The first time Victor M. Sweeney observed an embalming, it was for an 18-year-old woman who had died in a car crash just before her high school graduation. At the time, Sweeney was just 18 years old himself.
He had seen dead bodies before, but this was his first “hands-on experience with someone my own age,” he tells CNBC Make It. “That was extremely challenging.”
At the time, Sweeney was working his first job in the funeral industry as an assistant in a funeral home, “dusting caskets and carrying flowers,” he says.
Already set on a career in the funeral business, Sweeney’s boss asked him to watch the embalming so that he knew what he was getting into. Afterward, his parents — both psychologists — asked if he needed to talk through it.
“What I found then and what I find now, is that I was in a position…where I could actually do something that would help the family grieve — that’s what got me through the tough parts,” he says. “Having the ability to do something provides me with a bit of relief and comfort, so I don’t feel the need to unburden myself to my friends and family with the things that are happening at work.”
Today, 33-year-old Sweeney is a licensed funeral director and mortician in Warren, Minnesota, earning just over $87,000 per year. Here’s a look at what it takes to do his job, and why he’s happy with the life he’s built.
Becoming a funeral director
Born in Detroit and raised in a Catholic household, Sweeney dealt with death from an early age.
His older sister passed away before he was born and Sweeney’s family regularly visited her grave. He remembers fighting with his two younger brothers over who got to clean the headstone. At the age of 3, he also experienced a traumatic event when he discovered his best friend, also 3, dead in bed.
Along with subsequent deaths in his extended family, Sweeney’s early exposure to death made it less of a taboo topic in his household. “I really don’t fear death,” he says, coming from what he describes as a “death-positive” family.
Victor M. Sweeney inside DuBore Funeral Home.
Ben Brewer | CNBC Make It
As a teen, Sweeney considered following in his godfather’s footsteps in becoming a priest, but ultimately decided he didn’t have the right temperament for the job.
“When you start to look inward, you discover more about yourself — I discovered that I’m terribly selfish, and I really enjoy taking credit for things,” he says. ”It’s not terribly honest to want to take credit for the state of someone’s soul.”
In high school, after his family moved to Bismarck, North Dakota, Sweeney was deeply moved by “The Undertaking” by Thomas Lynch, a collection of essays on life, death and the role of a small-town funeral director. Inspired by the book, he approached the father of a classmate, a mortician, and asked for a job at a local funeral home. He worked there throughout his final year of high school, graduating in 2009.
He then moved to Fargo to study pre-mortuary science at North Dakota State University, followed by a bachelor’s in funeral service and mortuary science at the University of Minnesota, graduating in 2013.
Working as a funeral director in a small town
In 2014, Sweeney accepted a job as funeral director at the DuBore Funeral Home in Warren, Minnesota, a small 1,600-person town 70 miles south of the Canadian border.
He has since settled down there, buying a home in 2015 for $85,000 where he and his wife are raising their four children.
In Minnesota, funeral directors must also be licensed morticians, meaning they manage the funeral planning and paperwork as well as the preparation of bodies. It’s common in small-town funeral homes in the U.S. for one person to take on both roles.
Being a funeral director in a small town also means “you end up knowing almost everybody who comes through the door,” says Sweeney. “So if you don’t know the deceased, you certainly know some of their family. And that gets emotional at times.”
An important part of the job is balancing his emotions with the needs of grieving families.
“The kind of person who does best in the funeral world treads the middle way, the via media between two extremes,” Sweeney says. “On one end, you have people who are really morbid, and on the other, those who are too empathetic. The best funeral directors find a balance between these extremes.”
Victor M. Sweeney engraves a headstone.
Ben Brewer | CNBC Make It
At the same time, “You’re more than just the local mortician,” he says. “I’ve buried children and then I see the parents around town. Everyone’s a real person to each other, and it’s not just business, which is kind of beautiful.”
Sweeney has turned down higher-paying job offers from corporate funeral homes in bigger cities, including one that offered him over $200,000 a year. The average pay for a funeral director is about $100,000, according to the Economic Research Institute.
“I want to be here,” he says. “My only boss is a funeral director who does exactly what I do, so I’m not beholden to someone who doesn’t know how my job works.”
The flexibility of working in a family-run business also allows him to make decisions that feel right to him, such as offering discounts or helping families in need. “There are no corporate rules against charity,” he says. “That’s something I value probably more than anything else.”
Sweeney’s sense of community goes beyond his funeral director duties. In his spare time, he restores unmarked graves in the town’s Catholic cemetery, hand-carving headstones and inscribing their names in Latin.
“It’s a way of giving back to the people who came before us,” he says. “It’s very gratifying.”
On the job
Sweeney’s role begins as soon as the phone rings: “We answer the phone 24/7, every funeral home in the country does.”
Even if the call comes in the dead of night, Sweeney dresses, grabs his equipment and heads to the place of death. He arrives with a cot, prepared to transfer the body. “Often, the family wants to have a hands-on role in moving their loved one, so I gently coach them through how to do it,” he says.
The body is taken to the funeral home, where it’s embalmed, unless the family chooses a cremation. “The main goal of embalming is to sanitize the body and also preserve it,” Sweeney explains. This ensures that the body will be presentable for the funeral as it prevents decomposition.
If the body has suffered an injury, Sweeney will suture the wound together, then use mortuary wax and cosmetics to smooth it over.
Victor M. Sweeney with a casket outside DuBore Funeral Home.
Ben Brewer | CNBC Make It
“When I give a body back to a family — a body that’s been injured — I don’t want them to know where,” Sweeney says. By doing this, he hopes to “provide them with some peace,” allowing them to focus on their loved one rather than the circumstances of their death.
Sweeney then dresses the body in clothes provided by the family. From there, it is carefully placed into a casket so that it appears to be resting. “You don’t really want a person looking straight up out of the casket — we call that stargazing — but you also don’t want them looking stiff as a board.”
After the body is ready, Sweeney heads to the church or funeral site to set up the flowers and arrange everything for the service. Some relatives choose to gather around the casket, while others might keep to themselves, away from the body.
After the service, Sweeney takes the casket or urn to the cemetery for burial.
In his role as a funeral director, Sweeney emphasizes the importance of allowing families to participate meaningfully during the funeral. He believes that actions like carrying a casket or passing the urn around around at the gravesite can have a profound impact.
“These kinds of actions really drive the healing process,” he says.
Why Sweeney writes his own obituary every year
Sweeney has already planned his own funeral and keeps detailed instructions for it in a filing cabinet, right next to the plans he keeps for his clients.
“You only have to bury so many people your age before you realize it could be you,” he says.
His funeral plans also include his obituary, which he rewrites every August. “Each year, my obituary gets shorter and shorter,” he says. “It’s not that I’m doing less, but that there are fewer and fewer things that really, truly matter,” like his family and service to others.
Victor M. Sweeney preparing for a funeral.
Ben Brewer | CNBC Make It
By writing about his death each year, Sweeney also reaffirms his sense of fulfillment with the choices he’s made.
“I’m wildly happy,” he says, “My wife likes me, my kids look forward to my return every day and I love my boss. I don’t think I’ve ever felt I should have done something else, and that’s all a man can ask for,” he says.
“I don’t think I’ve gone home sad a single day since I’ve been up here.”
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