The Undertaking

It didn’t occur to her to follow in his footsteps. She set her sights on being a veterinarian. But once she’d entered the animal science program at the University of Minnesota, she wanted to consider other options. Her brother, already studying in the U’s mortuary science program, encouraged her to look into it. She enrolled.

What attracted her was the idea of working with the survivors, the families. “I knew that my dad was a very well-respected person in the community and the church, and that people had a good appreciation for him,” Starry says.

"You can't take someone's pain away, but you can do little things....You can come through a funeral saying, 'That was good.'"

There was no field work or internship in the mortuary science program when she was a student (something she helped change as part of a consulting panel to the program about five years ago). “I maybe didn’t understand the magnitude—you didn’t really know what you were getting into, until you actually got out and got your license,” she says. Because of the demands on your time, “it’s not a job, it’s a way of life.”

Michael LuBrant, director of the University of Minnesota mortuary science program (part of the medical school), says that at health career fairs, “I’m always alone. The only people who come up are those who can’t find a place at the other tables . . . . There’s still a stigma or taboo attached to death and dying.”

LuBrant asks those who do apply to his program—the only one in the state—why they want to be there. “Many say, ‘The way we were treated by the funeral director made our time so much less painful, I want to give that back,’” he says. “They use language like ‘call’ and ‘vocation.’ Many will frame it as a ministry.”