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'm surprised that you were able to see body bags rather than coffins, I'll be honest. I know dead bodies are a fact of life, but someone's loved one around in a body bag in full view of the street doesn't seem terribly dignified. I'd have thought they'd at least have had some screens to put around the area between the back of the ambulance and the entrance to the undertakers.

Exactly this. I presumed it was a shop front, like the one in a neighbouring town is where they do the admin and arrange funerals with relatives and occasionally may bring the coffin FROM the nearby (huge) storage facility to the road in front of the shop front to set off for a funeral. The ‘shop’ is facing the main street and our road is up the side of the shop, so they were loading in to the rear of the property, the ambulance doors were parallel to the back door, but the ‘shop’ is small so the front of the ambulance was next to the pavement on the Main Street. Don’t make me draw diagrams here 😄 the size of the ‘shop’ is very little.

Also, no body bags were rocking up in hearses. It was a private ambulance with one body on the lower shelf and one on the higher shelf. But you could clearly see the feet and head shapes.

Where's the coffin coming from if the person has just died and the family haven't chosen and paid for one?

When someone dies at home, the body is put in a bag and then transported via private ambulance to the funeral home.

Honestly, just treat it as normal.

People are placed in body bags for transport in private ambulances. I see this on a regular basis at work (in a hospital) I assume the dead only get placed in a coffin for the funeral and subsequent burial / cremation. Coffins are heavy and bulky so bags make more sense for transport between sites.

My daughter looked at dead bodies for her Chiropractic degree. Has it made you feel vulnerable? The human body is fragile and it shouldn't be looked at in disgust or fear. We will all die one day.

I would have thought this could only take place behind a gate/private area.
I work in a vets and pets bodies are collected from us away from public view, I think it's all about respect and lugging a body even in a bag about in the street I feel is a bit disrespectful.

How inconvenient for people to die in case your poor kids might see a hearse and the bags.

I lived across the road from a coroner's court. Saw this all the time.

The Co-Op in our town has no yard and has to use the public car park, quite common to see a body bag being wheeled down the carpark on a trolley.

It's part of life, or rather death, nothing to be bothered by. I know a local undertaker who is now in his 80's who started up in the 50's and as cars were not common then used a hand cart to collect from the house, and a horse drawn hearse for the funerals, having the mortuary in he back garden of his terrace house.

Back then people laid out in the front room for a few days.

When my dad died a couple of years ago we had him over the weekend, just lying in bed.

Nothing to fear from the dead, they don't complain!!

🤣

It's not a public road though. OP makes that clear in both the title and post.

I'm sorry for the loss of your husband.

You don’t know who the dead people are - I don’t see how it’s disrespectful. They have to get from the van to the mortuary somehow.

Youre being weird over the dead
I recommend Caitlin Doughty on YouTube she explains death matter of factly.
death does happen to us all after all.

Unless they are walking the corpses about like weekend at Bernies, then there is nothing to see here.
The bodies are in body bags, it's not like they are slinging dead bodies over their shoulders in plain sight

I didn't fear death. My husband remained at home throughout his illness and I nursed him to his peaceful last breath.

But the very least I expected from that point on, was for his body to be treated with dignity and respect. Fortunately I knew that the funeral director I used had a private yard next to the mortuary. But it wouldn't have occurred to me to check that. I would absolutely not choose a director who transferred bodies on the street.

It's unfortunate that the OP worded her post from her perspective, because people are just sneering at her not wanting to see body bags. But that's not the point. Funeral directors always push the respect and dignity thing, and what this company is doing, does not demonstrate a commitment to either.

Back in the day they used a transfer coffin called a litter rather than a bodybag - which seems a bit more respectful, but manual handling rules mean bodybags are safer as you don't have to heave the body out of the litter and on to the table to do the aspiration etc..

I’m not being weird about dead people/dying/death in general. I’m being weird about funeral directors huffing them about on a road we share when I think it could be done a bit more discretely. Especially as I have said numerous times, they have specific facility for that 10 minutes up the road that is away from public view.

This doesn't seem right at all. Most funeral
homes I can think of have really well concealed areas for the vehicles to unload, for obvious dignity reasons.

Im really surprised at the YABU/YANBU split currently (78/22%). Of course death is part of life but there's so many protocols that are carried out in hospitals when someone dies - and it's all about respectful and dignified handling of the deceased.

Maybe they needed to be at that facility for some reason.

I thought this when reading it. Definitely seen this before.

in any event OP is being ridiculous of course you can’t complaint that a funeral director receives dead bodies!

@Habbyhadno if they waitied everytime so there was no one around they would be there hours later, plus how can they rush it if someone does unload a body etc ?

That's not what she's complaining about. It's how they transfer bodies, not whether they do.

They take them out if an ambulance and into the funeral home. How would you suggest it’s done?

Well, it's been mentioned several times. Most/many FD use a private garage with access to the building to avoid this kind of situation.

What do you think happens when someone dies at home, like my dad did last year? Then there’s no avoiding the fact that a body bag has to be transported into a vehicle in a residential area at whatever time it happens to be. With my dad I think they did something to close the road but that doesn’t stop those who live there being exposed to it.

It’s something I’d never thought about, as OP doesn’t seem to have done either. And then you have to. Like how difficult it can be to get someone downstairs in a dignified way if they died upstairs.

Deal with it I’m afraid.

Why would anyone buy a house on the same road as a funeral directors if they are squeamish about dead bodies being carted around? I would never consider it, as I know that I am a bit of a wimp. Seriously though, it's got to be said that it's all part of the package.