Family Builds New Life in Funeral Home

Robert and Linda McGovern and their three young children live rent-free among the dead--on the second floor of the Hackensack Funeral Home.

With his decorator business floundering, McGovern took up an offer to move into the second floor of the funeral home in March, 1990, in exchange for helping out downstairs.

“In the beginning, I was afraid,” said Linda McGovern, 41. “It was eerie with dead bodies around. I think I saw too much television--vampires and stuff, you know.”

And the children, Stacey, 5, Bobby, 4, and Megan, 2, “thought the bodies would come upstairs,” she said.

But the McGoverns are no longer spooked. Even having their basement laundry room next to where the bodies are prepared doesn’t faze them.

“It was funny when I was doing the wash,” said Linda McGovern. “You forget somebody is in there. You see the body, and you jump.

“Now I talk to them,” she said, laughing. “I call them by their first name. Out of respect, I talk to them--let them know it’s OK, we’ll take good care of them.”

The family was renting a house in Clifton in northeast New Jersey when funeral director Kenneth Focarino, for whom McGovern worked occasionally as a pallbearer, offered them the second floor of the Victorian-style house.

McGovern, whose painting and wallpapering business was going badly, accepted the offer with some reservations.

“It gives you an eerie feeling sometimes,” said Robert McGovern, 36. “After viewing a horror movie, it’s perfect. You say: ‘I gotta check downstairs.’ ”

In return for the free rent and a small salary, the couple answer the telephone and do bookkeeping, Linda McGovern said.

“Of course, we had no idea what we were in for,” she said, interrupted repeatedly by the telephone during a recent interview.

Clients knock on their door at all hours. The children must keep quiet during viewings, and because “you don’t want the place smelling like a restaurant,” meals are kept simple, Linda McGovern said.

And some friends stay away, finding the setup unnerving.

“We haven’t seen Bob in 1 1/2 years,” said Bill Mirault of Saddle Brook, N.J., who’s known the family for about eight years. “We used to see him when he lived in a regular house.

“My wife won’t go over there, no way.”

The McGoverns, however, see advantages to funeral home life.

The children, who sometimes watch bodies being dressed for casket preparation, are learning about death. McGovern is learning the business and hopes to get a mortuary license. And his wife, who gave up work in the advertising industry to rear a family, feels “very alive” working again.

“It’s really quite pleasant,” she said. “I just feel good being able to help people.”

The children, who initially thought the deceased were asleep, are more inquisitive than afraid, she said.

And she no longer fears the dead.

“My husband says: ‘You have to be afraid of the people who are alive.”’