Jo Place has been involved in more than 10,000 funerals.
She is 44 years old, and for as long as she’s worked, death has been a primary focus of her life.
She didn’t grow up desperate to work with dead people. She hadn’t much considered her own mortality, let alone the inner workings of a mortuary.
But when she left school and realised she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life, she came across an administration role in a funeral home. “Everything is experience!” her mother said, and off she went to work in the death industry.
She enjoyed it, but it wasn’t the administration side that made her want to stay. It was the connection she developed with families.
Jo worked with elderly women who had lost their husbands, and had no idea how to pay their electricity bill. She sat down with them, and talked them through how to write a cheque, and how to transfer bank accounts over so things were no longer in their husbands’ name.
Working in a country town, she said, “If the lady was having to catch a bus, you’d say ‘well hop in the car and I’ll drive you home’, and when she needed milk on the way home, you’d stop for milk.”
Jo discovered how much satisfaction she got from “genuinely helping people,” a feature of the job she never expected.
Today, Jo doesn’t work in administration. She is the General Manager for NSW Funerals InvoCare, making her the youngest female General Manager of 86 funeral homes and cemeteries.
But after 25 years in the industry, Jo doesn’t think too much about death. Her job, she told Mamamia, is “making sure the family is being cared for, and that the family is really happy.” Her work is far more about the living.
Top Comments
"It doesn't have to be super expensive."
I'd like to know how she thinks the business of dying could be anything but. We recently had a death in the family - the cheapest option which DIDN'T even include the cost of a funeral (we didn't have one on purpose) came to just under $10K. That was to pick up the body, a cardboard coffin, cremation, death notice, and all other administrative fees.