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?

That’s a very rigid way of looking at it. I’ve no desire to look at dead bodies however loved they are. They are ‘just’ dead bodies to me. Looking or kissing a dead body would be meaningless to me and I’d not want to do. Our family do direct to crem funerals with no service. Not because we find bodies or death ‘disgusting’ but because, to us, once a person has died the body is irrelevant. It’s medical waste. Our memories and grief are tied to the ‘person’ who died not their physical remains. Our family can happily chat and reminisce about family members who have died and by minimising the ‘death’ part of their lives we remember them when they were alive.

To me, the traditional way of dealing with death seems strange. However, I think everyone should do what suits them.

Unless you never live anywhere with neighbours, there will be body bags in your street at some point!

Exactly. It’s like when people love opposite a school
then complain about parking, or near a pub and complain about noise.

I moved into a street with a funeral directors in and saw them going about their business dealing with dead bodies, now I’m shocked 😳!

So ridiculous!

yes there was....pretty much identical https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5105334-to-object-to-the-funeral-parlour-unloading-body-bags-at-the-end-of-my-street?page=11&reply=151044966

The dead don't bother me, it's the living that are the problem.
As a former Marie Curie nurse and before that working in A&E I've seen and handed so many dead bodies in various states of damage I can't get wound up about seeing funerals and the like anymore. Plus my work is in actual cemetery based so I'm witness, at a very discreet distance, to burials on an ocassion basis.
It's really nothing to be scared of, we need to get away from the secretive taboo aspect.

Bought house on the same narrow lane as a funeral directors and is shocked that this business involves dead people. OK.

Our rear access lane is also used by a funeral director. I know they hold the deceased there. One day that will be me.

*apologies, just seen that this point has been made repeatedly 😂

I commented on your other thread, but this is a specific question, so- could you ask them to put up a temporary screen when they’re unloading the bodies?

If I had a loved one going to a funeral parlour, I wouldn’t like to think them being unloaded from a van, in a body bag, was something other people could witness… it just doesn’t feel respectful.

I guess its like asking why do people not like spiders? Or the dark? Or flying?

I simply find the idea of dead bodies at the end of my road and being wheeled out on my private road a bit strange.

June 2024!

I think it is only legal to keep bodies in proper, intended storage. OP will have to find out if it's legal to keep them there. Usually, bodies are taken to a regulated, temperature-controlled storage facility and then taken to a funeral home in a coffin for a short time for relatives to visit.

It’s not only legal to keep bodies in intended storage, plenty of people have the bodies at home.

It’s not OP’s private road.

Then don't move to a road that has a funeral directors.

Agree, thats why i said in my first post that the only real choice the op has is to move. I was replying to a comment where someone asked why I wouldnt like living there.

Everyone is different and those that find it unusual or distateful to see bodies being moved from a car in a public road/street to the Funeral premises, have the right to their opinion, some people are more sensitive than others. Stop trying to impress there is something wrong with people who feel upset or disturbed by this. When my Mother suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, I was notified by a call at work and left to go to my Parents' house. I was in shock and had never had to face this before. (Father had passed a few years before but in hospital and I was witness to this). When I arrived I stayed downstairs as I could not bring myself to see my deceased Mother, as I wanted to remember her as I had last seen the night before, apparently well). The Undertakers were upstairs and I had to go to the furthest point from the stairs (downstairs bathroom). I hid there and covered my ears as I did not want to even hear the Undertakers going downstairs and certainly did not want to witness my Mother in a plastic bag being loaded into the Private Ambulance. That is my feelings and I own them and am allowed them. I can understand the OP's feelings. It is also a reminder that in the last couple of years there has been distressing stories about a couple/few Funeral Parlours that are or have been the subject of criminal charges for the way they stored bodies and their actual practices which were so disrespectful and a disgrace to the profession. Of course the majority of Funeral Directors are beyond reproach but some people just do not like to see bodies in bags, irrelevant of how often it happens and will happen to us all.

A new funeral parlour opened in my town a few years ago. It's premises open onto the High Street. The only access to the refrigerated part of the building is up an alleyway so body bags are unloaded on the street and carried through. It's a pretty town in a much visited area of the country, so not a quiet backwater. I know that all parts of the planning process were perfectly adhered to, neighbours were invited to submit objections etc. Permission was granted.
Interestingly, any objections from neighbouring property owners were concerns about the noise from the refrigeration units and the storage of chemicals. I don't think "Well it's not very nice, is it?" is considered a valid objection.

I’d suggest for someone more sensitive, they don’t purchase a property in the same narrow road as a funeral directors, they start moaning about it.

But it’s not her private road!

I don't think it's disrespectful, my poor old dad had to be wheeled down the road as it was the only way to get him out of his house and into the funeral director's ambulance safely.

I'd be horrified if anyone on the street was offended or disturbed by this. All people die, and that's just the way it is, it's not distasteful or horrid. Yes, it's sad because someone will be grieving them, but they need to be treated with exactly the same respect as if they were alive and you saw them.

YABU - what you are assuming is the shop front is usually where funeral directors hold viewings for people who wish to view and say their final goodbyes - it's much more appropriate than having to go and do viewings at some big warehouse or storage facility.

Private ambulances is how bodies are transported prior to the funeral - it would cost far too much and be completely unwieldly to move bodies around in coffins and hearses!

When my nan died suddenly at home we went over and arrived just as they were loading her body, in a body bag into the back of an private ambulance - although that was obviously distressing because it was my nan, it had nothing to do with the body bag and ambulance - it would have been just as distressing if it had been a coffin and a hearse!

Do presumably you wouldn’t move to a street with a funeral directors on it?

WHat would you expect the funeral directors to do exactly? Teleportation?

What would the solution be then?

And how is it disrespectful?

It's rather like the people who move into houses next to pubs and music venues and then complain and campaign to get them shut down because of the noise!

When I worked as a funeral arranger, I went into our back yard one day to accept some flowers that were being delivered. There was a separate door into the yard that led directly to our mortuary area. I was shocked because all the operatives had gone out on a funeral and there was a trolley in the yard, with a body bag on and what appeared to be a deceased person in it. I was livid that they'd left someone out like that. I eventually opened the mortuary door to move the deceased back inside when I touched the bag and realised there was no person in it at all. The bumps were being made by the wooden blocks that they place under the neck of the deceased, and some other material. Sometimes our eyes are led to believe something by what we expect to be there, but it isn't always so.

To answer another poster from earlier in the thread, who mentioned it must surely sometimes be difficult to remove bodies from upstairs in a home...it certainly makes the removal more challenging, but not impossible. The deceased will be placed in a body bag and strapped tightly to the collapsible stretcher. When the operatives get to a difficult part, they may "strike" the stretcher. That isn't hitting it, it's holding it in a much more vertical position in order to manoeuvre the deceased carefully around obstacles and down steep stairs. With care and practice, it's easy to do. Much more difficult is when someone has died at home sitting in a chair, if it's a long time until collection and rigorous mortis has set in. That's a whole other ball game!

Lastly, I disagree completely that it's either disrespectful or undignified to move a deceased from private ambulance to funeral home if there is no private yard. As someone else has said, not all FDs are fortunate enough to have a back yard or garage at their property, and the deceased have to be moved inside somehow. As long as the operatives are backing up as closely as possible to the back door, ensuring the deceased is covered on the stretcher, following correct process and treating them with utmost care and respect (no mishandling), then all is well.