Facing Death as a Teenager Part 2

Our Funeral Director Intern, Jared, is telling his story about how he ended up in the funeral industry. Here is part two of Jared’s story. Read part one.

Chemotherapy was hard. It was difficult on me physically and mentally. I would go into chemo once every two weeks for about 4 hour sittings. The drugs they were using were being referred to as a chemo cocktail. It was four types of chemotherapy all wrapped up into one very powerful, toxic medicine. It was almost corrosive. It was deteriorating my veins, so bad to the point I had to have a porta-cath surgically inserted into my chest. It was basically an internal I.V. that went behind my sternum into a main artery. I had a total of 12 treatments. But after number 4 I started to give up.

A porta-cath

Having a body that ultimately is failing you is a bad experience all on its own. But then the process to get you better is even more increasingly painful. I was sick all the time, I was tired, I tried to keep up with my friends, but it was hard. I had a really supportive family through it all, which was probably the deciding factor to continue. But internally I had given up. I didn’t want to keep going with a coin toss chance of success, to go through that much agony, to come out on the other side just to die. This is what started the process into acceptance of my death. And what I would want to do, if and when that time came.

I feel like death is looked at through a lot of misunderstanding. It is sad, yes, it is scary, yes, but until science finds a way it isn’t preventable. Everyone has their time. Therein lays the beauty of life because we don’t know exactly how long we have. I felt like I did. I felt like I knew roughly when I would go, or at least how long I was able to tie up my loose ends. I made a mental bucket list. The things I wanted to do with the time I had left, and also what I wanted to have done with my body when my time was up.

I knew I wanted to be cremated. I wanted to have my ashes spread at my favorite camping site known only to a few people close to me. I wanted my favorite things to be given to my best friend and my sister. I wanted to have a service at the church I was raised in and to have an awesome rock and roll ballad of some sort to be played acoustically.

I now know this is possible, well the spreading of the ashes part was more on the illegal side. But still it was possible.

So obviously I survived. But I got to experience a cathartic event that I believe has changed my life for the better. But it didn’t come easy, and I still have the scars to show for it. But I was in turn blessed with an idea that I can make someone else’s journey that ended differently than mine better, for them and the loved ones they left behind.

The funeral business is changing. It is ever growing and the interpretations of how someone’s funeral could, and now can take place are much different than they were. That’s the beauty to this profession, to make someone’s parting wishes become a reality. That’s the biggest reason I wanted to be a funeral director, because there is so much purpose into fulfilling someone’s final wishes.

My father and I now.