A mother and daughter duo who are funeral directors go the extra mile in caring for the deceased - including dying their hair and giving them facials. Michelle Slinn, 56, started working in funeral care after being "really upset" by the way her late father was treated after he died - and is now celebrating 10 years in the job with her daughter now in the same profession.
Her daughter Jodie, 25, who secured the job with an interview on her 21st birthday, says the experience has taught her to "make the most of every single day because the truth is, none of us know what is around the corner or when our time will come". The pair, who share a home in Walthamstow, London, both work for the Co-op Funeralcare chain.
Michelle always wanted to work as a funeral arranger, but it was the death and the funeral of her beloved dad, Leonard, in 2008 that persuaded her to take up the offer of a job caring for the deceased four years later in 2012. "I had a bad experience when my dad died," she said.
"I'd been to funerals before, but this was the first time the person who died was someone so close to me and I was not happy with how he was taken care of after he died or with how he looked. It really upset me."
The mum, who has spent more than a decade of working in funeral care, added: "It makes you feel so proud knowing that you are doing everything you can to make the family happy at such a difficult time for them.
"We make a point of doing whatever the family asks us to do. One time, I dyed the hair of someone who had died because that's what their family asked for and Jodie has even done facials for the deceased if that's what the family has requested."
Jodie, who studied hairdressing and then tourism at college before working for three years in care homes, agrees with her mum that nothing is too much trouble for a bereaved family.
However, she added that although she has learned to leave work at work, some upsetting circumstances can make it hard to stay composed, such as the funeral of a teenager who had been killed.
"It was very hard to watch how his distraught father sobbed the whole time he was in the room talking about the funeral," she said.
Michelle also recalls feeling emotional and upset when she helped plan the funeral of a newborn baby who had been born one of twins.
"That was very hard, seeing the surviving twin in the pram at the funeral and their sibling in a tiny casket," she says. "But the fact is we see all of life, from newborns to people who just got their telegram from the Queen and, of course, suicides too."
It was her mum who first suggested to Jodie she should think about switching to working in funeral care.
"She may come across as tough on the outside but she's a big softie on the inside and so caring and so I knew she'd be brilliant," Michelle said.
But Jodie was only 18 when Michelle first mooted the idea of working in funeral care. She initially turned her mother down thinking she was not yet mature enough for a role that her contemporaries would run a mile from, before becoming a funeral arranger in 2018.
"In the end, I agreed to try it and so went for an interview on my 21st birthday. I got the job and have never looked back," Jodie said.
Like her mum, Jodie says she has a sense of pride in her work.
"It is rewarding to know the comfort you can bring to a family and also how much of the stress of arranging a funeral you can take off of them," she said.
"This job did make me grow up but in a good way. I know now to live in the moment and make the most of every single day because the truth is, none of us know what is around the corner or when our time will come."
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