Above a patchwork of family photos around her desk, Vinka Connelly-Lawrence keeps a shelf decorated with Disney and fantasy figurines.
Indulging in her love of whimsical characters and faraway lands is one way Ms Connelly-Lawrence has learned to distance herself from the tragedy and heartbreak she sees as part of owning a funeral home.
"That's my outlet … my coping mechanism," Ms Connelly-Lawrence said to ABC Radio Perth.
"Having been to Disneyland a couple of times, it's just a nice place to let your hair down and not think about the real world for a while."
Ms Connelly-Lawrence is not alone in developing techniques to manage what it is like being exposed to grief and death on a daily basis — a role largely unseen and undiscussed by the wider public.
From navigating family feuds, assisting families to wash and care for the bodies of their loved ones or managing arrangements for the death of a friend, the work of a funeral director involves many challenges and rewards.
It has taken time for Ms Connelly-Lawrence to develop coping strategies to protect herself from absorbing the grief of others and from the impacts of repeated exposure to tragedy.
"Some days I don't really want to be doing it because I just want happiness," she said.
"It can be tough because it just consumes you."
Ms Connelly-Lawrence came to the funeral business more than a decade ago after nine years of working as a contractor for the WA coroner's office with her husband.
They were called to every unexpected death in the city — from suicides to homicides and car crashes — where they would pick up and transport people's bodies for the coroner.
Ms Connelly-Lawrence said she was too focused on work to be affected by what she was seeing.
"You learn to detach yourself," she said.
"If I go to a scene, my first thing is assessing where I'm going, what I'm doing, how I'm going to attack that situation and get that person out."
Trauma resurfaces in dreams
Debriefing with her husband also helped Ms Connelly-Lawrence process the most difficult parts of her job.
It was not until she stopped working for the coroner about 15 years ago — when another bidder won the contract — that Ms Connelly-Lawrence realised she had developed post-traumatic stress disorder.
"I went to the doctor because I wasn't sleeping," she said.
"I was having recurring nightmares and dreams, like reliving all the scenes that I'd been to.
"I didn't realise it was my brain processing all those situations because I had stopped doing it.
"They were all sort of coming to the forefront."
Ms Connelly-Lawrence said, in hindsight, losing the contract had been a blessing in disguise because she "got her life back".
With hopes of working more closely with families, Ms Connelly-Lawrence started her own funeral business.
Based in Kenwick in Perth's south-east, the business displays a board with the hundreds of names of people whose funerals they have handled over the years.
Ms Connelly-Lawrence said the business had provided her with an opportunity to support families and she had loved hearing them share stories about the interesting lives of their loved ones who had died.
But family tension and tragic situations, such as youth suicides, as well as the deaths of children still take a toll.
"You just have to try and put yourself in their shoes and have a bit of empathy for what they're going through," Ms Connelly-Lawrence said.
"It's a bit difficult because you get families that are feuding, or you get families that don't see eye to eye and we end up being like the mediator or stuck in the middle."
Small-town challenges
In the Wheatbelt town of Northam, Rob Tinetti runs a funeral home with a team that includes his wife Dianne and daughter Tina.
He arrived in the town with his family more than 30 years ago to manage a supermarket but found himself in the funeral business after receiving an invitation to manage the local home.
"I said 'let me come to Perth and work with you for a while and I'll let you know'," Mr Tinetti said.
"So both of us went down, Dianne and myself, and [after] a week we said 'yeah, I think we can do this'."
Under the guidance of the owners at the time, the couple were slowly introduced to various aspects of the business, such as how to transfer a deceased person from the place of their death.
Mr Tinetti later moved into doing mortuary preparation and took a four-year embalmer's course before they purchased the business in 2005.
Working as a funeral director in a small town means Mr Tinetti's staff are more likely to handle funerals for people they are grieving for themselves.
"One thing that we've learned to do over the years is keep a professional distance from that," he said.
"Although you're grieving with them … if we get too emotionally involved, we're not going to carry out the actual funeral correctly.
"We just need to focus on helping that family through that time."
Mr Tinetti's staff have relied on each other for support when they have been faced with difficult cases such as car accidents, and also have access to counselling through the Australian Funeral Directors' Association.
But in addition to daily interactions with grief, he said the job has brought other challenges.
Their location in the Wheatbelt means it's common for staff to travel more than 200 kilometres each way for a funeral.
So many questions
Mr Tinetti said his occupation had also drawn the curiosity of strangers.
"If you happen to go out socially — whether it's a wedding, a 50th birthday, or whatever — if people ask you what you do for an occupation, and you say funeral director, you're pretty much tied up for a few hours," he said.
"I don't mind."
Gerard Basili, who runs a cremations and burials business in Perth, said he had also experienced much questioning about his profession.
"[People] always say 'I'm so sorry for asking all these questions but it's so intriguing'," he said.
"And I say 'of course' — it's not something that's discussed.
"[If] somebody passes away and you're the person organising the funeral, you don't know anything that happens between the day the body's picked up and basically the day of the funeral."
From pharmacy to funerals
As a former pharmacist, Mr Basili also found his way to owning a funeral home unintentionally.
He decided to enter the industry as both a business decision and after having negative personal experiences with funeral homes in the past.
"I had also lost a few people through my life and had to organise funerals as well," Mr Basili said.
"I thought business-wise it ticks the boxes, but personal-wise — emotionally, intellectually — I could do a better job than what I experienced."
Mr Basili cautions news staff that the first 10 funerals they work on will have a big impact.
"You're going to be very emotional. You don't know when to touch them … but after a while, you will start to desensitise," he said.
"You will never be a robot — you're human. There are going to be times where you are going to be emotional and at least that shows you're still human.
"But you're not going to react in such an emotional way anymore."
Mr Basili's daughter also works in the business.
They have relied on each other in difficult cases and have tried to put boundaries around their working hours to ensure they have time to decompress.
Mr Basili said it was important to select the right people for the job as it had sometimes attracted individuals he had sensed as voyeuristic.
"You can tell who is really wanting to do it for care for the dead, or those who are just intrigued or morbid," he said.
"We got a lot of those people wanting to work in the industry.
"I don't think they realise there's no glamour."
Mr Basili said funeral directors and their staff worked their "ass off", but there were also "beautiful" rewards.
"That's what you take from it," he said.
"If you can give a family the closure that they want — they need — you've done your job."
