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?

Your comment is completely irrelevant. How many people have neighbours regularly dying in such numbers as to make seeing body bags a regular occurence.

It doesn't sound like this facility has the space for a private garage on the property.

English people are so weird about death. Like, your children do know the people die, right? Assuming they were handling the deceased respectfully not just slinging them about

My children would know to stop, stand still and bow their heads until the funeral directors had taken the deceased inside then they’d get on with their day (maybe with a brief conversation about how it was sad for their families, what would happen next etc)

I imagine if one is more likely to be shocked if it’s a one-off rather than a fairly regular occurrence…

My time to shine. Former death worker here. I've loaded numerous bodies. One thing you need to realize is that as much as we try to make it dignified and respectful as possible, at the end of the day it is body that needs to be moved, and it's hard, heavy work, especially with elderly and/or obese bodies. It's even worse when they die at home so moving is a hard endeavor. We are respectful as possible but we also had to take our own safety into consideration. Unless you're willing to do the work of death yourself you have to accept that much will be performed by people that don't know your loved one, and will view them as just another body out of the many they see in a day. We become pretty disassociated to the corpse, which you have to do to perform your job.

Not in the slightest bit ‘unreasonable’ when you’re unloading bodies in a residential area.

No, it is.

I expected this to be 99% YABU. What else should they do if they don’t have a car park? I’m not sure you can say anything, you could enquire with them but it’s not massively different to seeing a hearse with a casket in the back is it? It’s still a dead body being transported essentially.

I've seen this post before, down to the lane and finding it hard to get in and out, etc.

However, death is part of life. The dead have to be somewhere. YABU as long as the bodies are handled with respect and you haven't seen anything untoward.

What happens is that the funeral directors collect the deceased in the most respectful way and make sure to keep as discreet as possible. When my dad was collected from home the staff made sure we stayed in a back room until they indicated that he was in the private ambulance.

People don't see dead bodies all over the place precisely because there is an accepted way to handle such things and that doesn't include seeing body bags being flopped around in residential areas on the daily.

So you stayed in the back room - but neighbours or anyone passing by would have seen the undertakers loading your dad’s body into the ambulance.

There simply are circumstances in life when death becomes visible and we just have to deal with it.

You sound awful.

Ladyzfactor
That is your job. Sounds like you don't have a lot of compassion. You see dead bodies all the time. General public do not.
Get real. I hope you never have to contemplate one of your loved ones dying and all that entails.

Death is a part of life, but regularly having it right in your face like that isnt, especially for children. It would be different if it was in a highstreet setting where its occasionally seen, but seeing body bags when arriving home to relax is quite a jolting and unpleasant thing.

Well, quite. If you took the essence de corps mort argument to its logical conclusion, nobody would get fed in hospitals or nursing homes. And there can't be many hotels where somebody hasn't died at some point. It happens in people's homes too.

Was this the one with bio-hazard bags & the threat of rats etc? Or am I grossly mistaken? This thread just has that familiar feeling & other pps have said as much too

i really should not be reading posts like this before bed.. I read this about 11pm it got my ADHD brain googling if they reuse body bags (?) And other suggestions of topics about whT happens to your body 5 minutes before you die and the process if you're cremated ...

Which has now lead me to have a dream about my Mum coming back to life 10 minutes after she died to ride her scooter to the shop to get milk whilst I'm in her house with someone else who's died and come back to life and I'm trying to stop him from getting the keys to open the door...

I've woke myself up laughing in my sleep coz it's so absolutely crazy I'm glad it's not real.

So thanks for the thread, it's given me a bizarre dream.

I'm sure if you do a job like that you have to have a certain mindset or numb the emotional part of your personality coz surely if you do it long enough it would change you as a person? I imagine you see things that a normal person doesn't see.

I don't think it's possible in certain lines of work to not let your job change you as a person and that's probably the case with Ladyzfactor. Maybe being flippant is how people cope with the job?

Was my job. Perhaps learn to read. The reality is that to work the death industry you have to remove yourself from the grief of death. Unless you want to remove, clean, possibly embalm, burn and prepare your loved ones you need to accept that a detached person will do it. Yours is just a bizarre comment. Trust me, I've buried and scattered loved ones, and know far more than the average person what death preparation entails. Bonkers

I wish more people would expose their children to death. One of the reasons I eventually got out of death work was how impersonal it ended up being. In countries that have the family members handle the death rights always seem to have a healthier relationship with death and the dead.

I honestly don't think it would bother me. My mum died last year and I don't think I'd really even think about it. It's not like you can see anything.
The funeral director we used was lovely. Absolutely couldn't fault them. They do have their own car park but it's not exactly private and people would be able to see in if they wanted but as I said all they'd see was a body bag.
You could ask them to do it at night (they won't) or when no-one else is around (but they can't keep stopping and starting every time someone comes near) but I think you have to accept this is something that's going to happen at times. Or if it really is bothering you look at moving.

When I was 16, I got an after-school job with a florist in our very small town.

I hadn’t worked there but a few weeks when the boss loaded me up with arrangements and plants that I was to take to the “parlours.”
So I got there and I was supposed to take everything to the front. And that’s when I saw the dead guy in the casket - it was just me and the dead guy. Alone. Together. By ourselves.
And the aisle from the back to the front looked like it was 10 miles long. And that walk felt like it took 10 years hahaha.
I kept waiting for the dead guy to jump up and get me, but he never did, and I completed my task of delivering those flowers to the mortuary.
My boss and his assistant got a big laugh out of that, and looking back it is pretty funny.
I know this adds nothing to the subject at hand, I just thought somebody else might find it funny too.

You’ve lived there two years and it’s the first time you’ve seen this. It really seems like it’s not really a problem then.

You had to know there would be bodies in a funeral parlour at some point.

Use it as a reminder to love and use your time on this planet wisely.

Such dramatic words

OP saw them in the back of the private ambulance once in two years….

not
”flopped about on the daily”

Do you do a lot of creative writing?

If they are legally going about their business then this is none of your business.

The bodies are in bags, you didn’t see the actual bodies.

And your language about them ‘hoiking’ and ‘huffing’ these poor dead people is childish and not very respectful.