Taking care of dead bodies for a livelihood might seem strange or depressing to some people. But for Mariah Gibson, a funeral director and embalmer, it’s a matter of perspective.
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“I know it sounds weird,” Mariah says. “But I don’t feel much emotion about something I can’t change. They’ve passed away. I’ll do my best to honor them and serve the community that raised me.”
It may seem an unlikely calling for the 34-year-old 2003 graduate of Gallatin High School. She didn’t come from a long line of family funeral directors. But Mariah actually did have an experience that helped her decide her profession.
“I was working at a local facility for the elderly, thinking of going to nursing school. A gentleman passed away in the night. The people who came to get him were very disrespectful. That’s when I decided that’s what I wanted to do.”
Mariah graduated Magna Cum Laude from Kansas City Kansas Community College in 2008, and successfully passed a two-part national board examination prior to graduation. She was a member of Sigma Phi Sigma Fraternity of Mortuary Science and a selected member of the academic honor society Phi Theta Kappa.
Mariah worked and lived at the McGilley Antioch Chapel in Kansas City all through school. In Missouri a person can be a funeral director and not an embalmer, but you cannot be an embalmer without having a funeral director’s license. Mariah obtained both in 2009 after completing an apprenticeship under David McWilliams at McWilliams Funeral Home in Gallatin. She worked for Lindley Funeral Homes in the Chillicothe area and also assisted at Turner Family Funeral Home in Maysville since 2012. She began working as the embalmer for Stith Family Funeral Home in 2016, and worked at McWilliams Funeral Home until David and Deanna retired in late 2018.
Kyle and Erin Stith took over after David and Deanna McWilliams retired, and all the preparation for embalming is done at Stith in Gallatin; once finished, the bodies are taken to other places for the funerals. Mariah is responsible for all the embalming.
What does an embalmer do exactly? There is actually a great deal to the measures necessary to preserve a human’s remains for a period of time. But readying the body for a comfortable viewing is one of the most important things she does.
“Beyond the embalming process, I also do the hair and makeup,” says Mariah. “It’s more of an art than a science. Every case, though similar, is very different. We all have anatomical anomalies and the embalming process is a case-by-case scenario.”
Mariah is on call every hour of every day if her services are needed.
“Sometimes a lot happens in a day, sometimes nothing happens,” she says. “Some days I just answer the phone.”
Mariah says the most rewarding aspect of the job is the appreciation that families express for all that she has done for them. Most families are truly grateful for the stressful nature of her job, that she is available to them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that she is a comforting presence at the very worst of times.
“Death is ugly,” Mariah says. “Disease, aging, trauma or accidents, it takes a horrible toll on the body. I try to restore the person to the positive memory-picture that family and friends have of them, to when they were more of a complete person, before the decline. Whole and complete and at peace, that’s the goal.”
While in college, Mariah worked with Larry West, who was from Pattonsburg. The funeral home performed from 250 to 300 funerals a year, nearly all Catholic.
“That was quite an eye opener,” she says. “Everything about a Catholic funeral is a little bit different. And it was interesting to see the volume at a large city funeral home.”
She worked for nearly three years at McGilley until graduating college and during that time knew only three people whose funerals were performed there; they came from area nursing facilities. Mostly she worked with strangers. At Gallatin, she feels she knows everybody or their family…and that’s okay.
“I like working with people I know,” she says. “I’d rather have somebody like me taking care of them, than somebody who doesn’t know them.”
Though a funeral director deals with loss and grief on a daily basis — the professional term is ‘compassion fatigue’ — there are parts of Mariah’s job that are far more difficult than others, such as an untimely death.
“When we went through the untimely death of my dad, I learned that anybody can die anytime,” she says. “I’ve been there and I know exactly what others are experiencing.”
The death of a child is the worst experience. One of Mariah’s most frustrating efforts as an embalmer involved a stillbirth, a tiny baby.
“I cried for hours,” she says. “It hurts me to not be able to make people look right. People viewing the body may look for two minutes. I’ve stared at the body for hours. Things that stand out to me, nobody else notices.”
What worries her about the job is not death itself, but more the circumstances surrounding an individual’s death.
“When I’ve lived in the funeral home where I worked, it was the best sleep I ever got, it was so quiet,” she says. “But I’m always scared when I get a call, that it’s going to be something difficult, like a bad accident.”
To unwind from the day, Mariah loves to bake and cook, spend time with family and friends, do word puzzles and go to concerts. She is the daughter of Jeannie and the late Bob Gibson. Jeannie is retired from a nursing career and Bob passed away in 2012. Mariah has a son Vince, who is eight and in second grade at Searcy Elementary. Her siblings are Annie and Daryn.
Mariah has been 13 years in the profession. During her career so far, she has seen the phenomenon of four or five husbands and wives who have passed within a year or so of each other. While going to college and working at a funeral home in Kansas City, she had the unpleasant experience of Fred Phelps with the Westboro Baptist Church — who picketed the funerals of military veterans and disaster victims — protesting a procession.
She fears her profession may not last; that she may not be able to retire an embalmer. Traditional funeral arrangements are slipping away.
“There’s a whole generation that doesn’t want to deal with death,” she says. “When someone dies, life becomes crazy. It’s a lot of work, though it doesn’t have to be.”
Cremation is less expensive than a traditional burial. In America, roughly 50% of final arrangements are cremation.
“My own dad wanted to be cremated,” Mariah says. “He’d tell us ‘when I die throw me in the fryer.’ And that’s what we did because that’s what he wanted.”
However, she thinks the process of burial is good psychologically for people.
“To see a still and lifeless body allows people to cope and move on from the loss,” she says. “In this area, enough know what they want to do; they want to go into the earth for religious reasons. Traditional values carry us through.”
Mariah’s favorite part of her job is getting to know people — even if a lot of times it’s after the fact.
“Everybody is loved,” Mariah says. “I get to hear stories people would never tell you on their own. Most fond memories don’t involve expensive things. It’s ice cream at 3 a.m.; a stop at a roadside park; a talk at the kitchen table. It’s always the simple things.”
Everybody’s important to somebody.
“Always somebody comes to a funeral. Sometimes the great-grandchildren come. Even if that great-grandparent wouldn’t know them, they come to pay their respects. It’s touching to see how many turn out. We touch a lot of people in our lives.”
And for many of those who have passed in our area, Mariah’s is the last kind touch on this side.