Transcripts For ALJAZ Death In The Family 20171016

Forces tensions have been mounting evidence the kurds held a referendum on secession last month all struck that has more from. The kurdish flag no longer flies in the center of kirkuk the city now officially back in the hands of the Iraqi Government which foresees but made a rapid advance in the middle of the night fifteen hours later the Industrial Area airports military base and critical oil fields were under the control of iraqi forces. Soon after they marched into the center of the city. Iraqi officials were quick to declare victory. The joint military operation was launched at dawn and progress significantly as the troops approached the area to crete and the north oil company were confronted by some rebels who tried to hinder the progress of the advancing units turned five and silenced. Thank god today we have achieved all our goals according to our plan. The u. S. Military which a trained both sides in this dispute trying to downplay the escalation in a statement blaming the firefight on the darkness calling it a misunderstanding. But kurdish fighters painted a different picture of what was happening on the ground. I dont know what is happening exactly because we have been in the fight since four in the morning in the areas of tasa we have suffered casualties including martyrs and now we have withdrawn into this position and some of the other forces have pulled out they didnt fire a single shot and that so but we. Are holding up a system here. Thousands fled the city as the forces approached mixed in among them kurdish fighters now as the u. S. Urges dialogue and the question is whats next will iraqi forces and their militias pursue the Kurdish People and fighters that answer will have an impact here and around the globe oil prices are climbing with the news the possibility. Of a civil war perhaps in iraq with Kurdish Forces fighting both iraqi army and possibly iranian militias. Did not play well with the with the well so traders and so the perception is that prices will rise. Until thats what weve meant risky is completely character russia was saying understood most world powers at will the Kurdish Regional government and not to go ahead with a nonbinding referendum where the majority of people voted for secession from iraq. Now the people of this region and the government of finding out there is a very real price to be paid in this search for independence the speed with which the iraqi army were able to achieve their aim is left the Kurdish Regional government shocked and wanting and already there are questions being asked as to whether certain members of one of the main two kurdish Political Parties may have colluded with the Iraqi Military in order to ensure such a swift and easy victory in and around kirkuk for al jazeera. The Spanish Government has warned catalonia separatist leader that he has only three days left to return to the galaxy it comes after colors pushed him all refused to say whether he would follow through on a threat to secede from spain instead he asked for more dialogue in a letter to the Central Government. The death toll from somalias twin bomb explosions on saturday has risen to more than four hundred forty of the most severely wounded victims have been transferred to turkey for further treatment the bombs exploded at two busy junctions in the heart of the capital mogadishu it is the deadliest single attack in the countrys history the government claiming the armed group alshabaab. Twelve people including six children have died after a boat carrying the hinge of muslim sank in the bay of bengal the refugees were approaching the Bangladeshi Border districts of coxs bizarre when their vessel capsized survivors have told local officials that up to sixty five people were on board at the time. And those the latest headlines are back with more for you in twenty five minutes out there correspondent is next. Thank you. Thank. You. 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 when 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 so yes it is a real question but after 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. If i think of thats what dad said he would have wanted to do if he wasnt rector 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 to the race that goes by you go 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 this know hes a producer with your so thats why its whatever time yeah so different business yes yes hes mr smart fresher than a here. My grandfather with the brother of Paul Petersen oh ok oh ok sure yeah we had to register but just on the right to mention it was the walls yeah that was one of the that was the sentence to life serve your family have also you dont know. Why 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 mean the window that she was loving. A wave and she sings sung to grandma. Great grandma as the artist heard her you. Know your hair nothing is there. Ever you. Think you. Are a wound to the. Zero. Zero zero nine. Highly we got back to me like i could maybe have. Already heard that that you know that you know i mean if youre really going to assume. That you know. That it was here that you know it was very nice and theyre really really well all right im going to change ok because its ludicrous that in the city. I was in high school i would help with visitation so holding the door helping to show people where to go and then other than that around the business like helping with the lawns and washing the cars and putting officer being in the funeral it was kind of maybe a little glimpse of what it might have been like if i had if if i had done that job i wouldnt say i had five years old and looked at the business and said i doing this it was that i felt a lot of Different Things i was always very interested in history it was the idea of the power of witnessing moments of 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 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 very striking memories of our funeral of my aunt jennifer grew up around the funeral and also moved away from st thomas they called it the bassem one of the battling it was gallant we called it the funeral home phone but i think thats right youre right that it was the act and it had all these like intercom buttons and we call them the bow and you have to do and and whatever called whatever hour the day whatever youre doing it were after and thats perfect actually we were maybe we were back to. That phone ringing and it still sparks a little moment of things i wish everybody stopped everybody be quiet when im home briefly however briefly the phone rings i shut up as vacillated 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 it. 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 Osgood 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 you 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 suit 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 myself 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 bedroom 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 remain 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. We decided is if we could 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 could remember in the setting up in the in the main room of the funeral home with made up of suits with with flowers and framed photographs but maybe its the volume maybe its being here and within the last few minutes just seeing 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 is that. 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 more 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. We knew we were not the. Source of his anger and anger that 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 firsthand 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 and if you asked me at those moments you know you want to be found out id say hell 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. Oh ok. Yeah. Well do is all. I think since youre on the 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 with three oclock one 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 ready so. When i think about the connection of brennan the funeral home i think about the fact that he had this cool parking lot where everyone just play i could play hockey and they they stored the nets in the garage. But you can do old wooden sticks they dont make them like this anymore those gloves will big. For you if you do it are two of them. The way. You walk in the house all right we push hockey ok over it when. Ive been playing hockey sense i was probably seven eight years old i played travel hockey for many many years my dad missed me 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 were going to go in the funeral right. And who goes in there you know and. So here you. You know what my grandfathers name was. Leonard. And you know what leo leo was short for leonard. Good job. I was called here youre like kasey here. You. Know life here you know and theres to understand when theres no ghosts here no ghost 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 deputy free of the bodies i guess id seen like you know zombie movies or monster movies or something and remember him just being again it was just like a light bulb 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 to are you dead people cannot hear you this is not a monster movie this is real life. Oh your own phone or that i cant help but wonder if perhaps one day when will develop a passion for this profession where i didnt. Do you. I did. My dad since i was you know is eleven or 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 and i see this was there that was a Doctors Office at one time there were. Doctors and corners there i think companies came through here. Stars came through here when they were on the trains and theres a platform as side. Theres another film director this is mr this is this is mr brown is it. Alans dad actually the prince for my grandmother yes theres ago your father was best man at my fathers wedding i think i did know that yes i read yeah winter. 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 say yeah 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 right like you could own a printing shop people might not know your business but sifton. You know took care of my grandmothers funeral and thats a bond to people for the for life kind of thing i was proud to be a sifton i know grandpa 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 right now for you diving how much it just was a relief to come in and you 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 forget he felt like dr i dont know how many times i had people say to me your dad helped me through a really tough time behind the doctors. They couldnt see your dad and grandpa walked in and my dad that sense of humor joke or that he was said well yes here comes the two undertakers to take me home he 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 this cousin who was killed in action and awarded the Victoria Cross for valor my family believes that my great grandfathers experience of witnessing mass death and seeing his cousin buried in mass graves and still do him a desire to provide dignity for others 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 i carried on how important is the name thats of to her maiden name in the city of well. Its very. I also care about what her name stands for and thats one of the reasons i still struggle with my decision. I thought you know. Im ready for a real force and thats your favorite. Thanks for having. Your. Record heard. Youre. Not. Mine therefore i was wrong there is no reason. Do you know what grampa thought about. Becoming a film director deciding to be a hero they dont think about who i think you realize that. Everybody should make their own decisions and i think that i dont think it bothered lola never heard him say he was always so well hes got two books on you is very proud of you of all his grandchildren basically 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 im a grandfather an in your dad would say no you must you must do the what youd like to do yourself and that your be happy and i come from a farm background i think those farms will all be gone in id say they wont be long i dont feel badly i think that thats progress in other words we all we all make our own decisions i love you. 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 if you know the future will be very different. I was pretty good as. She was a Society Hostess in beirut in the 1940s she was in touch with a lot of people from the lebanese the rick was going to make this work the code name was the power and she spied for mossad in lebanon or for. What she was doing it was something brave as a woman algis you know well to house a story of. The beirut spy at this time. Yorkers are very receptive to house because it is such an International City theyre very interested in that global perspective that al jazeera lives. In slave abuse. The flight. After a lifetime of service a remarkable young woman breaks free. To lead the Abolitionist Movement of electrifying force. Driven by her Favorite Book collection of subjugation. My memory is my power with this documentary this time on a. Hello there im in london with the top stories on al jazeera the iraqi army has taken full control of the oil rich Northern City of kirkuk according to Security Forces troops moved inside the provincial government building with no opposition from Kurdish Forces deployed in the city thousands of civilians are fled the kurdish districts of the city heading in buses and cars towards kurdish controlled areas of Northern Iraq that has more from. Thousands of families that we saw. Cause rushing to get away from kirkuk as quickly as possible and also many. As well what was so interesting was that a lot of people were standing by the side of the road and demanding and telling people and the pressure to get back into the city and fight i think what is so incredibly surprising is the speed with which this victory for the iraqi forces has happened the Spanish Government has warned catalonia separatist leader that he has only three days left to return to legality it comes after college refused to say whether he would follow through on a threat to secede from spain instead he asked for more dialogue in a letter to the Central Government the death toll from somalias twin bomb explosions on saturday has risen to more than three hundred forty of the most severely wounded victims have been transferred to turkey for further treatment the bombs exploded out to busy junctions in the heart of the capital mogadishu it is the deadliest single attack in the countrys history with the government claiming the odd group alshabaab. Twelve people including six children have died after a boat carrying were him. In the bay of bengal all the refugees were approaching the Bangladeshi Border district of coxs bizarre when their vessel capsized survivors of told local officials up to sixty five people were on board at the time. At least thirty two people have been killed in wildfires and central and northern portugal over the past twenty four hours at least six thousand firefighters are battling the thirty major fires which is still raging the blazes which broke out over the weekend of being fanned by strong winds from storm ophelia a state of emergency has been declared. And those are the latest headlines join if the news hour and twenty five minutes aljazeera correspond continues next by. The smallest sprout shown was there is really no doubt. All goes well right now the 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 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 sort of slow or 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 very 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 bill this later it will be ok you know services 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 in 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. 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 fields 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 if your home doesnt 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 that is 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 is carry. Ok everyone least three people on each side and my name is partially marry one 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 whatever those are around that 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 from 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 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 if you help me if you can lead them down. Every time i do it. This is my favorite color and this one is being kept for when its time for me to you. In the forever. Whatever happens to you after death i know one mother eighteen year old son died and accident right in front of their house motorcycle accident doing the body care was allowing her to step one step over the threshold with her son and that was a. 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. 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 are dead and to confront our own mortality is positive and helping. This is stunning its. Its completely quiet and still. Burstein 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 the cemetery is 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 is an alternative or friend its just. Just beautiful and peaceful and 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. Hi 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 her 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 in our 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 were 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 nyos ford flex was waiting for her and it was raining and i said shes having her p. C. Baptism its beautiful. She put her in and off we went. From what ive read and what i thought for believe people is that your body sister vehicle right is just what youre here with it was her show 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. Deals 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 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 they cant eat there should be no Commission Sales at end of life welcome to our snow capital today tom crean 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 wall street comes into that very delicate situation 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 theres an awareness in the public that really the good old days are corporate oh you know what the difference is between no weve had a law passed where it was required for all with a publicly own funeral companies to put their real name in all their contracts all their signage and all their advertise. The two thousand and nine yellow paint just had their name in 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 telephone or shipper corp will buy a family funeral home and then keep that family name so the public thinks that theyre still working with an independent family if you know what a 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 thats were. Dad said. I got the. Funeral service you have a choice you can develop a keen sense of humor or become an alcoholic it can be. So he called back a few minutes later and he says jackie your mothers body is in that the morgue my sisters of what do you mean its not at the morgue and he says well its not here its 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. Armament 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 in and without her teeth. Is the part that gets me every time we never knew anything about a cia or any other of 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 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 sci declined to be interviewed and said they dont comment on pending litigation we had i 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 plate your mom. 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 boils i remember looking out the window at my garage across the street 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 ive 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. Or. Your i suffered a very bad mental breakdown and tie was hospitalized for a couple days and of course as most you know 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 and 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 funeral director than ontario who have 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 like ross was the exact same age as her son i just think it was so real. I was so how would that i met a festive self you would you know youd be withdrawn and just withdraw it all yeah like i would just come home and just sort of just quiet not saying really the little boy at the Memorial Gardens that the tree fell on i thought 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 no at all. For us were lucky because 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 want to 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. Says pretty good. Member. I said you know im just going to stay. Down. There was this something i want to do. I need to 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. How i was spent on the really wet weekend for southeastern parts of queensland in the next few days also promised more heavy rain coming through that we get with irene a cloud into that east the side queensland running down in sea breeze been very heavy rain coming through here and more of the same as we go on through choose day but a months worth fell through saturday and sunday well see a fairly wet weather continuing as we go on through choose day now this is the winds coming in from the interior i think. Some warmth around the path temps here around nine hundred five in the next couple of days may well be still getting up around thirty celsius for adelaide twenty six in melbourne bad and yet brisbane still seeing some rather wet weather well i think the wet so weather will just out at a little further north which as we go on through website High Pressure in charge into the southeast a quote of australia across the tasman sea heading towards new zealand but you might see want to two showers in the south all of the new zealand as we go through tuesday much of the country will be fat and dry if a little on the cool side cautious now will more than about twelve degrees for the middle part of the week with the waynes coming in from the south meanwhile southern parts of japan i will say some rather wet weather say go on through the next day it will slowly but surely make its way further with clear skies to the middle. From the family home of the ft as navigating dangerous rapids from the time would be far to the time we finish were scared to the fish and dicing with death. Im afraid of falling im afraid of dying but if i dont go a coffee klatch family to meet the men who go to the extreme just to make a living by not you have to be a school or swim or otherwise the surf and risking it all vietnam at this time on aljazeera. Aljazeera. With every us. This is aljazeera. Everyone ive missed a bar and well welcome to this news hour live from london coming up in the next sixty minutes iraqi forces celebrate as they take control of the Kurdish Health city of kirkuk. Evading the question catalans leader fails to answer yes or no on whether the region has declared independence from spain. And turkey stepped in to help the victims of somalias twin bomb attacks as the death toll rises to more than three hundred. In spore Colin Kaepernick takes a legal stance against n. F. L. Owners captain it claims he isnt being hard because of his protests against racial injustice. Although we begin this news hour with major developments in iraq where Government Forces have taken control of the contested city of kirkuk from Kurdish Forces and