The second hearse made it to the funeral in time and the family never knew about the accident that nearly delayed the whole event.  This is about when I came into the office to drop off some paperwork.  All the phones were constantly ringing, people were dashing about, it was chaotic.  As soon as I found out what had happened I immediately left and went home for the day (it was time to finish) as I knew I would be no use and did not want to get dragged into the chaos and panic.

    As for the hearse, it was towed off.  After a few hours and lots of debate the hearse was then towed over to the WNBull North Sydney branch before being taken to a mechanic a few days later.  They later found out that it had hit a road sign which was lying on the road.  This sign had then shredded the transmission and most of the engine.  After being hit the sign was then flung to the other side of the road, narrowly missing the oncoming traffic.  It is very lucky nobody was hurt and only the hearse was damaged.

    What is stranger, and luckier for the funeral home, is that it did not make the news in any way.  One would think that a hearse, with coffin inside, having an accident on its way onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge on the edge of rush hour would make the news.  But no, here are no pictures of stories to be found anywhere about the event.

~~

Funeral Fun - The Gloved Man & Stolen Flowers

    It had been a long day before I encountered a strange person on a strange funeral.  I had just finished working a short job in the city, everything had gone well, on the way to the next job I had to collect and take another staff member with me, not an issue as we had a good chat on the way.  So far it was turning out to be quite a fun little day.  The only problem is that we had not eaten since 7:00 and it was now well after 14:00.

Funeral Fun - The Crowed and Dementia Lady

    As a family car driver it is quite common to be out and about on the roads all day.  You may get a pickup so early that you barely have time to get changed and go, then finish so late the sun has gone down.  But you get use to it after a while, and do little things to make the day go by a bit easier.  Such as keeping snack on your person to much on when nobody is looking.

    One of these days however had been so long and tiring.  In fact it had been a long week of me racing about doing lots of things in each day.  It was the middle of the week and I had to pick up the wife of the deceased at 13:15.  The day sheet specified that she did not want to get there too early, before the coffin was at and in the church and was to call her on approach 5minutes before I arrived.  And considering the service started at 13:30 and church was literally 5 minutes drive away this could be an issue.  But no worries, I worked out a way that would take up some time, plus by the time she actually got in the car we would not be there too early.

    When it was time to set off I said bye to the conductor, telling him I would not be there before 13:30.  He replied that he knew the situation and would make sure the coffin was in before I even picked her up.  Little did we know things would not turn out this way.

    I arrived at the nursing home, a rather nice middle-class one with lots of independent living.  As traffic was good and the distance short I got there at 13:00, too early.  Again, I was not worried as it gave me time to make sure the car was clean and organised and to phone her without driving.  I had a habit of calling 15minutes before the pickup time and let them know I would be 5 minutes early.  Not too early as to hurry them but definitely not late either.  This was because many a time the family would more about the pickup time about.  So I called at 13:00, informing the wife that I would be there at about 13:10 and there was no need to hurry as I knew the church was close.  This is something I soon regretted.  The wife was a lovely lady, very kind and nice, but mostly checked out.  We later discovered she had milde to moderate dementia and the event of her husbands sudden death exacerbated it.  She had trouble making, and communicating, decisions or information over the phone.  At first she was quite happy with what I told her, then suddenly worried insisting I arrive at 13:45.  Both not wanting to wait about and not wanting to rush over to the church I informed her that the service would start around then and it was probably best she arrive a little before to touch base with the priest, funeral staff and other mourners.  At first the conversation was very pleasant although confusing.  However it began to deteriorate into just confusion and indecision.  So I suggested and settled on picking her up at 13:20.

    After waiting about for ages it was finally time to get her.  I drove in and waited in the car park as instructed.  Eventually the wife and her sister, who was a sister (nun) came down.  We introduced ourselves and exchanged pleasantries, they were both quite nice people.  And off we went to the church.

    Driving up to the church we come around the last corner and are greeted with the sight of a small crowd around the back of the hearse.  There is the conductor and hearse driver and a bunch of people all doing something with the coffin inside the hearse.  Obviously things had not gone to plan, a fact which I would like to prevent the wife noticing more for her sake than anything else.  So I look about but the only place to park is right behind the hearse and the crowd, right in front of the ordeal.   As I pull up the conductor sees me, races over and opens my door, while the car is still moving.  I was just so shocked, this conductor is such a composed person who is really difficult to rattle.  Yet here he is, opening my door before I even stop to tell me there is a problem.

    Luckily, due possibly to her dementia she never noticed and upon seeing my door open also opened her door, proceeding to hope out as she did so.  Between the sight at the hearse and conductor opening my door so suddenly and unexpectedly I was surprised and still moving slightly.  Thankfully she was not hurt and got out like nothing was wrong.

    After everyone was out of the car the hearse driver, conductor and I went over to the coffin still in the hearse out front of the church.  Without wasting time talking we got a young kid to help us (the deceased was heavy) and took the coffin out, into the church.  The hearse driver and I went to one side where I asked what happened, why the coffin was not in place already.

    He told me that the staff member who was sent to help us had been called away by the big boss when he was only 5minutes from the church.  The boss had him race back to the office to get a payment check for the priest for this job, then come all the way back to the church.  Obviously he arrived late, unable to help.  All four of us were less than impressed, the whole point of having him on the funeral was defeated.  But this did not explain the crowd.  So I asked about why there were all those people fussing behind the hearse.  The hearse driver explained that they had found two people quite willing to help carry in, the young boy wo had helped us and a middle aged man.  However as they had pulled the coffin out the man told them he had bad knees and did not think he could hold the weight.  Seeing him start to wobble the conductor insisted they put the coffin straight back into the hearse.

    When the conductor came out he told us that the priest had already been paid, by the family, and did not need us to pay him to.  he could not understand the cheque that was so important (even if we did need to pay him, we could post the cheque as we have done before).  The conductor then rang up the office, not wanting to pay the priest twice for one job.  In a 'brilliant' move our office insisted he ask the wife about the payment.  Yes, our office wanted the conductor of her husbands funeral on her husbands funeral if she had paid the priest.  Even though I reminded the office and conductor of her dementia.  If she had trouble telling time then organising a payment might not be easy or reliable.  But the office insisted that the conductor ask.

    So the service ended, everyone is out the front milling about and the conductor seized this opportunity to ask the wife.  It was as good a time as any that would be found during a funeral.  He came back over to us after some time with his head in his hands.  The poor lady had no idea one way or the other and was now convinced she had to still pay him.  The priest was set to get paid three times for one job, at about $250 per job that would amount to a nice bit.  Another stick in the score for our offices ingrained inefficiency and borderline incompetence.

    Driving the wife to the cemetery she had no idea and was quite happy considering the circumstances.  Given that the funeral was exacerbating moderate dementia she only had a lose grasp on the situation.  But with her sister the sister looking out for her she would be fine.  However she later wanted to stop for a coffee after the cemetery service, something I did not want to do.  So in another post I'll explain the time I prevented a nice old lady with dementia stopping for a coffee.

~~