The Mortician’s Son
Back in college at The Ohio State University, I took a non-fiction writing course, and decided for one of the assignments that I would write a short memoir about growing up in a funeral home. My father was a mortician in a 4 generation family business, and my family lived in the house connected to the funeral home.
Whenever I recount a story from my childhood, people inevitably ask me, “Oh my gosh… What was it like growing up in a funeral home?” My response is, “It was just normal. When you see dead people from the time you’re born, you don’t think of it as strange or creepy.”
There are many stories that I’ve collected over the years of growing up in a funeral home, apprenticing with the family business and returning home over the holidays and pitching in to help when needed. But for this piece I wanted to answer the question above, and the selected vignettes represent my experience as a mortician’s son from the ages 4 through 8:
