As mortician Marshall Nelson walked down the hallway of a local
convalescent home Monday, going to visit his 99-year-old mother, he
was greeted with the usual jokes.
Hollister – As mortician Marshall Nelson walked down the hallway of a local convalescent home Monday, going to visit his 99-year-old mother, he was greeted with the usual jokes.
“Hey Marshall, what are you doing around here, drumming up business?” one man asked.
For the last 42 years, 34 in Hollister, Nelson and his business partner Tom Ament have heard all the jokes, made up some of their own and on a daily basis managed to stay sane while preparing the bodies of roughly 150 county residents a year for the after life.
“It’s funny, people will actually come in and tell stories like “I swear, my uncle sat right up out of his casket,” Nelson said. “That’s one thing we really don’t have to worry about here. When they’re dead, they’re dead.”
Because their funeral parlor, Grunnagle-Ament-Nelson, can be filled with laughter brought on by a funny eulogy, or tears and an overwhelming feeling of loss, Nelson said being a mortician/funeral director/event coordinator/embalmer isn’t the most laid back job.
“There is a fine line of showing compassion for families and their loss, but also being able to separate your life from theirs,” he said.
And while they might work on dead bodies on a daily basis, Ament said since they’ve been in the community for 34 years, the funerals they’ve been coordinating lately have been getting more personal.
“You know when we first got here, we we’re young and didn’t know many people, and now that we’ve been here for so long, we’re starting to see community members come in who we’ve known around town for years,” he said.
Nelson agrees.
“We’re starting to see the families of our children’s friends, people we’ve fished with, people we’ve barbecued with,” he said. “It gets much harder when you know the people who have died.”
Ament learned that the hard way several years back, when seven of his son’s friends, who were all in high school, were killed in a tragic accident.
“That was the toughest funeral I’ve ever been a part of,” Ament said. “Anytime you lose a child or a young person, it’s a tragedy.”
No matter how old the person is, Ament and Nelson go through the same process with each client. When a death is reported to the funeral home, they go out on what is called a “death call,” which means they drive over to a home or the hospital to retrieve the body of the deceased. After that, the family will come into the funeral home, and go through the planning process. Nelson and Ament help the loved ones write an obituary, pick out a casket, plan music, choose flower arrangements and finalize any other details they wish.
“Every family is unique, and our goal is to make things special for every one,” Nelson said.
During some point in the day, after the family has left, Ament and Nelson have to turn their emotional switch to off, and deal with the physical remains of the deceased. As they walk from their office to the back of the building, past each tissue box and electric candle on the wall, they’re preparing themselves to prepare others for the after life. As they exit the back door of the chapel, Nelson and Ament either head to the left and inside the prep room, which has yellow tinted walls and a big white drape to shelter their work space, to embalm, or they head to the right and into the crematory, which resembles a gigantic oven.
“There is a big trend right now of having a viewing of the body, but also being cremated, because people are so mobile and they’re not with their families anymore,” Nelson said. “But they still need the viewing because people want to be able to witness the fact that their loved one is gone. They need closure.”
Another trend that has surprised Ament, Nelson and other morticians, is the recent popularity of funeral related shows on television. Winner of numerous Golden Globes and Emmy’s, the HBO series Six Feet Under, got rave reviews from Ament and Nelson. The A&E channel’s reality show, Family Plots, however, did not.
“Six Feet Under is somewhat of a soap opera, but they hit on some issues that are really out there in our profession,” Ament said. “There was one episode where the undertaker’s wife had just given birth, and a baby’s body came in for him to prepare, and he had a real difficult time with it.”
While Six Feet Under is a drama, Family Plots is a reality show, based on the Poway-Bernardo Funeral Home, and, Nelson said, it gives morticians a bad name.
“I wasn’t too pleased with it,” he said. “I just don’t like the consensus in which the show is handled.”
Regardless of the trends in the business, Nelson and Ament said they continue to run their funeral home with compassion, and even after 34 years in Hollister, they get a lot of personal satisfaction from their work.
“This is a rewarding occupation,” Nelson said. “There is a lot of gratification that comes with respecting what the families wishes are. In life, you have control over almost everything, but you don’t have a choice in your death, so it’s a good feeling to know we’re helping the families get what they want.”
