‘I've always wanted to do this’: Cork woman begins training to become an embalmer

When Karen Houlihan’s godmother, Rosie, asked her then 12-year-old niece what she wanted to be when she grew up, she wasn’t exactly prepared for the reply she got.

For young Karen’s dream was to be “the person who puts make-up on the dead people”.

Unusual though this was for a tween, it wasn’t just a random childhood ambition. This was a clear statement of intent.

Now, after a lifetime in gestation, Karen has finally begun to realise that dream.

Working as a funeral director with Keohane’s Funeral Home in Mayfield, she has set out on the long road to become an embalmer and has never been more content.

“I’ve always wanted to do this. Every time I’d go to a funeral, I’d think to myself I’d love to work here!” Karen explains.

Timing is everything, though, and while the vicissitudes of life may have caused her to take a more circuitous route to realising her dream, there is no doubting the passion that fuelled her determination all along the way.

An only daughter and youngest of four, Karen was 18 when her father died tragically.

“A tree fell on a car near our home on Christmas Eve, during that bad storm of 1997. My dad went out with a hand-saw to cut the branches off the tree and help the driver out of the car. But he suffered a massive heart attack in the process, and died.” He was just 54.

It was a traumatic time for Karen’s family, but they rallied together and muddled through.

A few Christmasses later, and 21- year-old Karen and best friend Marie-Louise had applied for a visa to Australia.

However, fate had other plans.

At a heady New Year’s Eve party in the nearby Deanrock Bar, ringing in the millennium with all the enthusiasm and exuberance of one on the cusp of bigger and more exciting adventures down under, Karen met Benny.

“I dated him while I waited for my visa to come through,” explains Karen “and told him I didn’t want anything serious because I was heading away. But then Benny decided to go to Australia too, to visit his sister, and the rest is history!”

After almost a year away, they returned home and moved in together. A wedding, two sons, and almost 26 years later, they are still best friends.

“My mam was mad about Benny. She treated him like one of her sons.

“When she got dementia, she lived with us during the week. And my brothers would take her on the weekends. I reduced my working hours in the Bons to look after her. Sadly, she passed away January, 2020, thankfully before the madness of covid.”

For 23 years, Karen had worked in the sterilisation department of the Bon Secours Hospital where she was responsible for cleaning instruments and getting them ready for theatre.

“I loved it. I was always drawn to anything medical. I used to watch operations on TV!”

Her mother’s passing was the impetus Karen needed to finally explore her burning desire to work in the funeral business.

“I always wanted to become an embalmer, so I started looking at Youtube videos to learn what they did.”

She also emailed the Mortuary Science School to enquire if “a person in her 40s was too old to begin her learning journey.” When she found out it would cost €15,000-16,000 to do the course, her dreams were put on the back burner.

“We just couldn’t afford that,” admits Karen.

Then a job was advertised in one of the Cork city undertakers, and Karen applied. “I hadn’t done an interview in 23 years and, unsurprisingly, didn’t get the job because they went with someone who had previous experience. But I had been shortlisted for it.”

And that fact alone spurred her on.

She reached out to a Cork embalmer to learn about the job. “He was so helpful and advised me to get in touch with Sligo-based undertaker, David McGowan.”

David advised her to watch an embalming first to see if she would still like to do it afterwards.

“I decided to go up to David for an introductory tour. On the way up, he rang to say they had a lady who had passed away and who they were about to embalm. He said they would wait for me to arrive so I could watch the process.

“I nearly passed out while in there. The whole thing is not for the faint- hearted, and I remember thinking: what the heck am doing here?” She stepped out for a few minutes to compose herself. “I went back into the procedure but, when it was finished, I really questioned whether embalming was for me.”

Karen persevered through her fears and reservations, however, and spent two days with David.

And, she actually loved it.

“I asked if they had ever come across someone who had witnessed an embalming, had had a massive speed wobble, and yet still went on to become an embalmer? They said it happened to the best embalmers out there.

“So, I said to myself, ‘I can do this!’” She wrote to every undertaker in Cork offering to work voluntarily to learn every facet of the business.

“John Keohane rang me back and said he could offer to show me how to arrange a funeral.”

He wasn’t offering Karen a job, but he might as well have handed her a pot of gold.

“I was so excited!”

Karen was still working part-time in the Bons so went working with John on her days off. “Gradually, I began to go in more days.” Then he asked if she’d be willing to do the foundation course for embalming as he was outsourcing the role and had plans to ultimately have his own in-house embalmer. He offered to help her with the fees.

So, she signed up for the week’s introductory course in mortuary school.

“It was amazing. I was totally immersed in it for the week and, afterwards, I knew 100% then that this was I wanted to do.

“I loved my job in the Bons but the funeral business is so different. I’m learning so much every single day. John has the patience of a saint,” she says. “He is showing me all aspects of the business from doing the accounts to driving the hearse. And is always very supportive and encouraging.

“I’ve done the Funeral Directors Course and am now a fully qualified undertaker/funeral director and meet grieving families to discuss their loved one’s arrangements over a cup of tea. We mind them through heartbreaking times.

“The hugs and thanks we get afterwards, the kindness, it genuinely does not feel like work to me.”

Karen had high praise for John.

“He is like a second dad to me,” she says. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without his support.”

Twelve years ago, John himself gave up his thriving electrical business to set up a funeral home. His only regret, he says, is that he “didn’t do it sooner!”

It’s no surprise, then, that he recognised that same sense of vocation in Karen.

“I’ve started the embalmer’s course now, and, though it is quite hard, I am already relishing it, she adds. 

“It will be every second weekend for the next two years.

“Once I qualify as an embalmer, my dream is to provide the best embalming service I possibly can to families’ loved ones”.

Karen knows first-hand how ‘good-embalming’ is all about getting the little details right for a family’s loved one.

After her dad’s traumatic death, seeing him laid out, with a small cut on his lip, still sticks out in her head.

“Embalming has come a long way since then, but I can still remember that one little cut.

“Compared to my dad, my mam looked beautiful and at peace in the coffin.”

Dementia had ravaged her over a number of years, and, even though she had been dying for a week, “when we saw her in the coffin, all the stress was totally gone from her face. Getting that right for the family is so important so they can say goodbye properly.”

Karen is learning the funeral business thanks to her boss and mentor, funeral director John Keohane. A lifetime of dreams has brought her here. She leads with heart and passion, and with an unquenchable ambition to be the best at what she does.

She’s only getting started.