An undertaker’s life

Marc Brusie has a distinct calmness about him as he speaks slowly and thoughtfully while answering questions about what it is like to own and operate a business that not only deals with death, but also actually relies on it to stay afloat. He is sitting in an office of the Brusie Funeral Home, which has occupied the same building, located at Broadway and Seventh streets in downtown Chico, for the past 72 years.

The building itself is more than 125 years old and has housed a funeral home for the past 110 years. Brusie’s grandfather and grandmother, Warren Pope and Helen Brusie, bought into the business in 1941 and took it over the following year. The interior of the building is quiet and simply decorated with flower-print carpeting and antique furniture. There is an open box of tissues sitting on one of the pews in the funeral room and another in the adjoining waiting room. While somber, perhaps, the inside atmosphere is more comforting than depressing.

While Brusie has carried on the family business, he said doing so was his choice after attending both Butte College and Chico State and dabbling in other professions, including road construction.

“My parents never encouraged me to come into the business or discouraged me,” the 46-year-old Brusie explained. “It was the same with my sister Amy, who is also in the business. We grew up always knowing that if we would like to work in the business, that it would be available, but that they weren’t expecting it.”

Brusie’s wife, Janice, whom he married in 1995, is the business’ chief financial officer. They have two children, ages 16 and 18, and put no pressure on them to take over when the time comes.

He said the job of running a business that deals with death on a daily basis is not as difficult as an outsider might think.

“When people come here, they don’t come here for counseling,” he explained. “They don’t come here to discuss with me their grief. Although they are grieving, they are not here for me to take care of that. They handle the grief within their family, or maybe with their minister—people they are very close to.”

He said the funeral home’s job is providing a service that involves timing, logistics, phone calls to vendors and services.

“We have that expertise on who to talk to, what to ask for, how to get those things done and in place with services such as the cemetery, the grave digger, the grave liner and the casket.

“I think the public’s perception is that there is a lot of crying, a lot of grief and that it must be very difficult for us to deal with. It is tragic when young people pass away—those get to you,” he said. “But on the whole, we are working hard to get a lot done so there is a meaningful funeral for that family.”