One day he is standing next to a very happy bridal couple, the next day next to a coffin. Marc van Esch (54) from Bavel is a wedding official and funeral director. Marc can deal with happiness and sadness. Yet he is not always on sale with his striking combination of professions. “It’s really not the case that at a wedding I give my other business card and say: ‘You can call me if things go wrong’.”
A funeral in the morning and a wedding in the afternoon, Marc has experienced it. “I manage to switch gears, I don’t know how.”
He has also done someone’s wedding and funeral. And within a few months too. “A woman had the last wish that I would do the same. That’s a nice compliment. It gave the family a familiar feeling. So the speech was much more personal, because I already knew them.”
“Sometimes it’s almost cozy.”
A marriage is of course much happier, but it is certainly not always sadness and misery around funerals. “It sounds very strange, but sometimes it is almost fun.”
For example, he once had to knock on the door of a family whose father had died. “Apple or cherry pie was the first question,” says Marc. “Our father had a good life, so we will celebrate that cheerfully”, that was the atmosphere. “Ten men sat there at the table.”
According to Marc, there are secretly quite a few similarities. “They are both very personal moments. You can really be there for someone, that’s what makes it so beautiful. I really build a bond with someone in a short time.”
“I already cry at sad movies.”
Yet a funeral is more difficult than a wedding. “You can still cover up a mistake in a marriage with a joke,” says Marc. “At a funeral, of course, everything has to be right. Every mistake stays with people forever,” he says.
Marc was not immediately eager to enter the funeral world. He worked as a recruiter for a healthcare institution, but there were constant cutbacks. Through an acquaintance, he once spent a day at a funeral home. “There I was in such an auditorium. This is not going to be him,” he thought. “I already cry at pathetic movies like ‘Bambi’ or at the broadcasts of ‘All You Need Is Love’.” And so he declined the honor.
“Can I hug you?”
When his job at the healthcare institution really disappeared, he gave it a try in 2014. It was surprisingly good. A year later he came across a vacancy as a wedding official. It turned out to be a small step from the world of coffee and cake to champagne and wedding cake.
In the meantime he has married quite a few couples in addition to his full-time job as chief funeral director. “Can I hug you,” someone recently asked. People are genuinely grateful, that’s what makes it both so beautiful,” he beams.
