Sometimes it is just a good feeling to be reminded as funeral directors as to why we do what we do.  Very often, including on this site, we talk about all the business aspects of funeral service.  However, I learned during my time as a funeral home business owner, if we follow the pretense of “Why We Do What We Do” the business profits and rewards just come with it.

I’m talking about the frailty of grief and helping those people through that cycle – which I’ve learned is different for every individual. . .even God’s creatures in the wild.  I do not know if you have followed or heard of the orca whale J35 whose infant died at birth recently.  Here is a news story and video on the subject.  If you have not followed the story, J35 has pushed her dead baby’s carcass on her nose as she has swam through the Pacific Ocean  for the past 17 days.  Just Sunday, she let the decomposing carcass sink to the bottom of the ocean.

The individuality of grief is everywhere.  Here is what a killer whale biologist researcher said of J35, “You cannot interpret it any other way.  This is an animal that is grieving for its dead baby, and she doesn’t want to let it go.  She’s not ready.”

According to an article in the Washington Post “the act itself was not unprecedented, but researchers said it was rare to see a mother carry her dead for so long. . . . the killer orca inspired a sense of interspecies kinship in some mothers who had also lost children.”

This was a reminder to myself that we cannot always just look at arrangement conferences as business as usual.  As funeral directors we need to be great listeners to see what type of grief resolution makes sense in the services we provide for family loved ones.  Every one has their ideas of what may be helpful to them.  It is up to us to listen and suggest options that may put these mourners on the right path to be able to move forward.

This happening in the Pacific Ocean is a great reminder that while funeral service and the death care industry is “business” there is a higher calling to “Why we do what we do” and that is to help resolve human suffering from the pangs of grief.

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