At the age of 16, following sound advice from his father to learn a vocation, Brian Ibbetson began a 44-year-long profession as a gas engineer.
But when he reached 60, he’d been running his business for 12 years, and fitting boilers by himself was getting more difficult. What’s more, he needed a new van and his certification was up for renewal – both of which would take time and money to rectify. He had a decision to make – did he want to keep doing this for another five years until he retired?
For Ibbetson, it felt as if “the planets were lining up” and signalling that it was time to move on.
His mind was made up when his wife showed him an advert for a part-time job – at a funeral directors. He knew it was right for him – decades of house calls had shaped him into a people person, and this would certainly be a personal job.
“It is random, but it appealed to me. It sounds like a gory job to suddenly get involved in, but I felt that I could do it,” he says.
‘There’s no training’
Ibbetson started winding down his business and began working for a firm on a zero-hours contract. He was thrown in at the deep end – “there’s no training; you learn on the job” – but loved it. After eight months, he moved on to Swindon Co-operative Funeralcare and has been there for the past two years.
When Ibbetson announced his drastic career switch, reactions were mixed. “The people who know me and my character said they can see me doing it,” he says – this included his son, Connor. Unsurprisingly however, many people do not know how to react to the news that your 9 to 5 consists of funerals and dead bodies.
“They might think that I’m a bit of a weirdo,” he says. “I’ve had people laugh because they’re embarrassed and don’t know what to say.”
Ibbetson doesn’t mind though, and can see the funny side: “It’s a great dinner conversation when someone asks you what you do. They don’t expect it! Then you have 20 questions to answer.”
He now works as a funeral conductor, a step up from the position of funeral assistant. His typical day includes checking the deceased in the premises for any signs of deterioration, cleaning the car and organising the flowers. He double-checks that he’s got the right person in the car on the right day.
“It sounds basic, but these things can go wrong,” he says. In busier periods, he can end up working four funerals a day – although this is rare, two per day is more common.
‘We try to give people as great a send-off as we can’
Many funerals are still traditional, with guests dressed in black, but every service is unique, and Ibbetson has been part of more unusual ones as well. Most notably – an Only Fools and Horses-themed funeral – “there was a themed coffin and a yellow Del Boy van with the hearse in tow” (shown in the video below).
Ibbetson and his colleagues went the extra mile, dressing up as Batman and Robin from the iconic episode where Del and Rodney are invited to what they think is a fancy dress party. “It got a big round of applause,” he said, “the family came in to thank us profusely for doing that. We try to make it as individual as we can, to make it as great a send-off as we can.” For Ibbetson, the effort made by loved ones to thank him and his team is the highlight of his career change.
Of course, there are many sombre parts of the job – particularly dealing with call-outs when someone has died in the middle of the night. Seeing and dealing with death is now “second nature”, but Ibbetson admits that “you never forget the first [dead body] you see”.
He has worked out his own coping mechanisms along the way, such as parking 20 minutes away from work so he has the walk in to prepare himself, and the walk back to clear his head.
‘You need to have a lot of empathy’
Ibbetson is well-versed in dealing with people during what can be the hardest day of their life. He describes the intimacy and immense responsibility of his job: “When I’m taking the deceased away, I’m taking away someone’s loved one. They could have been married for 60 years. I tell the family: ‘I’ll take care of them like they’re my own’.
“You have to have a lot of empathy. These people are putting a lot of trust in you – you’re taking away their most prized possession.”
Two years on from his career change, there are still difficult days. One especially tough day recently was the burial of a stillborn baby – “I was crying at the graveside”. Perhaps surprisingly for a man you may expect to have been desensitised by his work, Ibbetson admits he can cry “at the drop of a hat – I do get passed a tissue quite regularly by one of the gang.”
His job has helped him come to terms with the notion of death. “I’m not scared of dying. I know what happens at the end and I’ve seen a lot of it,” he says.
Despite his insider knowledge, Ibbetson doesn’t want a big affair for his funeral.
“I don’t want any fuss. Just put me in the box, as cheaply as you can, and put the rest behind the bar. Those are my instructions.”
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