Arranging funeral services, embalming bodies and helping family and friends cope with losing a loved one.

Those are just some of the duties Doreen Williams-James fulfills on a daily basis in her role as proprietor/manager and licensed funeral director and embalmer at the Alpha Memorial Chapel Funeral Home in St. George's.

But it is a career which she has found to be both interesting and rewarding, and has brought her into contact with people from all walks of life and exposed her to a range of different situations.

Ms Williams-James became interested in funeral services and embalming when studying at the Bermuda Institute and she went to work with her mother at a nursing home.

She went on day release to get experience at AJ Perinchief Funeral Home under the management of Boris NC Tucker before going on to graduate from Gupton-Jones Mortuary School in Atlanta, Georgia with an Associate in Science degree and coming back to work for AJ Perinchief and then starting her own funeral services business at the age of 25.

"For some reason a lot of people have an interest in what happens to people when they die," she said.

"My interest sparked from there and I went to a funeral home to decide if it was what I wanted to do.

"At first I was nervous and a little bit scared, but it was an experience and from then on I set my mind to it.

"My ambition was to be the first female to own and operate a funeral home in Bermuda."

Ms Williams-James was quite literally thrown in at the deep end, taking her first funeral booking two days after opening the business.

But she proved to be up for the challenge and held services for 19 families in the funeral home's first year of business.

"We have grown each year as a business and I have myself matured quite a bit in that time," she said.

"I would say the rewards of this profession are that you get to meet people from all walks of life and you get to make real bonds with the families.

"I have made really wonderful relationships with people and communities in Bermuda, especially in St. George's where we live.

"I have a good working relationship with my colleagues and we all work together to help each other out."

With her team of two honorary associates and a 17-year-old trainee, Ms Williams-James does everything from meeting with the family of the deceased to make funeral arrangements, including funeral notices in the paper, flowers, programmes and orders of service, such as special music, to co-ordinating with the minister, preparing and embalming the corpse, and organising the burial and interment, as well as offering her services to help the family after the event with the likes of dealing with death certificates, pensions and bank accounts that need to be closed.

Typically she prefers to meet families at their homes where they are more comfortable to discuss the details of the service, which can range from private graveside, church and sea funerals.

One thing is for certain - there is never a boring day in her line of work - if it is dealing with grieving relatives who find it hard to let go of their nearest and dearest who have passed away, or making arrangements to bring back the bodies of those Bermudians who have died overseas or sending deceased foreign nationals back to their homeland, including exotic places such as Russia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

"I do get quite a few unusual requests," said Ms Williams-James.

"I get a lot of situations where families' emotions run high - there was one instance when I was pregnant at the time with my second daughter and I had just buried a relative and the brother jumped into the grave, so I decided I was not going to get excited in my state and condition, but it all worked itself out and a relative came and took him out of there.

"You never know what to expect will happen - sometimes there are situations where you have got to think ahead of time about the things that will occur.

"We had a Russian who died and we had quite a job to get his remains back to Russia and ended up having to keep him for three weeks before a lawyer had to get involved because we could not send him home via the US, so the body had to be escorted by the lawyer back through England, Germany and then Vladivostok.

"There was another occasion when a ship carrying salt went down off the coast of Bermuda and six of the crew, who were Asian, died - their remains were brought back to the dock on Front Street and to see the Filipino community that turned out to watch was unbelievable.

"There was a 19-year-old man who had been in a similar situation only six months before when a ship went down - things like that just stand out in my mind - I call them my 'rocking chair stories' that I will tell my grandchildren when I am older."

During her time in the profession, Ms Williams-James has seen a lot of changes, among which more personalised and customised services, like the use of slide-shows and air-brushed caskets to suit different tastes and preferences.

Among the biggest changes she would like to see in the funeral services business are the Island's first crematorium for those who want to be cremated and to sort out the issue of limited grave space, and the introduction of bio-degradable caskets as the country becomes more environmentally-friendly.

Aside from her day job, Ms Williams-James is also actively involved in road safety programmes, going into schools to warn students of the consequences of families having to cope with the death of a relative from a road traffic accident or the survivor dealing with the possibility of paralysis, using such vivid visual aids as wheelchairs, catheters, nappies and graphic photographs of crash scenes and injuries sustained as a result.

"I once gave a presentation at the Bermuda Institute which was very graphic and it hit home to a lot of students the importance of road safety," she said.

"A lot of them actually left the room crying from what they had seen because they could not take the graphic illustrations. I had a lot of calls from parents who thanked me and that is good because it opened up communication between the parents and students about what they had seen and hopefully if I can reach just some of the students then I can get the message across.

"I also do a grief programme on how to cope during the holiday season, giving out care packages containing comforting scriptures, home-made lavender bath salts and camomile tea to help with relaxation and the healing process.

"Doing this job there are a lot of things that are exposed that come out in the open - funerals will either bring out the best or the worst in people and either tear them apart or bring them closer together as a family.

"It is a good feeling when families work together and support one another and show that even in their time of grief their love is still there for their close ones.

"My job is to be an advisor and a counsellor, so I have a lot of roles to perform."

Ms Williams-James, who has a husband, Charlie James, and two daughters, Channa and Brianna, is a keen church-goer, having worked in the children's administrative department at the St. George's Seventh Day Adventist Church for the past 10 years, and also enjoys baking and cake decoration, arts and crafts, and making Gombey dolls.

She said one of the questions she is asked the most is how much a funeral costs, and she puts the average price at $5,500 to $7,000, with the cost of bringing a deceased relative back from abroad ranging between $2,500 and $3,000.

However, Ms Williams-James said the day she stops showing her emotions will be the time to call it day.

"If I get to a point where I do not express my emotions then I will know it is time to get out of this profession," she said.

"I allow myself to grieve and I am only human and show empathy and sympathy like anyone else.

"I serve the people and when they need me the most - I like to set goals and pursue them and also open up pathways for others and that is what I will continue to do."

For now, she is happy to be there to serve the community and families during their hour of need in what has been an rich and varied career working in funeral services.