Top graduate seeks to ease grief process
Death is not a nine-to-five job.
It can be messy, complicated and make for some odd dinner conversations, but for embalmer and funeral director Cassie Murphy, it’s all standard procedure.
The 21-year-old has been working at Lower Hutt’s Gee and Hickton Funeral Directors for the past three years, alongside her dad, Gavin.
‘‘Dad’s a funeral director and embalmer so I grew up around it.’’
Even back when she was at school, Murphy was determined to become an embalmer – but her dad was just as adamant she try something else.
‘‘He was always like: ‘no, do something different, don’t copy me’,’’ she says.
Straight after high school, while she was tossing up what to do that wasn’t embalming, she took on a job at the funeral home’s front office. After a year of that, an embalming position opened up and Cassie applied – she was in.
Stepping into a mortuary role at first seemed daunting. ‘‘It is quite surreal that you’re looking after someone,’’ she says.
‘‘We’re in such a privileged position to be able to look after someone.’’
The hardest thing was looking after the deaths that shouldn’t have happened – young people and children, suicides, traumatic events.
‘‘It does get to you; we are only human. ‘‘You would never meet a funeral director who hasn’t been affected by someone.
‘‘[But] if we can make the grief process just a little bit easier, that’s our job done.
‘‘You go into the industry knowing death doesn’t just happen nine to five. It’s something you just have to work with.’’
While qualifications aren’t strictly required in the funeral industry, Murphy recently graduated as the top practical student from WelTec’s diploma in embalming – the only qualification of its kind in New Zealand.
Alongside the embalming course, WelTec also hosts the country’s only funeral directing course, which Murphy hoped to sign up to in the future.
The funeral directing course covers behavioural psychology through to religion, while the embalming course touches on chemistry and practical experience.