Beardsley-Mitchell Funeral Home

It’s in inescapable fact of life that most people-​whether they care to realize it or not-​may one day have to plan a funeral. This is just a part of life.
As weddings are joyful; funerals tend to be sad occasions. I am incredulous that I am actually Unilocaling a funeral home but I have had several friends who passed before there times and this is where they all had their services.
B-​M, as it is fondly called, sits on the corner of Sunset Cliffs Blvd., and Narragansett Avenue. It is a stately and benign-​looking building surrounded by the businesses of life-​liquor stores, pizza restaurants and dry cleaners. But let’s not kid ourselves-​these folks at B-​M are trading in death. Inside-​there is a very serene-​looking reception room and a stained-​glass draped small chapel. Memorial and Funeral services are held discreetly here and offer the grieving family an option for a service-​especially if they are not affiliated with a specific Church or religious denomination.
Beardsley-​Mitchell offers the option of public or private services. It also helps with all the minutia details involved with planning a service-​flowers, poems, songs, printing of memorial programs, coffin or urn choices, burial options, etc., It is very important to have some type of service, unless the deceased has requested otherwise. These formal events give family, friends, and co-​workers the opportunity to mourn and pay their final respects to the individual who passed. Also the offering of condolences and sympathy to the grieving family is considered to be helpful in gaining closure to those left behind.
When I was a college student, I moved into a big house across the street on Narragansett Avenue with 3 other SDSU students. It was a morbid curiosity of ours to always look out our living room window whenever the big black hearse would pull into the Mortuary driveway. We would all strain to glimpse whatever poor soul was being transferred in a coffin from the hearse into the building. It was not too long after that, one of my best friend’s at the time-​Robin– was thrown from a sports car being driven by her new husband on Sea World Drive and was tragically killed.
This is where I came to say farewell to her. I felt guilty at all the times I turned gawking at the funeral process into a juvenile game with my roommates. There is a solemn dignity that should always surround places like this and I feel I might have breached it in some small way.
I vowed after that epiphany to never make fun of funeral homes again.
As I have previously offered a Unilocal on the «Hitch & Ditch”-Glen Abbey in Bonita, I hereby consecrate this Unilocal in remembrance of all who have been remembered and memorialized at Ocean Beach’s last hurrah-​The Beardsley-​Mitchell Funeral Home. Amen.