Aaliya Campbell, A 19-year-old female mortuary worker said she considers it an honor to be the last person to attend to dead bodies before they are buried.
Aaliya Campbell, a grade 9 student at Mount Alvernia High School in St James, Jamaica, told the Jamaica Observer West that she considered becoming a mortician when she was 13 years old.
“I heard the term (mortician) somewhere, but the memory is a bit vague…I just remember saying that I am going to try this. I don’t think that’s normal because nobody just gets up and says they are going to pursue a career in funeral service, but I did,” the teenager said.
Her mother, who was well aware of her daughter’s interest in mortuary work, assisted her in obtaining a one-month volunteer position at the Delapenha Funeral Home in Montego Bay.
“I didn’t have a career path at the time, so I was exploring and that drew my interest. I told my mom about It, and she got me the opportunity to do voluntary service at the funeral home that I am working at now,” Campbell revealed in the interview.
She was so set on doing the job that not even the terrifying and traumatic first experience at the mortuary could sway her.
“I had never seen a dead body a day in my life, but when I came, I wasn’t scared. I was determined to give this a shot, so I was helping to embalm a body…everything went fine. But once I got home that evening, I was alone and I was so traumatized.
“Cold sweat washed me and everybody that I saw that day replayed in my head. I could not sleep, I was screaming. It was a disaster and I had to call a friend to calm me down,” she recounted.
Despite the ordeal, Campbell pursued her ambition of becoming a mortician. She mustered the courage to complete the voluntary service.
“I just made up my mind that this is what I’m going to do, and I grew to love it. I went back and I wasn’t scared. After that incident, nothing like that ever happened again.”
Campbell’s interest in the job grew after her volunteer service, and she went on to earn an associate degree in funeral service and mortuary science at Montego Bay Community College (MBCC).
“I absolutely love it so much. In grades 10 and 11, I didn’t really come (go to the funeral home) very often because I was focusing on my school-based assessments (SBA) and Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) [exams], but I would stop by.
“After I graduated, I didn’t see myself doing anything else. I was 16 when I graduated high school and I started the course at the same time.
“I really have a passion for this. I just feel like it is an honor to take care of someone’s loved one for the last time. My favorite part is embalming because with that process we bring back life to them basically,” she disclosed.
Currently, despite her plans to pursue other career paths, she performs funeral services and visits the mortuary to assist when called upon or when she misses attending to dead bodies.
“I only visit the morgue if I choose to. So, if I feel like it has been a while since I’ve embalmed a body then I’ll go and help. I do funerals, obituaries, and death notices…so I assist the drivers and the family with anything that they need.
“I have never thought of owning a funeral home. I don’t know why, but I don’t have an interest in that. But I would consider owning a crematorium a funeral supply shop because there are not many of them in Jamaica.”
Fortunately, she has her family’s support for the career she has chosen. They can’t figure out why she can deal with corpses but is terrified of small rodents.
“Sometimes they’ll make fun of me because I am afraid of rodents and cockroaches. So, they’re like, Aaliyah, how do you embalm people and you are afraid of a rat? That makes no sense. But a rat is alive and will do me something. The dead cannot do me anything.”
