At 18, Jimmy Forrest decided he was going to be a policeman, he went through all the tests, but as he had been working in his father’s Whanganui funeral business Dempsey and Forrest since he was a small child, he made the decision to go into the family business – the third generation to do so. He has now been surrounded by the business of honouring the dying for most of his life.
He has been with his wife Mel for 16 years and they have two young children: Demi, who is 9, and Coop, 5. As someone who always has a lot of questions, I really wanted to know how their daily lives operate and how they have managed to integrate and normalise what for most is a very scary and upsetting time.
I sat down with Jimmy and Mel in Jimmy’s office. I say office, it is part office and part creche. His children spend a lot of time at “Daddy’s work” and there is evidence of children’s playthings, colouring pencils, paper and toys in his office. This is deliberate.
“Having our children around adds to the family environment that we want this business to represent. There are a lot of times when just having the children around diffuses some situations and makes things feel more normal,” says Jimmy.
Bless children – always the great leveller.
Mel and Jimmy are a team and, as someone who knows them relatively well, I can tell you they are two of the most positive people I have ever met. They both have a gift for making people feel good about themselves, so I wanted to know if, when they get home at the end of the day, does Mel ask “how was your day, dear?” The answer to that is she doesn’t.
“To be completely honest, we don’t talk about Jimmy’s days. I like to distract him from what he has gone through and throw him into family time, doing the things he loves and being around the people he loves,” says Mel.
It also becomes obvious that any daily plans that the Forrest family make at breakfast can be out the door by lunchtime. School pick-ups, events, family occasions can change on a dime. It’s not a life for the faint-hearted. Jimmy’s dedication to what he does is absolute. It is a 24-hour-a-day business and the only way he gets a break is if they leave town to re-charge. If that did not happen, he would be in the office the whole time.
The cases that affect him the most? “Children and young people.” However, he and his team have no choice; they stand and they honour and respect each and every person with dignity. They put their emotions aside.
Something else I learned is that twice a year they host grief seminars. Grief has no limits, timeline or rule book, but grief educator Hazel Nesser comes to support the people of Whanganui. One thing that does make Jimmy very happy is that in the beginning it was full of women in the audience; now the number of men attending has grown which is fantastic from a progress perspective.
I went to a service recently for a friend’s stepdad who had passed. When my friend got up to give the eulogy, he cracked open a Tui. It was perfect. Nothing is off the table when it comes to how people want to honour those who are gone.
Mel also mentions that Jimmy always goes the extra mile to make even the most unique request happen. What Jimmy does gives him an immense sense of pride but so do his children, so how have they dealt with dad’s job? Mel steps in for this answer.
“Our children believe that their dad’s job is to take care of angels. They have lost two very important people in their lives so they have also dealt with loss first-hand. We don’t hide our emotions from them, which helps them normalise the experience.”
To give you an idea of just how normal dad’s job is to the family, this honour goes to 5-year-old Coop. He sat in his dad’s office before Montessori the other day and asked if he could “please draw the ‘angels’ something special?” Once completed, Coop announced: “Righto Daddy, let’s go and put these outside their viewing rooms.”
If you want to see a look of pride on the face of a father, and get an understanding of how beautifully Jimmy and Mel have found the balance, that example is it.
