Nick, I know what line of work you're in, so forgive me if this is crude or whatever, but can you share the top three most "interesting" stories from on the job? Whatever makes them interesting is up to you.
The most interesting is certainly an involved one, so let's start with that. I had just started in the business, hired mainly as night/weekend help as removal personnel, essentially fetching bodies. At that point I wasn't licensed (or even considering getting my license) and would only go to nursing homes or hospitals by myself, and house calls were always done with a funeral director. One of my very first removals (probably 3rd or 4th) was a house call for a man who had shot himself out on his porch. Family was all gone when we got there and it was only police and coroner personnel, and I got my first glimpse into the gorier side of the business. As we assessed the decedent to decide how we wanted to get him loaded the director told me to look up, and there in a cobweb on the patio roof was a fragment of the man's skull.
And that's not what makes this story interesting. My day job at this time was at a full service gas station, and our most frequent customer was a good friend of the owner. He travelled a ton for his work and would always get gas with us, to the point he was in every other day or so. He would eventually ask for my help on his days off and I started working with him. He had two businesses, one was to install garage doors and garage door openers, and the other was more interesting, prepping appliances for moves and building on site crates for valuables to be moved, and doing the breakdown and setup if we were at the destination on the move. To say I saw some rich houses doing this is an understatement. We went to Philly and NJ suburbs of NYC, drug company CEOs, guys with classic car collections, that sort of stuff. People who often had paintings and TVs being crated that were probably worth 5x more than my car at the time. I loved working for this guy to, and to this day is the BEST boss I ever had. Great communicator, treated me well, and set me up to do well. All these years later I'd happily spend my off day working $8 an hour again for a few days working with him. But I digress...
As we worked together I found out his wife worked for a cemetery locally within my company (the corporation I work for owns 100+ funeral homes and 400+ cemeteries), and eventually I would learn a little bit about his son. I found out he had died and that my funeral home had actually handled his funeral. Over my time working with him I learned more about how his son died and were he lived and details like that, and eventually I pieced it all together... that was his son I had picked up that night. I never told him I was there, and that connection remains with me to this day as my ultimate example of how it can be a very small world sometimes.
I feel like the next story could be a bit lighter, so let's talk about the Krowitz Memorial Media Center. I worked in deathcare Allentown for 12 years, but only 4 of those were as a licensed funeral director. And there was one family who I got along with extremely well. There were four kids, and when their dad died I handled the services. After that I helped design their stone at the cemetery and oversaw the installation, and also pre-needed their mother. Then when the mother passed I handled that funeral as well. They must have liked me as they gave me what was by far the largest tip I ever received. If I get 2-3 $50 tips in a year I'm happy, and I certainly don't expect any. Transplants from NJ or NY tend to be the ones you'll see tipping, as it's more engrained in the culture there. Anyway, the Krowitz family sent me a thank you note with a $250 check, and since I was running very low on CD/DVD space at the time I used it to buy a ~1500 unit CD/media tower that I refer to as the Krowitz Memorial Media Center.
And now we'll flip again to a tear jerker. About a year before I left Allentown to pursue opportunities elsewhere I had a house call in Coopersburg where a man had been living on hospice care with his brother. They had a dog there as well, a bigger one, a golden retriever I believe. When it came time for us to approach with our equipment the dog hopped up on the bed, sobbing, as much as a dog can sob, and shaking head to toe, just absolutely trembling over his dead owner. We gave the dog time, tried to pet him and slowly lead him away, but he would not budge. Eventually the brother just had to pick him up and then hold him back so we could take the man out of the house. I've seen similar things before, but never quite to that extent.