I’ve never gone home sad once – NBC 7 San Diego

Victor M. Sweeney first observed the embalming of the body of an 18-year-old woman who died in a car accident just before graduating from high school. Sweeney himself was only 18 years old at the time.

He’s seen dead bodies before, but this was his first “hands-on experience with someone my age,” he tells CNBC Make It. “It was extremely difficult.”

At the time, Sweeney was working his first job in the funeral industry as an assistant at a funeral home, “dusting caskets and carrying flowers,” he says.

Already starting his career in the funeral industry, Sweeney’s boss asked him to watch an embalming so he knew what he was getting into. Later, his parents – both psychologists – asked if he should talk about it.

“Then and now I discovered that I was in a position where I could do something to help the family through their grief. Thanks to this, I survived difficult times,” he says. “Having the opportunity to do something gives me a little bit of relief and comfort, so I don’t feel the need to burden my friends and family with what’s going on at work.”

Today he is 33 years old Sweeney is a licensed funeral director and undertaker in Warren, Minnesota, earning just over $87,000 a year. Here’s what it takes to do his job and why he’s happy with the life he’s built.

Become a funeral director

Born in Detroit and raised in a Catholic home, Sweeney struggled with death from an early age.

His older sister died before he was born, and Sweeney’s family regularly visited her grave. He remembers fighting with his two younger brothers over who would clean the tombstone. At the age of 3, he also experienced a traumatic event when he discovered that his best friend, also 3, had died in bed.

With subsequent deaths in his extended family, Sweeney’s early exposure to death made it no longer taboo in his household. “I’m really not afraid of death“ – he says, coming from a family he describes as “death positive.”

As a teenager, Sweeney considered following in his godfather’s footsteps and becoming a priest, but ultimately decided that he did not have the right temperament for the job.

“When you start looking inside yourself, you discover more about yourself. “I discovered that I’m terribly selfish and I really like to take credit for things,” he says. “It’s not very fair to want to take credit for the state of someone’s soul.”

In high school, when his family moved to Bismarck, North Dakota, Sweeney was deeply moved by Thomas Lynch’s “The Undertaking,” a collection of essays about life, death and the role of a small-town funeral director. Inspired by the book, he approached his classmate’s father, a mortician, and asked for a job at a local funeral home. He worked there throughout his senior year of high school, graduating in 2009.

He then moved to Fargo to study mortuary sciences at North Dakota State University, followed by a bachelor’s degree in mortuary services and mortuary sciences from the University of Minnesota, graduating in 2013.

He works as a funeral director in a small town

In 2014, Sweeney accepted a position as funeral director at DuBore Funeral Home in Warren, Minnesota, a small town of 1,600 located 70 miles south of the Canadian border.

He has since settled there, purchasing a home in 2015 for $85,000, where he and his wife raise their four children.

In Minnesota, funeral directors must also have a funeral director’s license, which means they handle funeral planning and arrangements, as well as preparation of the body. In small-town American funeral homes, it is common for one person to fulfill both roles.

Being a funeral director in a small town also means “you know almost everyone who walks through the door,” Sweeney says. “So if you don’t know the deceased, you certainly know some of his family. Sometimes it gets emotional.”

An important part of this job is balancing his emotions with the needs of grieving families.

“The person who does best in the funeral world walks the middle way, the so-called through the media between two extremes,” Sweeney says. “On the one hand we have people who are really sick, and on the other we have people who are too empathetic. The best funeral directors strike a balance between these extremes.”

At the same time, “you’re more than just a local undertaker,” he says. “I buried the children and then I meet my parents in the city. They are all real people to each other and it’s not just about business, which is beautiful in a way.”

Sweeney turned down better-paying job offers from corporate funeral homes in larger cities, including one that offered him more than $200,000 a year. The average salary of a funeral director is approximately $100,000, – reports the Institute of Economic Research.

“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 what my job is like.”

The flexibility of working in a family business also allows him to make decisions that are right for him, such as offering discounts or helping families in need. “There are no corporate rules against charity,” he says. “It’s something I value probably more than anything else.”

Sweeney’s sense of community extends beyond the duties of a funeral director. In his spare time, he restores unmarked graves in the city’s Catholic cemetery, hand-carving the tombstones and inscribing their names in Latin.

“It’s a way to give back to the people who came before us,” he says. “It’s very satisfying.”

At work

Sweeney’s role begins when the phone rings: “We answer the phone 24/7, that’s what every funeral home in the country does.”

Even if the call comes in the middle of the night, Sweeney dresses, grabs his equipment and heads to the scene of the death. He arrives with a cot, prepared to move the body. “Family often want to have a direct influence on their loved one’s move, so I gently instruct them on how to do this,” she says.

The body is transported to the funeral home where it is embalmed, unless the family decides to cremate it. “The main purpose of embalming is to disinfect and preserve the body,” explains Sweeney. This will make the body suitable for burial as it prevents decomposition.

If the body has suffered trauma, Sweeney will suture the wound, then smooth it out with bone wax and cosmetics.

“When I give a body to a family – a body that has been injured – I don’t want them to know where,” Sweeney says. She hopes this will “give them some peace of mind,” 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, he is carefully placed in the coffin so that he appears to be resting. “You don’t really want the person to be looking straight out of the coffin – we call it stargazing – but you don’t want them to look stiff as a board either.”

Once the body is ready, Sweeney goes to the church or funeral site to lay flowers and get everything ready for the service. Some relatives choose to gather around the casket, while others may remain aloof, away from the body.

After the service, Sweeney takes the casket or urn to the cemetery for burial.

As a funeral director, Sweeney emphasizes the importance of allowing families to meaningfully participate in funerals. He believes that actions such as carrying a casket or passing an urn at the burial site can have a huge impact.

“These kinds of activities really fuel the healing process,” she says.

Why Sweeney writes his own obituary every year

Sweeney has already planned his own funeral and keeps detailed instructions 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 an obituary, which he writes every August. “Every 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 matter,” such as his family and serving others.

By writing about his death every year, Sweeney also acknowledges his sense of fulfillment in the choices he has made.

“I’m crazy happy,” he says. “My wife likes me, my children look forward to my return every day, and I love my boss. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like I should have done anything different and that’s all a man can ask for,” he says.

“I don’t think I’ve ever come home sad once since I’ve been here.”

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