Spyke
lemmy.ca

Former mortician here. These aren't used everywhere or all the time. If your family requests your body be embalmed, all the liquids and semi-solids of your insides will be sucked out of your guts using a hollow spear hooked up to a vacuum. If done right, there should be no liquid left in your body to leak out.

The funeral homes I worked at didn't have these. If it was necessary to plug the anus, we'd pack it with a bunch of kapok fiber. It's like cotton but doesn't absorb liquid.

174
Lennyreply
lemmy.world

I have so many questions but I'm high, so, can you just write more about your job please? I'm fascinated.

16
lemmy.ca

Clothing brought in will be cut up the back so the person can be dressed without moving them much. After they're on, a few well placed stiches and some stuffing will make the clothes look like they fit perfectly.

Filling out someone's body is easy, but face has a bit of a trick. A product called "tissue builder" can be injected under the skin to puff it out. It's liquid in the needle but becomes a gel once injected before solidifying allowing you to mold it a bit. The mouth will be stuffed with kapok fiber as well, since it doesn't absorb liquid.

The mouth tends to naturally hang open after death, but people don't like seeing that, so it's wired shut. The most common way is with a tool that essentially pieces the gums with a needle that has a wire attached to it. The top and bottom gums get pierced and then the two wires are wrapped together. Very old people can lose gum density though. In that case, the piercing doesn't stick and will fall out. The alternative method, although some morticians use this method as their main one, is to use a needle and thread and sow the mouth shut. The needle is threaded through the muscles of the lower jaw and then the cartilage of the nose and then the thread is tied together.

Inevitably, a family member will bring you the person's dentures several days after the person has been embalmed. You can't put them in after the mouth has been wired shut, but don't tell the family that because they'll probably get upset. Just tell them you'll take care of it and put the dentures in the deceased's pocket. That happens with a lot of things relating to the body.

It's difficult to explain all the preparation that happens to the body so we just go along with what the family requests instead of explaining why it's not a good idea. I once had a family member request that we keep their mother's body warm because they didn't like the idea of the body being kept in a cold morgue. Uhh...you want us to increase the speed at which the bacteria living in your mother's guts eat her from the inside out?

That request only happened once but several times I've been asked to wait a few days (often the person specified 3 days) before embalming or cremating to ensure the deceased doesn't magically come back to life. Another request I only got once was a husband asking me if I could use his wife's body to make a skeleton display like you'd see in a science class and give it back to him so he could display it in his house and tell people "that's my wife!" At least where I worked, that was not a legal means of disposition. The closest is to donate the body to a school of anatomy for study, but even they will cremate the body after it has been used by medical students.

19
Lennyreply
lemmy.world

Woah. Yeah this is fascinating shit. I kinda like the husbands style tbh, I'd defo ask for my hubs skull back to display if it was an option (which it definitely isn't, as he's alive).

4

Some commit murder to get a fancy house. Others to acquire life insurance on the person.

You just want their pretty skull on the mantelpiece. I like your style.

1

You should really try the 'Ask a mortician' channel on YouTube. She brings answers to those morbid questions on a very light hearted tone.

6
Pyrreply
lemmy.ca

Where does human liquids and body goop go to be disposed of? Just down the drain or what?

2

Down the drain! There's nothing in your body that doesn't already go down the drain. The main chemical used during embalming is formaldehyde dissolved in methanol. Formaldehyde is naturally a gas, so just like CO2 bubbling out of soda, the formaldehyde eventually bubbles out of the methanol. Methanol is actually used during waste water treatment so that's also not a concern.

The only plumbing requirement in my area is that rooms for holding or preparing bodies need to have running water with a back-flow prevention valve.

4

I know it is vitally important to any culture to have those who handle the dead but for the life of me I am so amazingly glad that this wasn't a family business I was forced into. My respect to you but also a healthy dose of fear.

2
kbin.run

what if you die already with a butt plug? they pop that one out first?

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some_guyreply
lemmy.sdf.org

Thank you. That really made me smile and I never would have asked that question myself. Now I wonder what they do if you had a bigger one in at time of death.

16
fedia.io

Future archaeologists will be left to ponder the ritual significance of this object. Why were so many people buried with this grave good?

83
lemm.ee

The Egyptians were buried with their wealth. Wonder if they’ll think we ate ours & then plugged ourselves up to prevent any from leaking out?

Maybe we should start dumping a bunch of pennies in our coffins to support this hypothesis?

6

The only problem I can see with this plan is the volume of unpennied vs pennied graves. I think the best bet is to get a shovel and $100 worth of pennies then head to the graveyard.

5

Wouldn't this device prevent maggoty cum farts though? Or are you like a there can be only one kind of deal?

9

I'd like to screw it in to conservatives who died of COVID and who called drag queens groomers.

1
lemmy.world

Fun fact: the cork stopper in a cask, keg, or barrel is called a bung. The hole into which it is inserted is called a bunghole.

Bunghole is also a euphemism for anus. So, a question for any morticians here: can we start calling the corpse plug a bung? I’d consider a career change if I got to tell people about the bung in grandpa’s bunghole.

48
Jayreply
lemmy.ca

"Oh, and by the way would you mind corkscrewing grampa over there?"

13

Why would you wish your memory was good at remembering unimportant things instead of memes?

7
lemm.ee

If you angle the head just right, you can shine a flashlight straight through.

9
lemm.ee

…I’m more curious about what happens when you shine a light through the mouth!

Do you get a Pink Floyd-Esque Dark Side of the Brown Eye prism, or is it more like a hyper focused tac-light that can blind a raccoon?

1

Depends if it's a girl or a boy. Everyone know girls have a prism inside of their digestive system. Boys have lenses. It's how you can tell them apart with an ultrasound while in the womb

2
lemm.ee

Well that’s handy to know. Going to have to have a talk with our board of education…

The only thing they taught us was that girls don’t fart.

2

so nobody can get offended at the color choices?

or maybe because the holy cock is transparent?

10

normally opaque plastics are cheaper since they can include more recycled content

1

The spec should be 25tigs (that is 25 turnings in the graves).

But ppl eyeball it all the time.
Mostly because some of them like to get their hands dirty.

4

All conservatives are going to start choosing cremation. My parents were cremated and that brings comfort to my heart. Ass for I, I will require a big plug please. Then you can cremate me. It's just in case I'm still alive at the time. You never know, I could be given one final parting gift that I would gladly accept. LOL. C'mon conservatives! The water is fine!

18

A guy like that getting a buttplug from a girl in a mortuary you JUST KNOW she was one of those FrreeeeAAAAaaaaky goths.

13
lemmy.world

It must be difficult getting those stripes to line up every morning.

Wonder what it looks like on a day off?

6

I knew this guy back in the old LiveJournal days. He's a really genuine dude who definitely says and writes things like this caption.

5
lemmynsfw.com

So are these available for purchase anywhere?

Asking for a friend.

I'm the friend.

16

That's one cursed URL. Every part of it just makes it worse as you read.

Frigid - I wonder what this is about.
Fluid - uuuh...
Products - no, please.
A-V-Closure - nope, I'm done, this link is staying blue.

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MrMcGasionreply
lemmy.world

Not sure what I expected them to cost, but $5.70 is somehow less than I expected.

4
lemmy.world

I've been following him since the LiveJournal days. Back when he made things like Emo Assault Squadron (available on YouTube). He still does hearse work but hasn't put out anything big in some time.

14
lemmy.world

Was rereading mine recently (mirrored to Dreamwidth as LJ is Not Good anymore), it was rough.

2
FauxPseudoreply
lemmy.world

There are a few things I wrote there that I want to archive but no idea when they were. I'm thinking I build a crawler to scrape the whole thing and then load it into a LLM to help me find the bits I'm looking for. Then I can delete the whole thing and stop letting Russia have my stuff

1
lemmy.world

Are mortician more male or female? Anytime I've ever had a friend mention the career path, it's always been a woman...

12

I saw the recent post around here that said they are mainly women. I've only met one and he was a man. Morticians are fucking cool though.

7
lemmy.world

They don't install it while you're alive, what does it matter? Just a chunk of decomposing meat at that point.

13

could probably sell a lot of tshirts that just say 'vaginal plug"

5
Feyrreply
lemmy.world

We need a picture. For science, you know

4

Instructions unclear, now there's a prize in every urn (the prize is a screw-in buttplug)

4