u/jcashwell04

I just had a ship-out the other day, or rather the receiving funeral home was in an adjacent state so they drove up to pick up the body a couple days after I embalmed.

I thought all was well until a day or two later we received a very nasty email from the receiving funeral home’s owner claiming the body was “very poorly embalmed,” complaints about the decedent’s mouth, and something along the lines of “I see on the report the job took two hours, and if that’s the best your embalmer can do in two hours then I’d suggest he take a bit longer next time.”

I will admit that the decedent’s mouth shape didn’t look fantastic and was a bit sunken, but they’re seeing an end result. They have no idea what he looked like before features were set. I spent about 20-30 minutes on the mouth alone because lower jaw/gums were extremely sunken with major gum recession and no teeth. There was very little structure to the lower mouth and at a point I just had to work with what I had so that I could get to embalming.

As far as the embalming itself, there were absolutely no issues. I used about a 26 index solution as I wasn’t sure how long they’d be holding onto him. There was no leakage, lividity, and he was firm as anything.

In this way I just categorically disagree that the embalming itself was poorly done. I can agree some what on the mouth, but part of me feels that the email was uncalled for and that experienced embalmers should understand that sometimes a mouth just won’t cooperate with you the way you need it to.

That said, part of me regrets not keeping at it a bit more with the mouth, but I truthfully didn’t think I could realistically get it any better than I got it. I could be totally wrong.

Has anyone had something like this happen before with a receiving funeral home complaining about the body? Any feedback is welcome

I recently bought a house (late February 2026) that had “all new plumbing” (I don’t know if that includes anything beyond what’s directly under the house). The house was built in 1940, so for all I know, the drain line in the yard may be the original and only the plumbing under the house was recently redone.

We have had, probably 4-5 times in 3 months, water rush out from under our toilet after draining the bath. Also, after flushing, the bathroom often (but not always) smells like a sewer. I have been told to replace the wax seal, but my understanding is that the wax seal (or lack thereof) shouldn’t really matter if you don’t have a backup anyway. After all, why would water be coming up in the first place if there wasn’t a backup?

We had the line jetted once but the issue came back within a month. A further camera inspection revealed a belly in the main line out in the yard, some 4 feet from the clean out. We have been told the best way to fix this is the replace about 10’ of pipe to correct the sloping.

Does this sound like a reasonable cause of the bad smells/backups? What other actions can I take besides replacing the pipe which will likely be very expensive. Any info or recommendations would be helpful.