More than one way to say goodbye: How funeral service students are embracing the profession

For Sydney Konyha, losing a close relative four years ago was a major turning point that made her rethink what she wanted to do with her life.

Konyha, who worked in health care and is now enrolled in the funeral serviceprogram at Mount Royal University, decided to make the switch after her relative's death.

"I think it was the aspect of being able to see her one last time, because I hadn't seen her probably in two months prior to her death. It was very sudden for our family," Konyha said.

She worked with funeral service professionals to arrange her relative's outfit, makeup and hair at the time of the funeral.

"That was something that I thought I could do one last time for her," Konyha said. "And it was a beautiful way for me and my family to be able to grieve and say goodbye."

She is now working towardbecoming a funeral director and an embalmer. She hopes to run her own funeral home some day and is grateful for the opportunity to support others.

"I can now help families open the doorway to grief and be able to mourn in a way that they can say goodbye and see their loved ones one last time," she said.

WATCH| Whyfuneral service students are embracing the profession:

Dealing with death in a Calgary university's funeral program

1 year ago

Duration 4:04

Dealing with death is something most people want to avoid, but a small group of students at Mount Royal University is hoping to break the taboo around death through their studies in Funeral Services. With many funeral directors set to retire over the coming years, these students think the time is right.

According to Brett Watson, manager of a funeral home in Calgary and restorative art instructor at MRU, working in funeral services can be incredibly challenging.

"You have to be a special kind of person to be able to do this type of job," he said. "You know, there's a lot of trauma that you're dealing with, both physically and emotionally."

Watson added that the job requires a person to be empathetic and thoughtful while working with grieving families.

"You have to be there to support them," Watson said. "You feel their pain a lot of times, especially if it's something you faced in your own family."

Additionally, those working in funeral services need to be able to lift heavy weights and deal with stressful situations.

"You're handling human remains. You know, we have equipment that we use to move folks around. But still there is a fair amount of lifting involved," Watson said.

Cara Hewer is an apprentice at Westlawn Funeral Home in Edmonton and a student at Mount Royal for funeral directing and embalming. She says balancing work and her personal life is one of the most challenging aspects of being in the industry.

"The most difficult part, I believe, is separating your personal life and your work life. They do get mashed up sometimes," she said. "You will sometimes run into people you know."

'Do not take their grief away from them'

Hewer has a strict set of rules she follows to ensure she's able to maintain a healthy balance.

"The first rule I put in my head is [that] their grief is not your grief," she said. "Do not take their grief away from them. That is something they need for their healing process."

It's trickier if she's working with a friend's family and needs to set aside her emotions to help them through the process.

"It'll be hard to separate the fact that you knew this person and now you are helping their family," she said. "The thing is, you can turn it into a positive you get a chance to help the family. You get to be a part of helping someone through this hard time."

Jillian Martinson, an apprentice at a funeral home in Medicine Hat, decided to leave behind an accounting career in the oil and gas industry to study funeral services after she realized it was time to make a change.

'Grief is not just one thing. It is multiple things'

Martinson looked at a plethora of programs at several universities before making a decision.

"I liked being able to do things for people and be able to show them just how much people care," she said.

Martinson added she has two siblings with disabilities and knows what it's like to deal with difficult situations.

"[We] went through the struggles of going through life trying to learn things, grieving things that they were missing out on," she said.

Martinson believes empathy and compassion are non-negotiable in the funeral industry.

"We want to be there for them [grieving clients] in every way, and not just hide in the background and kind of disappear," she said.

Konyha echoed this sentiment and said grief is more complex than it seems, and those in the industry must acknowledge that.

"Grief is not just one thing. It is multiple things," she said. "It could be emotional, it could be behavioural, it could be symptomatic."

Konyha and Martinson hope to change the narrative through their work and tackle common issuessurrounding death.

For instance, facing the reality of someone's passing can be difficult.

"It helps with your grieving process and it helps by seeing your deceased, helps you to kind of be able to move forward," Martinson said.

Meanwhile, Konyha wants to tackle difficult conversations and "open up a door to be able to talk about death a little more freely."

Pursuing a career in funeral services isn't necessarily as grim or predictable as it may seem. Watson said it's a dynamic field and no two days are the same.

On a typical day, he may work at his desk, arrange a funeral, meet a familyor run the crematorium.

"There's all kinds of things that I do on a daily basis, and no two families are the same," he said.

"They're going to want to create a memory, a service, a ceremony to honour their loved one. And it's going to be different from every other one that I've done in the past."

As for getting embalming and facial reconstruction right, Watson and his students are acutely aware of the tight deadlines in the real world and knowit's important to get the details right.

"In the funeral industry, we often have to rebuild a lot of features that can sometimes be caused by unfortunate trauma, accidents [and] burns," Hewer said, noting grieving families want to see their loved ones the way they remember them.

"We want to make sure that we're restoring the person to the state that the families want to see them [in.]"