Honestly, I don’t know a funeral director in this world who springs out of bed in the middle of the night and, with ninja-like speed, throws on his or her clothes and dashes out the door on a death call.  As a matter of fact, it’s probably more like they roll over, stare at the ceiling for a minute or two, then slowly push the covers aside, and stumble around in the dark trying to find their shoes before exiting the house.  Granted, in some metropolitan areas there may be people who are hired strictly to do the night work, who are ready to go at the ring of the phone, but in rural areas the people who work all day are generally the ones who may also be called upon to work all night.

I’ve answered my fair share of late night calls over the years, especially before the days of call forwarding and cell phones.  Back when I was a young whippersnapper (you can drench that in sarcasm if you’d like), I had to move into my parents’ apartment and sleep in their bed so I could be next to the phone in case it rang.  We did have two employees who actually had land lines for our primary number that ran to their houses.  They would plug in the phone when it was necessary for them to answer it.  But most of the time, I just temporarily changed addresses.  That was especially important when the funeral home also operated the local ambulance service.  I remember waking up one night half-way through a phone call with the highway patrol.  They were giving me directions to a wreck . . . directions I was actually writing down . . . and which I insisted upon reading back to them since I had absolutely no idea what I had heard or if my subconscious had accurately recorded it.

Fortunately, I’ve never had to actually get up, get functional, get dressed, and leave the house to drive to some place I may never have been and speak coherently with people I may not know who have suffered a loss I may not be able to comprehend.  That’s why I so admire and appreciate the people who work with us and do that on a regular basis—sometimes all night long.  That’s why it’s so important that you be absolutely certain when you call the recorded obituary line at 3:00 in the morning that you’re actually calling the recorded obituary line and not our for-real, answered by a living, breathing, probably asleep human being number.  There are a great many funeral homes, large and small, rural and metropolitan, that have enlisted the aid of an answering service for after- hours calls, but not Shackelfords.  Nope.  We still roll over and answer that phone, no matter the time of night.

Believe it or not, funeral directors do actually sleep.  They go home at 5:00 PM, if the work allows.  And they stay away from the building on Sundays if there are no families with which to meet, or funerals to work, or calls to make.  So if you dial our number at 7:00 on a Friday night to see if your burial dues needs to be paid, there’s a real good chance we aren’t going to be able to answer your question.  If you call at 2:00 AM asking “who y’all got down there”, we hope you’ll understand if we don’t sound real happy to hear from you.  If you decide to pay us an unexpected visit after 5:00 PM or on a Sunday, please don’t be surprised if you find the door is locked, the lights are out, and no one answers when you ring the bell.

I guess the whole point of this rambling missive is to remind everyone that funeral directors are people, too.  They eat and sleep—although not always without interruption.  They have families of their own with whom they enjoy spending time—when work doesn’t call them away.  They have feelings that can be hurt when families are distressed by circumstances over which we have no control, and they ache for the people who must pass through our doors because they know they can help . . . but they cannot heal the pain of loss.  Still, they get dressed every morning—and sometimes at night—and come to work with no idea of what the day might hold, but prepared to do whatever is asked of them.  So maybe the next time you run into a funeral director, you could smile and shake their hand and say thank you.  And when they ask for what, just say “Everything”.

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