- You can smell death.
I could walk into a place and I know
there's a corpse in there.
(spooky music)
- Hi, my name is Angela Gilmore-Manning.
- I'm Jean Daleus from Roy L. Gilmore's funeral home,
and hope today I've answered a few questions that you had.
- With unclaimed bodies, normally the city
will take possession, repossess the body.
In other words, if they're homeless,
they'll go to the extent where they will
try to get in touch with a family member or so.
If not, you go to Potter's Field.
Potter's Field is a general cemetery for homeless folks.
That's what they call city burial.
To prepare a body is to preserve the body.
That's through the process of embalming.
The embalming process is just
like you're performing surgery.
Based on the way you approach it,
you have to know what the person died from,
so you know how to preserve the body.
- So, what we're doing is we're using the carotid artery
to inject fluid to preserve the tissue; the body tissue.
As we're doing that simultaneously,
we're draining through the carotid vein.
- The only time you smell something would be
once the body's been there for a few days
and once you die, you undergo certain chemical changes
on the inside which will reflect
on your physical appearance.
That's when you start deteriorating.
There you have an odor.
The way we deal with smell is when you're in the prep room,
you have to be equipped.
Put on your mask, and the mask,
they have filters where you don't get the odor
that's emanating from the body.
To add to that, once the body is embalmed,
there is no odor.
As you know an autopsy is a process where they
sample every organ in the body.
Then, when the body arrives at the funeral home,
we have to put the person back together.
The organs are placed back into the body.
- We're not actually doing the
cremation here on the premises.
We have to go to a crematory in order to cremate the body.
Not all funeral services have open caskets.
It's really designed to have a viewing for the family.
They do that because it's traditional
for some families, not all families.
Some families choose to have closed caskets.
- Techniques and then they have equipment such as a lift.
You could use a lift with straps.
I would caution anyone, again,
you don't try to lift dead weight, okay?
You use certain techniques to move bodies around.
That's why they have lifts.
You could use the lifts to navigate inside the prep room
and to place bodies where you want them to be.
- Our death certificates are obtained
through the doctor when someone passes
either at home or hospital or nursing home.
The original death certificate is signed by a doctor.
Once we receive that signature,
then we're able to claim the body.
My father told me years ago that funeral homes were
designed like homes because they were homes for the dead.
Years ago, when families had loved ones to pass on,
they used to be posed in their homes initially.
- Actually they don't, only on the exterior of the building.
Not on the inside.
On the inside, it's just like everyone go to bed
and go to sleep so the lights are off.
But, on the exterior of the building,
to see the entity yes the lights have to be on.
Love of working and also knowing that
I'm out here helping a family.
- How I keep my spirits lifted knowing that
I'm here to assist families in making
funeral arrangements for their loved one
with dignity and honor.
(mysterious music)