So in between my work on the double homicide, I had another family come in who lost their sister in a car wreck. She hadn’t even been released from the medical examiner, and they wanted to see her RIGHT NOW. It was 2pm. Medical examiner stops releasing at 3. The drive is an hour. A…

Christmas Eve, right after church while still wearing my silk dress, I drove to the funeral home and removed the cosmetics, wax and sutures from the facial wound. I scraped out all of the absorbent powder and stuffed the wound with phenol-soaked cotton, then left it overnight. I saw blood on the pillowcase so I…

Today’s case was harder than I imagined and will need more work. Luckily the funeral isn’t for another week so I will have plenty of time. I will document, as much as I can without breaching ethics, the steps I took. I was presented with a middle-aged slightly obese autopsied female, partially frozen. On the…

I am pleased whenever I am asked intelligent questions about what I do, and I thought the cost of trauma restoration deserved its own post. First of all, restorative art is a term that can include several small procedures as well as large, labor-intensive work like accident victims or suicides. Many parts of the embalming…