The funeral and unethical conduct of Acropolis Funerals

“Dehumanization silences empathy at the most basic levels.” 

Jamil Zaki in 

The war for kindness: Building empathy in a fractured world (2019). London:Robinson 

At the viewing the evening before the funeral, the behaviour of those relatives on my dad’s side was disgusting. After the service, my dad’s sister, her husband (the priest) and the brother made a bolt to my dad to be the first to pay their respects, leaving us stunned. “What just happened?” we were saying out loud. 

The priest made a mental note to call Acropolis Funerals that night after seeing they were the business organising the formalities. It looks like in-breeding (a.k.a. undisclosed conflicts of interest) in such businesses and organisations because the funeral director was the brother of another insensitive priest based at the chapel at Rookwood cemetery.

Anyway, why the call? “Kon, can you arrange a car for seven people for the funeral procession tomorrow. Don’t worry about the others, I’ll speak to them.” Something to that effect was likely said. As if he would respectfully call us and seek our approval. So not only did they get their car to be in the funeral procession without our permission or knowledge, when we blasted the funeral director several months later, he said, “But we respected your family so we gave them the car for free!” That just poured salt on our open bleeding wounds. It was also done “because he was a priest.” Exactly. If the reader recalls, it was a priest who called Acropolis Funerals, when we asked him to contact a business, to just get it done on that tragic night. Priests give Acropolis a lot of business. What would have happened if this “deal” with uncle priest, made without our knowledge or consent, had been done ethically, and the request was declined (which was a certainty)? 

We paid for our car which was the only one agreed in the contract. I’ve heard horror stories regarding this industry and how unethical some have been. On the day of the funeral, we all had our eyes fixated on the hearse that carried my father. A paid business meant to direct, not decide, took advantage of our vulnerability too. Only later, when we could gather our thoughts, did we realise the betrayal of having a carload of a lifetime of abusive backstabbers follow us in the formal funeral procession. With girlfriend and others we had nothing to do with thrown in to the deal. What a bargain for them.

Later we learn that we were most likely betrayed by the funeral business before they even came to our house to organise the details. The brother of the funeral director who’s the priest over at Rookwood, most likely told his brother that we’re related to the (then) priest of the Liverpool parish and we’re not on good terms. They made sure the business was protected from any risk of legal action, in case the priest buddy demanded his own arrangements for the funeral too. 

Oh yes. They did everything we agreed as written in the contract. But it was all in a dash placed in the extra car section on the item list, as we found out much later. The dash meant that anything included in this line item was an add-on benefit that wouldn’t be charged to the family. We had no knowledge of this “dash”. Withholding information to disadvantage someone is illegal and unethical generally, but when it’s done to customers in the most vulnerable and tragic times in their lives, it’s massively inhumane and immoral. Then, fronting up on the day of the funeral, the director springs this “arrangement” on us, at the front door of our home, where they came to collect us. We look over to see the “extra” car of people who are strangers to us. We do not relate or have anything to do with these people. Let the buyer beware. And Acropolis funerals were later boasting that they were doing us a favour. We were robbed of closure. I keep being robbed of everything that’s precious to me. There’s no closure or healing. It leaves me feeling violated and unsafe to trust anyone.

When we arrived at the church, the aunt made a theatrical, melodramatic and fake display of sympathy, as she approached my brother. I think she had overdosed on too many episodes of Days of Our Lives. I can’t even imagine what she had to do to suppress her demons. Days after the funeral, we were informed by several people, who viewed the afternoon news on the 9 February 2010, of an accident on the M5, where the car was totalled but the people came out without a scratch. Those people were the priest and aunt. Did this serious incident wake them up to smell their own human mortality? No. I will never understand dark triad personalities. I don’t want to enter their minds. Not even as a formal educational research project.

As a form of emotional protection at my dad’s funeral, from all those I’m ashamed to be related to, and a church packed with people, I had some close friends surrounding me and my family at the service. The gossip and judgement was about to start. My brother, while in the aisle greeting people, overheard one lady ask another person in her pew, how could the Archbishop preside at a funeral like this? A funeral like what? A funeral of a loved husband and father who was kind, socially just and wise, who loved seeing an underdog succeed against the odds, and would give the shirt of his back to someone who needed it more than he did? And why was she there? 

One person I had stand right next to me and with my family was Damascene. He was a colleague since 2002 and a family friend. He had told me about his story of survival of genocide in Rwanda. When he first arrived in Australia, he was a refugee all alone. I told my family about him, and when I invited him over, my dad was already skewing the souvlakia for the BBQ (I miss dad’s BBQ) and we became Damascene’s first family in Australia. At the time Damascene didn’t know if his own wife, child and possibly another child (she was pregnant when she escaped) were alive or dead. I never knew the words to say during the time of unknowing.

The human stories of the massacre in Rwanda are confronting and astounds me how evil can infiltrate so easily. The Hutus were brainwashed to believe the Tutsis were cockroaches and were to be killed as such. No one and nowhere was safe. And yet in late 2016, Damascene traveled to his motherland. He forgave the man who killed his family and gave him money to start life over. He knew this man’s name and called him by his name. I asked him how was he able to do this. I’ve never met a more Christ-like man and I already knew the answer to my question: “Father, forgive them. They know not what they are doing.” It doesn’t excuse such horrendous actions, or the questions of how human hatred could escalate to such crimes, between the peoples of one country. And the trauma as well as healing, post-survival, has been huge for this community. But Damascene’s faith has been an inspiration for me. Although I miss the mark many times, I do try. 

A thought crossed my mind having Damascene stand next to me in church, but I shook my head, thinking people couldn’t possibly stoop so low. Let’s just say eight years on and we were still correcting the fabricated story. Gossip makes me sick. We didn’t owe anyone an explanation, but in the hope that people would learn how rumours can hurt many, we would reply to questions of assumption with the truth. No, the friend standing next to me and my family at my dad’s funeral, had never been my fiancé. He was a married man with a family. He was our family friend and my colleague. I felt like saying, so no, my dad didn’t take his life because his daughter was marrying a black man you gossipy, racist idiots! I knew people in this “community” all too well. The good, the bad and the ugly. Regardless, one’s personal life is no one else’s business (refer also to previous posts detailing the many examples of bullying, discrimination and harassment from the manager and a subordinate). 

The first person to fish for information was none other than the priest at the church at Rookwood. Talking to my brother only weeks later, “But enough of that, you have happy news coming up.” “What do you mean?” said my brother. “Your sister.” “My sister what?” “The engagement with that lovely man next to her.” “You mean Damascene. First of all, that man is a saint.” And my brother told him about the genocide in Rwanda, the story of our connection with him, and in disgust he then said, “So tell me, in the end, what kind of fucked up community did I grow up in and was a part of anyway?” Gossip, judgement, beliefs do hurt people. A lot. No surprise, this priest had no understanding of humility and forgiveness. He actually got defensive and said, “And how was I supposed to know?” Since he didn’t know, he should find out from the original source and not make up stories based on his own beliefs and assumptions. I lost my dad in a tragic way, and I had to put up with this shit.

To end this section, only a few days after my dad’s funeral, the priest’s sister (no relation, even more distant, but no shame to join in on the persecution), called our home to tell us off that we didn’t go to the 9-day blessing at the gravesite, that we just dumped our dad and left him there. No regard as to how we were, to ask if we were OK, or anything that displayed an inkling of humanity. I told my brother to please hang up, I couldn’t take it anymore. No one should be subjected to any of this on top of their initial loss and pain, no one. Mind you, she had no problem coming to the 40-day memorial service lunch we hosted. That lunch cost $5,000, and I suspect the priest deliberately said something to the staff (using his priestly influence because that’s what it’s there for), likely that the family don’t want a table reserved. It would be nice to have somewhere to sit considering we were paying $5,000 to offer lunch in memory of our loved one. We get there and started looking around, and there was nowhere to sit. My friend, who saw this was going to happen, saved us three seats to sit with them. Needless to say, for the one year memorial, we donated $3000 to good causes instead of holding a lunch. My dad would have preferred this anyway.

I won’t go into another suspicion we had regarding harassment and interference from “undesirable” relatives, but we had to decide on the purchase of the plots on both sides, at the cemetery, so my dad could truly rest in peace and be left alone. Talk about harassment. And then my publicly funded university employer enable HR senior executives to stalk and harass, harass, harass, not only me, but my surviving family. Who protected and supported me the one time in twenty years I had to explicitly ask for help at work?

I need what was stolen to be returned asap. There is a beautiful Greek word that has been completely dishonoured by the senior executive group of this religious and publicly funded university. Philotimo. For me, all this is connected to the honour and respect I have for my parents, and the dishonour from all those who engaged in gross negligence, harassment, fraud or chose to be “bystanders”. HR senior executives desperately tried to crush me financially as a last attempt to make me “disappear”. 

The employment lawyer may have advised that I make a workers compensation claim because it wasn’t worth my health, but it’s a self-insured employer. The employer was already engaging in illegal adverse action for requesting workplace rights generally protected under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth). The employer as a self-insurer, “manages” the claims “process”. So they withheld benefits, which is employer fraud. And the National Tertiary Education Union, in which I was a member, withheld information to disadvantage me, after we discovered the cause of my claim had intercepted my emails to my union representatives. I will go further into these prohibited actions in later posts. The union engaged in unethical conduct, sacrificing me, a member, as part of the enterprise bargaining negotiations. How much more betrayal can a person of integrity, compassion, kindness, work ethic, philotimo, take? How could I not lose trust and faith in humanity and in our Australian society? 

I don’t know how that national manager of employment relations and SAFETY succeeded in influencing everyone to remain silent and go on about a process that’s non-existent. Keeping people ignorant is a cruel and cowardly weapon. Can the VC inform the public why such horrendous conduct and non-compliance with federal and state regulations? Can the Chief Operating Officer? Can the Chancellor? 

I have so much trauma now. I need my publicly funded university employer to comply with WHS, Fair Work, Workers Compensation and other related laws, to start the healing and recovery process. It is not gross negligence. It is reckless and wilful misconduct.

Going back to my experience of my dad’s suicide, the attitude we had to endure was double trauma. Now, it’s triple, if we add the toxic psychosocial hazards I tolerated for too long, while still producing brilliant work and service for the university community. And especially the creepy psychological thriller of the last few years. Our humanity unites us. But many are just inhumane.

I wasn’t “allowed” to just grieve, be supported in my pain, and to process my grief, expressing the feelings and emotions I needed to. I felt such guilt, I suppressed my pain for seven years. I was stoic, one colleague said. No, I wasn’t. No one let me take time to process what happened, get the support I needed and actually grieve. I was made to feel I had no right to feel vulnerable, fragile, hurt, grief, anger and express it so I could get through it. That also happened in July 2017. I was suffering from so much suppressed grief and hurt, until I was pushed too far, from ignorant words, by members of this community. I finally release a lot of suppressed grief and emotions. No wonder families, left behind by a loved one’s suicide, experience disenfranchised grief. 

Video: The Greek Secret - Philotimo