Volunteer to plan a mock funeral arrangement

Mt. Hood’s Funeral Service Education (FSE) program will stage an event on Feb. 18 where guests are invited to make mock funeral arrangements for their “deceased” loved ones.

The annual “life-like” exercise will run 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Town and Gown Room.

Mock arrangements can be made by anyone. The event is open to the public and is held so that students in the FSE program may gain experience in their field, said Maximilian Bodzin, a second-year student in the program.

“Before you would come in, you would put a scenario together and put a fake person together, and come in and make fake funeral arrangements for that fake person,” Bodzin said, explaining the setup. “The arrangement (one-on-one appointment) takes about an hour.”

The FSE program has run at Mt. Hood since 1969 and the first class graduated in 1970. It’s the only program of its type in Oregon, Bodzin noted.

Students participate in labs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays where they embalm real human corpses. The bodies are used with permission from the families of the deceased. “The (contracted) funeral home brings them to us (and) gets permission from the families for us to embalm them,” said Bodzin.

The embalming process is a lengthy one, involving disinfection of a body and setting features. Once the process is over, the bodies are sent back. “The funeral home comes and picks them up after we’re finished,” Bodzin said.

The program offers an Applied Science degree that requires students to conduct at least 10 embalmings. But, students aren’t finished once they complete the program: There is a national exam, an internship and an  “(Oregon) state exam, which is a lot harder than the national,” said Bodzin.

Entry to the FSE program is not easy for just anyone. “You’re supposed to have some kind of experience around a funeral home, or have your foot in the door,” Bodzin said. “Most students that come in already know what’s ahead of them, and what it entails.”

Bodzin said being surrounded by death “can definitely start taking a toll on you. But, you need to be professional and understand that this is your job and learn to enjoy what you do, learn to enjoy taking care of people in their time of grief.

“It’s really hard to not get emotional with some of these people,” he said. “Some of these people are coming in and (saying they) just lost their child or their sister or brother or something like that, something that’s completely unexpected. You can’t help but to feel terrible.”

Anyone interested in making a one-hour mock arrangements appointment should contact Bodzin at [email protected] or at 503-431-9613 (text and phone).