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The dead and the living

by Grace Richards
On a quiet Thursday morning, Hunter Hamilton, 28, picked up a flower delivery for one of Maysville’s recently deceased. As embalmer and co-funeral director of Brell & Son Funeral Home, he is no stranger to grief.

Hunter Hamilton always understood that death was part of the family business. As a child, he played hide-and-seek with his siblings in the dim, ornate visitation rooms of his family’s funeral home, Brell & Son. Now, he is the third generation to inherit this duty: honoring Maysville’s dead. 

Hunter, 28, and his mother, Coletta Brell Hamilton, or “Bae,” receive about two “death calls” per week. There are mountains of paperwork and obituaries to write. Hunter wheels heavy caskets through the back room. He can embalm a body in about 30 minutes, draining the blood through the carotid artery and pumping chemical preservatives through the vascular system. 

Dealing with the living, however, is much more complicated. Families come through his doors awash with grief, seeking emotional support and legal advice. Hunter sits with them for hours in the funeral home’s faded living room, listening to them recall their last moments with a loved one. He walks them through casket options. He provides a space to release their pain. 

During funeral visits, children run up to him with questions about their loved ones. These are, perhaps, the most difficult moments. “They tell you in mortuary school to never make up stories about death, to tell it like it is,” Hunter said. He finds himself caught between stark reality and the comfort of fantasy, the vague adages “she passed on” or “she’s in a happier place.”

The emotional toll can be heavy, particularly in the case of children’s deaths or when he knows the deceased personally. “It’s this tightness in my chest,” he said. “Children are never supposed to die.”

This week, Brell & Son received four death calls. There are bodies to embalm, fingernails to paint (what shade of sparkly pink?), and delicate hairdos to shape. “This is the last time they’re gonna see her,” said Bae as she considered how they might do one deceased lady’s hair. “Her hair’s gotta be better than ‘fine.’” 

At home, Hunter and his partner, Brianna, have four excitable dachshunds and a baby on the way. Down the hallway, a bright room lies ready with a newly assembled crib and pink walls; Brianna is having a girl.



Hunter is the third generation to take on his family business: Brell & Son Funeral Home. He feels that it is his duty; he would not do this work if he hadn’t been born into it. “It’s a somber experience,” he said, “but there’s some comfort to it.”
Hunter and his partner, Brianna Lambert, play with their dachshunds in their home across the river from Maysville. Their dogs are affectionate and fiercely protective, some more than usual: Brianna is pregnant and having a baby girl in about a month.
Much of the work done by morticians is logistical; death creates a lot of paperwork and there are often complicated family dynamics at play. “Where there’s a will there’s a family fighting,” Bae said.
Before a visitation ceremony, Hunter changed out of his sweatshirt into a dress shirt and tie. He keeps his dress clothes hung up in the back room of the funeral home. A body lies in the next room, waiting to be embalmed when he returns from the visitation that evening.
A family approached the church for a visitation. Hunter and Bae had arranged copious bouquets of flowers at the altar and straightened the casket to make sure it was perfectly centered.