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| ��� Cherita Sawyer | |||||||||||||||||||
| ������� 11-23-07 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Life as a Funeral Home Director | |||||||||||||||||||
| ������ "I am the third generation in the family to be in this business," Mr. Patrick Piercy confides as he scratches his head.� It is ten o'clock on a Friday morning, and Mr. Piercy and another man are sitting together, discussing where to place the benches in the sanctuary.� �Mr. Patrick Piercy is five feet, five inches tall man, in his mid thirties, with short brown hair, and he wears black glasses. �He loves helping people when they are in need of help the most. �"I am in a business where you have to love, and have patience, and be compassionate for people you do not know," says Mr. Piercy. (In the business you get very close to people and you learn to love their families.) �Mr. Piercy has been in the business for eighteen years. �He started out as a missionary and later advanced to a funeral home director. �"We do more than just the funerals, we are interior designers, florists, beauticians, consultants and a ministers in some aspects," says Mr. Piercy while smiling. �"We have a multiple job descriptions." He has dealt with more natural deaths than anything else. �"When dealing with funerals, you will remember the death of a kid more than the death of an adult," Mr. Piercy confides.� | |||||||||||||||||||
| A few years ago, Mr. Piercy lost his own child. �"That was a very delicate time for me and my wife," Mr. Piercy sadly recalls.� No matter how much he was hurting, he still had to be strong for his wife and his family. �In the same year, he lost his grandmother. �Fidgeting and moving things around on his desk, Mr. Piercy recalls, "I remember my father saying, "This is the first time in my life that I have ever felt loss." This was the first time I had ever seen my father cry." | |||||||||||||||||||
| Mr. Piercy explains, "In order for you to be in the business of taking care of other people's loved ones, you have to get close to them." �And if you are doing the funeral, you have to make sure that everything is in order and that nothing gets messed up because you have to fix it right away if it does. �"His main goal in the business is to serve the families and to help them remember their loved ones as they were when they were joyful and smiling." And doing this will help the family to get through the grieving process a lot easier, says Mr. Piercy while rubbing his leg. He also tells the family to bring in pictures of their loved ones, and he puts them on video so that the family can watch it during the wake. �That way, they will see them and remember them while they were happy. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Today, Sunday, September 30, 2007, there is a funeral for a little boy who was two months old.� "It was very sad at first, but the preacher cheered everyone up during his sermon," Mr. Piercy states just after, dropping his head and looking down at the floor. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Mr. Piercy explains the embalming process. Before the embalming is done, if there are gasses in the body, and they move, it will cause the body to move. �Or if the muscles in the stomach contract, it will even cause the body to sit up.� While Mr. Piercy is explaining the process he is making hand gestures to show how they embalm the body. �The first thing to do is make an incision in the leg or in the neck. �Then we inject the embalming fluid, which preserves and disinfects the body. �Now we vacuum the corpse, removing all of the excess blood and body fluids. �This is not your normal vacuum that we use; this is a special vacuum, "Mr. Piercy adds. "Most people that go for nursing do not like to see the embalming done. This is not an easy process to do. You have to have a strong stomach that can take this, Mr. Piercy states as he paces around.� | |||||||||||||||||||
| After all of these things are done, everyone moves to the cemetery. "This is the saddest part of the whole process," says Mr. Piercy as a frown comes upon his face. He goes on to say, "It is the saddest because this is the last memory they will have of their loved ones before they are actually buried." In order to do this you have to have the heart for it. | |||||||||||||||||||
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