“EVERYBODY who comes through here gets the degree of respect that I would give to a member of my own family.

“You take it home with you. You could be cooking tea. You could be in the shower. Something of the day will hit back at you.

“I tend to find that something on the TV will trigger a memory. You just reflect on it. You try to reflect on it, and that you have done your best.

“You appreciate it if your daughter brings you a flower from the garden. You appreciate it if your son shouts at you and you shout back, and you appreciate it if your parents are getting older.”

On the inside of her right wrist, Samantha Cunningham wears a tattoo as small and discreet as the hearing aid she uses to counteract a lifetime of deafness in her left ear.

The image is of a single eye crying a single tear, and Samantha had it applied some years ago in honour of her profession.

Samantha, 41, is originally from Didsbury in Manchester and lives in West Swindon with daughter Camille, 22, a customer services worker, and student son McKenzie, 18. She is divorced.

Since last April, Samantha has been the Great Western Hospital’s mortuary and bereavement services manager. She and her small team tend about 1,800 or so bodies per year, and thousands more of the living and grieving who are left behind.

Her responsibilities to the dead include ensuring they are identified clearly and not mistaken for somebody else’s remains, preparing them for post mortem or the attentions of undertakers, gathering forensic samples where necessary and making bodies as presentable as possible to loved ones who might wish to see them.

Her duties to the living include comforting them, helping them through official procedures, and sometimes gently telling people they might prefer to remember their loved one as they were rather than as they are.

On more than one occasion, she or a colleague has attended the funeral of somebody who would otherwise have been unmourned.

When Samantha left school at 16 and became a care assistant, her career ambitions involved the beginning of life rather than the end.

“I wanted to be a midwife,” she said, “but I originally wanted to go into nursing. That was in Manchester. Then I married and had two children in my early twenties.”

In the mid-1990s, while waiting to start a midwifery course, Samantha was working as a medical lab assistant at Manchester Royal Infirmary when she was asked to help out in the mortuary.

Initially reluctant, she found her vocation.

Five years of training covered subjects such as anatomy, physiology, dissection (the careful removal of organs and other material), microbiology, health and safety, and law.

By last year, when she decided to relocate from the city for quality-of-life reasons, she was acting manager of her department. She is delighted with her Swindon job.

“The manager’s role is fantastic because I’m still hands-on and I’m the main technician as well. I know everybody and I like to know everybody.”

The dead who pass through the mortuary have either died at the hospital or died elsewhere in circumstances demanding investigation.

Grieving loved ones tend only to see two rooms, the Relatives’ Room and the Viewing Room. The former is small and softly lit, with comfortable sofas where people can compose their thoughts, and where Samantha consoles those who seek consolation.

A small curtained window looks on to the Viewing Room. Loved ones can spend time with the deceased in this room if they wish. Some prefer to look through the window.

The dead are brought into the Viewing Room on a simple wheeled platform.

For babies and small infants, there is a crib with a small cuddly toy frog.

Away from the public areas, there is a wall of 50 refrigeration units, five of which have a deep freeze function.

They help to delay the onset of decomposition until bodies are ready for funeral preparations. A smaller unit is set aside for the remains of babies.

No relative has ever asked to see this room, but if one did, Samantha would not hesitate to allow it.

The units have doors at each end, with one end opening on to the next-door post mortem suite.

Contrary to the impression given by certain television dramas, a post mortem is a calm and respectful process, with bodies exposed only to those who have legitimate business with them.

No two stories of grief are alike, but some are partcularly poignant. Samantha said: “Anybody who comes to identify somebody who’s a sudden death... you’re watching their whole world fall apart.

“There’s also one particular thing. It’s when we have old people who’ve been together for 50 years and been each other’s rock, and the ones left sit on the sofas here and ask, ‘What do I do now?’”