Two years ago, when I got a rare email on the Order of the Good Death account, I was thrilled. Someone wants to talk to ME?! About DEATH?@! A zillion hurrahs! Since then, I’ve answered every single email I’ve received.
But as the Order of the Good Death expands, I keep trying to find ways to make everything more streamlined and functional. That’s why I was so happy to discover Marissa Segreto, a young lady with a fantastic blog The Mortuary Student.
Here she is wearing a shark costume. What is not to love?
Marissa writes both detailed (and brutally honest) blog posts about the rigors of mortuary school.
“What I am new to is formaldehyde.
We used a different preservative back in high school, one that smelled rather pleasantly of mint and disinfectant. Formaldehyde smells a lot like acetone nail polish remover, which is understandable, as they’re both in the aldehyde family of chemicals. However, there’s something about formaldehyde.. Ick. Just ick. I could feel it coming in through my mask and just coating my lungs and esophagus. I had just come from a funeral that day and I hadn’t had any time to eat, so I went in with an empty stomach, and even though I was so interested and enthusiastic, that smell just hit me off guard and I’m ashamed to say that I gagged and was extremely shaky throughout most of the dissection. Now I know better, of course, and I’m never going to go into a dissection on an empty stomach again.”
I am a big fan of her writing (I think a lot of you will be as well) so I asked her if she might be willing to partner with the Order as our mortuary student-in-residence. Which means she would be the one to answer the technical questions sent to the Order about becoming a mortician and mortuary school.
Her blog is found here and her brand new Twitter is here. Happy to have you on board, my dear! All official Order meetings are held in shark costume — I’m so glad you already have one.