A dead body is like a seashell, Wendy Ressler says.
“You go to a beach and you pick up these beautiful seashells, well, they are the bodies that housed a being inside, and we see that as beautiful,” she said in an interview with The Squamish Chief. “When a person dies that is your seashell... it’s not creepy, it still belongs to that person even though they have passed away.”
Ressler, 58, is owner, funeral director, bookkeeper and – she added with a laugh – the janitor of Squamish’s Loving Memories Funeral Services.
Her position has given her a unique perspective on death in the Sea to Sky Corridor.
“It isn’t what you would think,” she said. “It is not a bad thing. When it is an accident or something, that is tragic, but that fact is, everybody will; it is just the way it is.”
She said she sees a trend in the corridor to go back to having services, although not the traditional kind.
There was a long period, she said, when local people shied away from services, and sometimes didn’t even want to pick up the ashes.
“I have a closet of over 30 urns,” she said. “It is about not wanting to deal with it.”
In the past year people have gone back to having services, but with a twist.
“I just had one, they had a weenie roast,” Ressler said.
“They took the ashes to this lady’s favourite spot that all of them used to go to at the beach, lit a fire and had a weenie roast. So they set up a little fire and had their hot dogs and sticks and they spread her ashes in the water.”
Another example was a wing-ding that was a family tradition. The family gathers in a field with musical instruments and has a jam session with song and food.
“There are no rules, get rid of all the stigma or what is proper,” Ressler said. “Make it personalized; make it one of a kind and everybody will get what they need out of it.”
Breaking with tradition is not new to Ressler.
When she went back to school to become an undertaker 15 years ago, in her 40s, women weren’t common in the business, but she was part of a change.
On the first day of class, most of the students were men, but by the end of the first year many had dropped out, she said.
“We became the first graduating class to have majority women. Since then, it has exploded.”
Currently, she said, you see more women than men going into the profession.
The job involves a lot of paperwork, she said, and arranging and calls at all hours of the day and night.
Because she has lived in Squamish for decades, she often knows the person who has died.
“When the phone rings, I have to be prepared for how to respond to what I am going to hear,” she said.
She meets with the deceased’s family in their own home, often over coffee at the kitchen table.
“It’s basically like planning a wedding, and you’ve only got three days to do it in usually: arranging a minister, catering…” she said.
“I absolutely love it.”
She enjoys being able to provide comfort to people and take away the stress of the funeral planning so people can have the time and energy to grieve.
And yes, she has planned her own funeral: an environmentally sensitive burial followed by a traditional service.
“Death isn’t bad, and celebrating is good. I mean you celebrate everything else. This is equally important as all the other aspects of a person’s life and it is extremely healing, and it can be fun.”
