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?

Probably not even lifted them going by the OP! They were just in the ambulance!

I wondered at first if potentially the ambulance put in the address for the wrong premises, but then surely to accept the bodies they must have cold storage and be set up to have bodies on the premises.

I just remembered the funeral directors trying to get my 6ft 7 grandfather down the narrow staircase, they had to stand him upright and slide him down the stairs 😂😂

Probably for viewing by relatives.

They are not doing it in the street because it suits them!

When my Mum died at home the funeral directors collected her, placed her in a body bag, onto a stretcher and into their van. Anyone passing would have seen this happening

Same with my late mum, @Scoooobydooo, and there was a passing dog walker who stopped and bowed his head, which I thought was rather nice

For those it bothers though, this is the sort of thing which will happen only occasionally, whereas with a funeral director's they'll be arriving all the time - which is why, though it wouldn't worry me personally, I'm surptised they aren't required to have a private yard

My DH died in the living room. Victorian house, narrow hallway. It really was so difficult for the paramedics to get him out, they had to wiggle the body bag half way up the stairs, lift him over the radiator and onto the gurney at the front door. It was the bloody radiator that caused the problem. ( And DH was rather large) Those Victorians didn't consider progress!

Or maybe those it bothers shouldn't move into a road where there's an established funeral service business ?

They could be bringing the bodies to lay out for family to visit, maybe their chapel of rest is at the back of the shop? if I was paying my last respects to a deceased relative I'm not sure I'd feel as comforted if it was in a commercial unit on an industrial estate.

Goodness, 18 pages…… hasn’t t this topic been done to death yet?

I'll get my coat…

😆

I was going to ask OP if she lived in a dead end road.

If you were to visit your loved one before they are cremated or buried would you prefer to do that in a large cold industrial building or a nice warm welcoming funeral directors?

It’s a private road and no access is blocked

When I went to see my DH in the funeral home, I was taken to a small tastefully decorated room at the rear of the 'shop'. I had to walk along a short corridor to access the room. They have a vehicular access at the back but it's not big enough for an ambulance. The property is clearly a converted house. A large house, but a house nonetheless. I'm sorry, OP but that's the situation for lots of funeral parlours. Lots of people probably prefer homely settings for their loved ones, I'm really surprised that you are surprised, IYSWIM.

Come on OP, you presumably have neck muscles, you could have turned away. No private ambulance is so big it obscures a whole entire 360 view

Why are people like this about death? You can’t hide from it. Death is coming for us all eventually. You’re going to die one day. And your body will probably be in the back of a private ambulance and people might see your body being transferred in a body bag. What’s not normal is expecting to live next to an undertaker and never ever to see the business doing what undertakers do. They don’t wave a magic wand and magic the body out of the van. They don’t knock on all the neighbours doors asking nobody to leave their house while they do what undertakers do. Sometimes you are going to see van doors open.

The funeral director I used to work for did use coffins for removals because he felt it was more dignified than a body bag. It wasn't the one that was used for the funeral and he kept a couple of coffins in the back of the ambulance just for removals.

Bit late to the party....OP, I can see why you were a bit taken aback (I don't think you actually saw the bodies being moved out of the ambulance, perhaps they were waiting until the roadway was clear?) - I'd have walked my children past quite briskly and then answered any questions that might have come up. As others have suggested, I'd have been prepared to use it as an open discussion on life and death.

That seems insane, you would need at least double the amount of workers to collect each individual body for transport if they were in a coffin.

You say it's a private street, so is it just your house along there that is affected?

I think you’re thinking private drive. A private street is v common in the uk, usually as several houses and is simply unadopted.

No, a private street just means unadopted. Not maintained at public expense by the local authority, but the responsibility of those who live on it.

when my daughter was little she was fascinated by a Cupboard in the wall of the lift at her Grampys care home, one day we got into the lift and the cupboard had been left unlocked and she was delighted she could hide in it, i have never told her that was opened so stretchers could be wheeled into the lift with either live or dead bodies on them.

It’s a private road, so there’s 7 houses that use it as access to their houses, it’s a dead end at the top (and bottom it seems!). And the funeral directors who are front facing onto the man road but the side of their property is at the beginning of the private road. They have two car parking spaces, but I think they have bought those from the neighbour as they are kind of on the neighbour’s land and there’s a wooden fence between the parking spaces and the back of the ‘shop’ so they park the hearses and private ambulances to the side of the property to access the rear of their premises as the parking spaces wouldn’t be long enough.

DH tells me the ambulance was back late afternoon today, so I think last night they must have transported the bodies for viewings today and then are taking them back to the storage facility this afternoon.

The doors were closed though so he didn’t get to have ‘a good gawp’ on his way to the school run, which I know will be a disappointment to you OReilly 😄

That’s a shame for you, and your DH but glad it’s still a topic of conversation for you!

Maybe but your whole family some blinkers for the school run?