CASKETEERS

When Kaiora Tipene realised her husband Francis was serious about becoming a funeral director, she had no idea how it was going to affect her own life and how passionate she would feel about caring for loved ones and their grieving families.

One couple talk about their experience of running a funeral home.

When my husband Francis first told me he wanted to be a funeral director, I was completely taken aback. I thought our life was fine at the time. We were living in Kaitāia and were very settled. I was teaching and he worked for a Māori health organisation. Francis said he was ready to start his own business and I thought that was cool. But when he said he wanted to own his own funeral home I didn’t take him seriously – I thought he was going through some sort of man thing.

I was just going about my daily routine when a couple of days later he said he had an opportunity in Auckland to do some work experience at a funeral home and if they liked him they’d take him on full-time. I knew he was really serious when he told me he had arranged a teaching job for me.

I realised how determined he was and how much he wanted to do it. Knowing the security was there with work, I agreed to move to Auckland and give it a go. I wasn’t going to hold him back; now here we are, 15 years later with two funeral homes.

On his first day at work I was a little bit anxious, but when he came home he said he didn’t get the opportunity to be hands-on with a loved one but he had washed the hearses. I thought that was quite funny. I won’t ever forget the first time he came home from a police contract – those are the raw moments, we call them sudden deaths or suspected cases. He had gone out to Middlemore Hospital, a mother had died giving birth and it was an unknown cause of death. Francis noticed the family was Māori, they were all crying and his senior funeral director at the time was just straight, no emotions, because in her mind she was doing her job. He didn’t know how to react because he felt culturally connected to them.

CARING FOR WHĀNAU

When he told me about it, I could understand more about what he was doing and started to share more in what had happened during his day. He felt that there weren’t many funeral homes catering to the needs of grieving Māori and Pacific Island families and that’s what started us on the path we’re on today.

When Francis started his own business he would ask me if I could help with things and I just used to say, “Are you for real?” I used to say to Francis I’d never come to work with him. The tipping point was when I experienced a relationship with one of the families myself. They came and hugged me and said, “Thank you so much, my mother looks so beautiful.” That’s when I realised I could do it and it was my calling. It brought me so much joy to know I could assist grieving families at that difficult time. I realised I could join Francis on this journey and we could do it together.

For people to allow us to care for their loved ones is always a privilege, and when they ask for help I’m always overwhelmed. We give them all the options of what we can do, and tell them the steps they need to take to have things the way they want them. You are part of their final moments with their loved one – it’s a very personal, intimate time, and we are part of helping them to grieve.

I have learnt that the key to this profession is to be as transparent as you can with the families and then everything seems to flow a lot more easily for them and for us. We do a lot of funerals for Māori and Pacific Island families and there are a lot of cultural protocols that we help them with. For Māori, their marae (meeting ground) has always been the centre and loved ones were always taken back there. For some urban Māori, that has changed and they may want to take them home. It’s really important that they have some intimate time with their loved ones

and can sleep overnight together with them. We try to give them as much time with their loved ones as possible.

Families ring us up and say they didn’t know they could dress them. For us this is their time, they get the opportunity to put that last sock on their mum. It does hurt a bit when they say they never knew that they could be part of that process.

When we were approached about The Casketeers television show, Francis didn’t want to do it. He couldn’t see how we could ask the families if they could be filmed at such a time. He was concerned it wouldn’t be dignified and that we’d be showing a lack of respect. He was worried the families wouldn’t still trust us. But in my mind I could see how it could work. I remember the first time a family asked if we could put a funeral notice up on Facebook. It was what they wanted but we got some comments saying that it was disrespectful.

Now it’s become the norm, just like taking photos at a funeral. Once it was something you wouldn’t do, but now no-one thinks anything of it. I thought it was all a matter of how things were portrayed on the show.

I’ll never forget that in our first season we cared for a homicide case

– a young mother had been killed by her partner and it was all over the news. The crew was here and the director really wanted to film it. Without hesitation, her father agreed and said, “If there’s anything we can teach NZ by filming this and capturing the last moments with my girl, then it will be worth it.” He even rang a while ago and said he was so grateful for the show because he could still see his last moments with his daughter. I get a bit touchy with it all sometimes, but if it becomes a precious memory then it’s beautiful.

ACCEPTANCE OF DEATH

Making the show was challenging at first, but now The Casketeers is accepted and there’s more dialogue around death. We’re only a small part of that funeral process – we come and uplift, embalm, help to dress and place the loved one in the coffin – the rest of the funeral before and after is for the family. At least people can now have that opportunity to discuss funerals in a positive light.

Death is always confrontational and it’s a matter of how we as individuals approach that. We have received an amazing response to the show and every day we get beautiful messages from NZ and around the world. They thank us for helping them through their grief, or giving them strength. It’s those responses that I’m moved by and grateful for.

I have studied to be a funeral director but it doesn’t matter how much experience you have or how many books you’ve read, you don’t really know about the grieving process until you experience it yourself. You need to acknowledge and accept it and know how you want to move forward. You need to embrace it – I can share that. It’s important not to ignore emotions or it can drag the grief on. You have to cry whenever you want to, no matter who’s around. Invite as many people as you want to share in that grieving. If you bottle it up, at some stage you will reach a breaking point. You need the strength to grieve at the time otherwise it can lead to deep depression. It’s important to ask if people are okay.

I’m grateful to my culture because I was brought up to grieve openly and to sleep with our loved one – you’re on a marae and everyone is invited in. Even at home it’s the same – invite everyone in, share their stories – you can learn so much about your loved one when you talk to strangers.

Since the show aired, we’ve had a lot of non-Māori wanting our services. We get people saying, “I think the universe is confused, I should be Māori.” They want to have a sense of connection and belonging. I have to explain I can’t just give it to them but we can arrange for their loved one to be at home so they can share intimate moments. They want to adopt some of those ways and it’s lovely they want to embrace our culture.

The show has broken down some barriers of how people see funeral directors. People can see we’re not the typical morbid type they expect. They can see the way we banter at work, we have a strong staff and the beautiful thing is we do call each other family – whānau.

After a big day we all come back here and have kai (food) and debrief. Every day for us is learning, regardless of how many families we look after there’s always something new and we apply what we’ve learnt in our daily activities. I’ve certainly grown as an individual. My husband is very supportive – he’s the head of our family and my joint companion at work and my business partner. Sometimes I get confused about who I’m talking to – Francis does too – and I have to go, “No, I need the business partner.” It’s sometimes hard to separate the two because we often call each other “darling” in front of the staff. And my children help me through, so all I want to do after work is go home and love them.

LOOKING FORWARD

Francis is my strength and I like to think that I’m his strength, too. Fifteen years ago I never thought we’d be in this position. We thought we would have a simple, small funeral home. Now we have two branches and have nearly finished work on our own mortuary. It means we can offer care from the very beginning. Our goal is to invite families to be part of the final washdown, doing their loved one’s hair ... it’s important for Māori and Pacific Island families. We want to help families through that transition time and offer the best final send-off for their loved ones.

It’s been a long process and we never thought we’d have our own mortuary. But then we never thought we’d have five kids, two funeral homes, a TV show and a book. I often get asked if there’s more to come with all we’ve achieved. We’ll know when enough is enough. We see the need, then we aim for that and take each day as it comes.

• Francis & Kaiora Tipene’s memoir, Life as a Casketeer (HarperCollins) is on sale now.

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“EVERY DAY WE GET PEOPLE THANKING US FOR HELPING THEM THROUGH THEIR GRIEF.”

KAIORA TIPENE