May 3rd, 2004, 2:16 pm

The Art of Dying

I’m working on a story about the state of the death-care industry in San Antonio today. It’s been fascinating research, and has given me some quite interesting dreams. And I’ve met some very interesting people — among them being Francisco Solis, an instructor at San Antonio College’sMortuary Science program. Below is a transcript of our recent talk. Excerpts of a telephone conversation with Francisco Solis Tuesday, February 17, 2004

Francisco Solis: The real glamour in every article is talking about the bad stuff that’s always happening in the funeral industry, and I’m not going to try and tell you that there is not a lot, and I’ll tell you the tricks of the trade, and how people are tricked, but I wish there was an article somewhere about tellling the consumer how to sort of protect him- or herself. Maybe being sure that the consumer knows that there is the Texas Funeral Service Commission. If you have any question at all about a funeral arrangement, contact the state commission. And they’ll help you. They’ve shown all kinds of research about how the general public … and this might be something you [find?] with your own article, but because it’s death-related, people will not read it. Just because of the general fear about reading about death. And so, this is one market, unlike buying a car, or other markets, where the consumer tries to educate him or herself … It turns out they did a random survey, and you ask the consumer, “How much is the average funeral?,” very few people know that it ranges between 5 to 85 hundred dollars. 5,000-8,500 dollars. Very few people know that, because they are totally unaware of anything funeral-related. They don’t want to be.

Laura Fries: Six Feet Under is helping….

FS: Oh, I agree, and another thing that is helping a lot is the Internet. You know, you can go and find a lot of funeral homes online, their price list, they’re kinda showing you virtual reality if you want to look in and see what their funeral home looks like, you can on the Internet. Not to mention that you have far more people are burying their parents, and their children that ever have in the history of the world. Facing a time when people are burying their own parents, this is the time in which the greatest amount of people in the history of the world are over the age of 65. So, naturally those people are going to die. So more people are making funeral arrangements, more often, than before. And with things like unnatural causes, cancer, it’s not uncommon to be either burying your parents OR your children. I mean, before it was pretty much you buried your parents, and your children would bury you. But because of disease and stuff, we’re actually burying our parents and our children at the same time. You know, there are a lot of very interesting things, and I wish articles would written not so much about all the bad stuff that the funeral industry does, but I wish the consumer would arm themselves with knowledge about the funeral industry. And hopefully, that is what the article will help them do.

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In-person interview, February 18, 2004 2pm San Antonio College

After some preliminaries…

FS: A couple of national topics — I tried to put this in some perspective for you — but some of the national topics going on are kind of two-fold. One is the consumer, and one is the licensee. They have two different issues — or different issues. The consumer, naturally, is talking about things like price, you know, the ever-rising price of funerals, and you have to kind of break that down into what happens at the funeral home, and the cemetery. And some people tend to think that that’s one price. And rarely is it. There are some funeral homes, like Mission Park South, here in town, that have the cemetery and the funeral home on the same location. And that’s called a combo. But more typically, you see a stand-alone funeral home, and then cemeteries, and they do business, kind of. And so, there is a big discussion of price, and really it does depend on where you’re at in the nation. Texas is, and San Antonio is, relatively low, on the average scale. Somewhere between six and ten thousand dollars, by the time you finish with the funeral service, and the burial. That really could all depend on the merchandise. It could be a lot more, it could be a lot less, but again, that’s an average.

Other things affecting the consumer nationally are buyout. And that’s of the family-owned business by the big conglomerates. Nationally, there’s probably three really big ones, which [are] SCI, Service Corporation International….

LF: Loewen and Stewart?

FS: Loewen is now Alderwoods — there was a big lawsuit, and Loewen was a Canadian-based group. Because of some of the liability of the American funeral homes, they were able to attach the Canadian assets. So the group now said, ‘Ok, we’re going to be two now. We’re going to be Alderwoods in the United States so that can’t ever happen to us again.’ So there is an Alderwoods Group. And then there is Stewart. Really the strongest presence in San Antonio are the SCI group, and the Alderwood Group. They each have about five or six. Funeral homes. And then the family owned businesses. The family-owned businesses are facing — you know, sometimes in the family there is nobody in the family to carry it on, to carry on the tradition. They’ve made a good living in this family of doing something else, their kids don’t want to have to do the same type of work, by this time their kids are lawyers or doctors or something else, and don’t really want to go into the funeral homes business. Most funeral homes in San Antonio, the strong ones, are doing about 1.5 million dollars in annual sales. In order to survive.

LF: This is in San Antonio? How does that compare nationally?

FS: In order to survive, you have to be generating at least 1 million dollars in sales. 1 million to 1.5 million. Now, I would say that there are some firms that are working under that, and some firms that are working over that, in order to really turn the corner. And the problem is that when you face a family-owned funeral home, that has to generate that much revenue in sales, vs. a conglomerate, that can group together a centralized location, and kind of spread the duties out, that’s why a lot of the Mom and Pop funeral homes can’t survive. Because they can’t compete with what a conglomerate can do by centralizing their locations.

LF: Yeah, I read about ‘clustering’ — is that the name for it?

FS: Yep. Clustering. That’s it. They might have half of their staff, and you’ll show up at one funeral home one day, and you’ll work at another funeral home another day. The staff rotates, the cars rotate, they have one location answering the phone for all five, all the fleet, the limousines, the hearse, everything might come out of one location. So they are really able to cut down on the cost.

LF: What about embalming, things like that: Are those all done in one location, or in one spot?

FS: Most of the time — if they have clustering going on — it’s done in one location.

LF: Is that something they disclose to people? For example, is there a way I could find out the home that the … SCI embalming is taking place at?

FS: Right. It’s not required in the state of Texas to disclose that information. Where you are or not being embalmed. It’s only required if you’re not doing the … It’s still not required if you’re not doing the embalming in-house. Because a lot of even family-owned funeral homes, to cut corners again, or to cut costs, choose not to do the embalming at night. Not to run their own personnel. So there’s what’s called mortuary services that embalm at night. And you would call this service to go out, and pick up your body for you, and embalm it, and then bring it to your funeral home. And it’s not required by law to disclose that to the family.

LF: I hadn’t heard of mortuary services before — are they local companies?

FS: Yes.

LF: And they pretty much just do embalming?

FS: In fact, a family can’t contact them, nor are they allowed under law to contact families. So the only way they can hear of a death is if a funeral home calls them, to perform or contract some work out to them.

LF: So they don’t really advertise or anything — they are just subcontractors, kind of?

FS: Correct, you could call it a subcontractor.

LF: Do they do all of the restorative work?

FS: They do very little restorative work — they just actually do the embalming. And the body comes to you. Some of them might actually just do the removal for you. And if your location has a refrigeration unit, the body would be refrigerated until your staff comes in. Most embalming wants to be accomplished — to get the best results — as soon as possible. But that could be two hours. So if it is a 4 o’clock in the morning death, and your staff comes in at six, you might not have them embalmed, but just pick up and bring the body to your location. That leads to another big issue going on, and that is embalming. In the state of Texas, embalming is NOT required for a service with viewing. However — and that is the big however — a funeral home can require an embalming if they are going to have viewing. But: One, they have to disclose to you when they are asking permission to embalm the fact that embalming is not required by law.

LF: They have to ask your permission?

FS: Yes. So before they begin to embalm your body, they must first seek permission to embalm. If it is oral at the time, it has to later be followed up by written permission. And that is usually obtained at the family conference. And it might sound at the beginning that they’re almost just trying to get you to embalm the body, but it really — and the reason the Texas law allows the funeral home to make that requirement itself, is because when a family walks into your chapel and sees a body that’s not been embalmed, their first instinct is to say: “God, you do horrible bodies here.” And it is some reflection then upon the funeral home. And so the funeral home then has the right to say — if you’re going to have a funeral in our chapel, with viewing, we’re going to require that an embalming be performed. Most families, when they walk into a chapel, if they’re going to view a body, would expect that a body would have already been embalmed. And you wouldn’t go into a funeral home, and walk up to the casket, and kiss the body, which some people do, if you didn’t think it had been embalmed.

LF: Does the general public have an idea about what a non-embalmed corpse is like?

FS: I don’t think so. I really don’t believe so. And — you may have heard this — when they say ‘Oh, my father looked so bad at the hospital the last time we saw him’ — which is understandable, he’s been in the hospital, hasn’t been shaved, probably hasn’t been properly bathed, been under tubes and everything, the embalming process really does make you look better. You know, the embalming fluids help you, and set your features, and they close your eyes, and your mouth is closed … So the embalming process really does help with the appearance of the body, so when you hear things like, ‘He looks so much better now,’ it’s not always a bad case that the body was embalmed improperly.

LF:

{transcription in progress}

Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. As long as you cite me, do what you will with it - Laura Fries