Dr. Thanatos
Yep, GA
Female, 99
I graduated from funeral college, where I took classes like color theory, funeral service history, grief psychology, & microbiology, to name a few. I am a licensed funeral director and embalmer. I am also experienced in cremation practices.
People's skin can turn a wonderful rainbow of colors after they've passed. Assuming they are of a lighter complexion, the deceased can become very pale, very cyan blue, very dark red/purple in the face (especially if they've had a heat attack), green, or in special cases of jaundice, just exactly as yellow as a Simpson's character. Even people with darker skin tones can have these color issues, but it's a little less noticable because their skin isn't so translucent.
In the case of being pale, blue, or green, embalming will take care of that. The embalming fluid rinses out the vessels, while depositing subcutaneous dyes that are usually either tinted pink, to recreate the effect of blood flow under the tissues, or they're sort of a peachy orange color, which is very helpful for people with more of an olive skin tone and creates a bit of a tanned effect. This happens not only in the face, but all over the body, which helps makes things like the arms and hands look a little bit more pleasant for viewing.
In the case of being a deep red or purple in the face, it is rather tricky. This is usually known as livor mortis, or post mortem stain. It happens when the blood has pooled in one place in the body for several hours, and the hemoglobin (the stuff that makes blood red) has been released from the blood cells and is now trapped in the skin. This stain will not come out, or will only rinse out minimally. This can happen anywhere on the body. In this case, yes, make up will be necessary to recreate a more accurate and pleasant complexion.
In the case of jaundice, or being very very yellow, special embalming fluids are used to help rectify this problem. Embalming fluids come in different concentrations of formaldehyde. I like to compare it to the proof of different alcohols. A higher proof will contain more formaldehyde and will be stronger, while a lower proof will contain less formaldehyde and will be more gentle. For jaundice, lower proof fluids are used in large amounts, and the vessels are rinsed, letting the fluid cycle into and then out of the body and down the drain. This literally rinses the jaundice coloring out of the body, and when you are finished, the yellow discoloration will be almost, if not entirely, gone. If an embalmer was to accidentally embalm a jaundice body with medium to strong fluid, it would turn the body a deep, stained green, much like the Jolly Green Giant. This green is very bad news, and can only be fixed with a fair layer of cosmetics.
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Some things do waste away fairly rapidly. Bones, though, will remain (at least partially) for decades. You can see things in bones like breaks/fractures, or bullet holes. I'm not really trained to check bodies for evidence, though. That may be more of a question for the forensic scientist on here :)
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I don't know a better way to describe this, but they're just so dead. When the reality of this person being dead is right in front of you, it's almost hard to believe that they have ever moved before. Now if you're asking about ghosts or anything like that, everyone has their own beliefs about the afterlife. I don't personally think one way or the other about an afterlife, but I am not going to deny that one or two strange things have happened when I'm completely alone in the funeral home. 99.9% of the time, it's completely normal. There have been a handful of times, though, when I hear a door close and when I go to investigate to see who's come in, I'm still alone. And once, I left the embalming room and came back a moment later, and a cabinet door was open that I certainly hadn't had a reason to open that day.
So to answer your question, no, it's not really scary; but sometimes it's a tiny bit creepy.
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I have to say, in the few years that I've been embalming, this is the only time that a mistake like this was made. An embalmer double and triple and quadruple checks everything before they start, checking things like identity, making sure the paperwork has been signed by the next of kin stating that they authorize an embalming to be performed, etc. This one particular time, though, the embalming room had been very busy that day, and we were embalming one body after another. I was assisting in embalming, not in charge, so it was not my decision whether or not to embalm different bodies. The head embalmer was in charge of checking paperwork and things like that. So, we were embalming this woman, and we were about halfway done when the phone in the embalming room kept ringing over and over. The phone in the embalming room rings whenever the funeral home is called, and there's another phone at the front desk, so there's no reason really to answer that phone while you're embalming unless it's an emergency, so no one was picking it up. But it kept ringing over and over, so finally, one of the funeral directors came in from the other room and answered it. They spoke to the person on the other line for maybe 20 seconds, then called the head embalmer into the other room to speak to the person on the other line. It turned out the person on the other line was one of the managers, asking if it was true that we were embalming the woman that we were currently embalming. The embalmer said yes, she was almost finished. Apparently, not only was the woman not supposed to be embalmed, but she was a member of the Orthodox Greek church, so she really really wasn't supposed to be embalmed. All we could do was stop what we were doing and clean up our mess. As far as I know, the embalmer was fired, because that is one grievous error that could have been so easily prevented.
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Thanks!! It actually was not what I always wanted to do. My parents always expected their kids to go to college, but I really had no idea what I wanted to go to school for. I had a list of schools to check, mostly cosmetology and aesthetic schools. I'd heard of the state funeral school, and I put it on my list; half as a joke, half because I was really just curious. The open house ended up being so interesting, and everyone there was so helpful and friendly, I settled on trying it out. I loved it, and I actually ended up being pretty good at it. So here I am today :)
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In school, we take a couple different classes to help us generally understand the human psyche and the grieving process. Not everyone follows through every step of the grieving process, or sometimes they do but it's out of order, but to be knowledgable about it and to know what to expect helps tremendously when trying to help people out. As far as being emotional vs. remaining professional, that is sort of up to the funeral home's preference. Some businesses prefer their employees to be very compassionate, very sympathetic toward their families, while other businesses would rather you remain more professionally-minded and take on the situation as a leader and as a person these people can depend on.
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A lot of people seem surprised when I tell them about what I do. I've heard stories from other funeral directors about people being grossed out or even afraid of them once they hear what they do for a living, but that's never happened to me personally. Almost every time that I mention my work, I immediatly get of questions (like on here, lol) like "Isn't it really sad, though?" or "Aren't you scared or grossed out by that stuff??" People seem to be more curious than afraid, thankfully, and I obviously enjoy answering all kinds of questions.
As far as my romantic life, I was in a relationship before I even started funeral school. My girlfriend thought it was interesting when I told her what I'd be doing, and even though she nearly faints at the thought of blood, she hung in there all through nighttime study sessions, and I'm happy to say we're still together today. The only part of my job that really rubs any part of my relationship the wrong way is my call nights. As you can imagine, people don't just die between 9am-5pm. If you work in a funeral home, you will be on call sometimes, and you will be woken up in the middle of the night on multiple occasions. She doesn't hold it against me or anything, but I'm certain she would prefer that my phone didn't ring over and over and over some nights.
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