A man has shared how he became a funeral director at 30 despite being told to quit – saying the unusual career “changed his life”.
After struggling to launch a career in music, Nathan Morris moved back to his hometown and decided to pursue something entirely different.
After meeting the future mother of his children in a restaurant one evening, the topic turned to funerals – with her family owning a local funeral home.
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It sparked an idea in Nathan while on pause from trying to crack the music industry – that he too could get involved in the unusual line of work.
“Honestly, I was drawn to the macabre of [funeral service], the uniqueness,” Nathan, who is based in Owensboro, Kentucky, US, told Need To Know.
“Touring was all I’d really known for years, and I wasn’t sure how my talents would translate back into ordinary life.
“I’ve never enjoyed being normal or doing what everyone else was doing, and I get bored fast.
“The idea of walking into something new every single day inside a funeral home was deeply appealing.
“The job security didn’t hurt either.”
Nathan, now a father of four, had been given a tour of his now-ex wife’s family funeral home, and he found himself “intrigued” and “in awe” of the work they did.
He applied to work there, aged 25, and had to ignore warnings from a long-standing employee about his new career.
Nathan said: “He told me to quit and explained I’d miss ballgames, holidays, and friend’s parties.
“He was trying to warn me.
“If someone tells me not to do something, especially to quit, I’ll do the polar opposite just to prove the point.
“I don’t quit what I commit to, it’s not in me.”
Nathan worked there for six years, eventually assisting in managing the location, and people “couldn’t get enough” of asking about his unusual job.
He says he became a “magnet for curiosity”, with people regularly asking questions about his job and even share their own stories.
He added: “The questions never stopped.
“‘What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever seen?’ was always the opener.”
He went on to become a licensed funeral director and purchased his first funeral home in 2016 at the age of 30, alongside a partner, Jack Wells, with whom he acquired numerous locations.
He says the career has changed his entire way of thinking and offered unexpected lessons along the way.
Nathan said: “Funeral service has a way of recalibrating everything.
“When you sit with families on the worst day of their lives, day after day, year after year, you stop thinking about yourself – you can’t afford to.
“It taught me that life isn’t about me – it’s about service and compassion, and showing up for someone else when they have nothing left to give.
“That lesson didn’t just shape me as a funeral director – it eventually shaped me as an artist.”
But the “sacred honour” didn’t come without its challenges.
Nathan added: “The emotional weight is real and relentless.
“You are absorbing grief every single day, and there is very little infrastructure in the funeral profession for processing that.
“Directors are expected to be composed, professional, and invisible in their own pain.
“Many of them struggle privately with what we’d now recognise as secondary trauma, and almost nobody talks about it.”
The role eventually took its toll on Nathan, who came to realise that he had unfulfilled dreams he still wanted to follow in the music business – which was spurred on by his exposure to grief.
He said: “Nobody wishes they’d worked more – not once, across every arrangement I ever sat in, did a family say he really should have stayed later at the office.
“What they talk about is presence and the trip they finally took, the phone call they almost didn’t make, the dinner where everyone laughed until it hurt.
“I had spent years watching people reckon with un-lived life, and I recognised myself in it.
“I had a dream I’d walked away from, four sons watching how their father handled disappointment, and a song still unwritten inside me.
“Funeral service taught me that time is the one thing you cannot get back.
“I wasn’t willing to bet on having more of it.”
In July 2023, Nathan sold his funeral homes to pursue music full-time – and says people thought he was “crazy” at the time.
He started posting on TikTok about his day job, which helped people to discover his music – and make it go viral.
While he never stopped creating music, Nathan turned to writing to help his mental health during the pandemic and one of those songs, paired with a TikTok that went viral, put him in the spotlight.
He said: “The irony of it all is something I think about constantly.
“I grieved the music career I thought I’d lost.
“I buried that version of myself and became a funeral director in a small Kentucky town, thinking that chapter was closed for good.
“And then I started talking about death and grief on the internet, from the most honest place I had, and the world listened.
“Nearly one million people across social media.
“A viral moment that opened doors two record labels couldn’t; the very thing I grieved brought me back to life.”
Since returning to music, two of Nathan’s songs, ‘Yet’ and ‘Last Time’, have reached the Billboard Charts, making him the first independent artist to chart simultaneously in three decades.
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