At the age of 16, following his father’s sound advice to learn a trade, Brian Ibbetson began a 44-year career as a gas engineer.
However, by the time he was 60, he had been running his business for 12 years and it was becoming increasingly difficult to install boilers on his own. Moreover, he needed a new van and his certificate needed to be renewed; Both of these would take time and money to fix. He had a decision to make; Did he want to keep doing this for another five years until he retired?
To Ibbetson, this felt like “the planets were lining up,” signaling that it was time to move on.
He made up his mind when his wife showed him an ad for a part-time job at a funeral director. He knew this was true for him; Decades of house calls had made him a public figure, and this would be a decidedly personal affair.
“It’s a random thing, but it caught my attention. “Getting involved suddenly seems like a bloody business, but I felt like I could do it,” he says.
‘No education’
Ibbetson began to close down his business and started working for a firm on a zero-hours contract. He was thrown into the deep end – “there is no education; you learn on the job” – but you loved it. Eight months later he moved on to Swindon Co-operative Funeralcare and has been there for the last two years.
When Ibbetson announced his radical career change, reactions were mixed. “People who know me and my character said they could see me doing this,” he says; This includes his son Connor. But it’s no surprise that many people don’t know how to react to the news that their 9 to 5 consists of funerals and dead bodies.
“They might think I’m a little weird,” he says. “I’ve seen people laughing because they’re embarrassed and don’t know what to say.”
But Ibbetson doesn’t care and can see the funny side: “It’s great dinner conversation when someone asks you what you’re doing. They don’t expect this! Then you have 20 questions to answer.
He currently works as a funeral director, a step up from his position as a funeral assistant. A typical day consists of checking the deceased’s premises for any signs of deterioration, cleaning the car and arranging the flowers. He double-checks whether the right person got into the car on the right day.
“It sounds simple, but these things can go wrong,” he says. During busier periods, he may have to work four funerals a day; although this is rare, two funerals per day are more common.
‘We are trying to give people a nice send-off as much as we can’
Most funerals are still traditional, with guests dressed in black, but each ceremony is unique, and Ibbetson has been a part of more unusual ceremonies, too. Most notably – a Only Fools and Horses-themed funeral – “there was a themed casket and a yellow Del Boy van pulling the hearse”.
Ibbetson and his colleagues went the extra step by dressing as Batman and Robin in the iconic episode where Del and Rodney are invited to what they think is a fancy dress party. “It got a big round of applause,” he said, “and the family came out to thank us so much for doing this. We’re trying to make it as individual a wonderful send-off as we can.” For Ibbetson, the effort of his loved ones to thank him and his team is the highlight of his career change.
Of course, there are many bleak parts of the job; especially being called out when someone dies in the middle of the night. Seeing and facing death is now “second nature” but Ibbetson admits: “You never forget the first time.” [dead body] You understand”.
Along the way, he developed his own coping mechanisms, like parking 20 minutes away from work so he could get inside to prepare himself and walking back to clear his head.
‘A lot of empathy is needed’
Ibbetson has a lot of experience dealing with people on the most difficult day of their lives. He explains the sincerity and great responsibility of his job as follows: “When I take the deceased, I also take someone’s loved one. They might have been married for 60 years. I tell the family: ‘I will take care of them as if they were my own children.’
“You have to have a lot of empathy. These people trust you so much; you’re taking away their most valuable asset.”
Even though it’s been two years since the career change, there are still difficult times. One particularly difficult day recently was the funeral of a stillborn baby – “I was crying at the grave.” Perhaps surprisingly for a man you’d expect to be desensitized by his job, Ibbetson admits he can “cry at the drop of a hat; one of the gang gives me tissues pretty regularly.”
His work helped him confront the concept of death. “I’m not afraid of dying. “I know what will happen in the end, and I’ve seen most of it,” he says.
Despite his insider knowledge, Ibbetson doesn’t want a big deal for his funeral.
“I don’t want any chaos. Put me in the box as cheaply as you can and put the rest behind the bar. These are my instructions.”