Over my years as a funeral director the confidentiality that I kept for my client families was always paramount in my mind.  Being a funeral director in a small community just led itself to the fact that “people would ask me questions”.  Those questions included things like “How did he die?” or in cases when the family chose to have a closed casket people might ask, “Doesn’t she look good?”

 

I would get off-topic questions too. . . such as, “Is their son still in prison?”

 

I was trained to be silent at the times those questions were asked of me.  Sometimes I would respond that “You wouldn’t want me to tell these things of your mother or your brother, would you?”  Usually, that quieted the questioners up and they realized that part of my professional responsibility is to be confidential.

 

I tell you this today simply as a reminder of the confidentiality of our profession.  Funeral directors are priviliged to hear the discussion, and many times are asked, to weigh in with our opinions at family arrangement conferences.  That privilige is not something to be taken lightly.  What you hear in these discussions needs to stay with you and not be discussed with your family or friends.

 

Maybe that confidentiality gets tougher when economics and finances are on the line.  A subscriber recently sent me this article about a family learning that a funeral home took and disseminated their deceased mother’s fingerprints to a memorial jewelry company without the family’s authorization.

 

The family then learned of this only when the memorial jewelry company contacted them about the availability of purchasing jewelry with these fingerprints after the memorial services for their mother.

 

If you read the article it is very self-explanatory.  Today’s Funeral Director Daily column is simply a reminder about the professionalism and confidentiality each of us owe to the families we serve and to our colleagues in the profession.

 

Related — Here are two articles that rank America’s Most Admired Occupations. . . interestingly, Nurses are ranked #1 for respect in both surveys.. . . .

• The Most trusted professions in America, according to Gallup.  Advisory Board
• America’s most and least trusted professions.  Stacker

 

Related —  I did find this article from Business Insider about embalmers having “Respected jobs”.  Unfortunately the article is entitled, “8 respected jobs that pay much less than people think“.

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• Cookies and Corpses:  Inside the world’s biggest death convention.  Las Vegas Review
• Tuskegee man makes unusual find in family cemetery.  News video.  WFSA Channel 12 – NBC News (AL)
• The changing face of the funeral service industry.  Seven Ponds blog
• Gloucester redidicates Civil War cemetery.  Gloucester Times (MA)

 

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