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Death Becomes Her
By Christie Anderson
Bubbly 25-year-old Sarah O’Connor loves her work as a mortician.
“I’ve seen a lot more people who are naked dead than alive.” No, Sarah O’Connor isn’t the next Ted Bundy, she’s a 25-year-old mortician, living and working in Brisbane, and has prepared about 1450 corpses in the last 12 months. She is also the author of blog Until it Kills Me and her mission is “to change the world one cosmetised corpse at a time”.
You may find it a little odd that a 25-year-old female is a mortician for a living and loves it, but this girl has serious pizzazz. And she isn’t the only young female embalming corpses on a daily basis.
“In Brisbane there are about 20 people I’ve met, just from writing my blog, who are young woman [in my industry] that I had no idea were around,” O’Connor said. “I even had an 18-year-old email me.”
So how does a 20-something female land a job as a mortician? “I was selling make-up and had just finished uni,” O’Connor recalled.
“I was stuck on what career direction I wanted to go in and was watching Six Feet Under when I thought ‘Why not try it?’. So I called up a funeral home and, weirdly, they needed somebody. I had never seen a dead person before. From there I decided it wasn’t too weird and that I could do it.”
Working with dead people might not seem like much fun but O’Connor “gets a kick out of it”. “I really like the whole transformation process,” she said. “They come in and they don’t look the best. They are little old people most of the time and they haven’t had their hair done in 10 years, so I try to make them look really pretty. It’s like an extreme, extreme makeover.”
But working with corpses does have its drawbacks. For example, did you know corpses fart? It’s caused by bacteria building up in the stomach, which produces gas that has to come out… “They do it all the time, it’s hilarious,” O’Connor said. “They are usually silent but violent.”
Another pitfall of being a mortician is the chance you will run into a corpse you know, something O’Connor has experienced firsthand. “I had a primary school teacher come through,” she said. “I remember when I unzipped the body bag I was like ‘Oh my God, this is so weird!”
O’Connor also feels sad when she sees suicides and people who are the same age as her. “Sometimes I leave work feeling terrible,” she said. “And little babies are just awful, especially when you have to deal with the family directly – although I kind of like to do it now. At first it really freaked me out. I’m only 25 and I don’t have kids, so I have no idea what that pain would be like.”
One myth O’Connor is happy to bust is she doesn’t drain the corpse’s blood. “The temporary embalm I do as a mortician means I don’t have to drain the blood and replace it with chemicals, but sometimes I do have to relieve pressure and fluid in the abdomen,” she said.
Being a mortician also means you are constantly reminded of your mortality. “It kind of has a dual effect,” O’Connor said. “I try to live my life in the moment but then, on the other hand, I feel like I’m being held back by how safe I need to keep myself.”
So. The big question! Why does she continue do it? “If I got hit by a bus and died I would want someone to look after me – that’s what I focus on.”
To find out more about Sarah O’Connor and read her blog, visit untilitkillsme.blogspot.com
