Four people share this position and are paid to be on call from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. on Monday through Thursday, and Friday at 4 p.m. until 8 a.m.; the weekend is an entire shift. The first and only phone call Havlik, a 21-year-old UW-Oshkosh senior, has received from the funeral home was a little before 8 a.m. He met the funeral director at the Seefeld chapel on Oregon Street and they drove in the business’ van to the prospective house. The funeral director stood in the somber living room, talking with the wife of the deceased man as she softly cried. Havlik stood waiting a few feet away.
“I felt really shaky and my knees felt like Jell-O,” Havlik said. “I just remember being really nervous. Normally, you have to confront death (but) it felt really awkward because of the situation where a family is grieving over a lost loved one. I wouldn’t have had any idea of what to say or how to console them. It was just a really awkward situation to me.”
Havlik and the director entered the man’s bedroom, which was clean and neat, set up for hospice living. The man, about 5 feet 10 inches, looked incredibly skinny in a T-shirt and underwear and probably weighed a little more than 100 pounds. Havlik said the man looked peaceful in his small bed.
After the wife kissed her husband’s cheek and said goodbye for the last time, Havlik, wearing rubber gloves, put his arms just beneath the man’s knees and lifted him. The funeral director held the corpse below the neck and they carried him into the open body bag waiting in the hallway. Havlik zipped up the bag and pushed it on a stretcher out of the house.
“There was just a sheet between me and the body,” Havlik said. “I didn’t feel like I was carrying a human – it felt like dead weight, not a real person. He was a small person, but there’s a big difference between lifting someone who is alive and someone who is dead. He was heavier than he looked.”
Havlik described feeling numb and an “empty nervousness” as he moved the corpse. Everything went by quickly.
“It was really frightening for me because I saw this person laying there, and I saw his sunken eyes,” Havlik said. “I’ve always felt the desire or need to know that I will die one day and just to make the best life I can and do what I want to do with my life – this gave that a new tone and immediacy… in that respect, it was kind of good for me.”
Doug Seefeld, president of Seefeld Funeral and Cremation Services, said the removal assistant job was created about a year ago to relieve the funeral directors of being on call as often. Historically, two were on call at all times.
He said the qualifications for removal assistant include having a pleasant disposition, availability and being able to lift 100 pounds, occasionally to a height of four or five feet. Assistants earn $15 for weeknights and $20 for weekends.
Being called in is rare, because hospitals usually have the equipment to help remove a body without the need for a second person. Houses with hospice living situations, scenes of accidents and overweight individuals will sometimes require removal assistance.
Wanting another part-time job that wouldn’t take a lot of time, Havlik applied for the job in December with a friend who mentioned the opening. They went through Occupational Safety and Health Administration training together, and also were trained to use stretchers and other removal equipment. His friend quit after the training process, unsure if he was emotionally able to handle the job.
“Very clearly nobody looks forward to anybody dying, or themselves dying,” said Seefeld, who went to mortuary college 20 years ago. “There is the fear people have of their own death, but as a community, as family, as a society, we have to realize that this is a natural part of the cycle. People are born and people die. Our job is to help people then reflect on a life that’s been lived and plan events that are meaningful and memorable.”
The Seefeld funeral home spans four generations back, but Seefeld is the only family member who works there now. He said his brother got licensed but didn’t like the job.
According to the National Funeral Directors Association, individuals, families or private companies own 89 percent of funeral homes, averaging 66 years in business each.
Oshkosh junior Levana Gray, 20, also works at Seefeld as a removal assistant. She found the post through the university’s online job bank, Titan Jobs.
Gray was hired in February but she hasn’t been called so far. She said that when people ask about her current part-time job, they aren’t always understanding.
“Most of them aren’t overly, ‘What a great job. Tell me about it.’ I get a lot of the ‘Um, what does that even mean. Why would you want to do that?’ I just tell them I want to pursue a career in the funeral industry. That’s the beginning step,” Gray said.
She plans to enroll in Wisconsin’s only mortuary school at Milwaukee Area Technical College to become a funeral director. She became interested in the career during high school, when she job shadowed a funeral director for one day and helped prepare a service.
Gray is nontraditional in the respect that many people get into the business because their relatives are in it. The job is important because in times of crisis, people need a funeral home that will provide good service, she said.
Seefeld said there is a common misconception that funeral directors and funeral homes just deal with dead people.
“That is really a small part of our job,” Seefeld said. “We’re dealing with the living, the community, with those we serve. We’re caring for the deceased but everything else is about reflecting for those that are alive.”
The day after Havlik encountered death up close, he called his parents and went out to lunch with them.
“I really felt like I needed to talk with people who are close to me,” he said.
He said that in the end, he’s happy to have gone through this experience.
“It’s hard to accept the fact that everyone you know and love will one day be dead and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Havlik said. “The most important thing is just to remember that you’re alive and you have to make the best of it.”
http://www.advancetitan.com/story.asp?issue=11346&story=6070
