Poole Funeral Home: Beyond the service

The present: What all happens at the funeral home? (Poole Funeral Home Series: 2/3)

In my own life, I've only been to a funeral home to attend a funeral. Appreciatively, I've never been involved in the planning process and so I've never gone beyond the visitation and service spaces. It's always felt taboo to want to know details about the funeral process-- just like the general topic of death is generally spoken about in hushed tones within American culture.

This class and my meeting with Patrick Poole was the perfect reason to ask for the curtain to be pulled back. What all goes on in a typical funeral home?

Turns out, there's a lot to it. There's the conversations with the family and friends. Calls that could come in 24/7. There's the coordination with medical and legal professionals and offices. The paperwork. There's the transport of the bodies to the home. The preparation and care of them. The service. Comforting the bereaved. The transport of the bodies, again. 

So, if you are also interested in having the curtain pulled back on funeral preparation and practices, I invite you read further and learn from my walkthrough of the Poole Funeral Home & Crematory.

The Call

A family may call at any point in the day, or night, to inform the funeral home that someone has passed. Pat shared that he's often been woken up in the middle of the night by such a call, and even if he may be groggy, he answers. A family shouldn't have to leave a message for something like that if it can be avoided, he said. He'd then arrange for when to retrieve the body, usually as soon as possible, which also sometimes meant in the middle of the night.

The Meeting

In my first Poole Funeral Home blog post, I spoke of the sitting room-- which was the first place Pat brought me when I arrived. This is the same space that he and families sit down "the old fashioned way" and plan a funeral when they first arrive.

The room has a small table and couch in it. When I got there, the table was covered with tons of papers, from legal documents to cemetery arrangements, death certificates to flower order forms, cremation forms to grief resources and pamphlets.

In addition to working through paperwork and talking about what the service will look like, the Poole funeral home has a showroom complete with urns, caskets, and concrete boxes for families to choose from to house their loved one's remains.

In terms of urns "I've put people in pretty much anything you can think of," Pat said. Humidors, whiskey bottles, cookie jars, and tackle boxes are just a few he named. 

In terms of burial, there are urn options which are made to decompose along with the body. "Some people like the whole ashes to ashes thing," he said.

For caskets, there were similarly many options. Different woods and materials. There was even an option of a reusable casket, where a body was placed in a cardboard box, then slid into the coffin for the service, then removed to be cremated or placed in another container for burial. "Some people don't like the idea of someone else using the same casket... but they did but they didn't," Pat said when he explained that one to me.

Something which I was unaware of was that before burial, all caskets were placed into another container made of concrete. He showed me a diagram explaining why that had become the norm. Basically, it helps maintain the structure of the ground that the bodies are placed into, so that there aren't cavings in the ground where bodies have been buried.

The Preparing

Also in the basement is the prep room, where the bodies are embalmed and prepared for the service. "Embalming preseves and disinfects the bodies," Pat said. The funeral industry, he pointed out, has survived many illnesses. AIDS, Covid, Tuberculosis, the Flu Epidemic, etc. Embalming is what makes sure that people who have contact with the body are safe.

When his grandfather used to do the embalming he never even wore gloves "which just goes to show how much the industry has changed since then," Patrick noted. 

Basically, embalming involves the draining of all fluids from the body. Then a hose-like pump is used to distrubute chemicals through the body in the way that the heart would. Typically, he takes about two days to properly embalm the body.

Preparing also includes the washing of the body and hair, dressing, and styling. Someone usually comes in to style the hair and do someone's makeup, if that's desired. He dresses the bodies with whatever the family gives him, as long as they fit. People aren't necessarily always dressed in their 'Sunday best' nowadays. "I've dressed people in Packers jerseys," Pat said.

The Cremation

Cremation can occur before or after the funeral service, though my understanding is that it typically takes place afterwards. This is also done in-house at the Poole Funeral Home. In the garage, there is a cremation chamber where a body is placed to be cremated. Pat described it as essentially a giant kiln. Depending on the body, it usually takes about three and a half hours for it to be reduced to skeleton in the chamber. Then the bones are placed in a large metal grinder and ground into an ash-like powder and mixed in with the actual ashes. I think that this was the most unexpected and jarring thing I learned from my visit.

The Transport

Tranportation of the dead occurs throughout this process. The body must initially be retrieved for its place of death and brought to the funeral home to be prepared. If the service was elsewhere, whether that be accross town or accross the country, the Poole Funeral Home would handle the transportation. After the ceremony, in the case of burial, the remains are again transported to the cemetery. 

Pat has two vehicles for transporting bodies-- a classic hearse and a mercedes van. Last summer, I recalled that my roommate and him went on a road trip to Pittsburg since he had to transport a body and organize a funeral there. He pointed to the mercedes and said that's what he took. 

I asked where else he's transported bodies to/from. He said that he's done funerals accross the midwest, Pennsylvania, Missouri and other spots in the continental United States. He also said that he's had to coordinate air transit before too-- flying bodies in from vacation and picking them up at the airport.

Throughout my tour and conversation with Patrick, I was struck by the profound depth and care that goes into this line of work. Peering behind the curtains of Poole Funeral Home & Crematory revealed a tapestry of compassion, meticulous organization, and unwavering support woven into every aspect of the funeral process.

It's interesting to think about how much time and resources are invested into our care of the dead. But then again, Pat directed most of his comments towards accommodating and supporting the living-- so I wonder who these funerary rituals are truly for?

December 19, 2023