Dying to get in here
© Alastair Philip WiperOf all the things that happen every day, this is one of the most invisible. Not because it's rare — a funeral home like this one processes bodies the way other businesses process paperwork, steadily, reliably, without fuss. Not because it's secret.
This is a series made inside an ordinary American funeral home — the embalming room, the crematory, the front office where families are received. People arrive. People leave. Arms and legs are massaged, faces are set, and blood is replaced with fluid. Somewhere near you, right now. The people who do this work clock in like anyone else, argue about whether to wear suits, and take calls at 2 am. They have chosen to stand on the side of the curtain that the rest of us spend our whole lives avoiding.
“If there will be a viewing or visitation of the deceased, the body will usually be embalmed. If a person dies a natural death, the embalming process takes around an hour. But if they have been involved in a car crash or a shooting, for instance, they go to the county morgue and then have an autopsy. When they arrive at the funeral home, they can be in a bad state - there can be a lot of repair work to do.”
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