Tender Funerals

Step inside the not-for-profit funeral home that's doing death differently. By Susan Chenery and Olivia Rousset with photography by Harriet Tatham · Australian ...

"We contacted a few places," he says, "and Tender was the one that was able to enable a completely different funeral service." "Honestly, it wakes you up and it sort of catapults you to the centre of life. He liked things that were a bit odd and rebellious," she says. She reached out and Jenny immediately knew she wanted her to run Tender. For the first 12 months it was just the two of them. "I don't see funeral work as a job, I see it as my life's work really," she says. "You're in a different state for a couple of days when someone dies. "I do know that there is something that happens when you put your hands on the body of a person who you love that's died," Jenny says. Her mother would go to the "old people's home" and do the "old people's hair" and the kids would come along. "It was like Steel Magnolias. People were having perms, there was a lot of laughing," Jenny remembers. "He wanted people to be casually dressed, he wanted people just to be able to relax. "We are a culture of death deniers," Amy says. "We are afraid of seeing dead people because it's the unknown," Jenny says.