A Life of Death True North

Life is never the same

whenever you're introduced to the funeral business.

I think when you're young

and suddenly you have this huge culture shock

where you see things that nobody else sees...

The whole thing about seeing someone that has died

is the whole lack of animation that a human body has.

People look very, very different.

To be surrounded by death on a daily basis,

I think it's something that you get used to over a period of time.

To me, it's a very natural thing.

I don't think you can be in the funeral business for 25 years

and not be affected by it.

I probably lost a bit of my youth.

It was just one of those sacrifices that you have to make.

Embalming is an essential part of the funeral profession.

It provides a lasting memory picture.

No-one wants to be left with a bad memory.

The first time that I experienced the embalming theatre,

I said that I'd never come back.

I mustered up enough courage a few days later and back I came

and then I gradually built up my constitution from there on in.

I would have handled around about 5,000, I suppose,

give or take a few here or there. That's a lot of people, actually.

If they paraded out past the front of the office there,

I suppose it would take a long time.

I'm interested in the funeral business and I'm interested in art.

I started as a collector and I started to collect paintings

and I couldn't get enough of them and then I ended up owning a gallery.

People will ask the question,

"Do you see any comparison between the funeral business and art?"

From the embalming aspect of it,

we'd be very particular about how someone is placed in the coffin,

how they look in the coffin, how they're positioned.

I mean, every aspect of it has to be into perfection, you know,

and I feel the same particularly about art and the gallery

that I have - that everything has to be 100%, everything has to be right.

It's allowed me to become part of people's lives

in a very intimate and stressful time and distressful time

and share with them something that was very important to them.

There's that moment that's very hard to describe, you know,

that you get your head round where someone is in this scene and time

and then they're taken away from it.

It makes you think of prioritising in life and what you need to do

and what you want to do.

"Will I end up in a nursing home? Will I lose my mind?

"Or will I take an illness?"

I've often thought what it'd be like to transport my mind

into somebody else's mind that has no experience of death.

Would they have a much happier,

carefree sort of a life than what I have?

I don't know, but I wouldn't want to be anybody else.