Not as sure...

There are days that I just don't know. Days like today, when I find out that an old friend's young daughter passed away last summer on my birthday. Days when I wonder what experience I have--what gives me the right--to be involved with the grief of strangers.

The thing is...

We're all in a constant state of loss.

Driving home tonight from a late night outing with friends, a few moments combined to remind me of past times--a past where I was really happy and life was a lot simpler than it is now.

And then I thought about a few days ago, driving to work when I came up the hill and saw the horizon and the sunrise, and I could actually see the curve of the earth, and it took my breath away. The smallness of what we are, the minuscule role we play in a universe that is a great collection of minuscules trying to be bigger than they are. It made me sad.

And I'm sad tonight. I'm sad because I'm looking forward to a life full of death. Every loss is magnified for me now: the loss of friends (physically or conceptually), the loss of time, loss of age, even potential loss like looking at my darling Gatsby and knowing that one of us will eventually have to live without the other.

I'm questioning everything I feel--both physically and mentally. My stress is manifesting itself in pretty significant physical ways, and I feel like I'm not being honest with it--trying to make it something that it's not. People are trying to help me but I'm not giving them all of the facts. I wonder if it's in my head....and I know it isn't. I wonder if I'm being a big baby...and I know that pain is pain and it's individual.

And the more I think about it, the more I wonder if I can handle a life of death. I want to--the desire is not a question. But, how can I deal with death in a professional way, help others deal with it, when I can't even manage my own feelings?

From English teacher, part 2

Last Saturday I went out for lunch with a former student, Zach. I first met Zach during his senior year in the winter of 2004, just a few short months after his younger brother had been killed in a car accident. One of our first conversations was about his brother because the first class assignment is on The Scarlet Ibis, a story about a boy and his brother's death. I remember that I wanted to give him the option to do an alternative assignment, but when I was talking to him I couldn't look him in the eye.

Zach became one of my favorite students. Teachers try not to have favorites, but the fact is it's just like any other type of job where you get along with some people really well, just click with them. Zach and I have a lot in common, and the strength he showed after his brother's death taught me a lot. He turned in an 'assignment' to me once, an essay about his brothers (there are five boys in all) and it still today is the most moving piece of writing I've ever read by a student. He became my student aide, and we've kept in touch since his graduation in 2005.

When we were chatting over lunch, he told me that I had impacted him and that I was one of the best teachers he had ever had. Let me tell you...that means something. I know I can't change every life I encounter--I teach almost 500 kids a year--but to know that I did change a life, for the better, gives me pause.

There is an honor in the title "teacher." I have always identified myself as a teacher, and I hope that even in my capacity as a funeral director I will be able to "teach"--to help people look at something in a new way, to guide them, to give them the tools and knowledge they need in order to become something more than what they were before I met them. But, there's a huge difference between spending a year with someone and cultivating that level of trust and admiration required for real teaching to take place. Can I do it with someone who is in crisis? In a few days? I don't know. And if I can't, it's the number one thing I'll miss about teaching. Hands down.

An Introduction

Welcome to 'Death Becomes Her,' my blog that will capture all of the ups and downs of my journey to change careers from a high school English teacher to a funeral director. Going back to school at age 31 on the other side of the classroom and working in math/science/business areas rather than literary subjects promises to be very interesting.

The first question most everyone has asked as I've "come out" with my decision to become a funeral director is "WHY?"

My answer:
I've always been fascinated with death and feared it on a higher level than most people. I didn't go to a funeral until I was 24 years old. Once I started, though, I suddenly found myself going to a lot of them. Former students, current students, grandparents, friends of the family, parents of students...all told at the current time I've been to nearly 30 funerals in the last seven years.

Death, at least the idea of it, kept creeping into my fiction writing. Finally, when my grandma died in January of '05, I bit the bullet and asked the funeral director, Mark, to give me a tour of the place. I told him (and I believed this myself) that I was researching a story. I now realize that I was actually researching a career.

I put it out of my head until late 2006 when several events pulled together to push me in the direction of funeral directing:

1. I applied for the MFA program at the University of Minnesota and did not get in.

2. On a staff development day, we had to fill out a questionaire that asked the question "if you didn't teach, what other job would you want to have?" My answer: funeral director.

3. Pressure to get into a master's program finally reached a boiling point when I didn't get into the U of M. I looked at several schools and nothing seemed to fit right. Everything was a struggle.

4. A friend of my grandma died in the summer of 2007 and I went to her wake. Mark, the aforementioned funeral director, gave me some literature on the University of Minnesota's mortuary science program.

Once I made the decision to explore mortuary science, everything seemed to fall into place. The program is possible, affordable, and, after a few pre-requisite classes that I can take at Normandale Community College, totally doable.

That's the basic story of how I decided to go into mortuary science. There are, of course, a lot of feelings that I have on the subject of death care and funerals that aren't covered above, but I'll get into those.