Funeral director

From janitor to partner Twenty-six years after vacuuming floors and washing cars at Lain-Sullivan Funeral Home and Crematory (50 Westwood Dr, Park Forest, 708-747-3700) for his after-school job, Robert Moynihan, 48, now works as one of four partners at the Park Forest home, where he also resides. As funeral director, he responds to calls from families at any time of day (often in the middle of the night) and oversees all arrangements, from the preparation of the body to presiding over the funeral when necessary. “Sometimes families want to have a memorial service at a country club or the Newberry Library,” he says. “There’s creativity in that…helping people [figure out] the best way to honor a loved one.”

Ch-ch-changes “The function of a funeral director today is a lot different than it was when I started,” Moynihan says. “Back then, people dealt with funeral directors in ways they deal with a doctor. Whatever your doctor says, you do.” Today, he says, a funeral director is more like a consultant or concierge who’s there to provide people with options and information. “People want to have a more dominant role,” he says. Moynihan likens the funeral world to the travel industry: “For a long time, there was a lot of mystery around travel. Today, you can go to Cheaptickets.com. People have choices they didn’t have before [such as cremation versus burial and cemetery location]. Good funeral directors are aware of that and are open to it.”

You do what? Surprisingly, Moynihan says he doesn’t find people react much when he tells them his profession, which he assumes reflects the current popularity of cremation. “People today think a funeral director is someone they’re not going to deal with,” he says. Moynihan recalls the time when, at 25, he took a vacation (a train ride from Chicago to California) with his best friend, also a funeral director. “We’d go to the dining car, and we’d sit with two other people at the table. The first day or so, every time somebody would ask what you do, it opened up questions like, ‘What do you do with blood? Do fingernails grow after somebody dies?’ By day two, when people went to ask us, I elbowed [my friend] and said we’re insurance salesman.” (In case you’re wondering, the blood is disposed via a drain that feeds into a sanitation system and fingernails don’t keep growing.)

Coping mechanisms “In my twenties, I thought being good meant never shedding a tear,” Moynihan says. “Now I’m not afraid to get choked up if I’m feeling touched.” Every other weekend, he clears his mind by escaping to his weekend/summer home on Lake Michigan in Kenosha, Wisconsin. “Also, I have to have a sense of humor, not about people’s grief, but I don’t have to take myself seriously.”

Magic act “People come in and have so many things they need to get done,” he says. “While we can’t take away the grief, we can take away the duties and tasks. I call it funeral-home magic. They leave my office today and come back tomorrow or next week, and we shoot everything out of a cannon and make it happen.” Beyond taking care of the basic arrangements, the home offers all the bells and whistles, from webcast funeral services to educational seminars with lawyers or aromatherapists. “Today, a husband came up to me, threw his arms around me and said he couldn’t have made it through it without me,” Moynihan says. “That, to me, makes the 3am phone calls worth it.”

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