Transcripts For ALJAZ Death In The Family 20171013

Turkey iran and russia more from al jazeera. Who is at the jewel of the goes to Border Crossing on the turkey syria border. The possible the operation is underway but the buildup continues here on the border with syria there are still more reinforcements and more vehicles getting into the military Turkish Military bases on the border with the promise of. Now the stated goal of turkey in operation is to try to see the province of the best part of the ceasefire agreement between the different opposition factions russia and the Syrian Government but the troops now that crossed into syria are stationed in an area of village called. Which is on the. Border on the border where this is a territory under the control of. The Syrian Kurdish faction it seems that the Turkish Military is trying to take advantage of its deployment inside syria to block the kurds from expanding west towards places like libya and so briefly turkey of two goals first of all material presence in the second and most important i think for them is to prevent a wipe easier from further expanding its. Kurdish forces in iraq are reportedly mobilizing after accusing baghdad of sending its forces to two areas near kurdish controlled oil fields close to the city of kirkuk the Iraqi Government has denied its planning a military attack on the kurdish controlled region of the country tensions have been rising between the two governments since the kurdish succession referendum last month stratford sent this report from bill in northern iraq. Sources in the city of kirkuk telling us that they are seeing evidence of Iraqi Military and shia militia forces moving towards peshmerga positions to the south and the west of the city they say to within two to three kilometers of those peshmerga positions the Kurdish Regional government saying that they are moving thousands of patient fighters down to kirkuk to defend against any potential attack the k r g saying that this represents an escalation now the head of iraqs joint military operations is denying that this Troop Movement represents any threat to that area we also know from Prime Minister hyder loud body who said that he sees no military solution to this crisis after that controversial referendum held on kurdish secession but he has also warned that Peshmerga Forces should not interfere with any Troop Movements in that area kirkuk of course a city that is hugely controversial very or oil rich and lies in the disputed area an area that was taken control of by the pressure in two thousand and fourteen after the Iraqi Military fled and islip fences and the kurdish authorities are saying that they will defend that city at all costs i will not give it back to iraq the federal government control us President Donald Trump is expected to finally announce whether hell uphold the Iran Nuclear Deal later on friday early in the trumpet ministration released a document outlining the problems it sees with you at home but the white house says its the culmination of nine months of discussions with congress and u. S. Allies russia says theyll be negative consequences if the u. S. Pulls out of the agreement more now from our diplomatic editor james bays. Every ninety days the u. S. President must certify to congress that they believe that the deal that was done this joint plan of action that it is in the interests of the United States donald trump as president every ninety days is certified yes its in the National Interest what were expecting in the next few hours is that for the first time hes going to announce no then he goes back to congress or basically is pushing it into congresss into the into their court and they then will get sixty days under the act that was passed by congress again nothing to do with the actual International Agreement and in that sixty days they have to decide whether to bring back the sanctions related to the Nuclear Program and those are your headlines so far today the news continues here after aljazeera correspondent. Once youve taken over these businesses in these small towns you are locked in for your career however many decades i last. I want to know his motivations in getting into the business i would like to know the conversations he had with my grandpa how he felt he realized this trend in our family i want to know what it was like for him when he first began working earnestly in the business if it was hard for him to get over these more difficult parts of it that i feared growing up if there was times where he doubted what he was doing if you could do it all over again and again said thank god its possible say yes but these are real questions for him of course because he had the same experience i had he grew up in the same dynamics that i grew up. Who else would be able to relate more to our feeling than him. I was so surprised the stooge youre seeing parents going through the series. He really probably would have wanted to be a hockey player. Thats funny because thats what dad says he would have wanted to do if he wasnt back here but lack of skills. My familys own a funeral home in our small canadian town of st thomas for over ninety years it may seem strange to grow up around death but for us it was a part of everyday life. Im the first son in four generations not to become a funeral director my decision has weighed heavily on i worry about what it means for the future of my familys funeral. Do you think for the Service Today i dont know if we had to register but just down for the right to say that no you go and you know you get here is this if you like to sign the register book and im like to going to visit with the family this is our son this is why. Im so next generation going in the same no hes a producer with your so thats why the oh yes its perfect yeah so theyre different business yes but if he was for russia to take care. Of my grandfather with brother Paul Petersen oh ok oh ok sure yeah we had to register but just on the right she mentioned it was the walls far yeah that was one of the walls the sentence to life serve your family have also made you all go. By and asked if anyone could sing and no one was able to know someones got to you and i know someone in the family and. She really meant to me the window that she was loving. Going to sing sung to the grandma. Great grandma as the artist heard her you. Know your hair nothing there. Ever you. Think you. Are a loser to. Oh. Harley got back to me like i should maybe have. Already heard that but you know that you know i mean really. I dont think you know. It was that you know it was very nice in there really well all right im going to change ok because its a bigger person in the city. And i was in high school i would help with visitation so holding the door helping to show people where to go and then other that around the business like helping with the logs and washing the cars and putting on the suit being in the funeral it was kind of maybe a little glimpse of what it might have been like avoided if if i had done that job i wouldnt say i did five years old and looked at the business and said i doing this it was that i felt rather Different Things i was always very interested in history it was the idea of the power of witnessing moments well history is made of. This was my childhood bedroom this is where i would be asleep in the middle of the night when my dad would get a phone call to hear footsteps and see the light underneath the door he would walk from his bedroom over here through this hallway to the bathroom to get ready to get dressed and we were very aware that he was going to put a suit on that he was going to go outside in the cold and that he was going to go pick up a dead body i have a very striking memories of our funeral of my aunt jennifer grew up around the funeral and also moved away from st thomas and we called it the bat phone but a lot of the baton you know as well we called it the funeral home but i think that but youre right that it was it lacked and it had all these like intercom buttons and we call about and you had to and and whatever called whatever hour the day whatever youre doing it with you i answered thats perfect actually we were maybe we were that creative. That phone ringing it still sparks a little moment of the things i would everybody stop at everybody be quiet when im home briefly however briefly the phone rings. I shut up as fast as labor did its a strange thing. Id be interested to know how he prepared himself to do this work because i dont think he was actually built for it just like i dont feel like i was actually built for. Im going to talk to call and haskett a young funeral director in a neighboring community hes around my age and in a way i feel like he provides a glimpse of what my life might have been like if i decided to become a funeral director this is my great great grandfather Charles Haskett and then his son which is William Haskett and then well you had two boys clarence and then my father bill so there are six Funeral Directors in five generations thankfully were all passionate about it and i think thats for Family Businesses get into trouble is when people feel obligated if you love what you do and its easy to keep a clear direction and were all on the same path so this is my very grandfathers our family used to transport the deceased by horse and buggy im kind of allowed to say that i dont wear hats like that and i dont transport people by horse and buggy anymore when i was four years old i made the decision that i was going to be a funeral director and at that time it was because my dad had two separate riding lawn mower city used to cut the cut the grass at the funeral home and i thought what a cool thing to be able to drive two different lawn mowers it was for as well when i kind of realised for the first time there was this trend in our future home it was my great grandfather started a funeral home in one hundred twenty six and then my grandfather and my father and every generation there was one boy born in every generation they did it and i was four years old when im like wait a second great grandpa grampa dad do i have to do this and from the moment i first asked that question my dad always said you dont have to do this you can whatever makes you happy you can do if you want to be a film director thats fantastic but if you want to take a different path thats thats fine too so i dont know maybe if youve had writing lawnmowers i would have i would have been i would have been a better selling point what do you think the stereotype of a funeral director is black see. Dark tie and white shirt and you know maybe not very personable and certainly not very comforting and you know just sort of this this creepy this creepy image of someone that deals with the dead every day and thats certainly not how i would describe myself at all im far more suited to dealing with the living than i am the dead and its just the ability to do both which makes me go to a job im just the guy that lives down the street that doesnt know how to build decks but i do know what to do when your mom dies ok that would be great and if theres anything that comes down i will let you know and you have my telephone thank you very much but did you have a direct line from the funeral home to your home growing up you are standing in my better this is where i grew up really yeah we were very much have a direct line. I believe very strongly that my number one goal and my number one job is to stay in business were increasing our reception facilities and were having different types of receptions and were selling alcohol and thats not necessarily because thats exactly what i want to do i just want to make sure that we were mean profitable so that we can continue to do what it is that we love to see if i can pull something out here weve got all kinds of different options and now you can get rings you can get type pens you can cough links this is actually d. N. A. Keepsake so lots of different options. I have done some neat things with the cremated remains we have put people in their taco boxes in their recipe boxes actually we have someone here that was just placed in their cowboy boot as an urn i had a gentleman the strangest one yet every night before you went to bed he had a bowl of ice cream with his granddaughter so he is in a nice cream tub people are tired of what we would refer to a cookie cutter funeral a lot of us in southwestern ontario are smaller operations Family Businesses we have some larger corporations coming after the independent Funeral Homes on our own none of us would survive in this business or certainly. What we decided is if we can do it collectively then we can all do a good job and thats exactly what weve done with. Cremation is becoming increasingly popular but loved ones are rarely present i have never witnessed a commission myself. I grew up around the funeral home ive been to the funeral home. Constantly my whole life ive seen more bodies than i can remember in the setting up in the in the main room of the funeral home with made up in suits with with flowers and framed photographs but maybe its the volume maybe its being here and within the last few minutes to see so many bodies coming in from from from the region. I think that i could have done it. The men who tend to this long process tell me the last muscle to burn is the human heart. Occasionally i would bring stress home from work. It didnt happen very often did it but it did happen and im the first to admit that it did happen and i cant believe theres not a few a director out there that it hasnt they havent brought it home and so but there was a quote in and and blake said in the article my sister used to yell back at him if he would explode because maybe we were too loud when he just got off the phone or and and i would just take it and but his quote was. When we knew we were not the. Source of his anger and anger take much and it didnt take much to know what was he knew i had brought home from the funeral home right growing up i saw first hand the toll Funeral Service took on my father many of his days were spent helping other people through the worst days of their lives we saw the side of it that wasnt always great and he dealt with it very well but there were times that it was stressful if you asked me at those moments you know you want to be found out or its a home no there are circumstances that happened here that i feel like walking out the back door when the family are walking in the front door the thing thats going to make me retire is families not agreeing and i mean absolutely not talking to each other and probably after the service is over i never talking to each other again. So youre on the way to the hospital. Ok. Yeah. Well do is all. I think since youre way there and we wont be released tonight i dont think from the hospital so all the phone can ring any time you can ring at nine fifteen i can within three oclock. Its a release for your dad his you expressed what he. Had wanted to so you know well again my condolences to you and all ill call them in the morning. You know people call because theyre in the stuff. When i think about the connection of friends if you know home i think about the fact that he had to School Parking lot where everyone could play i could play hockey and they they stored the nets in the garage. All right. So you can do old wooden sticks they dont make them like this anymore those gloves little big really. Well you know if youre like are you have rhythm. You know where. You walk in the house all right we push off you ok over when. Ive been playing hockey sense i was traveling with a seven eight year old i played travel hockey for many many years my dad missed yours were a few games of mine he taught me how to play goal right between their house and the funeral home. After i wear is a tribute to my dad but i was also born in one nine hundred fifty eight this was my playground this is this was where you know i grew up you know i learned to play tennis i assume that my parents always knew that i want to be a film director but we really never sat down i mean i heard about from my High School Counselor that oh i guess parents going off to humber to take Funeral Service i never i guess assume that they knew but quite frankly i thought i was going to be a professional hockey player or a professional tennis player but i think lack of talent sort of got in the way. We got to go to the funeral right. And who was in there you know any yeah. So here you go. You know what my grandfathers name was. Leonard. And you know what leo leo was short for matter. Good job. I was called here youre like kasey here. You. Know life here you know and theres to understand when i quit and theres no ghosts here no ghosts theres no ghosts here. I remembered as a kid just being so so afraid by that idea like are you fraid of the being around the dead people and free of the bodies i guess id seen like you know zombie movies or monster movies or something and a member and just being again it was just like a lightbulb was just like well no because theyre dead like to be more free of the mailman for example then you should be of the dead body in the in another room because the living people going are you dead people cannot hear you this is not a monster movie this is real life. Oh oh oh oh your own phone oh that i cant help but wonder if perhaps one day when will develop a passion for this profession where i didnt. Do you. My dad since i was you know as level twelve years old he would send me on errands that would include sometimes going to Doctors Offices to sit and wait in their office until a. Certificate was signed actually this was there were that was a Doctors Office at one time there were. Doctors in corners there think companies came through here movie stars came through here when they were on the trains and theres a platform there is side. There is another film director this is mr this is this is mr brown is it. As for my grandmother yes theres ago your father was best man at my fathers wedding i think i did know that yes. Yeah i dont. I mean its funny you say but i think there was more of an expectation that the son would take it over i never felt pressured but did i feel a sense of obligation i would i would see having the Family Business and this is a provide such an Impactful Service to the community was kind of a badge of honor and people knew our business really you could own a printing shop people might not know your business but sifton to confute. You know took care of my grandmothers funeral thats a bond to people for the for life kind of thing i was proud to be a sifton i know he really felt that it was a calling and thats thats the way ive always liked upon it with me i i know this was something i was meant to do i mean i cant say enough of. How much it just was a relief to come in and know that we were amassed and he was so gentle and it was just like talking to a friend dont worry about that i got that look dr dont. Look after i dont know how many times i had people say to me here dad help me through a really tough time behind the dr spock they could see your dad and grandpa walked in and my dad the sense of humor joke or that he was said well yes here comes the two undertakers to take me home it was really my first hero and i guess i wanted to be like him and i tried that. Here we are nineteen twenty six the year we were founded my great grandfather founded our funeral home after serving in the First World War he served with his cousin who was killed in action and ordered the victoria cross. My family believes that my great grandfathers experience of witnessing and seeing his cousin. Grave instilled in him a desire to provide dignity for others down when the time comes i definitely want this funeral home to be. Family and i want to continue with the same values that. My father carried on and ive carried on how important is the name the idea that thats have to remain a name in this community and well by. Its very. Also care about what our name stands for and thats one of the reasons i still struggle with my decision. Yeah i thought you know. Im ready for a real force thats your favorite term. Have you. Ever go. Back and. Youre. Not hearing. My gosh i was wrong there is no reason. Do you know what grampa thought about me not becoming a funeral director not deciding to be a hero they dont think about whom and i think you realize that everybody should make their own decisions and i think that i dont think it bothered lulie never heard him say he was always so well its got two books on you is very proud of his grandchildren basically you followed my burgeoning dream with career you enjoy being a journalist i dont doubt my decisions i still felt like there was some kind of family responsibility that maybe i think graham funny when your dad would say no you must you must do the what youd like to do yourself and then youll be happy and i come from a farm background i think those farms are. Id say it wont be long i dont feel badly i think thats progress in other words we all know we all make their own decisions i love you for life. You shouldnt feel guilty and that makes me feel sad to think that you theres even an ounce of guilt what do you do when youre at a funeral you tell stories thats the thing youre continuing i dont know if you can think about it that way and frankly i think who knows whats going to happen right i mean everythings changed so fast maybe itll be one of those industries that stays very much the same because we all want that close emotional connection or maybe funerals the future will be very different. I was pretty good as. The sun and age old part of spanish culture the way i cant stop thinking about the bullies of my life others are explored and a symbol of Central Government by one time we shouldnt carry on something that goes against the morals of got along society is that the catalan nationalist perspective the believe the present political. Catalonia bullfight this time on aljazeera wild. In recent years the sawhill of north africa has witnessed the socalled war on terror. But is this official narrative. Masking a larger battle. A battle for the earths natural resources. Shadow war in the sahara at this time on aljazeera. I really felt liberated as a journalist was. Getting to the truth as i would thats what is dropping. He said ill be in doha with the headlines pardon me from aljazeera a Turkish Military convoy has crossed into Northern Syria in a new operation to enforce a socalled deescalation zone in italy province is part of an agreement between turkey iran and russia or from aljazeera as hashem alba who sent the jewelry goes through Border Crossing on the turkish syrian border. It seems that the turkish army is aiming to achieve two goals here first of all they would like to block the kurdish factions but. And they wipe e. G. From moving or expanding their territory from all the way towards number two they would like to ensure also that factions in live dont get in any fighting in the coming days and weeks with the Syrian Military and with the russians search or implement the deescalation zone this is quite a Significant Development Kurdish Forces in iraq are reportedly mobilizing after accusing baghdad of sending its troops to two areas near kurdish controlled oil fields close to the city of kirkuk the Iraqi Government has denied its planning a military attack on the kurdish controlled region of the country tensions have been rising between the two governments since the kurdish secession referendum last month. U. S. President donald trump is expected to finally announce whether he will uphold the Iran Nuclear Deal later on friday earlier the trumpet ministration released a document outlining the problems it sees with the accord trumpet previously criticized the Iran Nuclear Deal for not going far enough russia says there will be negative consequences if the us pulls out of the agreement. South africas president jacob zuma says hes disappointed after the supreme courts held a ruling reinstating hundreds of corruption charges against him accusations relate to an arms deal dating back to the early one nine hundred ninety s. Protesters in the kenyan capital have to fight a government ban on demonstrations in major cities the police in nairobi dispersed protesters with tear gas the demonstrators are furious about a court ruling on parliamentary vote which they say favor the president who are kenyatta the ruling came a day after the main opposition candidate reloading announced he was withdrawing from the president ial Election Rerun shirt year old for later this month lost one used one of you want on the web site aljazeera dot com you are right up to speed with all the top stories im back with the news hour and twenty five minutes between now and then well return to aljazeera correspondent. This mall is to spread show whos there is really. All goes outward now collapses were committing poetry its a reading of Walt Whitmans song of myself thomas lynch is both a writer and a funeral director he is considered the poet laureate of the funeral business i say read and write resist and this is what we do i bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass i love if you want me again look for me under your boot soles oh. Thank you my dad always said thomas lynchs bestselling book about Funeral Service the undertaking is the book he wished he could write like my father thomas lynch took over his fathers funeral home in a small town in michigan he recently passed it on to his son morning how are you oh man how you doing ok good thank you. Dr coffee ill be well yeah yeah. But he brought me a bill i feel very good right below his grave has been dug since youre going over he just refuses to go into it i declared hospice care for the last couple years so i feed him till as you know and see cheeses and now i think he thinks ill go in the grave and hell state that wont happen your attempted coup will work yeah. But its graves out there filled with snow right now and someday i hope yacub eyes light up bill because later it will be ok Funeral Service has nothing except Internet Access to a lot of stories. So ive always been interested in characters and the stories that surround them the narratives being a funeral director in a small town gives you access that is not often shared by other people characters and does exist now in north america kind of take for granted that this is the way things are done but it wasnt going to discuss maybe before the spread of Funeral Homes how death used to be treated up until that maybe the last fifty years probably even near term the only problem created by a death of the family apart from the ones you could catalogue as you know you know grief and mourning in religious fixations the real problem is the corpse on the floor what are we going to do about this you cant live with that guy something has to be done somebody has to get a shovel or build a fire or drag the corpse up where the birds will come and get pick the bones clean and its around those activities whatever it was became by virtue of our you know curiosities holy it was looking into the open ground or the pot or the fire where we would form the essential human questions which are is that all there is can this happen to me why is he cold are we all alone what comes next we process death by processing the dead we move the dead from this station to that station in this. You know this little. Community theater that goes on but the movement is important you know you cant stay here because we cant live with a corpse acting as a pall bearer and carrying the body of a loved one in most cases it is the only actor that remains it seems like in north america weve become quite a distance from death well even that we are entirely a strange from corpses. Which to me has always seemed like the essential brief of a funeral is tend to the course people will say well its really for the living yes but its by tending to the dead to the living get better good feels one that by getting the dead where they need to go the living get where they need to be in the way that we sort of replicate the movement of someone from the edge of this front here to the edge of the one we cant know thats what a funeral does it makes that we go with them as far as we can go and then we say. With the brutality of the living you stay i go thanks be to god or whoevers in charge or thank you so i thank you very much we havent had a sunday like this bill in the longest time. Caring for ones own dad is common in much of the world but rare in the west in British Columbia there is a small but growing Home Funeral Movement but its reconnecting people to the process of tending to the dead like yes ok this is Robert Smith Jones he has been our day person multiple times including for our youtube videos one of those videos and i actually now had over seven hundred thousand hits so she knew me before i was famous. Ok. So the first thing were going to be doing its kerry. Ok everyone i know least three people were any side and my name especially mary im a death major are. The executive director scindia which is an acronym for the canadian integrated network for death education alternatives which strongly supports families having meaningful choices whether those are around im also a wiccan priestess and and actually are dangerous one close off yes and wicca has a much stronger focus on the balance between light and dark at home and there is that respect for the cycle of the year and the death house to happen in order for there to be new growth what were going to work on right now is washing the top part of him theres something that happens between the mind and the body when youre hands on with the body that is what we used to call it in the seventys at the stall. Its like a whole bunch of things come together much deeper than just sitting by the body or praying or singing or writing a memorial or Something Like that but its also easier to process through to this is now a corpse and our beloved is still with us in our hearts and maybe in spirit but this is just carbs now. Ok so lets then proceed to washing the body itself most people feel that doing this is their last act of love and it allows the person whos been doing the major caretaking to have that one last time and that it also allows people who havent been involved in the caregiving to actually participate in that sort of feel like they gave a little bit if i could have someones help like you help me if you can lead them down. I do it. This is my favorite color and this one is being kept for when its time for me to sleep in the forever. Whatever happens to you after death i know one mother eighteen year old son died and accident right in front of our house and doing the body care was allowing her to step one step over the threshold with her son and that was it. I mean yes she would mourn him not being there but that actual process of caring for him was one that was. I did isnt just an hour ceremony its. In the middle of the night. That. All the things that never got resolved to now. All of those moments become incredibly sacred. I think that weve become increasingly detached from death i think people dont grieve properly when they try to avoid seeing death. And so i think anything that brings us closer to our dad and to confront our own mortality is positive and helping. This is stunning its. Its completely quiet and still. For steen and beautiful. Yeah i mean it might not be a traditional cemetery with headstones and. Rows and flowers and everything but i dont think anybody would object to spending for the rest of eternity here i think i have a very traditional view of funerals and of cemeteries just because the way things are done where i grew up but yeah i dont understand why this is such a rare phenomenon that is a controversial this isnt alternative or french its just. Just beautiful and peaceful thats what most people want when theyre choosing a cemetery. I think my father would be really moved by the scene and most directors to be honest. My name server make day my family and i did a home funeral for our mother though this was her bedroom the night that she passed we were all around her and this is where she stayed for five days so she has an ice pack on her abdomen and shes an ice pack on her head and ice pack under like the core organs are just like a painting with so many beautiful colors and everything versus just your regular funeral is like dead body general home service ground. We had so much fun and play with it. And we carried her out the door and we carried her like this and as we carrying her the ladies are singing in the kitchen. And we just carry her down the stairs and around the corner and then theres a driveway underneath and thats were in the aisles ford flex was waiting for her and it was raining and i said shes having her p. C. Baptism its beautiful. We put her on and off we went. From what ive read and what ive talked about with people is that your body sister vehicle right is just what youre here with it was her shell that we were disposing of which we had to write and then her spirit was around with us. Davis is a funeral director who helped deborah with her mothers home funeral her experience working out a corporate on the funeral home led her to embrace alternative practices alongside traditional ones when you first get into Funeral Service you come in with all these ideals and thoughts about what youre going to do and how its going to go and the more experience i had within that corporate environment it just seemed like those ideals werent able to be realized we were told that we needed to have unlicensed sales people with us when we were meeting with people who were just telling us you know someone close to them has just died what was their background would be come from sales of other. Industries there were people who came from car sales for sure photocopiers just whatever their background was if we were in the selection room looking at ernst and caskets. I felt that their their suggestions were biased you know based on what kind of commission they would get out of that once people have suffered a loss how fair is it to put an employee in a situation where if they dont up sell they cant eat there should be no Commission Sales at end of life welcome to our snow capital today tom green is a funeral director and a leading opponent of corporate ownership of Funeral Homes when you serve people who are bereaved youre serving people who are to me uniquely vulnerable so when a organization the size of walls. Comes into that very delicate situation and there is an opportunity for people who are more ethically. Challenged. To make enormous amounts of money in the city of vancouver and burnaby there are nine real Funeral Homes left and the largest chain owns eight of them do you think there is an awareness in the public that so many the films are corporate owned and what the difference is between no weve had a law passed where it was required for all of the publicly own funeral companies to put their real name in all their contracts all their signage and all their advertising the two thousand and nine yellow paint just had their name you know about a font of i think point five. The next year but it was there so this is a process called stealth ownership right where you are thats where the corporations wealth ownership where a corporation will buy a family funeral home and then keep that family name so the public thinks that theyre still working with an independent family funeral home when in reality its just a part of a of a much larger corporation exactly right the mass takeover of independent Funeral Homes by corporations is what worries me the most when i think about the future of my familys business you know its such a critical time its so important that environment is a caring and supportive environment. A Funeral Homes a scary place with. Dad. I got the. Funeral service you have a choice you can develop a keen sense of humor or become an alcoholic it can be. You know. So he called back a few minutes later and he says jackie your mothers body is in the morgue my sisters what do you mean its not at the morgue and he says well its not. Here it sounds like possibly sci has the body john dental ohh. And Jim Halliburton stories share a Common Thread they say their mothers bodies were both mishandled by Funeral Homes owned by Service Corporation international a funeral conglomerate based in texas that has come to dominate the funeral industry in north america we had planned to have an intimate Family Service we had planned to do a celebration of life later but we never had anything we never had anything she said i literally dont know how to tell you this but mom has been cremated she was on her way to the funeral home. Story with her mothers clothing. Our mum had always taken very good care of herself she always wanted to look great she was a little bit of a fashionista and you know even even in a walker she would want to make sure she had high heels on so the fact that our mother was taken and cremated in the pajamas that she died and and without her teeth. Is the part that gets me every time we never knew anything about a cia or any other for their of their brands we thought it was Pleasant Valley Community Local vernon funeral home thats been there for i dont know how many years but i remember seeing it as a kid theres basically three entities in the town and the public doesnt know that they all have all three of us so so that so families are going from one to another to another getting prices and wondering why the prices are so difficult he started to push an envelope towards towards me on the table and i started to stand up and i said are you offering us money and he said well you know all this and maybe you could pick pick and earn on the wall and blah blah blah and i turned to my sister and i said carrie were leaving now my sister opened the envelope and it was three hundred dollars. Can you imagine how insulted you would feel if a check was pushed across the room for you basically telling you that your mothers death and your mother was worth three hundred dollars i have not after three and a half years been able to grieve over my mother ive been trapped trying to get the word out about what is going on here these are not numbers or statistics these are people se i declined to be interviewed and said they dont comment on pending litigation we had found out a song that my mom used to sing to the troops thats called ill be seeing you. Oh do you do you know play with her for your we played your mum. Or you really really yeah wow. And you know i think the thing. Is that a lot of this gets lost in the narrative of death because the fact is is that it is a sacred right for all of us that if there were more private providers that would be concerned about how they were providing that service they would be more tuned to the needs of of the community. You know that boy that William Carlos williams wrote about the red wheelbarrow its only forty words so much depends upon a red wheel barrow plays with rainwater beside the white chickens. What are you talking about says i i mean i really tried to get that one it was a december because we had two kids in our town that they live by the river in the they had ice over theyd got out and they fell through the ice and drowned one was six one of those four i think we put them both in one casket. And i remember the minute walking those parents in to see these two little boys they were in there we got blue jeans one had his arm on the other one they looked like two boyles i remember looking out the window at my garage across the streets and i wish them well theyre all there something to take your your gaze away on which you could concentrate all your attention so as to avert your eyes from this horrible notion that this could happen to be a good funeral director you have to notice right away that there are things that wont be fixed but you can be present for them. Obviously the tragic situations that you deal with the current since the suicides ive had to deal with homicides have had you know many deaths of children those are probably the hardest like my father Doug Gilchrist ran his own funeral home for many years he and my father studied together to become Funeral Directors death is always there its always in your face its always part of your every day. Your i suffered a very bad mental breakdown and ty was hospitalized for a couple days and of course as most people doctors a couple days later im back at the you know over the period of the next four years i had another three nervous breakdowns i one point of which i was told that i had p. T. S. D. We grieve for those not only in our own family. We grieve for those families that we serve every day because we probably knew them we probably buried their answer their own call years before we know that there are a funeral director than ontario who had been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder directly linked to their work there appears to be a higher than average rate of alcoholism and certainly a higher than average rate of divorce Michelle Clark works in funeral education she and her husband paul are both former Funeral Directors we have lived in constant fear that these things were going to happen to our children or to us most Funeral Directors just suppress everything weve weve were taught how to do it the most recent one was the lady that stopped her son son to death from postpartum and mike ross was the exact same age as her son i just think it was so real. I was so how would that metaphors that self you would you know youd be withdrawn and just withdraw oh yeah like i would just come home and just sort of just quiet not saying really the little boy at the Memorial Gardens at the tree fell on i thought it was horrible you dont even remember it oh mike this is the thing theres been so many people stories for him there on a School Field Trip the wind picked up and blew the tree branch on the kid i mean he was eight you know it all. For us were lucky cause were both Funeral Directors so we get it. People to say that. Youre born to be a film director. And most people in our industry would say the same thing why i went to this profession. And we know film directors that have born into that world and have continued a legacy on and its not what they wanted to do and in part because of the guilt but you feel you dont want to let the community down and so theyve given up their lives to do something they dont do. Ok. Its been great for us we would never have met their fallen in love if we werent both Funeral Directors but as parents i i wouldnt want to children. Thats pretty good a. Member. I said you know im just going to stay. Down. There was just something i want to do. And. I didnt come. You know you never get over it its but you you are to cope and you know. I dont know what will eventually happen with my family. And i dont think i will ever fully get over the guilt that i feel for not continuing their legacy i understand now that i made the only choice i could its a sacred and solemn duty but youll never last. From a fresh coast to breeze. To watching the sunset on the australian outback. Hello again well look at the weather across the americas in south america plenty of showers across the amazon basin frontal system across far south of brazil cross paraguayan giving some rain maybe pushing into far northeastern parts of argentina and parts of europe why but otherwise for much of argentina weather conditions are fine fine for santiago in chile and the other side of that front plenty of sunshine for rio their highs of thirty two for the way slightly as we head on through into south and also some showers likely for the past in bolivia i think for lima improve we might see wanted to showers but quito ecuador should be largely dry and fine up into the caribbean region now you see a few showers across the islands americas parts of cuba and also the bahamas and john thats where the bulk of the showers will be kingston jamaica may pick up wanted to showers during the day heavy showers up through the isthmus still but somewhat better than the house been in recent days and that continues through into saturday lets head up into north america we have some snow up over the rockies at the moment as you can see seattle in motion staying up to the woman at twelve and calgary in kind of the just three degrees fine for the south twenty seven los angeles as you move further towards the east with this low pressure system across parts of the midwest heading towards the great lakes but fine in the eastern seaboard twenty two in new york city. The weather sponsored by cats race. As we embrace new technologies rarely do we stop to ask what is the price of this progress what happened was he was started getting sick but there was a small group of people that began to think that maybe this was related to the kind of aspersion job an investigation reveals how even the smallest devices deadly environmental and health we think ok will send our us to china but we have to remember that therefore you should travel around the globe death by design at this time on aljazeera. We understand the differences. And the similarities of cultures across the world center matter how you take it aljazeera will bring you the news and Current Events that matter to you is iraq. This is aljazeera