Any people here in the funeral industry? Anyways. There's no greater gift you can give a family than doing a good job presenting their loved one in the casket, if your job is in that line of work. It shows you cared. And they do notice. But (not to get graphic) pay attention to how you seal the eyes/mouth. It you do a bad job, it makes adults angry. And it traumatizes children. I'm not kidding. Singer Madonna saw her mother's lips sewn in the casket in 1963. And it still bothered her when the song "Oh Father" came out in 1989. I guess sealing the eyes/mouth is not easy. So pay special attention to it always.
Today they use superglue on the eyelids and inner lips, plastic shields behind the eyelids to keep them plump. The jaw pretty much holds the lips closed and that's either sutured through the top and bottom gums or they shoot pins from bottom to top....kind of like a nail gun. What a rather macabre custom, propping up someone's body in a box for all to view and say "my, don't they look nice...". Not for me. Funny, a good friend in high school, rather much the class clown, went off to study embalming....we were all like you have GOT to be kidding....but no, now he's got his own business. Got his start by washing and cleaning the cars at a nearby funeral home after school..
Ewww....that funeral director should have been drummed out of the business. My mother in law dated the local small town funeral director for like ten years after her husband died... all kinds of macabre stories....family business for almost 100 years....what a racket, too. As a kid, our house was directly across the street from a big funeral home.....I was always waiting for someone to trip on the six or eight stairs bringing the casket out to the hearse...you'd think they'd have figured something better out. Even with six of us, that thing is heavy. Nope. Not doing that.
