A few days in the life of a Melbourne Funeral Director

People are often curious about what a funeral director does, and I always get a lot of questions about what my life as a Melbourne Funeral Director looks like. So I thought I would give a little snapshot of how our weeks roll by! It's important to point out that we work very differently to many traditional funeral companies, first because we offer a continuity of care model where one person cares for a family the whole way through the funeral process, and second because as a small independent company, we have just two full-time staff members.

But here goes, a few days in the life of a Melbourne Funeral Director. Grab a coffee and hang onto your heart, because we're about to go on quite a journey! I originally made this a week in the life, but the amount of work was overwhelming even to me when I wrote it all out!

SUNDAY

We begin on Sunday, because offering funerals to Melbourne families is honestly a 24/7, 365 proposition.

7:10am The phone rings on the bedside table. It is a family sitting with their person, Alice, who has just died in a nursing home, and they are all at sea, needing to engage a funeral director quickly as the nursing home doesn't have a mortuary. I slow them down a little, offering general funeral information, and giving them some things to discuss, like whether they want a funeral or memorial, burial or cremation, and whether the person had any specific beliefs, or community. I encourage them to take a bit of time to have a proper goodbye at the bedside, and offer a quote in case they want to shop around. They agree that would be a good idea.

7:30am I am already at my computer tapping out a quote for this family. I send it off and within 20 minutes the family calls me back to engage our services. It's always a great feeling when I can build trust and rapport with a family at such a hard time. We have put a ton of thought into options from no-frills funerals to our famous full Last Hurrah Send-offs, and our reasonable pricing also helps families to feel like they have options.

I then call the nursing home to confirm the person is ready for collection, and then our mortuary transport team, who are on-call and will arrive within 90 minutes. I also call our mortuary manager, and interrupt his breakfast too. We have a little joke about that.

Oh Gosh it is Sunday, and my own family stir wanting breakfast.

3:00pm I speak to Alice's family and we arrange to have an funeral arrangement on Monday at 12pm. Our funeral home is deep in renovation at our new location (we are now Thornbury funeral directors HOORAY!) so I arrange to meet them at their home.

I also sit down and make lists for the coming week. We have one full funeral, a burial and and memorial service, both of those at our signature venue 75 Reid St in North Fitzroy, and one at the crematorium at Fawkner Memorial Park. We need to book in a burial at Springvale Botanical Cemetery, two cremations, check staffing, order the booze for the two big services, check the catering orders, place floral orders, make two slideshows, organise the music, and arrange an after hours viewing! But wait, it's still Sunday. All that will wait till tomorrow.

9:30pm I am in bed, still texting with families about the services coming up, before I finally turn my phone to 'do not disturb' but of course with 'accept calls from everyone' because sometimes the phone does ring at 2am! Not tonight I hope

Monday

I drop the kids to school and decide to take my computer and head halfway across town to do some work at a cafe before meeting Alice's family. My co-founder Stass and I have our Monday teleconference, where we divvy up jobs and get all our ducks in a row. Stass will chase up the coffins we have on order, and order a new pallet of the cardboard coffins we use about 60% of the time. They go so quickly, we have to keep the stock levels high!

The family of Matty, the man who's being buried at Springvale on Thursday, have decided they'd like him to be embalmed, and they'd like a viewing on Wednesday, so we juggle the calendar and Stass contacts our master embalmer Tara, who is very much in demand. She'll have to come in on an evening after her full load at another funeral home, what a legend!

The morning passes in a flurry of calls and emails. Being a funeral director is basically like being an event manager, and it's super important to pay attention to the tiny details, especially for us, who offer unique funerals, bespoke farewells, not things you pick off a list.

The arrangement with Alice's family is lovely and sad, and we take our time. We have cups of tea, fill out the endless paperwork, and they decide on a shrouded cremation (we often use Bendigo Crem for this as they are super open to sustainable funeral options), after a full funeral at the Fairfield Boathouse early next week. I am a little relieved I am not having to squeeze in another funeral this week; we tend to only do one service a day, because our funerals generally take the form of a seamless funeral into wake/party, and take hours.

We arrange to have a Zoom in a few days to talk all about Alice, so I can write something beautiful and personal for her Fairfield Funeral. I came to this work as a celebrant, and I often say ceremony is my super-power.

As I drive back across town, I am delivering Stass lists of things to do via the handsfree phone, and she also tells me I'll be home late tomorrow as Matty's viewing is now Tuesday night. There goes my yoga class, AGAIN!

I have a Fitzroy funeral for Miranda tomorrow, and I am driving the hearse, so the night passes in a flurry of last-minute organising, chatting to Miranda's family, emailing a runsheet to the team, all the media to the AV, and then it is off to bed early for another big day.

TUESDAY

There is a lot of toing and froing to work with our 1973 Cadillac Hearse, a big white hearse called Mama Cass. Our families love her, but she needs a lot of TLC, and driving her is always an adventure.

I put the kids in before school care and trek over to our Thornbury funeral director HQ, picking up Mama Cass and driving headlong into the crazy morning traffic.

Our mortuary is in Moorabbin, which is across town, but is a lovely modern space, we're very lucky to be able to access. This Melbourne Funeral Director certainly gets a cross-town tour of the city, and I roll back into Fitzroy at 11:30am with Miranda. She is in a cardboard Casket her family will write messages of love on during the service.

75 Reid St is a flurry of activity as our Funeral assistants/masterful catering legends ready the space, the AV tech checks the slides, the florals arrive, and the family comes to help carry Miranda the three stairs up into the venue. There are tears and hugs as we set her in the space.

Before long the music Miranda loves is playing, the live musicians are set, and folks are arriving. We offer them champagne on arrival (Miranda adored bubbles) and they visibly relax as they enter a relaxed, beautiful space, and share a drink with friends before the funeral begins.

At the close of the ceremony, Miranda is carried to the hearse, and everyone gathers on the street. It is always a profoundly sad and beautiful moment as I drive away with people's person, but soon after they head inside for an amazing spread of food, drinks and music, taken care of by our team, and Miranda and I are on the way to Fawkner Crematorium.

I drop off Mama Cass to HQ and head back across town to ready the viewing space in Moorabbin for Matty's viewing. It will be amazing when we can hold viewings in our own space.

It's dusk when Matty's family arrives. I have created a playlist of tunes he loved, Tara has done an amazing job of getting him looking so more like himself, and he is laid out in a beautiful wicker and seagrass casket, with candles eveywhere. His family have brought wine and food, and after some very difficult first moments, they settle into a couple of hours of reminiscing, while I work upstairs, ready to attend to them at every moment.

I spend the time ensuring everything is ready for tomorrow's witness cremation and vigil tomorrow at Fawkner Memorial Park. I'll be saying some opening and closing words and reading a poem written by the person who died, who was a poet of note, so I rehearse the poem silently.

I also line up the next lot of tasks for Thursday's graveside service in Springvale, followed by the memorial I'll be leading back at 75 Reid St. There is always so much to write, and it's a huge privilege to work with families in this way.

I get home late, and I am tired, but after kissing my sleeping babes in their bed, I am asleep not long after my head hits the pillow.