Who decides whether it will be an open- or closed-casket service?
The next of kin make that call. We try to encourage them to make it a consensus, because there will be some who want to see this person. Some who may not have seen the person for two or three months, maybe even years. Sometimes families will be adamant and say no viewing. If they say no viewing, then nobody can view. Last week, we had a man who’d been in a car accident. He was ejected from the car. His head hit a tree or a pole, and it just caved it in, the whole skull. The coroner that advised the family said there’s nothing that can be done. They contacted us. We said, give us a chance. Let us see what we can do, and then you can look at it. Our restorative art teacher came down and while I was running the students through the embalming, she was rebuilding the head with cotton and plaster and Styrofoam, rebuilding the structure on the inside until his head fit his body. We had to do cosmetics and cover up the scratches and scrapes. We did the embalming on Tuesday, and on Friday the f
