How did you decide?

To start, you must be wondering how one finds a job at a mortuary when they know nothing about the business...  When I was sixteen years old my older sister died in a car accident on Christmas Eve.  I know... OMG!  How sad!  Life happens and it shapes who you are becoming.  When my family and I returned home to attend her funeral I remember looking at her in the Viewing Room, laying there in her casket, she appeared way too dark.  My sister was always fair skinned and the cosmetics they applied to her were not normal for her at all.  I judged everything about her.  Not just because I was so confused at that time how such a horrible act could occur but because I wanted to know how she could have been pinned under her van but still be viewable.  As my eyes cascaded around her figure I say a big blotch on her clavicle that appeared to be something smooth covering whatever lied beneath (later I would realize they used wax to cover her embalming incision because her husband had brought in a low-cut dress for her to wear).  Her hands were room temperature but slightly ridged and affixed in place.  How do they keep them like that?  The corners of her mouth were slightly turned upward as if she was trying to smile her last smile for us.  I was intrigued at how they can prepare someone for their last viewing.  When I returned home I began my research on death and the mortuary sciences.  I was in a vocational high school learning to become a CNA and my mind set completely switched at that moment in time.  I was staring at the computer explaining to me the procedure of embalming and realized that I what I want to do.  I want to help the patients after the nurses cannot.  As time passed my thoughts didn't falter.  Senior year we had a final project in school, we had to do a report on a health field of interest to us.  I went to my teacher and asked if Mortuary Science was still considered a health field and was given the "green light" to run with my new obsession.  When I went home and told my mom about my ideas she looked at me and said, "I know the right person for you to talk to."  By a stroke of pure luck from the Gods, my mom had a regular customer at her food-service job who waited for his wife to finish shopping and he was the boss of a mortuary!  How could I have been any luckier!?!  A couple phone calls later and a time set I had my interview set with one of the executives of a mortuary...