After high school at 17, rather than immediately going to the university, I decided to work for a year to prepare myself. I found a job at a furniture store in my hometown where I thought I would deliver furniture, sell furniture, and take care of stock in the warehouse. It did include all of that, but when I was asked to help lift corpses from a table and into a casket, the job turned out to be much more.
In the early days of this country, the furniture maker was the logical person to turn to when a loved one died and the family needed a well-constructed wooden box. In the 19th Century, caskets were wood and since furniture makers worked with wood they were called upon. It’s easy to see how furniture makers became trusted with handling specific requirements of the casket, and from there, not hard to imagine conversations about the deceased spilling over into a pastoral care-type situation. It’s also not difficult to imagine these furniture builders doubling up on their businesses and offering funeral services. This is why so many furniture stores doubled as funeral homes.
Seldom thinking about death as a teenager and with no preparation for handling dead bodies, I was thrust into a situation where I touched the hands and lifted the bodies of deceased people. It freaked me out a little bit. In time, I became comfortable around dead bodies, and one time before a funeral, even drove the Goodrich Funeral Home’s Hearst to the car wash with a casket and body in the back.… read more...
