my application letter for another mortuary job I won't get

oh look she's writing about death again

I know my resume is incongruous with what you're probably looking for in an employee. I've applied for many a job like this in the past year and some change, in both Boston and New York. When I first moved to Brooklyn I walked on foot with a resume in hand to any funeral home and morgue and medical examiner's office I could find, to no avail. I understand that it's odd for a plucky 19 year old with a resume full of acting credits to want to work in the death industry, and my eagerness despite a lack of credentials or prerequisites is perhaps unnerving. The truth is being in movies and on television (which I love to do, and will hopefully do forever) has come much easier to me than this very specific secondary interest... When I was in seventh grade, before acting became a professional gig outside of school theatre and ultimately very vain fantasies of my own potential for glamour and acclaim, I discovered the art of autopsy through an Instagram account run by a pathologist’s technician who would post her most curious at-work discoveries. I was fascinated by the craftsmanship and puzzle-like qualities that a cadaver can come to represent to the person tasked with caring for and investigating them. I wasn't fazed by the gore and guts and was actually rather shocked when the peers I would gleefully show my favorite cases to would recoil or cover their eyes. To me, autopsy and the handling of the dead was a novel and generous pursuit that deserved as much praise as being a firefighter or a veterinarian or a nurse. This really became clear and obvious to me just a short while later when for the first time in my young life my intrigue around death started to come from a more personal place rather than a voyeuristic one. I had a friend in 8th grade who died of pediatric brain cancer, then a friend in 10th grade die of pediatric adrenal cancer, and a third friend die in a sudden car wreck after my freshman year of college. It felt like somehow I manifested these tragedies, that my need to know more about the embalming and the dissection and the pathology of it all brought the object of my obsession hurtling toward me in the worst way possible. But I still couldn't shake off my curiosity and my care. I watched my peers slink into themselves over and over again, afraid to face the reality of terminal illness, degeneration, mishap, and mortality. I spent this time wondering how their bodies were being treated and cared for in those sterile rooms I had spent so much time in in my imagination, on the internet, and in medical books. Were they doted on and paid attention to the way they were by loved ones in their pre-mortem days? Were they handled gingerly and respectfully? Did the people tasked with transferring and freezing and preserving care about their humanity, their interiority? Maybe out of need to exert control over situations I previously could not, and/or maybe still out of a voyeuristic need to be in the room where it happens, I decided that my passion and verve needed to be fed because it was for the right reasons. I want the families and friends of people in my care to rest assured that someone is being tender and allowing their loved ones dignity and kindness even after their soul has left Earth. However menial a duty may be, I want to be there to pay my full attention to those who would otherwise be discarded, who would otherwise become the bodies that people wince and cringe at photos of. Death is not an easy thing to swallow, I know this too well and much too young, but someone needs to be there to carry the burden with love. I know this is long-winded and probably too solipsistic to be of any interest to you, Dear Hiring Manager, but I need to be heard out by someone who gets it and right now I'm gonna use that opportunity.