I decided to interview my grandfather because I just recently learned that he was a hearse driver for a funeral home after he retired. I never knew this so I thought it would be interesting to talk to him about it. I didn't want to bother him much I just asked him a few questions to see if I could get a basic understanding of what his experience was. I made up questions based up on my curiosity about what it is like to work with dead people and I was wondering if a job in the funeral business would have an affect on your own personal views.
I interviewed him over the phone so I didn't get his word for word answers so I just put the basic answers that he gave me to the questions.
The questions I asked were:
What were your responsibilities for the job?
He said that he started out just helping out a friend (who was a funeral director) at one funeral carrying the casket and things like that and at the end the guy gave him some money and then from there he started helping maybe once a week. Then it was like 2 or 3 funerals in one day that he was driving the dead bodies around or the families. He said basically his job was to transport the people and just make them as comfortable as possible.
How did it feel to be working with dead people every day? Did it feel weird to be driving around these dead bodies and being around people mourning?
He said this had no affect on him, he didn't feel strange with driving around dead people and being around people mourning, he had been around death during his life already.
Did this job change the view you have on death and funerals?
He said that this job, which he had for about 10-12 years, did not change his view on death and funerals at all.
These were the answers I could have probably expected from my grandfather, he's a nice man but he's not easily phased and bothered by things. He is very laid back and very practical and takes things for what they are without questioning or blowing things out of proportion. Birth, death, babies, old people, it's part of life and all very natural to him. Maybe it's from being at war, and having 6 children or just being 86 years old. He has seen friends and family pass away. I still got an understanding of what this job was like for him. From what I heard I believe, that a person with skin not as thick as his, would be more affected by the experience of working in the funeral business. I think that like my grandfather said, you get used to it and it doesn't really seem like a big deal, after a while. I connected this to the movie that we started watching today: A Family Undertaking, because it seems like when people really see and are around death a lot, really seeing death face to face they become more comfortable and accepting of what it really is, a natural progression of life.
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