What does a funeral director in actually do?

What Paul Brooks sees in his line of work is not always nice.

At the age of 12, he was given $50 to help his father transfer a dead body. He can still picture the elderly man in his recliner chair in the lounge room.

"Kind of looked like he was asleep to me," he said.

Mr Brooks, now the general manager of Burke and Douglas Funerals and Lincoln Grove Memorial Gardens in Tamworth, has been around the industry for a long time, as his parents had a funeral business in Gunnedah.

A 'transfer' is when a deceased person is transferred into the care of the funeral business.

Some days are more confronting than others, such as when a person has taken their own life, but Mr Brooks is able to let the hard stuff go.

"There's some scenes I can vividly recall and picture, but I've managed to put them somewhere else, and they stay there," he said.

Burke and Douglas Funerals has a mortuary and a cool room where the bodies are placed until a meeting with the family arranges what kind of funeral it will be - burial, cremation, church, chapel, graveside.

"Some people come in here and laugh the whole way through an arrangement, and other people come in and they cry every time you ask them a question," Mr Brooks said.

The strangest requests by a family are usually in song choice, he said, such as 'Highway to Hell', 'Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead', and "tonnes of Slim Dusty", particular favourites being 'Looking Forward, Looking Back', and 'Leave Him in the Longyard'.

"We're only part of the grieving process and we're a small part of that process. I think as Australians, we often try and rush, get it done, get it out of the way," Mr Brooks said.

"But from my experience, if you give yourself more time, put in more effort and thought into the funeral, you come away from it feeling better in yourself.

"For us, it's about putting people on a road to a better place sooner, whatever gets them across the line."

What people don't understand about the funeral industry is that it's a lengthy process, he said.

"They see you standing outside the church in our suits and that's all they see, they don't understand the amount of back hours and work prior that goes into a service," he said.

What happens during a service has changed through the years, Mr Brooks said, and the production has gotten bigger.

Knowledge and education has led to a greater acceptance and willingness to discuss death, he said, and since COVID, there's a camera set up permanently in the chapel for live streaming.

"It's more of an experience now than a funeral," he said.

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The non religious, non denominational services are also becoming much more popular, he said, as well as cremations, and eco-friendly options, such as biodegradable coffins.

There's a lot of pressure to get a funeral service right, he said, because there's only the one, and because of the emotion involved.

"Dad always said to me, 'if it doesn't affect you, you can't do your job, because you have to be able to feel to do your job right'," he said.

"But I seem to get worse as I get older, I see a family crying, there are tears on my cheek and I'm meant to be looking after these people."

Despite his long years in the industry, he doesn't think he knows any more about death and dying than anyone else.

"And to be honest, it scares the hell out of me," he said.

"I'm gonna miss everyone. I love it here and I don't know where I'm going to."

He may not have all the answers when it comes to death, but he admits his profession makes him pick up the phone and reach out more.

"I often have people walk up to me at a funeral service say, 'I was gonna call this bloke last week, and now I'm at his funeral'," he said.