Funeral directors share our private road - AIBU about what I saw yesterday?

[Habbyhadno]

This is such a random post but…

I live at the top of a private road just off a main road in a small town. At the main road end we have a funeral directors that faces the street, the building is tiny and it’s a branch of another directors in a neighbouring town where the directors is very much a shop front.

I thought this one would be the same, but they do seem to store bodies in there. We’ve had a fair few hearses park on our road as we turn into it (at the side of the shop), I literally have to squeeze my car up the road as obviously hearses take up a lot of space and the road isn’t wide at all, it’s a bit of an inconvenience but whatever.

However, last night me and my three kids 6,8 and 12 were heading out and we were all walking down the road and I spy a private ambulance with the back door open and clearly two bodies were in black bags in the back of the van.

There were two people out there about to start manoeuvring the bodies into the building, but I’m a bit icked out by it all, I don’t really think the kids need to see that and I felt a bit weird about seeing it (there’s not any other way we could have gone as the road is small and there was no getting away from it).

Do you think I should pop in and speak to them about being aware of who is around when they are unloading bodies or AIBU? I just feel like they could make the operation a bit more concealed rather than hoiking them out literally in the street, it seems a bit disrespectful and it’s been playing on my mind. What do I do?

I really didn't understand that comment! It would just attract more attention. When my DH died the ambulance crew were very respectful, but he still had to be in a body bag on a gurney across the frontage, pavement and to the ambulance, which had been bocking the road for over 2 hours. No one complained, my neighbours were very kind and understanding, they made a traumatic situation a bit easier. I think that today, most people don't die in their home, in their bed but in hospital or hospice care. Death has been removed from daily life. In the past it was different, people saw bodies, relatives washed those bodies and prepared them for the funeral. The coffin often stayed in the home until the actual funeral and was taken to the church by family and friends.
I honestly think this situation here, is a fuss about nothing.

To be fair I can see your issue, bur I can also see the other side, you presumed this wouldn’t happen and you presumed wrong, you should have checked, they would have been doing it as they didn’t have a private place to park and unload. It also isn’t illegal and the ambulance staff are nit going to stand there waiting for a moment when no one is about, it could be virtually impossible,

so as much as I get your point, you don’t want to see it, there is nothing you can do about it, you bought there, you made an erroneous assumption, without checking.

See here : https://www.mortuary-supplies.co.uk/coldrooms-and-mortuary-equipment/mortuary-equipment/funeral-body-bags.html

I'm sure you know what a coffin looks like.

I've read it before too. Tales from the Crypt!

I’m sure it gives the same anonymity as a body bag?

Surely the transportation of bodies is well regulated with specific guidance and rules?

If you have doubts over the behaviour then you should find some regs and read up and then seek advice locally.
It may be within regulation.

There have been funeral homes who have behaved very badly in the last few years.

Yes, I currently live in a terraced house where the neighbour’s front door is directly next to ours and we were coming back from the park so I made the kids stay quiet and I bowed my head until his body was secured in the ambulance.It would have felt wrong to start faffing around with my key in the door at the same time.

My DH and I always stop - and if he has a hat on, takes it off - when we see a hearse.

It's common to see this in my town.

There are only two funeral directors here. One is in the centre of town, facing the high street on the corner of a very narrow road, and close to a busy crossroads. They have a yard at the back, which is open to the side street and where the hearse and funeral cars are often parked.

Because there is so little space, the private ambulances often stop in the high street to unload the deceased. There have been many occasions when I've seen body bags unloaded while waiting in traffic for the lights to change, and I expect most people have.

I've lived here for 35 years and I've never heard anyone complain about it, including my friend who lives in the narrow side street and is the undertaker's next door neighbour. (Friend has a dark sense of humour and jokes that she lives "in the dead centre of town"!) The funeral directors has been operating from there since the 18th century.

ETA: the yard also makes it possible for cars to pull over if another car comes the opposite way as the street is two-way. It would be chaos if it was fenced off!

That’s not what bodies are carried out in.

They maybe placed in that bag for reasons of preservation - hence why it’s under the “cold room” section. But when carried out of homes and funeral homes they are placed in a thick, black bag.

That’s a bag for cold rooms anyway it’s not what the public or family see

Yes I do. A body bag does exactly the same job. There’s no difference.

I didn’t click on their link because I didn’t think anyone was so ill informed to not know what a body bag was!

I mean we’re all adults here!

That’s not even the bag the public see, that’s mortuary equipment

The PP is just scaremongering for some reason

@Charlize43 what is the 'K word' that you won't use? I'm curious - and probably rather naïve.
Btw, I don't think funeral directors should be unloading body bags in full view of the public because it's undignified and disrespectful to the deceased and their relatives. Hospitals and undertakers have discreet back entrances where they deal with bodies before they go into coffins and that's how society as a whole deals with death in the first instance. If this undertaker is not using his yard to move the body bags, but rather a shop that fronts on to a street/private road, then I would be having a word with the Council to check that they know and have given the OK.

The one on that link was a transparent one used in mortuaries.

Helen Lovejoy over there decided to google, pick the most shocking and indignified one and claim that that’s the one bodies are “carried around” in

Maybe they’ve come from the storage area for a viewing and preparation for the funeral. You say it’s residential so maybe it feels more personal for loved ones to visit in a residential area that feels more homely and gentle than a “huge storage facility”

Yep. You moved into this property knowing they were they, I am not sure what you expected really. This is a bit like moving next to a school and then being unhappy about traffic at 8.30am.

YABU

Helen Lovejoy! Won't someone think of the children! Sorry, I couldn't resist it!

I agree - the council staff could do with a good laugh no doubt. “help - a funeral directors is <gasp> moving dead bodies in and out of its premises”
”WHAT! We are on it, calling 999 now”

Someone I used to know bought a house close to Selhurst Park football ground, and then complained about crowds, noise and people parking in the street on match days!

I remember when my Mum died, the funeral director ( not the care home) phoned me to say Mum was resting there. What an odd attitude we have to death.

Our lay home was in a village on a new build estate with 200 homes.
Another developer then applied to build 30 new homes further down the village. Most of our neighbours literally protested against new homes being built 🤣

"The PP is just scaremongering for some reason"

Don't be so ridiculous.

Does it matter if a body bag is white or black - it's anonymous?

Having a word with the council 😂

Council, council! Do you know the funeral directors are transporting dead bodies??

You'd be okay with occasionally then.... How frequent do you think you could manage?