One of them being that I decided to make a career out of working in a funeral home - nothing else was fulfilling enough. So I actually went and applied for a job and started a career at the very bottom of the food chain (as a receptionist) and I learned from the bottom up. I unfortunately lost my father when I was 21 years old and that experience completely changed my life in many ways. I never imagined working in a funeral home, period.

Did you ever imagine that you’d be working at a funeral home right out of college?Ī. She spoke with USA TODAY's Sara Moniuszko. Campbell Funeral Chapel). She faced surprising challenges - like almost losing the body of a UN Ambassador - and learned valuable lessons about living from the death industry. 25), a memoir of her experiences helping plan funerals at 'Crawford' (real name: the Frank E. Now 30, Meyer has written Good Mourning (Gallery Books, on sale Aug. The Manhattan socialite and one-time party girl grew up fast. (Aug.Elizabeth Meyer made an unexpected career choice in her early 20s when she went to work at an Upper East Side funeral home that caters to the rich and famous. I needed to stop fearing it, and my way of doing that was to help other people who were grieving.” It’s a story well suited to the big screen. From saving the day when an important ambassador’s body is lost in transit, to gracefully handling intense office drama when she is accused of having an affair with Tony, Meyer takes the high road and concentrates on what becomes a spiritual journey of healing and self-discovery: “I needed to know death. Meyer injects a healthy dose of humor into what could otherwise be a morbid topic.

Soon Meyer discovers her deep capacity for empathy and her desire to help people in their most difficult moments, along with the calling of making each funeral as amazing as any bash in the Hamptons. But she finds respite downstairs with the embalmer, Bill, and her kind if brusque boss, Tony, who soon offers her a promotion and an office of her own after she proves to be indispensable to Crawford’s rich and famous clientele. At Crawford, she faces challenges as a child of privilege trying to fit in with the working-class staff: receptionists snub her and whisper about her behind her back. After her father’s death, she begins searching for meaning in her own life, and the path leads her, surprisingly, to a calling to work with the dead. If Carrie Bradshaw worked in a funeral home à la Six Feet Under, her story would look something like Meyer’s charming memoir about her tenure planning funerals at Crawford, an elite funeral parlor in Manhattan where the Upper East Side socialites she grew up around plan their ultimate farewell parties.

Good Mourning by Elizabeth Meyer