Chatting to corpses, stitching up eyelids and make-up of death… our lives as British morticians
It may be the final taboo, but for these morticians, death is just part of everyday life
"I AM really sorry for what you've been through," Debbie Homewood says quietly, as she brushes the hair of her daughter's 15-year-old friend, who just died in a car crash.
She's one of hundreds of British morticians who spend their days glamming women up for their funerals.
Her clientele ranges from teenagers who have died in tragic accidents, to women who have suffered with cancer and elderly ladies, whose hair Debbie, 49, dyes over the sink in the local funeral home.
She uses the dead women’s own make-up, including fake lashes and their own shade of lipstick to make them look as lifelike as possible.
But the process of preparing the dead can be heart-breaking.
Debbie reveals she sometimes cries for hours over the bodies of young girls and mothers and says preparing people for funerals after violent deaths can be just as difficult.
For loved-ones, people like Debbie are the angels of death behind every funeral home who bring people "back to life" for their family to say goodbye.
It's a vital, if morbid, service.
Here, three British morticians bare all.
'Putting dead bodies in mini skirts isn't appropriate'
Debbie, a trained make-up and hair artist first became a beautician for the dead after losing her own grandmother and grandfather 22 years ago.
“The way my nan’s make-up had been done for her funeral gave my mum so much comfort and I wanted to change people’s lives, too,” she tells The Sun Online.
“I have become used to seeing dead bodies, although sometimes it can be incredibly hard.
"Recently, one of my teenage daughter’s friends died suddenly when she was run over roadside after getting out of a cab.
“Her face was bruised and swollen but her mum wanted to see her. I cried for hours over her body – she was just 15 - but how could I refuse? I brushed her hair as I would my daughter's.”
Despite these sad moments, Debbie says her job is her passion, and she always makes light conversation with her "customers" as she works on them.
Make-up for funerals is usually only needed for an open casket or when relatives have requested to see the body at a funeral home.
By this stage, the embalming process - a treatment in which the body is preserved via injection with a chemical solution - has been completed, so the body’s eyes are shut and their mouth has been stitched closed.
“I will always talk to the bodies," she says. "I tell them what I’m doing as I go along, and if they have very evident injuries, like broken bones or tell-tale signs of illness like discoloured skin, I just say: 'I’m so sorry you had to go through this.'
“I have used embalming packs on faces, where the death has been particularly violent, or an illness has altered their facial features in drastic ways. It’s just like a face pack I leave on overnight and plumps up their skin.”
Debbie’s job also involves dressing the bodies with items of clothing family have brought in.
“About a month ago, I had two ladies, one of 26 and one of 38, both whom had young children," she says.
"They had both died of cancer and I put a special wig on one of them, and the other had requested she was buried in her wedding dress."
As her job can often be very upsetting, Debbie says a pinch of dark humour is sometimes needed, too.
“Sometimes I’ll get myself into a real pickle. The family will send in clothes that are far too small or large and I’ll have to cut bits and bobs here and there. Sometimes outfits, like mini-skirts, are just not appropriate for a dead body,” she says.
“Once a family also requested that their loved-one wore fake eyelashes. In life she had used the same pair about 20 times so I stood there for ages just trying to glue them on.”
She adds: “There are also the times where bodies move at the funeral home. It’s not quite like it sounds, but they do groan as they release gas so it’s just a little movement.”
'We sew up mouths and eyelids'
John Harris grew up around dead bodies and has worked as a funeral home director for as far back as he can remember.
His great-grandfather founded T. Cribb in 1841, and the company has now established a reputation for their effective embalming.
This is the process of flushing a body with preservative chemicals, including formaldehyde, which stops the body from decomposing.
The mouth is then sewn shut and eyelids are secured with "caps" – thick lense-like layers that stop your eyes from appearing shrunken.
John says certain formulas for embalming fluid are as coveted as the Coca Cola recipe, with some embalmed bodies lasting for over two years without decaying.
“We’ve made a name for ourselves because we can keep bodies for a long time in, for want of a better term, good condition," John says.
"Older formulas often made the body look very waxy and made them very stiff. Bodies now are very natural to touch."
John explains: “The fluid itself tends to be marked with a rose tinted colour, leaving the effect of a natural skin-tone in the deceased.
“Very often, when somebody has died from a long-term illness or through an accident and families have watched their relatives go through and deteriorate – the embalming process makes them look much more like they did before.
“The easiest way to describe embalming is like a blood transfusion. The fastest parts to discolour on the body are where blood flowed.
“When somebody dies, the blood reaches the lowest point. So if somebody’s face is laying to one side, that side of the face will be purple.
“So the idea is to use the arteries system of the body and flush everything out. It can take anything from an hour to several days, depending on the condition of the body.”
John's company preserves corpses from all over the world, including Ghana, where he has one of his many funeral parlours.
Here, bodies are often kept for months, and it isn’t unusual for relatives to ask for the body to be placed in the deceased’s favourite chair at home, so the family can pay their last respects.
“We once had a lady who sold roasted sweetcorn on the side of the road," John says.
"After she died, we prepared her body to sit in the exact position next to her sweetcorn-roaster, so locals could see her just as they remember."
However, the old joke about funeral workers always being in business isn't going to hold true forever.
"Now funerals can be so direct," John says. "You can send someone a body and a cheque and they’ll send you back a pot of ashes.
“I once spoke to a man whose mother died and he told me: 'Don’t do the funeral on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday, because I play tennis'.
That epitomises how life is now and the attitude to funerals – whatever is the most convenient.”
'Some people give out chocolate funeral favours'
Planning to go to university to study performing arts, life changed for Ellie Carr when she was offered a position at a funeral directors aged 19, and she has never looked back.
Now a funeral director at A.W.Lymn in Nottingham, Ellie says: “My mum is a palliative care nurse so death has never been a taboo in our family.
“I would find watching people suffer very distressing, but I love what I do. There is more control in helping people after death, and being there for their families.”
Ellie says the stereotype of funeral directors as the Morticia Addams-type, with long-black hair and an obsession with all things death couldn’t be further from the truth.
“It’s actually much more about helping people, there is a very old-fashioned view on the job sometimes,” she says.
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“There’s a lot more personalisation around funerals now. There are balloon releases, colourful clothing, and funeral favours are becoming popular.
“They can be chocolate, or something like memory seeds – it’s a really nice touch.”
“Making the experience so personal is something I take great pride in. I just treat people how I would like to be treated.”