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?

It's really annoying when people move somewhere that there's an established business and start complaining about that business.

Move near a pub - oh noes there's people drinking and music!!

Move near a school - oh noes, the school run's a nightmare for parking!!

Move into the countryside - oh noes, there are cows mooing and the farmer is muck-spreading!!

Move near a funeral director- oh noes, there's dead bodies!!

🙄

Speaking as someone who works at a funeral home, how do you think people who have died at home or in care homes are brought into our care in the first place? They have to be taken out into the street and transferred into the private ambulance.

We try to be considerate of course but there's no way you can ensure total privacy. Even in the middle of the night with nobody around there are Ring doorbells etc. recording.

Just try to be respectful and considerate and not gawp or stare.

This.

Complain op, if they're so slapdash with unloading bodies god knows what else goes on.

YABU

I don’t know if it’s a British thing but so many people have a weird relationship with death.

Death can be awful but it isn’t unnatural or offensive. It’s a part of life and children shouldn’t be shielded from it.

And they may have a main mortuary elsewhere but family may wish to come to the smaller branch to visit their loved ones in the chapel of rest. Or the funeral may be leaving from that smaller branch itself (hence the hearses). So the deceased need to be there.

I appreciate it's a startling thing to see, but as long as the crew are being respectful, safe and quiet when bringing the deceased into care, I don't see how you can complain.

Judging by this thread, it’s undignified to put people into an ambulance on the street and the OP should complain to the council. Clearly the funeral directors should either teleport the bodies or use their stock of invisibility cloaks 🙄

There is everyway you can ensure privacy by having an enclosed rear yard area for starters or at least put some portable partitions up?

Do you seriously just carry bodies around in bags in the street in front of the public, don't you think the deceased deserve a bit of respect and privacy?

Isn’t the bag the ‘privacy’? I don’t think they’re see through bags!

Putting a body from one building into another isn’t an offensive thing to do, to be hidden away. OP chose to live there, did she think the fairies bright the bodies in?

And many funeral homes are just converted houses or shops, people can’t magically build a back entrance accessible to large vehicles.

Yes, our young-ish neighbour died suddenly last year and me and the kids saw his body in a bag being put into the private ambualnce. Its really isn’t obvious, or a commotion, or a spectacle.

Hiw does the body get from the home to the ambulance unless in a body bag from the door of the house across a pavement to the road? You expect an ambulance to carry portable screens?

It depends on the premises. Some funeral homes have gated yards, some are in the middle of town centres or on busy streets.

Deceased are not carried in body bags, they are transported on stretchers or gurneys just as with paramedics, and of course as quietly, quickly and discreetly as possible.

If we had to put up partitions every time we went to a first call it would be very cumbersome and probably even more obvious to everyone in the street what was happening.

We always try to be as discreet and respectful as possible.

@Gloriia the bodied aren’t “carried around” they’re placed on stretchers

@eastegg "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."

This is why some Victorian houses had what was known as a "coffin drop" on the upstairs landing. This was a rectangular trap door about 7' x 3' which could be opened to allow a coffin to be lowered through it into the hall.
It was especially useful in houses where the stairs had a "dog leg" halfway that stopped a coffin being manoeuvered downstairs.

How is it disrespectful? They were moving bodies from the private ambulance to the building. They weren't doing anything else from the OP's post.

And whilst we're at it OP, where did you think a funeral directors would put the bodies of the dead whose funerals they were dealing with?

You realise I could walk down any residential street and might see a body being brought into the back of a vehicle?
How do you think people are transported to the funeral directors?

Wouldn’t portable screens attract more attention anyway?

Not sure how you get bodies from one place to another without moving them. In saying that I live near a very big funeral directors and the vehicles drive through gates so are behind a wall so you don't see anything from the road. This a big establishment though I doubt smaller businesses would have the same space to do that. Anyway far better a funeral directors next door rather than a rowdy restaurant or pub

People are so weird about death and bodies.

I used to live above a funeral parlour and we saw this kind of thing regularly 🤷‍♀️

Oh how ridiculous!! Surely it’s more respectful when sone one is alive being worked on, having a heart attack being hidden. Ambulances can’t do that.

The respect in transporting is the body bag, completely hides the body!

Stop being so bloody precious!

But then the body would be at the warehouse. Many people like to visit their deceased relatives at a funeral home, so they would not want the body at an estate out of town?

A pp asked what the difference is between a body bag and a coffin. Nobody answered it - maybe you can?

If they used portable screens you can guarantee people would be craning their necks to see what was going on behind them. Like people who slow down to gawp at accidents on motorways. At least if it’s clearly a body bag they might avert their gaze!

Is this in the Midlands OP?I think I used to live nearby 20yrs ago and often thought the proximity to other houses (tiny terraces) /narrow lane/hearse meets car would be a bit of an issue.

Yes and often people when they see this stop and bow their heads in respect. The movement of the bodies isn't disrespectful it is how people respond to it that can be, such as being repulsed by it and starting a thread on MN in disgust. May those souls you saw op rest in peace