A mother who started working in funeral care having been “really upset” by the way her late father was taken care of after he died is celebrating 10 years in the job with her daughter now in the same line of work.
Michelle and Jodie Slinn, who share a home in Walthamstow, London, both work for the Co-op Funeralcare chain – Michelle said she knew her daughter, who secured the job with an interview on her 21st birthday, would be “brilliant”.
The pair have honoured families’ wishes by dyeing the hair of the deceased as well as giving facials, while Jodie said her experience has taught her to “make the most of every single day because the truth is, none of us know what is around the corner or when our time will come”.
Michelle, 56, is based in Walthamstow where, having previously looked after funerals carried out by 14 different branches, she now works as a funeral arranger after stepping down to become special guardian to twins.
Jodie, 25, is based in Hackney and works as a funeral arranger – the duo are two of almost 2,000 women who work for Co-op Funeralcare.
Michelle, who is mum to Jodie and her two brothers, special guardian to four-year-old twins and married to Michael, 67, said she had always wanted to work as a funeral arranger, but it was the death and the funeral of her beloved dad, Leonard, in 2008 that persuaded her to take up the offer of a job caring for the deceased four years later in 2012.
“I had a bad experience when my dad died,” she said. “I’d been to funerals before, but this was the first time the person who died was someone so close to me and I was not happy with how he was taken care of after he died or with how he looked. It really upset me.”
Michelle, who received a Long Service Award from the Co-op for over a decade of working in funeral care in May 2022, says she jumped at the chance to try out for a job at a Co-op funeral home when a mutual friend working at the Manor Park centre offered to recommend her – she began part-time before becoming a full-time funeral arranger months later, and in 2018 became an Estate Planning Lead.
“It makes you feel so proud knowing that you are doing everything you can to make the family happy at such a difficult time for them,” she said.
“We make a point of doing whatever the family asks us to do. One time, I dyed the hair of someone who had died because that’s what their family asked for and Jodie has even done facials for the deceased if that’s what the family has requested,” she added.
Jodie, who studied hairdressing and then tourism at college before working for three years in care homes, agrees with her mum that nothing is too much trouble for a bereaved family.
However, she added that although she has learned to leave work at work, some upsetting circumstances can make it hard to stay composed, such as the funeral of a teenager who had been killed.
“It was very hard to watch how his distraught father sobbed the whole time he was in the room talking about the funeral,” she said.
Michelle also recalls feeling emotional and upset when she helped plan the funeral of a new-born baby who had been born one of twins.
“That was very hard, seeing the surviving twin in the pram at the funeral and their sibling in a tiny casket,” she says. “But the fact is we see all of life, from newborns to people who just got their telegram from the Queen and, of course, suicides too.”
It was her mum who first suggested to Jodie she should think about switching to working in funeral care.
“She may come across as tough on the outside but she’s a big softie on the inside and so caring and so I knew she’d be brilliant,” Michelle said.
But Jodie was only 18 when Michelle first mooted the idea of working in funeral care. She initially turned her mother down thinking she was not yet mature enough for a role that her contemporaries would run a mile from, before becoming a funeral arranger in 2018.
“In the end, I agreed to try it and so went for an interview on my 21st birthday. I got the job and have never looked back,” Jodie said.
Like her mum, Jodie says she has a sense of pride in her work.
“It is rewarding to know the comfort you can bring to a family and also how much of the stress of arranging a funeral you can take off of them,” she said.
“This job did make me grow up but in a good way. I know now to live in the moment and make the most of every single day because the truth is, none of us know what is around the corner or when our time will come.”
To find out more about careers with Co-op Funeralcare and learn whether embalming is the right career path for you, visit www.coop.co.uk/funeralcare/advice/what-is-embalming
