In the thirty-five years that I spent as a working funeral director and funeral home owner I learned to truly comprehend the responsibilities that had been given to me by the families that I served and how they truly relied on my guidance to plan and carry out the memorialization wishes that they had for their loved one.  In every case, as do almost all funeral directors I know, I gave honest opinions that were not based on a profit motive.  I then worked very hard, sometimes for many hours per case irregardless what was happening in my personal or home life at the time, to carry out those plans at the family’s directive.

I got great satisfaction for getting the details done in the way the family wanted them done.

That is why it saddens me so much to know that there are a few in our profession who do not have that calling as their motive for work in this field.  You can see a video and read a news story here done by KREF 5 News of  a Saturday gathering of family member survivors of the case of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home where the funeral home, unknown to family members sold bodies and body parts of deceased people whose family thought they were being cremated.  Many of these family members, unknown to them at the time, received dry concrete for what they believed was the cremated remains of their loved ones.

The news story shows the pain that these people have had inflicted on them by the purported actions of one in our profession.  As we have said before, the FBI now has the case under investigation and the funeral home has been closed.

Additional coverage from an article in the Grand Junction Sentinel about Saturday’s gathering of family members can be found here.

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