Inside the not-for-profit funeral home revolutionising how we deal with death | Australian Story

[Music] we treat our mortuary as a sacred space and so we treat the act of caring for someone's body as a sacred act when we wash someone it's not really because they're dirty it's more because it's the last act of caring for someone's body [Music] drehele muzak was my ex-partner he's the father of my beautiful daughter amala who's now 17. and he's an amazing artist and a friend as well [Music] it's quite an honor to be able to look after someone after they've died for me it's really important to maintain their humanity because that person represented a parent or a sibling or a child to the people in their life and they can't advocate for themselves anymore so that's where i step in [Music] i think people are afraid of death but being afraid of the dead is a different thing we say to people when they're coming into the mortar you know we say you're about five minutes away from not being afraid because of course when you see that person in the mortuary that's your person and you're not afraid of them you know them [Music] i want to see the funeral industry change i want to see what we're offering is really normal and not unusual and i want to see having access to the body as a really normal thing [Music] fuels a one-off events and they can be not good or they can be absolutely transformational and why not why not go for the absolutely transformational because that's the right thing to do [Music] poor campbell is an industrial town its reputation was like lots of disadvantage lots of drug and alcohol issues now there's a sort of turning happening in paul kembla where there's a lot of young people moving in so it's a community that's changing but what people probably don't know about paul kembla is that it's home to a movement that's transformed in the way that we do death [Music] tender is a not-for-profit funeral service that's community-based and we work to provide beautiful and affordable funerals for everyone but we also work to change the culture around death so that we become a community that knows what to do when someone dies rather than just following a process that we don't understand jenny briscoe health was fundamental to tender happening she is like this incredible leader in our community and the reason that she's so great is because she's not trying to be an incredible leader in her community she's trying to be a good human in her community i've been working in the port campbell community project for over 20 years i'm the general manager and we create projects at the community want to see happen i'm not trained as a community development worker i'm not trained as anything actually um but i do know about community development that's in my dna [Music] i just grew up in a suburb in sydney it's you know five children in my family my mother ran a hairdressing salon at home this is her with the grandmothers rosina rose and rose she was this person who understood people she would go to old people's homes and she would do the old people's hair and we'd have to go but she's done all of their hair i bet we're like do we have to go those old people they'd be smelly and she'd be like i don't care you're going and you're gonna give them a hug we possibly are the only people who are physically touching these people so we're gonna do it so that was sort of the environment other people were important my mum died in 2008 and i hadn't had any experience at all in the funeral industry i just went through the same process that everyone has to go through when they're organising a funeral i'm quite forthright person and um i was surprised at the way i didn't ask questions i had to pick a coffin out and it was like there's no prices on the coffin we owned the burial plot we did the flowers we just drove in our own cars we washed and dressed too we did everything and we got a bill for something like nearly ten thousand dollars um and i suppose it was in that moment that i was like i don't know how people will pay for this she'd heard the stories of people trying to pay off a debt for a funeral and a burial and taking 10 years to do it and i think that brought into incredible sharp focus what people um in her community port campbell we're dealing with suddenly something becomes very clear in your mind about a possibility of something being different [Music] so i went to our community committee and i said what about we do a not-for-profit funeral service like straight away everybody went oh we want to do that let's do that [Music] she knew instantly and very clearly that it needed to be a not-for-profit but she also understood that being professionalized away from touching your dad's hair or putting on your mum's dress for the last time didn't help the grieving process the what helps the grieving process is that ability to stay present with it okay so tell me what your understanding is i think everybody was pretty determined and i don't think everyone thought it wasn't going to happen what we needed was money what we needed was a building [Music] but i could not find the money i could not find the money and i was just writing grant application after grant application this grants during on the 15th that gives us 10 days that was seven years of applying for grants and getting knock-backs you've got to convince people that this thing that no one's done before a community-run funeral service is possible is is is doable makes sense and so then lynette of course said uh i think we have to make a film this film has traveled around australia and it has inspired and ignited communities around the country too i'm a great believer in the power of showing sometimes you've got to show people something and that became tender the film when someone dies the thing that comes forward is love it's just something about doing all you can for the people that you love first i filmed i met nigel so niger was the caretaker of the community uh center and he spent a lot of time there he knew everyone everyone knew him and nigel doesn't want to his sister said that he doesn't want to know his prognosis and nigel dies in that film so i went to the doctors and they took a scan and that said lung cancer then i told my sister then the tears came yeah like now yeah nigel it's the biggest thing we all find yes i'm not ready for it the most profound gift of that film is nigel's gift to it then maybe the last thing he could do to help this incredible community was to let them show his death and let them do this first funeral which was nigel's funeral i'm steve um i'm the brother that looks a little like him but doesn't dress like him last evening i had the profound pleasure of helping some of nigel's friends prepare him for today's journey um and we dressed him and for me that was mind-boggling because i i had never imagined that i would get involved in that but turned out to be a wonderful thing [Music] so then with the film came the money we did a crowdfunding campaign and people sent money from all around australia we got five dollar bills rolled up in handwritten letters we got a one-off thirty thousand dollar donation from somebody that's awesome so good so what we need then social enterprise finance australia came on board to give us a loan now i've got to work out how this goes and vincent fairfax foundation came on board it probably took about between seven and eight years between when first thinking about our tender to opening tinder but we didn't know we didn't have a clue how you'd start a community funeral service is there a back entrance someone sent me an email to say have you ever heard of zenith farago first of all does anybody have any questions i've spent 25 years living in the northern rivers working with people who are dying with their bodies when they are dead and with their families to really reclaim those death processes zenith was one of the first people to look at doing death differently in australia she came to the community she trained the community before there was a funeral industry there were always families taking care of their own washing cleaning them dressing them most people don't know that they can do it themselves you can go from the bed to the cremator the bed to the grave without a professional person or being involved you need a medical person but that's it none of it's rocket science it's just not what the funeral industry is doing their first one is probably yeah how to make a profit the funeral industry is a corporate business and they are owning links in the chain which people don't understand like the coffin manufacturer the funeral director the cemetery the crematorium you know that's a monopoly and it's a huge industry it's 1.6 billion dollars as a natural and sacred part of our lives what was so exciting about it i think was that people would think that could only happen in byron bay but i think the thing was is that if it could happen in port kembla then it can happen anywhere in australia we were all on this path to make it happen and when people would join they would join at the right time amy was one of those people she came in at just at the right time to help when i first started considering this sort of career i was in year 11 and we were watching a documentary of an autopsy i was so intrigued watching these mortuary technicians because they were so blase about it i was like i bet i could do that and then that really became oh no i really want to do that the next year i was really fortunate to be employed full-time at 17 in a funeral home but i was very much feeling like i was stunted in my position not able to offer the things that i felt like families should be offered and then i saw this documentary called tender and it was so exciting seeing it because at that stage i really wanted to see a difference in the industry and seeing this fam this community that wanted to make that change i just wanted to see them succeed the next day i called jenny here we go you've got it but i don't think it's got the wording yeah she had been in the funeral industry for eight years and i immediately thought she's the one i want her to run tender so she was about 24 when she came to us you don't want people to be thinking they're just going to view that they can't interact with the body i just had great conviction that actually this was the best opportunity ever and i was the right person for the job i don't think that the cool handle keeps sliding we're like a team you know and for the first 12 months it was really her and me you know and i didn't know what i was doing and she knew absolutely what she was doing ready cushion would be good for him oh try the green one i know about the i know but he's very yellow funerals can cost between six and forty thousand dollars actually our tender hour funerals cost between two and a half and four and a half i think our most expensive funeral we've ever done has been eight thousand dollars and that family said to us oh we usually pay that for the coffin the model is we charge what it costs ask then there's a 250 charge on top of that for people who can afford it i'll be able to get there and for people who can't afford it there's that 250 dollars goes into a benevolent fund and so we can pay for some aspects of their funeral [Music] the value of a funeral shouldn't be judged on its cost you know the value of a funeral should be about what that experience was and so we really just are shifting it away from the cost being the main thing about the funeral and actually what service do you want do you know what service is possible most people don't know that they could have a funeral in their backyard or in their living room if they wanted to they could choose no mortuary care at all the funeral might look like a beer with friends or a a dinner around a table that could be a funeral if the farewell matches the person that we know then we feel happy about the fact that we've been able to honour the person and and have meaning in that now we're in tender's sixth year and in that time we've done over a thousand funerals intended funerals this is amy speaking you know it's it's really helpful to just slow the process down i wish more people did drajon mizak was 64 years old before he died he had prostate cancer that metastasized to his bones he was definitely afraid yeah and that's why we spent four days and three nights holding him and holding his hand and talking to him then he just turned his head and he opened his eyes and he looked straight at me and i said it's okay you can go and then he just turned his head and then i just saw the light leave his eyes it was really amazing to experience that and i feel very grateful to him that he shared that with me as his friend you know the last one's amazing you'd remember this one marissa drought she's someone who was quite well known in our community as an artist isn't it amazing uh present we're restricted to only 10 people attending a funeral and so what we decided to do was for his community to decorate his coffin and for the act of decorating his coffin to be his funeral we have mina's original characters from her own original book when i put the message out to our friends and our community it was like this is our ceremony and as the family we'd like to invite you to participate oh this is gorgeous yeah it's just actually been such a beautiful experience sort of setting up this space and all the community sending all their artworks and stuff the wonder the brilliance the darkness the humor it's very beautiful we always would say to people would you like to come into the mortarey and wash and dress your person and sometimes people say no we don't want to do that and then they might ring back and say actually we've thought about that and we would really love to do that marissa had spent a long time caring for him as he was dying people you know people get tired and she felt like she'd done what she needed to do in that process so we did the next part of the process on her behalf honestly it's a great honor to be asked to do that [Music] one of the things that we were really wanting to do was to make what was invisible visible people can participate i think 59 of people who come through tend to do participate in the care of their person and in their traditional funeral service i think in the past it's been like one or two percent tip it i'll lift it and then we can place it on the trolley a few years ago my grandmother passed away she was always involved with the scouts through her entire life and it was she was adamant that she wanted a funeral service in a scout hall we contacted a few places um and tinder was the one that was able to enable a completely different funeral service [Music] then i found out that tender actually did volunteer work and allowed volunteers to come in so i signed straight up i just remember walking into the arrangement room and sam said i love administration i was like oh my god he's so unusual i was like do you he said i hear you're looking for an administrator and i said we are and then he told me that he'd rewritten the excel training course for tafe i mean harry is just turned 21 sam sam here's your present oh oh cool coffin cufflinks and then i decided oh i'll go into the mortuary and found a passion for it thank you and then i got interested in mortuary studies that led me towards studying forensic medicine at the moment our volunteers are incredible do you know where all that cool plate stuff is i can't imagine tender without volunteers they help keep the price down they're at the heart of what we do if you've been caring for someone that you love for a long time as they die and then for them to just be removed and gone after they've died that's such a stark end to that process but what i would love is for people to know that actually they can continue that care if they'd like to they could do that using a cool plate which is a refrigerated tray it sits at about minus 15 degrees celsius and it just sits under the torso of the deceased to keep them cool this is the first time that i've taken a pool plate out to a family if you're not home i've worked out didn't um didn't have any available for families to use kevin didn't quite make 60. we'd been together for 32 years he just had an aggressive form of cancer and um yeah it was it just took everyone by surprise he had three months hello is it nikki my name is wes i'm one of the funeral directors with tender funerals and this is sam volunteers so we're just here to deliver the cool plate for you i broached the subject to the cold plate with kevin when we're talking about funeral and i asked him would he mind just to help us process and to be able to say goodbye to you our way [Music] the option was there to have your private time with him and and just to have those moments where you're in a relaxed familiar environment my kids could go in the neighbors and some friends came in it was our family our little one room for one last time there is something that happens when you put your hands on the body of a person who you love that's died you can really understand that person's gone that body is gone it doesn't mean you're not gonna miss the person but i think this it's helpful and i think it's helpful for the next stage because the next stage is letting that body go [Music] kevin goes by the name teabags is her name's bushel so it was the name he picked up when he was in the navy they just rest the front down on there now come to the back he's worked at bunnings real big member of the community guy would do anything for anyone if you asked him to help out love his motorbikes and that will form a big part of his funeral today there was no way my husband was getting in the back of her purse no way was i going to do that that's not who kevin was and if i hook up by crook we're going to get him there in his you [Music] he wanted people to be casually dressed he wanted people just to be able to relax and he also wanted to be at the wake we ended up at the local surf club where kevin had grown up and it just felt so right that we do that [Music] [Applause] this idea that could only really have emerged in this very particular beautiful little community is now spreading across australia after we got tender in port campbell people almost really immediately started to ring and say they wanted to have their own tender jane from tender funerals in perth we had two fantastic things happen this month there's now six tenders in different stages of development around australia they're in finals queensland the act tasmania perth and two in new south wales at this point everyone has to cross everything and we hope for the best the idea of it was that each community would own and operate their own tender and what we needed to do was support them to to do that so i'm i'm denise i'm from the new south wales north coast and they do it they they do it they're doing it like um bid north coast is about to open [Music] [Applause] it's wow oh my gosh it's nearly finished in 2019 the dying for dignity group invited jenny to come up and do a presentation on tender funerals it was incredibly well received that the people there basically said we want this in our community [Music] a core group of four to five volunteers have spent quite a lot of their time it it you know tender has that way of just sort of taking over your life really oh cool plate is this lovely blue one i don't know it just dead is that you yeah i like the glue yeah it looks good doesn't it what i see happening is people doing amazing things when they work together there's so many skilled people in in our communities and it's very inspiring they're giving the community a gift that they don't even know they need until the minute they need it and the minute they need it they absolutely know they need it and if it's the and it's there i find it very moving actually because it's really hard like it's a really hard thing to do underneath each one of these we've got a little simulated pacemaker which like if someone would give us six million dollars we could change the culture of funerals across the country like it's not much money right it's hardly any money but it's hard to get the money you're not allowed to cremate with any form of battery-powered device so a pacemaker has to be removed before a cremation sam's come up to do mortuary training i'm dragging it along the middle of the pacemaker whilst um staff have you know very different roles in the organization in the end um where need be everyone does everything and you'll see the pacemaker steve i might be the general manager but if there's a hand needed in the mortuary then then i will do that you get the gist if you guys want to try it out not really jenny with creating tender and then the other tenders that are coming around the country you know that's a revolution and that is unstoppable the profit driven corporate funeral industry is worried because once people know what's possible they're not going to be satisfied with that thing about being around death is that it does catapult you to the center of life it does wake up something in you and the thing that wakes up in you is this understanding that all life is limited [Music] and it does make you sort of go up you know what what am i going to do with my life what is how am i going to live my life and really with it would be a terrible shame to miss that opportunity we don't want to realize that when we're on the brink of death [Music] you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 90,016

Keywords: abc news, australian news, abc news indepth, documentaries, long-form journalism, Australian Story, Tender Funerals, Funerals, community, grief, bereavement, Amy Sagar, Jenny Briscoe-Hough, Port Kembla, cold plate, deceased love one at home, grieving at home, unique funerals

Id: 9xEXM0xYpgg

Length: 30min 24sec (1824 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 20 2022