THE FUNERAL INDUSTRY : Living and the Dead : Helping people is what’s important to a Camarillo mortician chosen by his peers for honors.

When John Basham headed down to the 88th annual convention of the California Funeral Directors Assn., held last month in an upscale hotel in Palm Springs, he expected plenty of the usual comments.

About what a lively gathering it would be. About how attendees would party hearty until they were dead on their feet. About how competition for the best seats would be stiff.

What he didn’t expect was to receive the association’s equivalent of an Oscar--the outstanding young funeral director of the year award--given to him for “efforts on behalf of the funeral industry.”

“I couldn’t have done this alone,” the 34-year-old Basham said last week from his wood-paneled office at Pierce Bros. Mortuary in Camarillo, where he gave credit to a business associate, a close friend and especially his wife for helping to make it all possible.

“She’s spent a lot of lonely nights,” he said.

Plenty of people may snicker at the idea that the funeral industry needs any kind of promotion. After all, it’s not like toothpaste where there is a choice in the matter. But a spokeswoman for the CFDA said there’s more to it than that.

“A lot of people are all of a sudden faced with death,” said Betty Young, the 700-member association’s administrator. “John has been very active in bereavement programs . . . and how to deal with coping with the loss.”

Inside Basham’s office, decorated with sample headstones that say “Always in our hearts,” silk ivy plants in a corner and a dark wooden desk that is liberally covered with pictures of his wife and two children, Basham folded his hands on his knees and spoke somberly about his job as “something I love.”

But it also, he said, has gotten a dark image from Hollywood, an unreal, macabre reputation that has been fueled over the years by the Vincent Prices and Stephen Kings of the world.

“I’ve worked hard to be rid of that ‘Fright Night’ image,” he said. “Being here, helping the living people is what’s important. The most important thing after a person dies, to facilitate the grieving process, is the viewing. I think that’s my specialty--the cosmetic process.”

Basham said he tries to do everything he can to honor the wishes of loved ones. “Nothing is odd,” he said. “Some families want a fishing pole in the casket. A can of beer. Pictures, letters. Some people write real private letters. We never read them.”

I looked at Basham--at his dark pinstripe suit, his gold nugget ring and wristwatch--and wondered why it was I felt so uncomfortable. Then, a bubble of hysterical laughter--the kind that hits you in the worst possible place and at the worst possible moment--suddenly threatened to rise up in me. I bit my lip.

The journalist part of my brain, I realized, could appreciate what he was saying and the importance of what he does. But the part of my brain that had seen Vincent Price movies and read Stephen King books held altogether different notions. That part wanted the rest of me to be somewhere else.

Basham’s intercom buzzed, and he excused himself for a moment, heading down the hallway. I sat back in one of his armchairs, wondering what my reaction said about our culture’s view of death.

Fifty quadzillion million deaths a year on TV cop and drama shows barely fazes the average Nielson viewer. But ask that same person to sit in someone like John Basham’s office and death becomes something quite different. No one here gets up and walks off the set.

Just then, a man in his 60s stopped in the doorway, clutching a wadded-up Kleenex. “You have someone here too?” he asked after a moment.

I shook my head. I was with a newspaper, I said. But he had someone here, didn’t he?

“Oh yes, and I’m so sorry. I’m not a man, crying like this,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve seen so many people go and I never broke down for any of them--not even my father--but this little lady, this lady was the sweetest thing on God’s green Earth.”

He took a deep breath. “I brought her her diamond earrings today. Her late husband gave them to her. Would you like to see her?”

I didn’t know what to say. I asked if he wanted me to see her. He nodded.

Inside the chapel, soft music played. His friend, whom he and his wife and known and helped for 10 years, seemed to be sleeping. Frail and in her 80s, she had had no family.

“That bird pin--I gave that to her five years ago because she used to have a bluebird that ate off of her table every day,” he said. “Toward the end she’d ask, ‘Oh, is that my bird?’ whenever one came to the window, but it’d only be a swallow. But I always said, ‘Yes, that’s him.’ ”

Basham came into the chapel. The man turned to him and took his hand.

“Thank you,” he said to him, his voice catching. “Thank you for letting me see her one last time the way I remember her.”

* THE PREMISE

Attitudes is a column about a variety of current issues and topics.