life in the funeral home

By Cathy Caudill

Three hearses, four bodies. The American ideal of the nuclear family—a husband, a wife, and two children—were smothered by the black pall of tragedy in the blaze of a house fire.

Harlan “Skip” Wilson stood with the deceased man’s brother in the basement of his funeral home. Empty caskets on metal carts that looked like gurneys packed the room, lacquered and gleaming in elegant-but-subdued colors: mahogany, cherry wood, gunmetal grey, deep blue, and black. The human-sized boxes are lined in a pillowy layer of satin or silk, as if to guarantee the departed spirits a good-night’s rest in the afterlife.

Although Skip would never describe the life of a funeral director as “morbid,” cases like these left him with a heavy heart—in this business nothing is more despairing than the death of a child, but death of a whole family is a catastrophe. Skip studied the man as he circumnavigated the sea of caskets. He was a military man—a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army. After some thought, he selected the blue coffin (“sort of an unusual color,” Skip thought to himself)—one step in the grievous process of funeral planning completed.

Death: while many people diligently avoid thinking about this mysterious-but-inevitable future, Skip’s life has revolved around it—indeed, he feels that he is more aware of his mortality than the average person. He had grown up in this very funeral home—Wilson’s Funeral Home—founded by his father one generation before him. It was a quiet life—no running, no shouting, no loud music—but having known no other life, it all felt natural to him.

Skip has directed funerals for over 58 years, but his tenure in this far-from-typical family business extends into his childhood. “I started out climbing in the back of the hearses, sweeping the flowers out for my father when I was about 12,” he recollects. Now, at the wizened age of 79, Skip is a pseudo-retiree, still devoting a part of his week to the funeral home. “I guess I’m the consultant emeritus, or whatever.”

The business is nestled in the heart of Charleston, W. Va. in a three-story brick house built in the 1920s. The building is heavy with history—one can’t help but to feel the other-era atmosphere that permeates the premises. The elegant lamps outside once lit the grounds of the state capitol building, salvaged after it burned to the ground in 1921 (next time the government won’t store gunpowder in the basement below their offices). 

The chairs inside are framed in wood—curvy and polished, like an orchestra of elegant instruments—each padded with embroidered cushions, no two chairs looking alike. Funeral attendees rest upon these during visitation. It is sophisticated without being pretentious—the lived-in feel of the house counterbalances the sense of death that one might expect of a funeral parlor.

For Skip, the foremost duty of the funeral director is to simplify the process for the suffering family. In the funeral business, the director’s customers are often under a great deal of emotional stress. This is a job where people sometimes faint; a job where people will try to pry the lids off of closed caskets (“we’ve had some you’d think are gonna climb in the casket!” he chuckles). “[The business is] about helping the family. It’s a combination of helping them select the casket and arranging the funeral and getting the people in and out—little details that go into making the whole package work.”

Skip’s method of simplification stemmed from a revelation he received while working with the lieutenant. One year after the death of his brother and his family, the man returned to bury his wife’s father. Once again, Skip was standing with the man in the room of silk-lined caskets. At that moment Skip had a curious thought: he turned to ask, “Do you remember what casket you used for your brother last year?” The man took a moment to scan the room, finally pointing to a silver casket. Skip shook his head. “No, it’s the blue one you’re standing beside.”

Skip then thought to himself, “If this gentleman with a military background (here’s a person you know is observant) couldn’t even remember the color of the casket, much less which casket, what in the world is some poor little old lady who comes in here to bury her husband...what is she getting out of this? Very little, probably, that she’s going to be able to tell me in a month.” The clients are in such a mental state from the emotional duress that even some of the larger details of the funeral cannot be retained. 

From that point on, Skip personally began to simplify the details he would go over with the family, paring down the process to fit the two most important objectives: providing the desired aesthetic appeal, while keeping the costs within the customers’ necessary budget.

As he is able to pull the funeral together quickly and efficiently, the families of the deceased are free to grieve without having to worry about the many details that go into making funerals runs smoothly. Knowing that he is helping people in their greatest hour of need is what makes the funeral business worthwhile—indeed, that is what keeps this business of death from being morbid. “[I] feel rewarded when families say, ‘we appreciate what you did’ or ‘we don’t know how we would have gotten through this without you guys.’ I hope somebody treats me that way when I have the same situation.”