Retrospect
Retrospect
Talk Like A Mortician (feat. Shanna) | Retrospect Ep.162
In this week’s episode we talked with Shanna with Talk Like A Mortician. Shanna has 15 years of experience as a mortician, and with her Facebook page she seeks to demystify some of the misconceptions. She also educates us on the funeral industry in an informative and helpful way.
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Talk Like A Mortician
Keywords
mortician field, funeral director, compassionate care, embalming history, funeral costs, cremation trends, funeral services, funeral industry, funeral planning, funeral customs, funeral director challenges, funeral industry statistics, funeral industry growth, funeral industry education, funeral industry technology
Speakers
Shanna (51%), Stoney (20%), Jason (17%), Ian (12%)
Ian
Welcome to the retrospect podcast, a short people come together from different walks of life and discuss a topic from the generations perspective. My name is Ian, and as always, I'm joined by Jason.
Hello, everyone.
and Stoney.
Stoney
Hello.
Ian
And if I'm not mistaken, this episode has been a long time in the making. Yes,
Stoney
we've been talking about doing this for a long time.
Ian
You got a guest here, so I finally got it. I'll go ahead and let you introduce her,
Stoney
Miss Shanna. Hello. So I found this book a while back called the history of death. And one of the things that I love about Miranda is I think we have a 5000 book library together. Okay, I found this book, and we're looking at she goes, Oh, you know, the neighbor across the street is mortician. She would be great on your show. And then come to find out she has an online presence,
Shanna
correct? Talk Like a mortician
Stoney
. And I kept saying, What did I say? It was, ask the mortician, but it's talk like a mortician. And so we finally got you on. Welcome to the show. Shanna,
Shanna
I'm happy to be here. You.
Stoney
I have a question. Right off the bat, it seems to me that the mortician field is very male dominated.
Shanna
Yes.
Stoney
How did you get into this field?
Shanna
So, exactly like you said, we see and growing up, I imagined a funeral director, a mortician. Was always a tall man with
Jason
much, I'm thinking, from the guy from Phantasm
Shanna
Gomez, you know, with a big, oversized coat, kind of sunken, dark eyes, little wispy Yes, that's what I always expected. And my step dad passed away very unexpectedly, and we had to go to the funeral home, and I did not want to go, because I was expecting that creepy man, and when we walked in, there was a young lady. She was about 21 -22 years old. Her name was Rachel, and when my mom walked in, of course, because it was so tragic, it wasn't expected, my mom barely could get through the front door without crying. And Rachel grabbed her and just held her and hugged her, and she had no idea. She'd never met her before. So then we did the whole entire arrangements, everything, and she had such a compassion. But the kicker was when we went to the visitation. So visitation, we call it visitation, the funeral walk. A lot of people call it Awake, awake. So at the visitation, during that family hour, my mom was up at the front with my stepdad at his casket, and she was just a crying and I was trying to get to her, and when I finally got to the casket, my mom was leaned over into the casket, into his chest, and there was somebody else leaned over into his chest as well, and they were both just sobbing, completely sobbing. And so I'm like, trying to console two people, and trying to figure out who this other person was. And when she stood up, it was my funeral director. Oh, wow. And she had mascara running down her face. She had got mascara on his white dress shirt. And at that point, I saw something completely different. I saw that it wasn't for her, it wasn't a job. She was she had true emotions. She could feel my mom's emotions, and that changed my whole entire look on the industry. And I knew that I could. I was an accountant before, and so I went back to school. Matter of fact, I actually started I asked Rachel for a job. I was like, I would love to make coffee greet the old ladies that walk in the building to show them where to go. I said, I do not want to touch a body. I don't want to be around any of that. But I would love to have that connection that I saw Rachel have with families. So my hire date was September 10. September 11, my grandmother passed away, and my grandmother had all of her pre arrangements done with that same funeral home. Oh my gosh. And so Rachel came to pick my grandmother up, and she was like, I know you don't want to be a part of any of it, but what do you want to do? And I was like, I do not. I want to be part of everything. And from that moment on, that was it, that? Was it okay? So I went back to school, I did my internship. How long is like the schooling and stuff for that, the schooling for that is going to be, usually about a year to 18 months. There's only No, it's not there's only one school in Louisiana. There's a couple in Texas. So it's not something that you can just, of course, right? You know, anywhere you can go, you have to go to an accredited mortuary College. Wow. Yeah.
Ian
Oh, interesting. Such a, that's a, such a crazy story, but at the same time, like, what? But it's so it's so specific to you and, like, that's such a, like you said that, like, the you don't want to be involved at all until, like, it was right in front of
Shanna
you, yes, and then I wanted to be and, you know, I try to, especially if we have younger kids, teenagers that come to a funeral and you see them looking around, because everybody is we're all very curious, right? You know, that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. And so I try to talk to those young people. You know, if I have a young little boy that wants to stand by his dad, who's a pallbearer, and help push a casket out, I'm going to pull him by me and let him help as much as possible, because the death world, everybody thinks that it's very scary and stuff. And I want to try to help people realize, right, that it's not that's
Ian
interesting. Yeah, that's so cool, though. Well, you know,
Jason
Stoney, you were talking about it being male dominated. I mean, I'm looking at the latest some stats I've pulled up here, it's 61% are male. 38% are females. That Jen, Is that about right? I mean, I don't know how, how up to date that is, but
Shanna
now the for mortuary college, it's about a 54% female, really.
Jason
Now, I did notice the number of females going into this profession has been steadily rising since 2010
Shanna
Yeah, absolutely. I
Ian
had a friend of mine. I believe she moved off somewhere else now, but she, I think was a, I think she did the whole either. I don't think she went through the whole like mortician stuff, but I believe that she worked at a funeral home and did a lot of the stuff. Just beneath all of that,
Shanna
there's so much to do,
Ian
I know. But again, the crazy thing about that was, of all the people that I would have, I would have like pinned as to do that kind of profession, she was not the one, but she loved it, and she was just, I think she did a great job at it.
Shanna
So I do a lot of career days at high schools and stuff. Wow. I usually pull up my first my first slide is usually Gomez or lurch or something out there. And I'm like, This is what you expect a funeral director to look at. And then I'm like, but then you have me right? And it's totally different,
expectation, reality, right, right,
yeah,
Jason
well, it's definitely. The unemployment rate for a mortician has about 1.9% so it's pretty much a there's
Shanna
definitely a high demand. Yeah, there's
Jason
death is always here. So it's,
Stoney
well, there's, what's the thing? There's, there's three professions to get into that you'll always have, a job, food, plumbing, and a funerals, you'll always have a job there. So you people gotta eat, people gotta poop, and apparently we're gonna all gonna pass.
Shanna
All going to pass.
Jason
So you said there's, there's like one school in Louisiana. There's a few in Texas. Now they is this degree, what would be the equivalent of a bachelor's degree. No,
Shanna
usually it's an Associates in applied science or mortuary science. Okay, all right, yeah,
Jason
because I'm I'm right now educational attainment, 33% are associate. 31% bachelors, and then high school diploma, 25% doctorate, 3% they actually people get doctorates in this stuff,
Shanna
not that I know of,
Ian
yeah, I don't know what you could do. So I don't, I don't know if you said when you when that, when that happened, but when did you like, start the process of, like, going back to school for more back to school? Yeah,
Shanna
um, was that like, I was in, I had been employed probably about three months, and I was doing what we call removal. So when someone passes away, right? I was doing that in the middle of the night, and I realized this definitely is for me, right? And so I went back to school. I worked at the local funeral home. I worked at the local coroner's office. So it was pretty fast after that, when I decided to, it definitely was. So
Ian
how long have you been, like, like, an official, like, mortician, like,
Shanna
I have been in the business for 15 years. Wow. Okay, yeah, wow. That's
Ian
awesome when,
Stoney
when you've been doing it for so long, and you have your your online presence, talk like a mortician. Do you study the history of this, because I'm fascinated by that, reading this book and other stuff my research, it seems like the Civil War kind of changed funeral practices in America. So
Shanna
around that time is when we started with embalming, right? Because they were trying to get the soldiers home to their family and to be in a presentable state for their family to be able to be seen, right? I
Ian
didn't know that. Wow. Yeah, there
Jason
was a lot of advances, I think, made during that period of time. Well, there was a variety of things. 4000
Stoney
soldiers alone by Dr Thomas Holmes. Does that sound familiar? Is he like father of embalming? Right? So during the. Civil War, he did 4000 just by himself.
Shanna
And he did those outside on like two scaffolds, you know, in a wood box.
Jason
So, but question is that the history of embalming? I mean, so we say this really started taking place during the Civil War, but I mean, prior to that, was their embalming, yes.
Shanna
So even back in Jesus days, they considered when Mary and Martha went to the tomb, right, okay, they were bringing flowers and things like that, mass this to mass the smell, and that's what they also considered was part of that process of embalming. Um,
Stoney
but embalming has been going on since the Egyptians, absolutely, absolutely, they had tools. And because they believed when, when they were in their coffin, or whatever they were in, all of their organs were in jars next to them to go with them. They had a little hook. They would stick up their nose and take the brain, take the brain out, and then that went in one jar and then the other, or because they needed them. That's right. So embalming has been going on a long time now. It's just formaldehyde injections, probably from the civil war times, right,
Shanna
right. So
Jason
how did, how did I mean, but the idea of using formaldehyde, I mean, how did that come about? I mean, well,
Shanna
your formaldehyde is going to, um, and your formaldehyde is going to
preservative. Thank you. I'm just
so that formaldehyde for the Civil War. Again, we're trying to preserve that soldier to at least get home. It's not a 100 year guarantee. Oh, okay, it's typically to preserve that body for the viewing and for the funeral service. Oh,
Stoney
see that? I didn't know. I thought it was long term. But then when you look at some of the Egyptian mummies, what they did, they're still there. They're still there, yeah, so that's fascinating to me. And then we changed it. And now the climate
Jason
over there that dry, dry, dry,
Shanna
and they used a lot of salt and stuff like that. So even with our bodies today, some can last forever. But then there's some dependent on the environment that they're around, the chemicals that have been put in their body, as far as medicine that even though the embalming slows that process down, it's still going to continue. Okay, yeah, wow, okay, well, mainly just to be able to view for that family to have that closing I started
Stoney
reading about Dr Holmes a little bit, and his point was to make this method popular as practical and emotional way to semblance of the good death, even in war times. What, what I mean? Did you study this? What was going through his head? How does he come to that
Shanna
point? Possibly, and I do not know this for a fact, but does that go in line with your story? Yes, because, you know, the soldiers usually died an awful death and mass graves, yes, and to get them back to their family, he's gonna close their mouth, he's gonna close their eyes. He's gonna make them look peaceful. So Mama, when she gets her boy back, that's
Ian
enclosure, yeah, but
Stoney
didn't they do that before it was the family, and you got buried on the family plot of land or something. But didn't they do that too during the Wake period in the living room? They did.
Shanna
They did, but sometimes still they weren't really embalming, right? So decomposing was still happening. So they were going to have, they had to mask smells. They had to mask the discoloration of the skin and all that because they weren't embalmed. Okay. Wow. So
Jason
I'm curious, how did the transition occur with having funerals at homes to funeral homes? How did that kind of happen?
Shanna
I think just the economy, because we still have families sometimes that will ask, can you bring them to our house? Oh, really, no, they were undertakers
Stoney
before, and then the undertakers became the funeral directors when it became a more business oriented I guess, because the undertakers made the coffin, brought that to the family. And you know how, you know, took the little measurements, made the coffin by hand, and then said, Okay, here you go. Give me $1
Shanna
right? So yes, we still do have families. Occasionally, it's not, it's not often, sometimes in the smaller communities, they would like grandma Jay to be brought home to the homestead and let people visit then.
Ian
So have you had, like, I don't know the is the process, kind of, like, is the normal process? What you kind of did, like, just starting off in like a position and then kind of working your way up to going to school for it is there, like, some sort of, like mentorship kind of approach. Gram or something. So
Shanna
there's some people who have grown up in the business where they might be family owned business. So um, little boy has, you know, lived above the funeral home, and that's all he knew. And at 12 years old, he was going out and doing removals, and he just always knew that that was what it was going to be. Um, some people in middle school realize that that's what they want to be. So it's kind of all the way around the board. I I didn't want anything to
Ian
of course, I was curious because, I mean, like, you were saying you have, like, workshop, or, like a, what did you call it, like days, where you go out to, like, schools, career days, career days, yeah, where I was curious of that sort of thing, like, and
Shanna
those are absolutely amazing, because especially middle school, high school kids, they're not afraid to ask, Oh, questions. And there's no silly or weird question. They come up with some, of course, almost off the wall ones, but they get so intrigued in it, and that's cool, and my job is to make them understand.
Ian
So how long have you done those sort of things, like career days?
Shanna
Was that probably about 12 years?
Ian
Oh my gosh, wow. Is
Stoney
that where talk like a mortician came from? All right?
Shanna
No, talk like mortician came from. I had a couple of people just simply ask me little questions, like, when do most people pass away? Is there a certain time of the year when most people pass away? And so I was answering certain questions like that, and I was like, You know what this is? Things that the publicly know for that question, though, Death isn't part of a calendar. You know it's not. But when you have somebody, we have more deaths that happen around the holidays, around somebody's birthday. We have so many times the person will pass on their birthday. I feel the reason that it is especially if they're on hospice or something. They want to make it to that next birthday. And when they make it to 93 they're okay. They're at peace. They want to go. They want to see one more new year come in. They want to see one more Christmas. They you, I know you all heard this. They waited until, yeah, my son got there right, and then they're, they're okay, yeah, they have that. So I do feel like they get that closure exactly before they pass, I had
Stoney
a good friend of mine back in the 80s. He was a stunt man, and he his mom caught the sea, and he said, I need help. I got to go do this movie. So I moved in to help him take care of her, and just got to know this lady just so wonderfully. Spent almost a year and a half there helping. He would come in and out with his movie stuff. I would go in and out with my protective services stuff, and she wound up in the hospital, and she was out, and we were there for almost four days straight, no showers, no nothing, hoping she'd wake up. And that fourth morning, she woke popped up, woke up, perfect, sat up. What are y'all doing? Where are we? And you know, we're talking to her. And she says, okay, look, what I need y'all to do is, is I want my favorite ice cream, and y'all need to go home and take a shower. Yep, y'all need to go home and take a shower. And I says, hey, Ron, look, go. Go get a she said, No, both of y'all go together, take a shower. Please. Would y'all take a shower and brush your teeth and bring me back my favorite ice cream? And when we got back, she had passed. She had passed, she she woke up to give us that strength, and she just didn't want us to see her
Shanna
right? And most of the time, and I am not a nurse. But most of the time, if they're on hospice or something like that, they are going to have a burst of energy before she wasn't
Stoney
on hospice, she just, she was just, it was just, she knew it was time.
Shanna
Yeah, and a lot of times, people do wait until they don't want their loved ones to be there. So some want their loved ones to be there, but some do not, and they wait until that person goes and takes a shower, and that's when they pass, right?
Ian
I've heard the same sort of thing for like, the like, the mental stuff, that dementia, that kind of stuff, like having that, that last moment of like lucidity before, like, it all goes in a way which is kind of
Shanna
crazy. I love the stories when people say that, you know, Grandma is looking up and seeing her husband who passed and is talking, having a conversation, right? Like, I do believe that that's the afterlife. I guess you want to say, I do believe that they they see that and they're coming for them, yeah? Well,
Stoney
we did a show a long time ago about angels and
Jason
demons. I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna I'm gonna mention a very personal experience that I had when my daddy died, because he died at the house. Oh, gosh, and we had a little dog that was very, very close. Mm. My father and my dad had had cancer, eventually died of a brain tumor. It actually metastasized as a brain tumor, and he died from that. But the day, the morning he died, was very early. Was like 530 in the morning, my the little dog went inside the room and was fixated on the ceiling. Would not budge, would not budge. I mean, you can just imagine a dog sitting on its hind legs right, staring at the ceiling right for a good five minutes, yeah, solid, still. And then after that, he put his head down and walked out the room,
Shanna
dang. And is that when he passed, he
Jason
died? Wow, he died. And so what the dog sensed, I would think it was the soul departing the body, right and drifting up. I mean, most people that have near death experiences, they should, you know, explain or, you know, try to tell people that I kind of saw my body looking down on it. So, yeah. So it was a very moving moment, because I knew the night before I went to bed, hospice had already been taken care of him, his legs were going ice cold at that point. The hospice, they kind of, you know, they they walk you through this whole process of death, amazing. And they said, Okay, once the legs. That means the body's shutting down. Wow. And the next morning, my mom woke me up and said, Your dad died. So
Shanna
seeing the dog do all of that, did that give you any kind of closure? Well, believe
Jason
it or not, I actually had a another experience with him about a year before he died. That was probably even more dramatic than what I saw little Onyx. That was a little dog's name. But I remember being woken up early, and it was like two o'clock in the morning. Heard my daddy talking. My daddy was his hours of of his because of the brain enjoy. He would be up all hours of the night and and then he would sleep during the day, or vice versa. But this particular he was up and I heard him talk, and I heard what is he saying in there? So, you know, I'm, I was 19 years old when my dad died. Oh my gosh, wow. So, I mean, I was 18, you know, so I'm, what, a senior in high school, or maybe a freshman in college, I don't quite remember, but I walk in the in the den, and he had his recliner that he sat on, yeah, and then there was another recliner next to where my mom normally would sit, and it was rocking, oh. And I said, Dad, are you okay? He was just smiling. He goes, Yeah, I'm fine. I said, was mom in here? Said, No, you know? I said, Well, walked in the room, my mom was in their bedroom, sleeping, yeah, when I tell you there was electricity in that room, Oh, yeah. I mean, even today, that's been 30 years ago, I still feel it, wow. But he told me at that point. He said, Jesus says I'm going to heaven.
Ian
Oh, man,
Jason
yeah. So, I mean, so I have had some very and then, of course, you follow that up with the dog, right? Oh, right, right incident, and it's like, wow, you know, so you as a kid, you're, you know, you're trying to process all this because dad's illness was over the course of like, four or five years, okay,
Ian
yeah, yeah, so, but
Jason
yeah, these
Stoney
things are very they're personal. They're Yeah, they and that's kind of one of the questions I wanted to get with you on, especially like from the shift from coffin to caskets, there was a huge shift in that, and there was a lot of people very resistant to that. And one of my questions was, how did the casket designs evolve to meet kind of the Victorian error ideal of making death appear beautiful and dignified, right, and things like that. Can you go on that one?
Shanna
I don't know if I can. That's okay, because I really don't know. You know, more caskets or more metal. So possibly that that could have had something like
Stoney
at that time they started. Dressing them up a little bit more. I started putting nice
Shanna
skirts and stuff on that. Yes, I'm used different materials, whether it's velvet or just a crate material, just to make it more fancy, pillows, pillows, pillows that we wouldn't use, dressing
Stoney
people up a little nicer, and then the makeup and things like that, yeah. And
Shanna
then placing the flowers on top of the casket. Because most of the caskets these days are what we call a half couch. So it's 6040, the end stays closed, where most of the time a coffin, the whole thing, the whole entire thing goes off. Yeah, yeah. Speaking
Jason
of funerals, of looking at the National Funeral Directors Association website, and said the the cost, the median cost, of a funeral with a viewing and burial in 2023 was $8,300
Shanna
so that's,
Jason
is that kind of like a I assume that's probably a
Shanna
baseline. Yeah, that's a baseline, baseline between eight and 10 is what I would say. Of course, it could be more, depending on what kind of casket you want to use exactly. That probably did not include your burial space. So wherever you're going to be buried, especially if it's not a family place, you're going to have to purchase a plot. So yeah, that's that's pretty
Jason
Yeah. And they said that the median cost of a funeral with cremation and $6,280
Shanna
well, they're saying what? How did they say it again?
Jason
They said the cost of a funeral, and this is just kind of general. Is the national median cost of a funeral with a viewing and burial in 2023 was 8300 while the median cost of a funeral with cremation was $6,280
Shanna
so what they're saying right there is, they say a funeral with cremation, cremation can be so many different ways we can do a Direct Cremation, which is exactly what that says the funeral home picture loved one up, the cremation takes place and you pick your loved ones. Cremator remains up and nothing else is done. What they're saying is probably like a service as well. Yeah, you're gonna your loved one is going to be involved. They're going to be laid out. We're going to have a full funeral service, and then the cremation takes place afterwards. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, yeah, that will be we would call a traditional funeral with the cremation to take place afterwards. Yeah, I'm gonna
Jason
tell you a lot of people are now opting for cremation. I've talked to a lot of people that have said that. Well,
Stoney
these spaces are getting expensive and hard to come by, especially in more urban, higher density cities. That was going to be a question I got into you about was, what do you think about now this vertical burial, instead of the horizontal, where you go six feet down, now they're digging 12 feet down and sticking
Shanna
standing you up. Now, I don't know of any place around here that is not
Stoney
around here. It's more like New York and lost. You know, the higher, really higher density, but cheaper,
Jason
yeah, it says, I'm just following this, some of this stuff here, it says of those who prefer cremation for themselves, 44.5% would prefer to have their remain scattered in a sentimental place. 17.2% would prefer to bury or inter them in a cemetery. And 10.6 prefer to have them kept in an urn at home. And 9.6% have not decided that is
Stoney
probably my favorite movie of all time, called the way, with Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez. Emilio Estevez wrote and directed it's about a Catholic pilgrimage, yeah, from France to Spain called the Camino de Santiago, which was on my bucket list to do until my accident. And Emilio Estevez was Martin Sheen son in the movie too, and he passed on this pilgrimage. And Martin Sheen had to go get the body, and decided to cremate it, and took and was putting the ashes on every main point on that pilgrimage. And that, I love that movie that is called the way, okay? And it is the Way of St John. That St John is St James. St James, I'm sorry, thank you. St James is buried at the compostelo, at the tip of Spain, and it's about this very thing taken, and it's about life, yeah,
Shanna
and people do all different things. They will, they will take their loved one and scatter their crema remains to take them on a trip. Take them on a trip. Barry, so the Catholic faith, they have just started allowing cremation,
Jason
yes, but where you keep the remains is
Shanna
key. The cremated remains have to be buried or entombed, that is,
Jason
or some sacred space. It can't be kept at a house. Correct,
Shanna
correct? Yes. The only other thing that worries me sometimes with that, and I had a lady asked me about this the other day, is, if I go home and on a May. Channel, what happens if something happens to my family? And I'm just, you know, we've seen it where the Goodwill has an urn and there's cremated remains in it, so it's almost, you almost need to know exactly what's going to happen after the fact. I'm not for or not against cremation. My biggest thing is, with a cremation, I feel like a family, the deceased deserves a service, some type of service you're going to hear a lot of, just throw me in the back ditch. You know,
Jason
I hear that all the time, all
Shanna
the time, and I try to explain it to people that sometimes that service isn't a it is for the deceased. It's about the deceased, but it's your family that's there. Your family is going to have co workers that you haven't seen in years. I had somebody last week that told me all of my childhood friends that grew up on the street came because they knew my dad. Well, they came for, of course, dad, but they came for the son that they grew up, and he was so happy. And so a service I feel is very, very important to have. Um, it's not, it's very important. I've had
Stoney
to put a lot of thought into my service. Um, being in private sector Protective Services. I've been shot, stabbed, I've actually been dead four minutes and 32 seconds total. But when I caught the diabetes, I went into some diabetic thing and almost died. And all of my friends didn't care about all my stuff. They just want to know where my recipe book was, because I can cook. And so now what I'm going to do is, is, when I pass, there's going to be a funeral thing, and everybody gets a taser, and the last person standing gets so mine's going to be very simple. You know,
Jason
that's Stoney for you can
Shanna
we can put recipe cards out, and each one of your guests can get a recipe. Wow,
Ian
only one person has the secret recipe. That's right,
Stoney
of course. Now that I'm married to hottie Doctor Miranda, I may have to change my funeral plans a little bit, so
Jason
that's fine. Says nearly 76.2% of funeral homes are family or privately owned. Is that? What is the what is 76.2 who is that that looks seems
Stoney
high, that seems very high. Well, there's a lot of small towns that have a lot of individually owned but some of your bigger metropolitan areas, I hear they're owned by what two companies
Shanna
there's, there's two, possibly three, larger companies that own the majority of big population. So there are 15,703
Jason
funeral homes in the United States that employ 106,188 people. Wow, and it generates $16.096 billion in the United States. Well, there's
Shanna
so many different careers in the funeral industry, you're still going to have an administrator. You're going to have your embalmers. You're going to have the people who are going to do the removals. You're going to have people that work the the hostesses who's going to make the coffee and stuff like that. You're going to have people that are, I
Ian
work specifically in in media like so I do a lot of I do a lot of photography stuff, a lot of visual stuff, but I have worked sound and ran sound for funerals as well as done slide show presentations, and I've gotten paid for that. So I'm like, I know that. I'm I may not be incorporated in some of that, but I know there are people in that industry that do that sort of
Stoney
work. So a normal sized funeral home could have how many employees, total employees? So
Shanna
some a smaller funeral home can four, and they can manage with four. But then some of your bigger ones, you're going to have 4050, employees, especially if they have a cemetery on grounds and a crematory on grounds, because you're going to usually have somebody that's going to be over each one of those things and talking about the photography and all that, that is something that's coming back. So back in the Victorian days, there was a lot of post mortem, right? That was taken. Then it got really the creepy word. Nobody wanted that, yeah, because
Jason
you look at some of those photos, they are kind of creepy a little
Shanna
bit. But that is something that is coming back into play. I have people ask all the time is, is it okay if I take a picture? I don't care if you take a picture. That usually means Right, right? I'm kind of glad of the work that I did, right? But if it's somebody that's just coming in, that's a friend. I'm gonna have them, you know, ask the family, is it okay? You know, be a little respectful for
Ian
that, but more so in my, in my line of work, I've, I have filmed the service as a whole, especially because a lot of times, like, it's like a the pastor is a friend of the family, or they go, they went to the church. There. And of course, you have people that usually will either read the obituary that's like a part of the family, or so many nice eulogies from people that just have so many beautiful things to
Shanna
say. And we even have photographers that come in that actually take pictures just of the crowds and stuff like that for especially a big visitation, big funeral service, whether it be a police officer, a young person, right, right? And the family, even though 90% of those people passed by the immediate family and shook their hands and gave their condolences, they're not gonna remember all right, yeah. And so they get to go back and they get to see, oh, my high school teacher did come and they remember some of that. So I love that, even the videographers, like you said, almost like a wedding, you know, they'll put something beautiful together, and that's a keepsake for the family.
Ian
Of course, that's the goal, at least, right? Absolutely, especially, like I said, so many nice people again, just just from sitting in the booth in the back, so many cool pictures, but also so many like you can really tell where, like, this individual has impacted so many different lives in this room. That shows by the people that are there or the things that are being said about that person, it's like, oh, even I get choked up that person. I'm like, such a lovely thing to say. Some
Shanna
people are great storytellers, and when they tell that you, you feel like you have known person. Or,
Ian
even better, yet again, I have, I've worked kind of hand in hand with a few pastors before, and like, the pastor has known that person, and so even that, like, the fact that they get to sit down with the family and get, like, those, like little, those little behind the curtain stories, and it's just, I don't there's, it's also been sometimes a fun thing, as much as it is a sad thing, right, for some people. So
Shanna
that makes a service. And I am a religious person 100% I personally don't feel like a funeral is where hell, fire and brimstone should be taught. It's okay for the scriptures, in my opinion, it's okay for scripture and all that, and hope and faith and love and prayer and all that. But that service is about that person. So having those stories and all that, I think that makes it so much the
Ian
word that I that we've used, or that I've used with the pastors that I've worked with, is a celebration of life. Yeah, like it should this should be what that is of like, this person has lived a good life, or most circumstances, and all these people are here to celebrate that life.
Jason
Have you experienced any strange or unusual things 15 years in the business I
Shanna
have, I have, and it's a little emotional, but it's so, so sweet. So the first child that I ever came in contact with in this profession, we're going to call him Ben. Ben was abused by his parents, and he passed away as the result of that. And when I took Ben into my care, it was I had a hard time doing my job, just because I kept wanting to hold his hand and talk to him and consult, because I just kept thinking, what did this baby go through? And after everything was done, on the way home one night, I looked in my rear view mirror and Ben's face was there, and it freaked me out. And so over probably the next two weeks, I would see Ben in the corner of my eye, and it would scare me. And so one night, sitting in my bed, I had something in the corner of my eye, and I looked and it scared me. And my husband was like, What in the world just happened? I was like, so I told him the story of what, what I'm seeing. Like, please don't think I'm crazy. And, um, he's it's the, really, the sweetest thing, because he said, What if Ben needs a safe place? He was like, and he obviously feels safe here. And so I was, I said, Ben, you're safe here. Can you please not scare me? You're okay to be here, but please stop scaring me anymore. And that was the last time that I saw Ben. Wow. So maybe that's what it was. But I have, you know, I do feel amazing. I do feel their presence, especially when it's a trauma, when it's
Jason
there is just somebody dies suddenly or under tremendous you,
Shanna
you feel that tragic? Yeah, wait on you.
Stoney
I want to go. It's a two part question, and I love the way you got into the conversation here. You natural at this. So I'm gonna give you both questions, and feel free answer them. How you want, okay, what is the hardest part of your job and what is the most enjoyable part of your job?
Shanna
So there's a couple of hard parts of the job. Of course, it's very emotional, very emotional. You've had, I've had to, over the years, learn how to separate my emotions, because a family is going to come in. First off, the family is usually they're mad, they're angry. They don't want, nobody wants to come in and sit across the table from me. No. Buddy wants to do that. So you have to learn that they might be ugly to me, and that's okay. They're not really meaning to be ugly to me. They're processing their own. They're processing their own, usually at the end, if I've done my job, right at the end of that funeral service, at the burial, they're hugging me and saying, Thank you so much. That is an enjoyable part of the process. I have become part of their family, and they love me for it. They're going to remember me, while I might not exactly remember their names and stuff, they're going to remember me and what I've done for them over the years. The children were kind of hard, and it was always when my kids were that certain age. So at that time of Ben's story, I my son was the same age as Ben, so that was kind of hard. So right now, My children are older, 1315, and 18. So if I get a baby, while it's hard, I can, I can do it a little bit better, but if I got an 18 year old, that would be a little bit harder for me. Of course, my brother's a fireman, so if I got a fireman, that would be a little harder for me. The times that I'm having to be away from my family serving another family, I've missed many of holidays, many of birthdays. I've had to walk out on my birthday one day, oh no, because I had to go, you know, take somebody into my so
Stoney
you're on call 24/7 basically,
Shanna
I have been before, but right now I'm not, thankfully, but I missed, two years ago, I missed a award ceremony for my son, who was a senior, because the Church that the award ceremony was at didn't have good reception, phone reception, and I was on call and I didn't have a backup, and so I had to miss certain things. So that's that's really, really hard. My family has suffered for it over the years. Thankfully, they understand. But
Ian
doesn't make it easy, though, you're right.
Shanna
It does not. The best part of my job is to be able to give that closure to the family, to have someone who's been in an accident and someone tell them you can't see your loved one anymore, and the restorative art that I do, and they're able to see their loved one, they're able to touch them. They're able to have that closure. They hug me at the end, right? That's, there's nothing like it.
Stoney
There's, there's bedside manner classes for doctors. It almost seems like you almost have to have that same detachment. Bedside manner is that, is that part of the mortician school or No, no, you just develop that your own. I
Shanna
think you just have to develop it. So like Rachel the funeral director for she instantly started crying, and to this day, 15 years later, she still will cry at almost every service. I have before cried at services I've cried in the arrangement room with a family when they're telling me a story, but I also have to stop, and they are not here to console me. I'm here to help them. So it's okay for the families to see that I am that person, but they're also here for me to do a job for them, of course. So I have to separate that you're
Ian
human, but but you still someone needs to be yes, and the day that
Shanna
I don't have that compassion and that care and like me have to stop and compose myself. Is a day that I need to get out well, you
Stoney
got into it because of that empathy and that compassion and connection with people, yeah. So you got into it for that. So if you lose it, I could see what you just be like, I'm done.
Shanna
There's no point in it.
Jason
I got something that's geared to my heart that I think would be interesting to know I'm looking here. Last year, said Louisiana House committee gave its nod Monday to a proposal that would allow pet owners to have the cremated remains of their companions buried with them. So what's what's the status on that?
Shanna
So in the state of Louisiana, we have pet cemeteries. Okay for a cemetery where Human remains are, you are not allowed to bury cremated remains of a pet or stuffed what would we call a pet that we taxidermy, taxidermy type thing. You're not allowed to bury that pet. Does it happen all the time? As a funeral trader, we are not allowed to do that. The cemetery has to know what that person is in that casket. But there are families that sometimes do things that we just don't know about. And I can tell you the cemetery boards, they're gonna fight that law all the way, because everything sometimes comes down to money, and they're trying to keep, you know, there's a pet cemetery and there's a human cemetery, and want
Stoney
to cross, well, that's our one of our favorite sayings here on the show is. All of the money. Well, I
Jason
mean, you know, I have the cremated remains of my last little puppy that's next to my bed, and I have a bi fold type deal you can buy with the picture. And the remains are kind of contained behind that, and it's right there next to my bed, so I can see. So if
Stoney
you go before me, you want me to make sure it ends up.
Jason
Just curious about
Shanna
your funeral director.
Jason
I would love for that to be put into my casket one day.
Shanna
You know, we have lots of people that bring in all different kinds of things to place in the casket. So, you know, fun things that are stuffed animals or letters, pictures and stuff like that. I've had someone bring in a, I don't know if it was a shotgun or a rifle. I don't even know if there's the difference between the two. And they put that in the casket, soft drinks, little Debbie's, you know, all that stuff, you know, hey, well,
Stoney
the Egyptians believe that they did. They had their soldiers, their their staff, they killed themselves to take them with them, right? What about the the story that you saw, what was in in Scotland, where the guy was being buried, and as he was being lowered, the recording went off going, hey, it's dark in here. Let me out of here. And everybody could hear it. That was freaking awesome. It is
Shanna
amazing. And from what I understand, he was a jokester, right, right, so he planned that it is especially in his accent, yes, it's brilliant. It's It's so funny. If you have not seen it, please come up. Talk
Ian
about scare the life out of somebody.
Stoney
Oh no. Everybody loved it. There was no everybody was laughing. And just because
Jason
everybody say, yep, that's him, that's him, yeah, that's okay, yeah. Think about the old, you think back in the old days before they knew, when people died, you know, they had, like ropes. Well,
Stoney
hold on now, see that's, that's actually the way, the directions I wanted to go. There is something called Help me out here. Taphobia is the fear of being buried alive. Is that how you pronounce that? No, no. Okay, then we won't go that way. But
Jason
it was, is it agoraphobia?
Stoney
No, it's something else.
Shanna
But, I mean, who doesn't have that fear?
Stoney
Well, hold on now, in this the 17th and 19th centuries, let this fear led to an invention called safety coffins. Okay? And this was a bell. You had a rope tied to a bell, and if you woke up, you could actually ring the bell. And I have some documented cases here where somebody rang the bell, oh, yeah, they were buried alive, well. And I think
Ian
it's pronounced, I think it's pronounced taffovia
Stoney
Taff, a phobia, okay, I think so
Shanna
that's where also the graveyard shift comes from. The term for that, because you would have somebody in the graveyard for if that person rang that bell, they were able to get them out.
Stoney
So there was actually a job
Jason
we gotta dig about.
Stoney
You imagine, you know, just having your tea and hearing Ding, ding, ding, ding, oh, man, we gotta go dig somebody. Come
Shanna
on, imagine waking up and I couldn't, no, I think everybody has that fear, though. Yeah,
Ian
I don't have a phobia of it, but I definitely have a for me. It's, it's if I can't get my arms, if I if I can't get my arms around, is when? Is when, like the that's why they made when, the fear of the tight spaces make sure you're dead
Jason
when they put you in the box, and if you do come back, there's something else going on. One of my favorite
Stoney
authors, Edgar Allan Poe, wrote a whole story about this, the premature death. One of his stories was about this fear and stuff. It was insane. Never read that story. And
Shanna
in those days there was, you know, people would be comatose, and you know, you would think that they were dead, and embalming, the way we do it today, wasn't done so they really weren't and when they would wake up, and, you know, thankfully, there was somebody at the cemetery to pick them up. Yeah,
Jason
I can imagine just, you know, kind of picture the scene kind of foggy, and think of like a New Orleans cemetery.
Ian
Well, at least those are above ground. Even give us some credit there,
Shanna
yeah, the majority of those above ground. Yeah,
Stoney
I don't usually,
Ian
like, I said, I don't usually have a fear of tight spaces ever, but, like, but I've noticed, like, there's been moments where I've been doing, like, work underneath something and, like, my arms get stuck, whatever. And I've had that, like, the panic kind of sets. I'm like, Okay, I know I have to, like, and get myself out of it, right? But, like, I've watched videos of those guys that will just, like, inch their way through, like, caves or whatever. Like, there's no way I would never I
Stoney
couldn't do it and see I don't have a problem with tight spaces. I've probably had, what, 30 M. Rise and CAT scan. Since my accident, I get in trouble because I actually fall asleep in the MRI machine. Yeah, all right, asleep, but all that sound and everything else going on, yeah, that's fun. I don't mind that at all. So
Ian
have any of your any of your children, like, voiced the interest in potentially going in your field, or they go in different directions, I think directions?
Shanna
I think they're gonna go in different directions. Now, they have all grown up in the industry with me. They have worked funeral services. They have did a lot. Of course, they haven't been in the ballroom with me or anything like that. They've watched me fix hair and everything. But I feel like they have the compassion that's cool, but they don't want to, yeah, they want to go their own. My
Ian
My dad was a paramedic for 20 something, or almost 30 years, I think, if I'm not mistaken, and there was an opportunity where I had considered going into that field as well, and I was like, I think I could probably do it. But then I other opportunities came up, and I took those instead, and I followed my dreams in other ways. But my youngest brother is now in that field, and he has a he has his moments where he loves and hates it, but it's the same sort of thing of like the I think the reason why he is as good as he is, a way does, is because he's able to talk to people like, like they're humans, and I think also have that compassion. He's also very charismatic and jokey person, like, like, all of us are in the family, and so I think that also helps a lot, because there's been a lot of cool stories that he's told me and other co workers of him, of his, has told me of like, he does a great job, because it's like, that human element of it all. It's not just and
Shanna
they see a lot of traumatic things, they 100% a lot. Yeah,
Ian
yeah, yeah. So
Shanna
interesting. Very hard for them.
Stoney
Wow. Well, no more statistics over there,
Jason
I am. That's all I've been looking at the whole time we've been talking because some of this stuff is pretty interesting. But you had mentioned that more women are now going into this profession. They said the tipping point was in year 2000 number of women exceeded the number of men going into the mortuary industry.
Shanna
I don't know if it's a bedside manner thing. I can tell you this. My mentor is a male. Some of the best embalmers and best funeral directors I know are men, so I don't really know why it changed. Yeah,
Jason
it's, it's so funny here it's 2000 it was 51 to 49% they say today the number of women entering funeral service programs is more than two and a half times the number of men, 72.1% to 27.9% Wow. And of course, they give some, some various you know, women are caring, empathetic, sympathetic. They were good at multitasking, nurturing people. And women have had the tendon, the tenderness that's required to be in this industry and forming these long, lasting relationships. So, yeah, yeah, there
Shanna
definitely is more women that are coming into the industry, but pretty much the majority of my learning and everything has come from men. Has
Ian
there? Has there been any interesting developments over the course of your like, 15 years, or any, like, new technologies. He had new stuff, or whatever that's happened over the
Shanna
well, there's always different things. At the National funeral directors convention that I just went to. You know, there's so much like jewelry, as far as fingerprint jewelry that families sometimes want. Where, 15 years ago, we were just taking fingerprints with ink. Well now we can do it on an iPad, and it can go straight to the family, and they can, wow, order jewelry, or do, um, a tattoo, or anything like that. Um, wow. So there's lots of other different things, but nothing just completely groundbreaking. I've recently
Ian
talked with a few friends of mine because I was there's a lot of things in the world that everything needs to be made. Or there's, usually there's somebody in this modern world, there is somebody that either has constructed something or made something, whether it be art, graphics or music, or they're like, someone is doing a job that is, like, making the world work. And in that discussion that I was having with those with that group of friends. I was like, we were talking about, like, a, like, a random job. I forgot what it was like exactly, but I was like, it doesn't now that we've talked about all this, like, it doesn't surprise me that there's a job that that that has to get done, that someone has to do that. But if he would have asked me 10 minutes ago, like, I wouldn't have known that that was a thing. And said, like, you just recently said, like, a convention about that kind of stuff. I'm like, if you would have asked me earlier today that there was a, what
Shanna
was it called, national Funeral Directors Association convention, I
Ian
would have never known that was probably a thing. But like, when I think about it now, I'm like, Well, of course that there's, like, a place for all you guys get together and figure out what to do.
Shanna
And I would think, how. On these guys earlier we had, I want to say it was about 303 50 vendors that are there. And so when you look at that, you have vendors for vehicles, our horses, our transport vehicles. You have your casket vendors. You have your earned vendors. You have the vendors who do insurance. So we sell a lot of pre needs and stuff like that. You have clothing, they still sometimes sell the clothing. You have the jewelry. You have
Stoney
a formaldehyde guy. Yes, you
Shanna
have your chemicals, you have your makeups you had so, I mean, it was just a huge, huge convention of all
Stoney
different I mean, how many you think attended that not the vendors. But I want
Shanna
to say, someone said, the first night that it opened, with the opening ceremonies, there was about 7000 funeral directors. Yeah,
Stoney
when you said there was 15,000 Yeah, in the work in the country, so that means half of the funeral directors showed up. Goodness, gracious.
Jason
I'm looking at this as the wages, wages for mortician in the highest group that has the highest average sour Asians, according to this stats. And mortician wage gap by race, and they have Asians. They're almost at 93,000
Ian
Are you mean like in America? You mean, like in like Asian countries, no,
Jason
just, just in general. So according to our data, Asian morticians have the highest average salary compared to other ethnicities.
Stoney
Well, the Asians put a lot into their burials and their service. There's a lot that goes into that.
Jason
A lot very elaborate. It's very elaborate.
Shanna
Um, their customs are amazing. It's going to be usually a couple of days, instead of a traditional Caucasian a lot of times one day, just do one day. Let's get it done. Get it over with. Wow, they're, they're going to put a lot into that service, into their loved one. Well,
Jason
I mean, it's, I've, I've seen it change since, I mean, just since my daddy died. I mean, that funeral was, I think it was at least two days, really. Now I've seen more and more. It's the day funeral, right? Your service and you're done. I mean, it's definitely shortened out of time. Now, I think a lot of it's probably driven by cost.
Shanna
I don't, I don't believe it's driven by cost, though. I believe it's driven by people are just in a hurry. Oh,
Jason
that could be too
Shanna
see that. Yeah, I have a sales rep that I'm very close to. His son passed away a couple years ago, and he he's given classes speeches on this, but he did a visitation the night before, and the amount of people that came through that visitation the night before was just amazing, because half of those people couldn't have come the next day, right? And again, the people are coming for the family. And you know, he talks about how important that was. If he would have been in a hurry and just did everything in that one day, he would have probably missed some very
Ian
beautiful he
Shanna
would have missed some very beautiful opportunities. But also the people that showed up, they met, they would have missed that opportunity. Yeah, if you're able. I went to a visitation a couple of weeks ago, I did not know the person. I knew, the daughter in law, that was it, right? But I went, I paid my respects, I signed the register book, and I left, and that right there. That's a big deal. I feel like
Stoney
things are like that. Now, weddings and funerals used to take a week. You had a wedding, it would go on for a week, right?
Shanna
We'd have a whole weekend of celebrations and stuff like, then it went to a weekend.
Stoney
And then now the funerals are kind of the same thing in Indonesia, they don't prep the body, they allow the body to decompose in the home, and this goes on for a week or two, and that's part of the thing is to make it to the end where it smells the most. Thank you. Wow. And it's kind of particular to make sure you make it to that point.
Shanna
Okay, that's something that people are never going to forget. Yeah,
Jason
I don't know about all that. I don't think I'd want to
Ian
everybody's across
Stoney
the world, a lot, you know, the sky burials in Tibet. I mean, there's so many different things that people, oh, yeah, every death, yes, yes. Each culture is significantly different.
Jason
People who burn, yeah, you think of the, you know, like, like, the pyre, you know. I mean, it's
Stoney
early cremation. Yeah, right, yeah. And, you know, I have to start looking at cremation now, because that's probably my last chance for a smoking hot body. So
Ian
you keep it unless your
Jason
husband, there's always made that joke more than once and he keeps telling always a little joke there,
Ian
of course, well, there's
Shanna
always the um. Um, you know, the little old man that walks in and said, I bet the people are just dying to see you, dying to get in here and have to laugh at them. And yes, or the pallbearers when you're going to, you know, pin their boutonnieres and they want to jump back and, you know, think that you've nicked them. And,
Ian
of course, yeah, not the first, not but it's, but it's always, it's usually
Shanna
a daily occurrence. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Ian
I get that. Well, this was, I think, a very lovely conversation. I really appreciated this. This was really cool to see. And like I said, to tie back that other the conversation I've had before, there's a lot of, there's a lot in this industry and in this world that you're talking about, that I'm almost sure that I'm not aware of, but hearing you talk about it all now, it makes sense why there. There is a lot of people,
Shanna
right? And that's why I think I really started to talk like a mortician, because I want people to be able to ask me questions and me to be real to them. Of course, so many people will walk into a funeral home and think that funeral home is out to get their money, and we're not, you know, we do have overhead expenses, just like anybody else, but
Stoney
and now it's against the law to bury them in your backyard. So you kind of have to go through a funeral home at this point in time, right?
Shanna
I mean, you're able to, but you have to go through the right procedures and get the right permits and all of that stuff. And I want to say, if you do get all the right permits, you're not allowed to sell that land, of course, anymore.
Jason
It would bother me to live on a cemetery human remains there.
Shanna
Correct, correct. But, yeah, definitely. I want to, you know, educate, of course, take some of the, what was the old wives tale? Oh, you were talking about the hair and the nails still grow it, you know, just to cut some of those old wives, tells that people.
Stoney
So basically, what you're saying is the hair and nails don't continue to grow. Continue to grow. So how does it look like it? You know, go into that. How does it look like the hair grows and the nails continue? So
Shanna
because of the cold of the body, your skin actually decreases it. What is the word
Ian
constricts? It
Shanna
kind of constricts and stuff
Stoney
like that. So shrinks, shrinks, the moisture, leaves. It just kind of,
Shanna
so if some a lady just had her roots redone, it's gonna show the rest of the roots. If I shave my legs and walk outside my legs at all. So that's really, that's where the old wives tale comes in. Your it does not continue to grow. I have never seen somebody sit up, really. People say that all the time. I have never met a funeral director or mortician, an undertaker that has ever had somebody sit up. Most of the time. If you hear that story, it's going to be a maintenance worker that worked in the hospital, and it's usually one
Stoney
of those other maintenance workers messing with them well, and they're, they're just,
Shanna
they like to go back and tell that story, like I went into the or, you know, just kind of be the cool uncle or something. But we've never had anybody our story a campfire story, or a fish and tail, you know, my fish was this big. So, yeah, there's quite so, just to debunk some of those, and that's cool, just
Stoney
educate was there anything else you'd like to let our listeners know we were talking
Shanna
about pre planning, the amount of people that kind of do that. So pre planning going into a funeral home. There's certain things that I want for my funeral that my family might not realize. So if you're able to do that, that's absolutely amazing. You're able to prepay your funeral. If you go into a funeral home and prepay your funeral today, and you don't pass away for another 20 years, nothing changes that prices you're paying today's prices were in 20 years, those prices are probably going to increase. So that's really, really good. A lot of people think that their life insurance policy is going to take care of that, and since actually COVID came through, the life insurance policies don't work really well with funeral homes.
Stoney
That's good to know. What
Shanna
they do is they'll say it's going to take us six to 10 days, business days to verify this policy, so a funeral home can't necessarily just take the word of the family. I've had families come in and say grandma Jay put me as the beneficiary. What that person didn't realize is, two months ago, cousin Jay came through and needed a fix and changed it, had it changed, and it doesn't go to them. So there's so many other different things. You know, a funeral home has to be paid. We can do a service. We can bury a body, but if we don't get paid, we're not going to go like Corley. What are we going to do? We can't go dig them back up. I mean, we could, but who would want to do that? So we do try to, you know, of course, we're going to make sure our funds are there. So there are some insurance companies that are great to work with, but there are some that just give the family the run around, and that's really, really aggravating. So this is
Stoney
something people need to research. And. Get educated on you.
Shanna
You really need to call your funeral home, because I had a family yesterday that actually said my insurance agent, and it wasn't like, what state farm or anything like that. It was one of the knocking on your door. Insurance Agents said that everything is going to be taken care of instantly with the funeral home. And when we called, they said it's going to be, I want to say that was the time. It was six to 10 business days before we can verify anything, and then it's got to go to claims, and then it's got to go to all that. And this family had really expected that that was what was going to take care of it. So that's a big thing. But even, even as far as the pre planning. You know, Grandma Jay might not want, and I refer to everybody as Jay, right, right? Everybody's gonna be Jay. Grandma Jay doesn't like to talk about her funeral arrangements. So when she passes and you're sitting in front of me, and I'm like, What kind of songs do you want? Yeah, what do you think she would want as a casket? You don't know. So there's little questions that you can ask. You know if you're sitting there having a conversation, and say, what's some of your favorite songs? You can write that down, even though you're not going to a funeral home, pull your phone out, get some of that information, and it makes it a little bit easier when that time comes. Yeah,
Ian
I've had, I've had to jump through some hoops to get some some very cherished family photos on that slideshow before. It was not, not easy, but I was like, but, you know, I I either knew the family or was close to them or whatever. And was like, I can, I can do a little bit extra work. And I'm trying to be accommodating, because I know that not everyone has the technological know how. So they just, they'll get them to me however they can, and I'll make it happen. And I want
Shanna
to say statistics, yeah, someone said, When you come sit in front of a funeral director for arrangements, there's over 200 questions that we're going to ask you. And if you don't, you know right? When we need vital statistics. For mom, who we need to know who her father was, who died when she was two years old, we need to know that. For the death certificate, we need to know where he was born. You know, there's so many different questions that families just really don't understand. And then it's overwhelming at that point, because you've just suffered the death, you're having to plan a funeral, and we're needing all this information. So that's another thing to even just it makes
Stoney
you feel even worse that you don't know this kind of stuff, on top of losing the person, and now I should
Shanna
know, I should know where my mom was born.
Ian
And then doesn't help that the insurance company is giving you the runaround.
Shanna
Yeah? So there's, there's all different kinds of things.
Stoney
200 questions, huh? Wow,
Shanna
it's about between 150 and 200 questions, because we're asking, What day would you like the service? Who's going to be your minister? Do you have other people that are going to speak at the service? Who are your pallbearers? Right? Um, what kind of flowers did they like? There's, there's so many different questions that we and, you know, we have one shot to do a funeral. We have one shot, yeah, a wedding. We can redo a wedding, if we need to. We can redo a birthday party, anything like that. We have one shot to make this right. So we're manipulative, meticulous on everything, because we want it perfect. We don't have a do over,
Ian
wow. That's a good point. I didn't think about Wow, yeah, that's right,
Stoney
wow, man, wow.
Ian
Well, again, thank you for so much for coming out and having this conversation with us. This, like I said, this like I said, this was a long time in the making, and I was looking forward to it for those Is there any do you want to send anybody to it towards your your stuff? Or do you have any?
Shanna
Absolutely, you can find me on any social media platform as talk like a mortician. I'm more than willing to answer any of your questions. There's nothing that is too silly or too off the wall, and I will help love that.
Stoney
And if you ever want to come back here and do another show like this, will be the week after Halloween. If you ever want to do one before Halloween, some spooky story stuff too. I do have one more question, and I don't know if we can ask this. And if we can't just say we can't ask this.
Shanna
Okay,
Stoney
there's a lot of stuff on social media right now about funeral directors finding big clots in people since the shot, okay. Have you found this out?
Shanna
Yes, yes. So we have found so when someone passes away, sometimes their blood does clot since the vaccine shot has come out, we have found these. It's, we call it the COVID clot. It is a very long rubber Bandy type clot that comes almost in a rubber band color, you know, a very pale color, not like a traditional dark red clot, very long, kind of tapeworm, looking, yes, very vain. Is where you can see where it's gone through this circulatory system. We can almost, of course, we can't ask a family, has your loved one been vaccinated? But we can, we can tell when we. Start that involved process. From
Stoney
you heard it here on the retrospect podcast. Yes,
Shanna
we definitely can tell. And I will say this, a lot of neurologists, a lot of pediatricians are actually now looking into it. They're coming to us and asking us, as in Palmers, what are we seeing? Do we think this is all so they're, they're they're, they're understanding that something's happened. Something's happening, yeah, whether it was from the vaccine or whether it was from COVID or right, right, something did change around that time. Yeah, interesting.
Stoney
Okay, sorry to throw that in. I wanted to get that question, especially if
Ian
we couldn't answer it. You go,
Shanna
yeah. But thank you guys so much.
Stoney
Did you have fun?
Shanna
I did. I
Jason
had a blast. This was a good one, and we're so
Stoney
sorry that you have such a far drive to get home. I
Shanna
know I'm gonna have to walk about. I don't even think it's 100 feet.
Ian
Well, as per usual, for you guys trying to, you know, reach out to us. Can
Stoney
I say one more thing, you know, normally you feel good when a police officer lives next door, or a fireman or a doctor. I'm not exactly sure I feel about having the mortician live next door. I mean, insurance rates go down that there's a fire department a block away. I'm just saying. All
Ian
I'm hearing from the end of this episode is you're gonna be taken care of, right,
Stoney
right. At least somebody may cry for me,
Ian
like I said before, if you're trying to reach out to us, we have an email address get offended together@gmail.com, where you can give those long form answers. But we also have all kinds of social media usually, usually you can find us at at retrospect pod or forward slash retrospect pod and all the major platforms, as we've been saying recently, if you are a listener of Pandora, we recently just got on Pandora. So anybody out there who wants to get involved there or and we're upset that we weren't on there we are now. So go ahead.
Stoney
That's exciting too. That's
Jason
exciting. Great news. Another
Ian
long thing in the making.
Stoney
We often avoid talking about death, but today's conversation reminds us that it is an essential part of the human experience, as we saw in the unique burial practices across the world, the way we say goodbye reflects what we value most in life. So as you leave this episode, consider how would you like to be remembered, and how might your choices echo the legacy you hope to leave behind
Ian
until next time. Thank you so much for listening. Bye, bye,
Jason
Goodbye everyone. God bless.
Shanna
Have a great one
Stoney
thank you for hanging out with us today. You're the best. Peace.