Chapter 45

It’s crazy, how incredibly cosmic and random everything really is. How one day, one chance encounter, can change everything. And I soon had another encounter that would forever alter my life’s trajectory.

At the gym, as I walked by the chest press, a dude, around my age and also squat, with close-cropped hair, had asked me, while I was passing by, if I could spot him on the chest press, and we got to talking; I found that he was a rare local, a fellow Florida boy, actually from the Sarasota area, not a transplant, snowbird, or tourist.

When I asked what line of business he was in, he hesitated for a second, furtively looked away. Then he swung his gaze back to me and, with a deadpan look, told me straightforwardly that he was in the funeral services industry. Was the manager of a funeral home.

“A reliable business, recession proof,” I quipped, and we shared a laugh, which obliterated the tension. I was thinking he probably received strong responses when people heard of his job, and he was visibly relieved that I didn’t have qualms.

When I told him I was a loan officer, he perked up. He’d been thinking of branching out, leveraging, and buying into the franchise of funeral homes that he worked for, he told me. I told him I could possibly set him up. And thus, a business partnership was born.

The franchise he worked for was profitable, highly so. And I decided to take things a step further and join him, use some cash I’d saved to buy in as well, and was able to secure financing, not from my company, but another (mine had passed on the idea, so we went to another bank and were successful in our proposal).

Our leveraged stake in the franchise paid off handsomely for both of us. I was able to quit my job as a loan officer and to work full-time, handling various matters at the funeral homes.

Many might find this line of work icky, morbid. But I don’t. I see death as a part of life. Corpses, caskets, and funerals don’t dismay or scare me. If anything, working with death reminds me how limited our time is, how each one of us, anyone reading this, will be in that box one day. Would our time have the same meaning if it were infinite? I don’t think so ... Time is truly the only commodity we can’t replace. Being a coworker of death has clarified this...

Because of my outlook, or for whatever reason, I took to work at the funeral homes easily, naturally. Including speaking with, receiving customers, grief-stricken families, loved ones.

I think that my experience with death, losing my father at a young age, losing my wife, my girlfriend, two babies, that that trauma had given me perspective and ability to feel empathy for those dealing with loss. Rather than cowering or being pedantic, offering advice to those in grief, I listen to them, take on a role of grief counselor, and lend them an empathetic ear during their time of sorrow. I know their pain. I live their pain. I share their pain. And I do what I can to help them along in their grieving process.

Of course, word spreads, with how we take care of people, and, with Florida’s large elderly population, many seek our services.