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?

We get so few non-traumatic opportunities to explain and normalise the concept and practicalities of death to our children. I'd say this was a great chance to initiate a calm chat about death with your kids, which can only be a good thing.

Seriously? You could have disagreed without resorting to calling me ridiculous and precious, yes for some bizarre reason I am not willing to be labelled that by you, disagree all you like with the AIBU but lay off the personal judgements!

Don't complain, the situation is time sensitive in the way that decomp starts immediatly from the time of death so these guys needed to work super fast to get the deceased remains into a fridge.

They probably could not wait for people passing by to move, and think if the shock it could cause the loved ones of the deceased if they saw them swell to twice their size.

All the ones I know of have private driveways with full height gates. One has an underground driveway. I wouldn’t be pleased either op. You don’t need to be seeing that on a regular basis. It’s also not dignified for those who have died.

I was hoping an Irish person might comment - I went on an introductory death doula day course years ago where we spent the day talking about death and dying, going through what actually happens and how to help the dying person. At the start there was the usual introductory thing where people said a bit about themselves. The facilitator asked everyone how they felt and out of 20 people only three said 'interested' and everyone else was 'nervous' or 'scared'.

An Irish woman there talked about how different the attitude in Ireland is and her words stayed with me. She said 'Mam's in the kitchen, the kids are playing out the front and granny's dying in the back room' and everyone was accepting about what was happening. Friends and neighbours would call by to say 'Sorry for your trouble' and then come to the wake, which would last several days, whereas in the UK the body is removed within a couple of hours. It all sounded very straightforward and sensible. How far removed we've become here from the cycle of life and death.

I really need someone to explain how there is more dignity in hiding the unloading of a human out the back with the rubbish.
It seems quite the opposite.

If they are parked on your private road doing this I would certainly complain. they shouldn't be parked there. Do they not have a private yard for moving bodies in and out, it seems pretty disrespectful to the dead as well as not nice walking past with children.

I’m not sure I’d feel happy about it if that was one of my relatives.

It's never occurred to me that one of my dead relatives, whilst completely covered and therefore anonymous and with their dignity preserved, would be whisked away to a secret location where they could be taken into the funeral director without anyone seeing them. Just in the same way as when they were carried from the house to the private ambulance, they were not completely shielded from any chance viewing.

YABU, particularly given that the body is then moved from one 'container' (a black bag) to another (a coffin) and literally paraded through the streets in a vehicle with windows designed for it to be seen.

This. Death isn’t dirty or shameful. They weren’t being roly poly-d naked down the local high street. They were being carried into a funeral home.

But then I regularly see Facebook posts from a nearby town along the lines of ‘there’s a dead cat on the corner of Keeper Road. Just warning everyone because kids could see it. I couldn’t move it because I had kids and didn’t want them to see it’. Eh? It’s just a cat that you don’t know and it’s just dead.

it’s not OPs private road! The funeral directors also have premises there!

Walking my children to school, a large bird dead on the pavement. Parents were actually telling their children it was asleep! I mean WTAF! Obviously I told mine the truth!

It’s certainly one of the biggest cultural differences. I’m Irish, but was a university teacher in the UK. I was a bit taken aback when I realised a seminar group were more shocked by a scene where young children were in the room with their grandfather’s body while the family said the rosary than by a harrowing scene of child abuse in the same novel.

I asked how many people had actually seen a dead body, and lots of the group assumed at first that I meant a murder victim, not a grandparent or elderly relative! From what I remember, only two out of a group of about 25 20/21 year olds had,

Oh I’m so sorry you had to go through that.

What exactly were they funeral staff meant to do? Look into every car that’s nearby to see if there’s children then throw the body into a bush?

How about everyone puts their big girls pants on and deals with it instead?

I’m waiting on this too.
Such bizarre complexes about the one thing we will all have to deal with.

I know that it would have really upset one of my DDs when she was a lot younger, and I have always been quite open about death and would have been more than happy to talk to her about it, so don't think it's about family attitude. The other would have been fascinated.

Surely someone who can't hack seeing bags, or coffins, containing bodies being moved should think twice about buying a house with an undertaker's at the end of the road and doesn't have gates or an underground driveway?

And this is why we get to a place of people being upset at funeral homes having dead bodies put in them.

Couldn’t agree more! As this thread proves.

I thought the same, but while it wouldn't bother me personally I also thought that they had to have a lockable yard or something in order to get their plans passed?

It's possible that the undertaker's was there before the houses were built.

If so, they could hardly insist that the undertakers moved!

Likewise people lying about dead pets. Mental.

I think I’ve always been desensitised to death because of my culture. I was raised on “This was your great uncle he was murdered in a gas chamber, remember and be wary it could happen again” from very young. We couldn’t afford to tiptoe around death

It wasn't an emergency, they were dead, being wheeled up the road in a black body bag towards a black private ambulance!

How often do you see bodies? I doubt they are loading bodies all day. It was an unfortunate moment that you were there with your kids but that’s life. As long as the bodies were covered and you couldn’t see names and/or parts of the body I don’t think they were doing anything wrong.

I've witnessed someone killing themselves and my dad died in a public bathroom. Which is actually a very common place for people to pass away.

So think about people having to see an actual recently deceased dead body. Possibly badly injured. Not just a black bag that's vaguely human shaped.