Teen’s funeral home project grows into real business

At 15, Tamara Turner was given a school assignment that most teenagers would have forgotten by the time they graduated.

Turner didn’t.

For her Principles of Business class at St Mary Technical High School, she was required to develop a business plan. While her classmates explored more conventional ideas, Turner chose something that had already captured her curiosity — a funeral home.

At the time, it was nothing more than a school project. Fifteen years later, that same idea sits at the heart of the business she now runs.

“I named it Turner’s Funeral Home at the time. I got a grade two,” she said.

A few years later, Turner revisited the plan, refining and updating the idea she had conceived as a teenager before using it as the foundation for Edith’s Funeral Home.

The idea had taken root even earlier, during a community service assignment that led Turner, then a teenager, inside a funeral home in rural St Mary.

While other students gravitated towards police stations and more familiar workplaces, Turner and a cousin deliberately chose the funeral home because they wanted to know what happened behind its doors.

“Everyone was going to the traditional business places or to the police station, but I was fascinated with a funeral home. We were being inquisitive and just doing it for the fun of it, but it led to something deeper than what I expected.”

Then she saw something she could not shake.

“I remember the first time I walked into the morgue. I saw a lot of bodies, but one that I remembered vividly was a father and his two sons that were being prepared for their funeral,” Turner recalled.

The three had been victims of a triple murder.

“That image stayed with me for a very long while because it was a triple murder case and it was so tragic. I really saw how important it was for family to see their loved ones the way they saw them in real life for one last time.”

That moment changed the way Turner viewed death — and, eventually, what she believed she could offer grieving families.

But there was no straight line from that teenage business plan to becoming the 30-year-old certified funeral director and mortician and CEO of Edith’s Memorial Funeral Services & Supplies Ltd.

In 2018, Turner enrolled at the University of the Commonwealth Caribbean to study social work. Financial difficulties forced her to leave after her first semester, and she later worked in motor vehicle insurance while continuing her education part-time.

The funeral home idea, however, never disappeared.

In 2023, she returned to it in a more serious way, enrolling at Montego Bay Community College to study Funeral Services and Mortuary Science.

Then life handed her a painful test.

During her first year of studies, Turner lost her grandmother, the woman she describes as her main support system.

“Within the first year of my studies, on the 15th of July, my grandmother died. My grandmother was my main support system. That’s when I decided to name the funeral home in her honour.”

Edith’s Memorial Funeral Services & Supplies Ltd was no longer simply the business described in a teenage assignment. It had become personal.

The death of two cousins within two years deepened that connection. Turner found herself helping with their final care, including dressing and funeral planning.

“I was able to actually be a part of their final care, preparing them in terms of dressing and planning. I pretty much did everything for my grandmother’s funeral. At the time my aunts had doubts because they were concerned about the fact that we were so close, they were not sure if this is a good idea. But the moment that I was able to plan and execute her final care I knew within myself that I can manage whatever that should come.”

Those experiences taught Turner that working around death requires more than technical knowledge.

“Before being a funeral director and a mortician, I am human first, but families still trust me to serve them when they are at their lowest. I maintain that professionalism and still have the compassion and empathy because I have been there.”