Embalmer Career
Embalmer Career
The Real Poop
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to pay our final respects to…your ignorance about embalming: what it is, who does it, and how one makes a career out of it.
A professional embalmer is responsible for the preparation of deceased persons for their final moments above the solid ground. This includes (but most certainly isn't limited to) cleaning, dressing, reconstructing, and, of course, embalming. During the time it takes to prepare corpses for burial, you'll get to know them better than most people…even their doctors. You'll also get paid around $45,000 a year (source).
If you're going to be an embalmer, you're going to have to learn to be hands-on with parts of people you may not even have known existed. A gentle touch is a good quality to have, as the job requires you to be part-surgeon―though, thankfully, you won't kill anyone if you mess up because…well, you know. You're working with the dead.
You're letting their loved ones have that final, cathartic moment of farewell.
Sound like a lot of responsibility? Well, it is. To be completely frank, the people who make the best embalmers are those who can handle that responsibility. If you take pride in creating lasting, positive moments for people, this is a line of work you might want to consider.
For those of you who hear embalming and think "mummies," stop it. To begin with, the embalming process has coming a long way in the last 5,000 years since Ancient Egyptians starting draining fluids and putting organs in glass jars.
The purpose of the mummification process is to preserve the body for the afterlife; today, we preserve people so we can see them one more time. However, just because it's the 21st Century doesn't mean everything's just scrub-brush-comb-done. You'll be working with blood, hearts, bones, teeth, eyeballs, and all the other wonderful (sorta gross) parts that make a human being walk, talk, and digest. An iron stomach would pair quite nicely with that golden heart of yours.
Don't worry if your stomach muscles are underdeveloped or your gag reflex overdeveloped right now. If you go the college route (which is almost definitely required for licensing reasons) you'll have plenty of classes where you'll learn about the various body parts. Then, when you're learning your trade under a master embalmer, you'll be elbow-deep in those very same body parts. You'll learn real quick whether this is the right career for you.