A mum who quit a fashion degree to follow her calling as an embalmer and even worked on her grandfather’s body after his death sees preparing the deceased for their loved ones to view as an “honour”. Drawn to her profession since childhood when, aged seven, she viewed her paternal grandmother’s body and worried that she “didn’t look good,” Rachel Carline, 32, sent speculative letters to funeral homes asking for work while she was studying.
Landing an administrative role at a Co-op funeral home in Rochdale, Lancashire, in the country where she still lives with her web designer husband Simon, 35, and their daughter, Iris, three, when she turned 20, even then, she would arrive early to watch the embalmers at work.
Now an expert in her field, she feels it is a privilege to be able to prepare a body to be viewed by loved ones after death, saying: “While it’s difficult and emotional, I also feel honoured to be in this position.” She added: “Me feeling this way actually drives me to make sure I do everything within my power to support families through a very difficult time.”
While Rachel knows that many people consider her overwhelming desire to work in the funeral industry from such a young age to be somehow peculiar, she is extremely proud of her work and the service it gives to the public.
She said: “Even as a kid I was fascinating with things other people would consider morbid. In primary school, I was obsessed with ancient Egypt and mummification.
“Ironically, back then I wanted to be a vet, but couldn’t face the idea of putting animals down. When I told my mum I thought working in the funeral industry would be a good job she called it ‘ghoulish’.
“My dad was just worried about the kind of things I’d see. But I feel it’s a real privilege.”
A profound early inspiration for her career in embalming – where a body is preserved to slow down natural deterioration and to make the deceased appear restful in preparation for loved ones seeing them in an open casket or the chapel of rest – came when she viewed her grandmother’s body as a little girl.
She said: “We’d been really close. My grandma, Edna, was quite a big influence on me. I think she’s where I get my artistic streak from, as she spent a lot of time teaching me to draw and paint.
“But when I saw her when she had died, her colour was really, really, really unnatural and there was a smell. The odour really stuck with me. It wasn’t a good experience. But, when I look back now, I understand why she looked the way she did.”
While Rachel was “glad” her parents took her to the viewing, that helped her to understand death – something she also did with Iris, who recently viewed her ‘big nana’ – her great-grandmother – after she died, the experience had a profound effect. And, although Rachel initially went to university to study fashion, falling ill before her final year, she deferred her place and, with time on her hands, started approaching funeral homes for work.
She said: “I was at a loose end for a few months, so I pursued getting a job in a funeral home. It’s hard to explain why. I just felt this pull. I sent letters out, CVs, phoned up. Then I just started turning up.
“There was a Co-op funeral home in Rochdale and I wouldn’t leave them alone. Eventually, a position opened up in admin. I didn’t really care what it was so long as it was a foot in the door.”
Abandoning her degree, Rachel started her role, aged 20.
She said: “I liked going in early and watching them doing the embalming. They’d even let me help with little things, things within my remit.”
After studying for vocational qualifications, Rachel became a funeral arranger at the remarkable age of 21, but she soon realised that it was embalming that really fascinated her.
She said: “I was then meeting families, but still coming in early to care for the deceased. I felt more drawn to that.”
So, in December 2012, Rachel began studying to be an embalmer. After qualifying in 2015, she landed a role with Co-op Funeralcare Lancashire. By 2018, she was the chairperson for the north west division at the British Institute of Embalmers.
Now she has embalmed thousands of people, including her grandfather – whose wife’s body she viewed as a child – and several friends. Embalming up to three or four bodies a day, taking two hours on average to ensure the deceased look their best, she also restores and reconstructs the faces of people who may have been in accidents or dead for some time.
To do so, Rachel asks the deceased’s family for photos showing their loved one from various angles, so she can recreate the way they preferred to look in life.
She said: “Sometimes I’ll get a photo that’s 30 years old. I’m a good embalmer, but I can’t knock 30 years off! Many people think embalming is just doing hair and make-up, or preserving the body, but it’s so much more. It’s anatomy, maths and chemistry.
“To work out the amounts of fluids you need, such as formaldehyde, water and dyes, you have to know how much the body weighs, how long it’s been since the person died, how long until the funeral, plus many other factors. But we always see them as a whole person, not an equation.”
Rachel cared for her grandad Dave Phillips, 76, when he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in March 2015, before he passed away in the September, and considers embalming his body one of her most poignant jobs.
She recalled: “When grandad was ill, he deteriorated, lost a lot of weight and was very frail. I looked after him and spent a lot of time with him in his final weeks.
“No matter who it is, I embalm everyone as though they are a close friend or relative, so the technical aspect of the embalming procedure didn’t feel that different. I had been heavily involved in looking after him when he was ill at home, so why wouldn’t I do it when he passed away?
“It felt like the most natural thing to do for me to continue to care for him after he’d died. I was devastated when he died.
"But I also felt that I had extra time with him that nobody else was going to get. It was such an honour to know I was going to do the last thing anyone was going to do for him.
“Once I had all the paperwork and was legally in a position to embalm him, I came in to work on a weekend when it was quiet. While I was doing the procedure I was fine. The technical, procedural part of embalming, which is visceral by nature, is what I do day in and day out.
“I was simply looking after someone who has passed away and it was my job to restore him to a peaceful and lifelike appearance that my family would benefit from. Once he was embalmed and looked like my grandad again, that’s when I found it quite emotional.
“When I was washing his hair, I got some shampoo in his eye and apologised to him. I shaved his face, trimmed his fingernails. Those last elements of care, although difficult, I think benefited me in my grief.”
Provided with mental health support by both the Co-op Funeralcare and the British Institute of Embalmers, when needed, Rachel finds the strength to work in difficult and emotionally demanding situations - such as with the Manchester Arena terror victims, some of whom she embalmed.
And she has also felt a deep emotional reaction when she is embalming people of the same age group.
She said: “As well as people that I know, which is emotional, I used to be really affected by embalming people that were a similar age to myself. It really made me face my mortality.
"Now I never leave a conversation on an argument. The job has changed me in that way. Since having my little girl, I now find embalming babies and children more difficult, too, but it drives me to do the best I can for that family.”
While she rarely talks about her job with her husband at home, Rachel is aware that people can be very curious about what she does.
She said: “My husband dreads going out with people we don’t know as there is always a lot of interest in my job, but I don’t mind answering their questions. There’s nowhere else really people can go to can ask them!”
Rachel also shares information, educates and informs people on embalming by hosting a podcast, The Eternal Debate, with fellow embalmer Andrew Floyd.
She said: “Some people in the profession still have the attitude that having feelings stop you from doing your job properly. It’s the opposite for me. The day it doesn’t affect me, or I don’t care who I’m embalming, is the day I stop.”
