Devoting his life to caring for the dead makes Gordon Lyken a Special Person

Apr 12, 2009 News

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“I grew up in the funeral home, seeing the bodies and so on. As a matter of fact, since I know myself, we always had a contract to pick up dead all over Guyana and as a young man I would just go for the ride. People are scared of the dead but they should be scared of the living.”

By Dale Andrews

Many people fall prey to myths about the dead, but if you ask Gordon Lyken about the dead he would just brush the subject off as if you were talking about another beverage or motor car on the market.
You see, Gordon Lyken was ‘born among the dead’ and today he still ‘lives among them’.
From the outside, his home is like a scene straight out of the early Dracula movies with coffins and caskets laid out as advertisements for viewing through glass windows.
But although he eats and sleeps above this scenario, for him everyday is just like a normal walk in the park.
There are no scary sounds or hollow screams, just the buzz of activity, as with any other business place.
Lyken is the Managing Director of the Newburg Funeral Parlour, popularly called the Lyken Funeral Home, one of Guyana’s oldest established funeral homes.

A mechanical engineer by training, he gave up a lucrative career in the United States to come back home and continue the work which was started by his grandfather many, many years ago – an undertaking that has left peace on the minds of those who have lost their loved ones.
The parlour, now in its 69th year, is only the third period in the history of funeral services provided by the Lyken family to the people of Guyana.
The history of the Lyken’s funeral services runs parallel with the history of technological development in Guyana over the 20th century.
The first period dates back to the 1920s when Gordon’s great grandfather, the late Joseph Eleazar Lyken, established the ‘Croal Street Livery Stables’. There were no funeral parlours in those days and the funeral businesses were all called livery stables because the service offered was of horse drawn vehicles – hearses, carriages and Landaus, and the coachmen were dressed in fine livery-top hats or beavers and frock coats and gloves – all symbols of grace and dignity for the solemn occasion. There were no soul funerals but the druids and lodges with their music and regalia attracted large crowds.
Today, Gordon Lyken could only read about those things and to maintain a business that hinged on those ‘dark days’ and still have it on the name on the lips of many Guyanese today is no easy task.
Lyken grew up at the Norton and John Streets, Newburg residence that is the home of the funeral parlour and, according to him, there was no way he could run away from it.
“I grew up in the funeral home, seeing the bodies and so on. As a matter of fact, since I know myself, we always had a contract to pick up dead all over Guyana and as a young man I would just go for the ride.”
While most youths his age at the time would have bluntly shun such activities, it was just a normal thing for Lyken to do.
In fact, to Lyken it wasn’t strange at all, since it was a part of the family business.
“People are just scared of the dead but they should be scared of the living,” he said matter-of-factly.
But no matter what, he is human and there were times when some of what he was doing as a young boy got to him.

He recalled a major fire that occurred on Hadfield Street when he was about 14 years old.
“A lot of kids got burnt up in there and when we brought the bodies in, it had a lasting effect on my imagination. There were a lot of scorched bodies and that was probably the impacting thing about the dead on my life at that time,” he reminisced.
He also remembered the Lusignan massacre where bodies with their stomachs open and blood everywhere was the sight that greeted everyone.
“Although you are used to being among bodies, still when you see a scene like that, it still affects you in a way because it is just gruesome. But if it’s a normal death, it is much easier to stomach,” he explained.
There were other similar events but there were so many that he could not immediately recall them.
“There were also times when I went to these Dracula movies and I had to come home and walk past all these coffins. I used to be a little scared.”
Lyken attended the Central High School and most of his schoolmates were not too keen to be closely associated with him.
Being the son of a funeral parlour owner, Lyken was the subject of several unfriendly remarks but this did not impact negatively on his self esteem at all.
“Schoolmates used to make you cry by telling you awful things about the dead, and you weren’t as conscious as you are now, so you used to come home in tears. They used to tell me how my “father doing this and that to the dead” and “y’all are dead people”- the things that kids would say,” Lyken remembered.
“It used to be disturbing but my father would always console me,” he added.
A few of his friends visited his home but they would always remain upstairs and they would disappear at the slightest offer to take them downstairs.
Gordon Lyken subsequently moved to the United States of America where apart from earning a Mechanical Engineering Degree and an Associate Degree in Mortuary Science from the City University of New York, he could not get the funeral parlour blood out of his veins.
He even moonlighted with several funeral parlours in the U.S., learning embalming as a part-time gig.
“The thing is, I was in America but I still supported the business in Guyana, in buying materials for the business, like embalming materials. There are a lot of stuff that you use for a funeral parlour that are bought in the states, so, although I was living in America I still supported the parlour when my brother (Joseph) was running it here,” he explained.
Although he was living in the U.S., he never lost touch with Guyana, visiting his homeland from time to time on a regular basis.
He re-immigrated to Guyana after spending 35 years in the United States of America to run the 85-year-old family owned business.
“Engineering is my first love, but my father always knew that we would come back here and continue the business.”
“I think my father conned us into coming back to Guyana, because I mean, I gave up a lot, in terms of money to come back. But this business has been around since the turn of the century and I didn’t want to let it go down. It is not only about the money because I could have made a lot of it in the U.S. but I just wanted the legacy to live on,” Lyken reflected.
It was as if he was always being groomed in some way to be a part of the funeral parlour business. He does not regret the choice he has made.
Gordon Lyken is now 52 years old and has been playing an integral role in the funeral parlour business throughout the years, up until the death of his older brother Joseph in 2001, at which time his role became more involved alongside the skilled management of his aunt Olive Lyken.
Early 2006, Gordon began to transition into the leadership position as Owner/Director of Lyken/ Newburg Funeral Home along with his sisters Ann Lyken, Emily Pestano and Audrey Goring.
He immediately started his term at the helm with his focus on his predecessor’s vision for the establishment.
He recalled that his father had once said, “our goal is to have the Lyken name remain synonymous with four things: compassion, affordability, dependability and family services. However at the same time you must remember charity begins at home, therefore you must support the community and the less fortunate.”
His experience in the United States brought home the fact that there is a huge gap between America and Guyana when it comes to the funeral parlour business.
“For example, they embalmed all the bodies, once it had to be viewed. In Guyana you only embalm a body once it has to be exported,” he shared.
He described embalming as basically cutting the body open and finding the arteries and injecting the embalming fluids into the body.
Not anybody could stomach cutting open a human body, but Gordon is not your average person.
“The good thing when you grow up with it, it’s not hard to stomach it. But it’s gruesome sometimes,” Lyken said.
Over the years the Lyken Funeral Home has dealt with a number of high profile bodies, including those of presidents, and Gordon was pleased to disclose that he had the honour of preparing the body of the late president Janet Jagan.
Incidentally, his brother Joe prepared the body of Walter Rodney and also had the distinction of dealing with President Cheddi Jagan.
This is all despite the fact that the establishment continues to be deemed the poor man’s parlour.
“People are always satisfied with the work that we do here, from time to time,” said Gordon, who oversees every single aspect of the parlour’s operations – from the workshop to handling the bodies.
Dealing with a member of his own family though could be sometimes overwhelming.
“When my father died I came back here and we all prepared the body and I did the same for my brother. With my father it was hard. It is not easy to prepare for your father. Joe’s was relatively easier,” he noted.
But like everyone else Gordon has a family and he was quick to point out that his work in no way affects this part of his life.
His wife Dawn plays an integral part in the business and considers herself a partner and just the wife.
He also has a nine-year-old daughter but whether she will follow in her father’s footsteps is still with the jury.
“Well, my sisters grew up in the business and they still play a role but I don’t know what my daughter will do,” Gordon said with a chuckle.
He pointed out though that one thing is for sure, she is not afraid of the dead.
When asked if he would like his daughter to carry on the work he laughed and said, “this is not a bad business.”
But then there are issues that sometimes make him feel like getting out of the business all together. These are issues that he said are unique to Guyana.
“Every thing you do is a hustle. There are persons, the competition, who are just playing a dirty game all the time. It wasn’t like that in the past. In the past all the funeral parlour owners were pretty much friends. If you want a coffin you just called up one. Right now the industry has really turned into a rat race. I don’t feel comfortable about that, because I’m not all about that. I think there is enough business to go around. In every business, you don’t have to fight down one another to survive,” Gordon stated.
Today ‘touting’ has become the norm and many persons earn a living from it.
He remembered a customer had come to him and made a down payment for a relatives’ funeral.
However, the man was contacted by one of the touts at the Georgetown Hospital Mortuary and for some reason took his dead somewhere else.
“I don’t know what they told him but to this day, the man has not even come back for his down payment. I would prefer if you advertise that you are the best funeral parlour but don’t go and bad talk another just for business,” Lyken said.
Gordon also wants to see some changes in the way Le Repentir Cemetery is kept.
“When we grew up here the cemetery was like a garden. If you see the cemeteries outside of Guyana, they are not in this abominable state. There is not only bush but trees growing there now,” he pointed out.
He is willing to assist in the restoration of the cemetery but the cost is a major inhibiting factor.
Lyken had also harboured plans to establish a crematorium at Le Repentir but again the economics have tentatively put paid to that dream.
“We encountered things like problems with electricity and gas because crematoriums use a lot of electricity and gas. To run that in Guyana is very costly,” he said.
This is in addition to the established culture that obtains in Guyana where persons carry out cremations traditionally on the foreshores of the Atlantic Ocean.
But when all is said and done, Lyken is committed to ensuring that his business remains one of the most respected of its kind in Guyana.
“We must provide a world class level of service for the people of Guyana at a reasonable cost, a great place to work and our employees must feel respected, rewarded and valued,” he stressed.
“A dead person is not only cold but peaceful. Some people have the fear of the dead instilled in them from the movies… the dead moving in the movies, but the dead is not something to be afraid of, it’s not gonna do any harm to you,” Lyken assured.

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