Since becoming a licensed funeral director in 2007, I’ve gotten used to being asked bizarre questions that people wouldn't normally think about if they weren’t face to face with me. I've found that most people want to know everything about my job but don’t know how to ask about it.

I don’t usually drop my "insider" funeral knowledge without prompting, but since I'm here, as a real-life funeral director, I might as well answer some of the most basic questions. Initially, the one I get asked more than any other is: How real is and what did you think of the HBO show, Six Feet Under?

To provide some context, Six Feet Under started just as I was graduating high school. I already knew I wanted to be a mortician but I had no good cultural points of reference to explain why. I went to Los Angeles to visit a friend and to feel out the mortuary college there, and could hardly contain my excitement when I landed at LAX and saw the first posters for the HBO show. I think the tagline was “Your Whole Life is Leading Up To This.”

While my future did not end up involving LA in my funeral endeavors, I am satisfied by having been able to live it through Fisher and Sons, a truly iconic family. Most people would agree that Six Feet Under was a great show, funeral directors included. It was dark, funny and began early in the 21st century when we were still drawing today’s pop culture outlines about "deathcare entertainment."

When HBO aired a show that revolved around a family mortuary splitting at its sutures, it was reflective of the world at that moment and audiences flipped for it. So I’m ne’er surprised nor annoyed by this initial question. It certainly got people talking death, which is a massive achievement in itself. Let’s be honest: death is a topic that is hard to approach if it is not exaggerated or somewhat entertaining.

I think the real question (and it typically follows) is how realistic the show is to the funeral industry. Technically, it did a great job of showing typical body preparation techniques like cremation, natural burial and embalming. Often, David Fisher and his assistant Frederico were all but ignoring the process while they worked, talking about their own problems, allowing the audience to enter the dual reality of their world: dealing with death to make a living.

The Fisher Family’s personal drama was not far off, either. A text I recently got from a funeral director friend of mine said, “I have to call you. Are you around tonight? Lots of drama here at work. I’m at church now...”

At the end of the third season, Nate Fisher experiences a tragic event and struggles, quite unsuccessfully, to keep it separate from his work. This is a true challenge for any funeral director. While in the show it gets pretty out of hand (screaming at grieving families, illicit liaisons with grieving families, bar fights) there have been times at work when the drama outside the casket room couldn’t have been written; these scenes could be edited into a lively PSA about the dangers of overworking employees.

One incident that stands out most in my mind happened in a flower patch of all places. When business is slow at a funeral home, employees are put to work maintaining the grounds. It must have been extra slow as two of the owners of this Milwaukee funeral home, who were brothers, were also gardening alongside the maintenance crew. It was hot. The pansies were abrasive. That’s when I noticed the brothers arguing. One of them lunged for the other. I saw their younger sister throw down her rake hoe, either to break it up or to join in. Not much got through to the brothers that afternoon after a cease fire was called by one of the senior maintenance men, and I was relieved of flower detail with a smoke break in the shade.

So, yes, funeral directors are people too, and it can be difficult to suppress one’s own drama in exchange for another person’s. Part of being a good funeral director — like any job — is knowing how to separate your worklife from your personal life.

Let’s hope that should you need to work with a funeral home in the future, they leave the drama to HBO.