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Whilst growing up, my dad was a mortician, which meant that my family and I lived in a funeral home. I had never pictured myself being a mortician until my cousin died by suicide when we were in high school, a month before we were set to graduate in the spring of 2011. It was one of the worst days of my life.
I feel that we all live our lives and we never picture that one day we may unexpectedly pass away. The topic of death has become a taboo, but when you experience the loss of somebody close to you, it is the most shocking thing, and you think about that person every day.
After high school graduation, in the fall of 2011, I went to college at the University of Minnesota, Morris set on being a dental student. But I hated it. I was so cut off from my friends and family.
When I had been at my cousin's funeral, I had watched the funeral directors. I saw how wonderful they were with my family, and I began to picture myself helping other families who were going through a tumultuous time in their lives, by guiding them through that process.
Deciding to become a mortician
I started to feel that my true calling was in helping others families going through loss. So, when I was 19, I dropped out of college and moved back home to Minnesota. I worked for the summer for my dad's funeral home and finally was able to envision myself working in the funeral business. I then went to college there and trained to become a mortician. My dad never thought I would because I had always said that I wasn't going to be part of the family business.
While in mortuary school, I lived above a funeral home and worked as a night attendant. My job involved helping out on funerals and going on death calls at night. Our funeral home had a contract with the local morgue, so the death calls I was dispatched to were usually the worst of the worst, including homicides, suicides and car accidents.
The funeral home had a contract with a medical examiner's office, so I was able to work with licensed funeral directors and medical examiners while studying. As part of my job, I did corner transports and corner removals. At the time, I had to also transport children who had died unexpectedly or from suicide.
I completed my bachelor's degree in mortuary science and then started my apprenticeship, which took a year to complete. So, I became a licensed mortician at the age of 25, after completing my apprenticeship in 2016.
The toys that I have banned from my kids
In my profession, there are many causes of death for children. The scenes I would be called on more frequently involved farming equipment, choking deaths involving certain foods, winter-weather related deaths typically involving sledding or falling into the water and drowning, and jump ropes. But the three main ones I see are jump ropes, specific foods, and sledding accidents. When I was in community college in 2013, an accidental child death stuck with me, and it involved a jump rope.
The child had wrapped it around a tree and got themselves tangled in the jump rope, and it only took minutes for them to pass away. The parents were not outside, and by the time they noticed that their child was missing, it was too late.
Because of those incidents, I will never look at jump ropes the same, and they are banned from my household. If it's a supervised jump rope activity in school, I am happy for my children to partake in it, but I will not have them in my house.
Often, I feel that some parents view toys as harmless but they may not realize how dangerous they could be. I have also banned all toys that include strings from my household. Although many toy companies manufacture these toys so that the string isn't very long, a child's neck is small and fragile.
I was involved in a case where a mom put a string toy in the crib with her child and she turned off the light and said good night. The baby didn't wake up the next morning because the string had been wrapped around the baby's neck in the night.
My dad, was also a paramedic for over a decade, as well as a funeral director, and witnessed a case of a child with a string toy wrapped around his neck. We were never allowed to have them in our home from that moment after growing up. Being a mortician really changes how we see the world.
Banning certain foods from my household
As well as toys, I also avoid having certain foods around my children, too. When I was growing up, my siblings and I were not allowed to eat peanuts or popcorn, and it was because my dad had gotten calls in his role as a paramedic that involved those two foods.
A child's trachea is very small, and when small popcorn pieces get lodged in there, it's very difficult for the child to breathe. I felt that my dad was helpless in some of these situations, as he wanted to save the child's life, but couldn't. I remember seeing my dad coming home and crying, visibly upset because of the things he had seen.
I believe that caring for children is definitely one of the hardest things that we ever have to do in our lives. My kids are not allowed to play on frozen ponds, rivers, or even lakes. I witnessed many cases that included water drownings, and no parent should ever have to see that happen to their child.
People attacking my parenting style
After raising awareness of my profession on social media, I felt validated as a creator because many people began thanking me for raising awareness of how dangerous some of these children's toys, and specific foods, could be.
One woman thanked me for my videos and said that her in-laws had told her that she was crazy for having fears about jump ropes. So, it was good for her to feel validated by my videos.
But I have also gotten a few negative comments. Some people have told me that I am a "grinch mom" because I don't let my children play with particular toys, or that I am ruining my children. Others have said that my children live in a bubble and they're going to grow up and hate me.
After doing some research, I realized that a lot of the people who were leaving hate comments under my posts did not have children.
People think that I don't give my children toys at all, but there are lots of toys in my house. I have had to pick up children who had passed away, and I was there for their parents when they screamed and cried, and you never forget a mother's scream, ever.
So, I will do whatever it takes to protect my children, and help other moms protect their children, too.
I feel that as morticians, we often do not handle the emotional turmoil that comes with our job very well, as we don't have enough resources. In school, I was told to disassociate from the trauma that comes with seeing a family mourning their child's death.
We are not supposed to cry or show our emotions and we have to often be level-headed and calm, but coping with the underlying feelings of shock and grief is difficult, and it can sometimes be quite depressing.
My job has allowed me to understand that life is very short and I really want to make the most of it by spending a lot of time with my kids. So I left my career in funeral service to stay home with kids in January of 2021 and we then moved to Florida in the fall of 2021.
Although I am not practicing as a mortician right now, I hope to go back one day as I miss helping families. Life is short and it goes by very quickly. Every day really is a gift, as life can be taken from you in the blink of an eye.
Lauren Taylor is a licensed mortician and funeral director. You can find out more about her here.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
As told to Newsweek associate editor Carine Harb.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text "988" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
