From Newsweek Story by Lianna Champ
For as long as I can remember, I have dreamed about being a funeral director. My mother recalled me whizzing around at the age of 9 saying: “Mommy, I want to be an undertaker!” I just knew instinctively that’s what I would do.
From a very young age, I remember just looking at strangers and being able to feel their sadness. I was always in tune with other people’s emotions, so maybe I instinctively knew that being a funeral director would put me in a position to help grieving people.
In my early teenage years, my career adviser at school told me that I had as much chance of being an undertaker as I did being an astronaut, because both jobs were only done by men. I didn’t take any heed—I knew being female wouldn’t be a hindrance for me.
I was young and naive; I had never seen a dead body before and don’t think in my head I had equated undertaking with dead people. I saw the body and was absolutely fascinated. I wore gloves and overalls while helping suture. I was really involved.
I asked a million questions, which must have frazzled their brains. I was like a little sponge, I wanted to know everything.
At one point I asked one of the men: “Why aren’t there any more females doing this job?” He turned around, looked at me and said: “Because there’s a lot of silence involved in this role.”
She was kind enough to drive me around all the local funeral homes to ask whether I could do my training work with them for no pay. But every single one of them shut the door in my face. They said it wasn’t the right place for a young girl. I was undeterred.
Eventually, I found a mortuary that took me on and worked Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. until 5 p.m, and Saturday night until 4 a.m. in the morning for £30 ($38) per week.
I then took on a cleaning job in the funeral home from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. for an additional £15 ($19). By then I had a little car, but was restricted to £5 ($6) worth of petrol in it per week. Food was very minimal. In fact, one of my friends compared me to a cat because I lived on tuna.
At one point, a job became available in the local nightclub paying £26 ($33) a night, four days a week, so I took it and started working around the clock. I lasted six months before I fell asleep at my desk and had to stop.
I made it through my training and, at 18 years old, became the youngest qualified female funeral director and embalmer in the United Kingdom.
Then, two years later, I was made redundant. I was absolutely devastated.
I had no idea why I had lost my job, though the man I worked for didn’t have his funeral diploma and I suspected he may have been threatened by having a qualified woman around.
I began applying for other roles, including one on the south coast where I had sent a letter signed “L. Champ” so they couldn’t tell which gender I was. The second I turned up they said: “We’re really sorry, but you’ve wasted your time. If we hire a female, we’ll go out of business overnight.”
It’s only looking back I realize the extent to which I was discriminated against on the basis of sex, but I never thought about it at the time because I was doing what I absolutely loved. All I wanted to do was learn as much as I could.
So I did the same thing I did as a teenager. My mother drove me around all the local funeral homes again and I heard the same old thing: “You’ve wasted your time, why don’t you try something else?”
Eventually, after repeatedly being told the profession was simply no place for a woman, I decided I would start my own funeral home.
My parents acted as guarantors for a bank loan, and by the age of 27 I had an overdraft I estimate would be valued at around £500,000 ($635,000) today. I had to have the best of everything, because throughout my training I had seen what needed to be done better.
I saw how much comfort just doing certain things a little bit differently brought to the families I was working with as I trained, and I had a deep yearning to help them.
During my training I lost my best friend very suddenly to a blood clot, which was a huge learning curve for me in the workplace. Her death gave me this determination to care for the bodies of the dead, because that person could no longer speak for themselves and didn’t have any protection.
That’s always been something that’s incredibly important to me; a genuine respect and sense that being somebody’s loved one is very precious.
People did think I was strange because of my profession. Clients expected me to turn up with a broomstick and green skin. I was christened Morticia and people would freely tell me I had the worst job in the world.
But I loved the personal connections I would make with people. When I spent time with families whose loved ones had passed away, the first thing I would say to them was: “Tell me about your relationship.”
I believe that when somebody’s died, their family, friends or partner are preoccupied with that person, and the first thing they want to do is talk about them. So I would sit with my clients and just talk. The funeral would grow from there; they were always different and very personal.
I was constantly trying to learn as much as I could to give families a positive experience and help them with their grief. Eventually I signed up for a course to become a grief recovery specialist.
A few weeks before starting the course, my mother passed away. I was devastated and the months following were terrible for me; it felt like everybody just disappeared. Nobody would say much to me because they were terrified of saying the wrong thing.
I felt very adrift and needed to take some time off work because I was so lost. I called the woman running my course and said I needed to take some time before starting my training.
But she told me that the sooner I came to them after my loss, the better. They needed to break me down and build me back up again so I could understand what other people were going through.
We had an agreement that I would try it out, and if I didn’t like it on the first day, I could go home. When the day arrived I sat down and, before I knew it, the session was over. It was magical. In fact, I loved the course so much that I did it again the following year.
I gained a greater understanding of grief and have since had the privilege of learning from many different people in various environments, from addicts to those who have been abused or had their loved ones taken away in very traumatic circumstances.
One of the most important pieces of advice I could give to anybody when dealing with death is to always be emotionally honest, however you feel.
When we receive good news, often the first thing we want to do is share it with our family and friends. It needs to be the same when we’re sad or when something is bothering us, we need to offload.
When someone is talking about grief, usually they aren’t actually having a conversation, they’re making a statement. Often people can be very quick to jump in and try to change their feeling in order to make them feel better, when actually that’s one of the worst things you could possibly do.
I’ve never been afraid of death. While I might fear the mode—I don’t want to die frightened or in horrific pain—I’ve always accepted dying as very much part of life. I believe sometimes people put too much focus on the length of a life and miss out on the width.
I’ve worked for many elderly people who I feel have lived half a life, and I’ve seen young people go out in a blaze of glory having had the most amazing effect. To me, longevity doesn’t matter. It’s what you do while you’re here.
The best advice I can give is to live honestly and have a full life. I don’t think people are actually afraid of death per se. I believe they’re afraid of the things that they haven’t done while they’re alive.
Whether it be a conflict, wrongdoing or some unfinished emotional business somewhere along the line, I would advise finding out what you’re really afraid of and fixing it while you have the chance.
Lianna Champ is a leading bereavement expert, grief counselor and funeral director. She is the author of How to Grieve Like A Champ which is available now.
All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
