Mortuary Confidential

The question I’m constantly asked by my friends, mostly people in their mid-twenties, is, “How can you do what you do?” followed by, “Isn’t it depressing?” They’re incredulous that I’d even consider a profession that author/undertaker Thomas Lynch has dubbed “the dismal trade.” But it’s not a depressing job; in fact, it’s an extremely rewarding one, being able to help the bereaved take those first steps in the healing process. Sure, some days are tough, especially the ones involving children and tragic deaths, but there are tough days at any job.

The first story in this section, “Lesson: Never Go to Bed Angry” is a good example of a tough day, but an important lesson. A friend of mine, who helps peer-edit my work, told me the first time she read it, it brought tears to her eyes, and she called her husband to tell him she loved him. On the surface the job may seem daunting and “depressing,” but how bad can a day be that makes you call your loved one simply to tell them you love them?

Working around death has given me a greater appreciation for life, because everyday I have to face that final stage, while most people choose to ignore it. Our lives are finite; there are graveyards filled with immortals. So live each day to its fullest, because you never know if it’s your last sunset.

This section is about planning the funeral service called, the “arrangement conference.” The funeral service (or memorial service) is about honoring a life lived, and I believe it is a necessary ceremony for each and every human being. Its an acknowledgment that, “Hey, that person was unique and special in some way.”

In addition to the exacting situations we encounter during the funeral arrangements conference, we encounter people who are in the grips of strong emotions. Ken and I had one funeral director submit to us the story of a customer who nearly killed him during the conference. After you read it you’ll understand why I emailed this gentleman back and asked him if he receives combat pay.

In this section we also cover a couple of the more outlandish questions/requests that have come up during the arrangement conference. Not too long ago I was giving a presentation in my cousin’s sixth grade class on ancient burial customs. After I had given my spiel and opened up the floor for questions a little boy raised his hand and asked me, “Do you bury people naked?” Caught off guard, I stammered a bit, and my mind raced to the story in this section—I was actually doing final edits on it at the time. I answered truthfully. “I’ve never seen it,” I told him, “but as a matter of fact, I have heard of it being done!”

Heartrending workdays, killer customers, nude burials, yeah, it’s all in a day’s work.

CHAPTER 20 Lesson: Never Go to Bed Angry Contributed by an urban spelunker

A woman came to the funeral home one day with the most heartbreaking story I have ever heard. Being a newly married man, I could empathize with what had transpired earlier in the week in Maddison’s life because we were both newlyweds. Do you recall that old adage, “Never go to bed angry?” Maddison’s story put a new spin on that axiom.

I’m thirty years old and have been working in this profession since my early teens. I started out washing cars and cutting the lawn for a little extra cash in high school, and the career kind of grew on me. In my spare time I spelunk; it is also known as vadding, building hacking, or draining. I’ve spelunked all over America and in Europe and South America, too. People ask me what an urban spelunker is. I tell them I explore abandoned factories, hospitals, rail stations, missile silos, and housing. I love seeing what was. The past. History.

I’ve been married eight months. The only real thing my wife and I have ever fought about is vadding. Granted, it’s an extremely dangerous sport, but I love it. I have, however, since made some concessions in my spelunking because of Maddison. No marriage is perfect. You’re going to fight, and if it’s not about money then it’ll be about something. In the past 244 days, or eight months, my wife and I have gone to bed a handful of times angry at each other, but after I met Maddison, I’ll never go to bed angry ever again.

Maddison came to the funeral home on a Friday, numb with shock. Her husband had died suddenly.

Maddison’s mother came in with her, and once I got them seated at the conference table, I poured them each a glass of water and pushed a box of tissues closer to them. Maddison ripped out three or four and dabbed at her red-rimmed eyes. Her mother looked a little worse for the wear; I imagined they had a rough night.

I introduced myself. “My name is Damian. I’m sorry about your husband, but he’s in good hands. I’ll take excellent care of him.”

Maddison sniffed. She tried to force a smile but failed. I understood.

I wanted to get her and her mother loosened up a little to start them talking. It helps start the grieving process, and makes them feel safer with me. “So, how long were you married to,” I consulted my notes, “Payton?”

Maddison blew her nose and took a tiny sip of water. “Pay and I have been married three years. We went to college together. We didn’t date there. We actually never even met in college. Pay had to drop out his last year when his father died. He had to take over running the garage. It wasn’t until after, when I moved back to the area, we kind of—discovered each other. Three years later he proposed.”

Her mother squeezed her hand in encouragement.

“What garage?” I asked.

“European Specialists, over on Second Street.”

“No kidding? My wife has an old, run-out Bimmer she takes there,” I said.

Silence. Maddison half-smiled at me. I could tell the memory of the garage hurt.

I changed subjects. “Where do you work?”

“The bank. Sun Trust. I’m a loan officer… have you heard anything—” She choked off the end of her sentence. I knew what she was trying to say.

“I talked to the ME’s office before you arrived. The investigator told me off the record they suspect he died of a brain aneurysm. That kind of problem is usually very sudden. There is sometimes no warning.”

Maddison burst into tears. Her mother held her, and I sat in silence studying my notes. After a minute or two she stopped. “Tuesday night we fought. We rarely fight, but when we do it’s always about money. Money!” she spat and paused. I nodded for her to continue. “Pay was thinking about expanding the garage. Big project, but I wanted to start a family. We have no children, just a boxer. I told him we couldn’t afford the expansion if we were going to have kids now. I was planning on staying home with the kids. Anyhow, we fought for a long time and Pay went to sleep in the spare bedroom.”

She gulped down half of the water in her glass and looked at me steadily. “I let him go. Sometimes it’s best that way. The next morning—that would be Wednesday morning—I slipped a note under the door saying if he wasn’t mad at me anymore then that night we’d go to our favorite spot for dinner. It’s this romantic Italian bistro in the city we can walk to from our townhouse. We like to go there on special occasions; it’s so quaint and perfect. Pay proposed to me there.”

I could tell she enjoyed that memory.

“I had a meeting that night and knew I would be real late getting home. The note also said—” She glanced at her mother and blushed. “It also said if we went to the restaurant then I’d give him his favorite dessert.”

I figured the dessert wasn’t food. Maddison’s mom seemed oblivious to the connotation.

“That was our kind of way of mending fences.”

I nodded.

Maddison continued, “That night on my way home I was thinking Pay would be waiting for me as I walked through the door—all showered up, smelling of his cologne, and maybe he’d even have a bottle of red open so we could have a glass before we went out. He’s sweet like that. We never stay mad at each other for very long. When I got home the house was completely dark, the spare bedroom door was still shut and our dog was sitting in front of the door like he was guarding it. I thought, Fine, if he wants to be an asshole and let this continue, then I can too. I took the dog out, fixed myself a Lean Cuisine, and went to bed without ever bothering to knock on Pay’s door.”

Maddison paused and squeezed her mother’s hand. “So anyway, I get up for work—this is Thursday, yesterday—and the spare bedroom door is still shut. Pay usually got up and went to the garage pretty early, but I thought that maybe he wanted to avoid me, so I took the dog out, got ready for work, and left.”

She drank the rest of her water, started to hyperventilate, but quickly got herself under control to finish her story. “When I got home and the door was shut, I started to get worried. It wasn’t like him to not talk to me for two whole days! I went and knocked on the door. No answer. I decided to go in and I opened the door—” She broke down sobbing. Her mother put her arm around Maddison’s shoulders and massaged them. Maddison continued, “There he was—”

I sat there stunned while Maddison wept. I had heard a lot of tales come across this table, but this one was probably one of the more heart-wrenching. The guy was my age! I shuffled my papers and avoided eye contact, giving her a minute, but she wasn’t finished.

“But—but next to him on the bed was the phone book… open to the restaurant section in the yellow pages!”

My head swam.

I guided them through the funeral arrangements. It would be awhile before the initial numbness wore off, maybe even until after the funeral. I told them what they needed to do, where they needed to be, and wrote down everything for them. They were going through the motions, just trying to get through each minute to greet the next and see if it brought less pain. The office air hung heavy with unrealized dreams, guilt, and the bitterest remorse I have ever witnessed.

When Maddison and her mom left, I called my wife. When she answered I told her without preamble, “I love you.”

“What was that for?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you all about it when I get home,” I promised.

Maddison’s story really put my marriage in a new perspective. I still do some easy building hacks from time to time because I love it, but I’d like to think I have my priorities in line now. And I tell my wife every night before I fall asleep, no matter how angry I am with her, that I love her because you never know when that time will be the last.

And there will be a last.

CHAPTER 21 Buried in the Nude Contributed by a church choir member

When it comes to clothing, I’ve run the gamut as an undertaker. I’ve buried people in everything from military service uniforms to tee shirts and cut-off jean shorts. And I’ve buried people nude, or, at least partially nude. From a sociological point of view, I find it interesting to see what a family chooses to bury a loved one in, or what they choose not to bury them in.

I’m a funeral director in South Carolina. In my neck of the woods, as in the other 85 percent of the country, we mainly sell half-couch caskets. The term “half-couch” means that only half of the casket is open, hence only half of the interior “couch” is visible. The half-couch lid is split and the lower portion of the lid covers the decedent from the waist down. I think that’s why I bury so many people—predominately men—partially nude. You know that old adage, “out of sight, out of mind”? The families’ logic seems to be, if you can’t see it, why bother? Most of my families come in to make arrangements with just a shirt, tie, and jacket for their loved ones to wear. No pants. No shoes. No socks. No underwear.

If that’s what the family wants, that’s fine with me, but I strongly believe in giving people some dignity. So, if the family doesn’t bring in underwear, I’ll ask permission to supply a pair. Most people agree to my suggestion. That wasn’t the case with Mrs. Peterson.

Mrs. Peterson made a grand entrance into the conference room, a half-hour late, red-faced, and breathless. She hefted her considerable bulk into the chair, after pumping my hand vigorously while apologizing repeatedly for being late.

I assured her that her tardiness was not an issue and offered my condolences for her husband’s death.

“He didn’t take real good care of his-self,” she said nonchalantly, drawing a cigarette out of a battered pack with her lips.

I looked at my worksheet. Mr. Peterson was 64. Relatively young. “At least you had many good years of marriage—”

She cupped her hands, fired her lighter, and waved dismissively at me. “Ain’t no need for that, Hun,” she said, interrupting. “He is dead. I knew it was coming; I ain’t out of sorts.”

“Okay,” I replied. “Let’s get started.”

Mrs. Peterson was obviously a salt-of-the-earth type person. I liked her matter-of-fact attitude, although she had the tendency to be a bit abrasive. I could tell she drank too much, smoked too much, ate too much, didn’t get offended by anything (especially bad language because she used an awful lot of it), and really didn’t care what people thought of her.

During the course of the conference I gathered the biographical information on Mr. Peterson so I could file the death certificate; we picked out service folders, arranged for a minister, and Mrs. Peterson picked out a nice russet colored twenty-gauge steel casket half-couch. Then she unloaded a canvas bag she had brought in with her. Lynyrd Skynyrd CDs to be played at the visitation; a pack of Marlboro red cigarettes, a can of Budweiser, and a bottle of gin to go in with Mr. Peterson, along with his favorite John Deere hat and his fuzzy slippers.

Next, she pulled out a wrinkled dress shirt and a thin tie. “Mandy, lay him out in this,” she told me, handing the hanger across the desk. “He never did wear a tie much, but I think he should look proper.”

I took the clothes and hung them on the doorknob. They obviously hadn’t seen an iron in ages. It wasn’t at all uncommon for me to get no pants, so I casually asked, “Would you like me to put a pair of boxer shorts on your husband, ma’am?”

“What the hell for?” she asked.

She followed with a coughing bout that nearly dislodged a lung.

“Just to provide him with a dignified burial. So he doesn’t have to meet his maker without drawers. I’d be happy to do it.”

She coughed again, and this time I know a piece of lung came up. “Hell no! Jim preferred to be nude. He sat around without his pants on most of the time anyway. Nude. All the time, just wore an undershirt and those slippers.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Okay.”

“Now young lady,” Mrs. Peterson said and wagged her finger at me, “I’m going to be checkin’ to make sure my Jim ain’t got drawers on. I swear that man never wore his pants, ’cept when he had to leave the house. He lived that way so he’s going to be buried that way.” She started laughing and coughing at the same time. I wasn’t sure which one precipitated the other. When she got herself under control she said, “In fact, Jim often said—” She lost herself in another coughing/laughing fit. “Jim often said he wanted to be buried like that outlaw, you know, the one that said, ‘I want to be buried face down so the whole world can kiss my ass.’” She looked at the ceiling as though revisiting a fond memory. “Yeah, he liked that, but I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to bury him the way he lived.”

“I understand,” I said. “My boyfriend is the same way.”

“See,” Mrs. Peterson said. “Men.” She cackled. “They’re all the same.”

I laughed too. “I guess they are.”

That was that. Mrs. Peterson and I bade our goodbyes.

I pressed Mr. Peterson’s shirt and dressed him in it, as well as the tie and slippers and John Deere hat, nothing else.

Three days later I watched Mr. Peterson being lowered into the ground, clad only from the waist up. Mrs. Peterson wept something terrible.

Later that night when I told my boyfriend about Mrs. Peterson’s last wish for her husband, he scratched his chin and said, “She might be on to something there, but I’d one-up him. Forget the shirt and tie, I want to be totally buck naked.”

CHAPTER 22 Walk the Walk Contributed by a dog lover

A few months ago I learned in the true sense the meaning of undertaker. The word for the profession historically describes the fact that the town cabinetmaker would undertake the responsibilities of caring for the dead. The profession grew from those humble origins and the name stuck. I’m not sure why—other professions undertook tasks—but it did. I didn’t truly appreciate the value of an undertaking because today we now have the nice sanitary title of funeral director. But a few months ago I undertook for the first time.

It happened when I made funeral arrangements with an English woman named Abby. I’d judge Abby to be in her late forties, young to be a widow. Her husband, Greg, had worked for one of the big financial houses. They had met and fallen in love in London while he was working overseas, and when Greg had been transferred back to America she had followed. They married shortly thereafter. This was, according to Abby, “Over twenty years ago.” Long enough that America was her home now—she was a citizen—but not long enough for her to become completely assimilated into American culture.

Abby looked very English: round, pleasant face framed by a thick mane of straight brown hair she kept cropped neatly at shoulder length. She was thin, yet looked soft, and I imagine she kept her weight down by her “fag habit,” as she called it. We Americans would call it a smoking addiction. Abby chain-smoked the entire time she was in my office.

Abby had a very continental attitude about Greg’s death, and by that I mean she was very matter-of-fact. She told me between puffs on her Woodbine cigarettes that Greg’s death hadn’t been sudden. He had been chronically ill for some time. I could tell that she had come to grips with losing him a long time ago; what we were doing in my office was merely a formality. I have to admit, Abby had quite a stiff upper lip, and she sure hadn’t lost her Cockney accent in the twenty years she had been in America. I spent most of our meeting trying to figure out what she was saying.

“Now Dere’, I’ll be expec’ing bof ’e ’earse and limo to pi’ us up a’ ’e ’ouse.”

In my mind I had to translate what she said. It took a moment for me to sort out the jumbled syllables and insert the missing consonants before I got: “Now Derek, I’ll be expecting both the hearse and limo to pick us up at the house.”

“You want the hearse and limousine to pick you up at your house?” I asked carefully, so as not to offend her, yet puzzled by her request.

“Of course. It’s normal in Britain to have the hearse and limousine pick up the immediate family at the house. My mum and dad are flying across the pond for the occasion. They were quite fond of Greg, you know.”

I paused to translate and think before I replied. “I think I’ll be able to make that happen for you.”

“Splendid!” she said and clapped her hands together softly. “We’ll also be needing a walker.”

I thought she was talking about one of those gray aluminum assistance devices. “We don’t have any walkers but we do have a wheelchair at the funeral home that I could bring along. Is it for one of your parents?” I spread my hands and looked at her. She lit a new cigarette with the tip of its predecessor and crushed the old one out. “Would the wheelchair be all right?”

“Oh my, Derek, you’re so silly!” She waved her fresh cigarette in the air with one hand and reached across the desk and squeezed my hand with her other. “No, my parents don’t need a wheelchair; they’re perfectly capable of walking on their own. You know, a walker to lead the cortege. Walker walks in front of the hearse and all.”

I processed what she was saying before answering. “I’m sorry, Abby, it’s just your accent. I’m having a little trouble understanding you.”

She laughed, and stuck her cigarette between her lips so she could take both of my hands in hers. I noticed she was very comfortable invading my personal space. “Greg used to tell people all the time that my finest and most frustrating feature was my accent. And then he’d say”—she put a husky timbre in her voice, which made it even harder for me to understand—“‘Abby, why can’t you learn to talk American?’ God, I’m going to miss him saying that.” She cackled and let go of my hands. “And some other things I won’t repeat to you.”

I blushed

“I’m from Cheapside, you know, and I’ve found most of you Americans have trouble understanding the accent, but I can’t understand the Americans from the southern states. Talk about talking through molasses! I can’t understand them to save my life.” She stabbed her cigarette in the air to accentuate her point.

“I can understand you pretty well, Abby. I’m just not sure what you mean by a walker.”

“Oh, I guess you don’t have them here in America then. Come to think of it,” she grabbed her chin, “I’ve never actually seen one here in the States. A walker is the chap that walks in front of the hearse and leads the family members out of the drive of the residence toward the cemetery.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You want me to walk in front of the hearse out of your driveway while you walk behind the hearse with your family?”

“Yes, and a couple of friends will accompany us too, I’m sure.”

I had never heard of such a thing, but I acquiesced. “Okay Abby, I’ll lead the hearse. I’ll be your walker.”

“Beautiful. Everything’s set then?”

“I believe so. See you on Tuesday.”

I went to shake hands. Abby wanted a hug.

What have I gotten myself into? I thought after she left. I had never heard of anything as ridiculous as picking the family up at the house with the hearse, much less walking in front of the hearse through a neighborhood, and I couldn’t very well ask someone else to do my dirty work. The walker would have to be me.

Four days later I found myself walking in front of our black Cadillac hearse, leading it out of Abby’s driveway and in the general direction of the cemetery. Abby, dressed head to toe in black, accompanied by her tiny British parents, and a couple of friends and neighbors trailed behind. It made for quite a somber procession. Halfway out of her neighborhood, I didn’t feel so ridiculous anymore and began to think that maybe the Brits were onto something. The custom had a certain restrained dignity to it. When my little procession reached the edge of Abby’s development, I hopped into the hearse and they piled into the limousine for the rest of the journey to the cemetery.

I learned something from Abby, and I learned it literally. Undertaking is more than just talking the talk.

CHAPTER 23 Death Knell of Jefferson and Adams

Contributed by a collegiate baseball player

The second and third presidents of our fine country—authors of American democracy, visionaries, patriots, businessmen, politicians, and most of all, citizens—separated each other in death by mere hours. Thomas Jefferson died first, at his home Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia, and then John Adams a few hours later, at his home hundreds of miles away in Quincy, Massachusetts, muttering the false words, “Thomas Jefferson survives.” These two men, though fierce political rivals, were connected with each other and the utopian republic they had created on such a deep level that not only did they pass away within hours of each other, but they died on July 4, 1826—the fiftieth anniversary of our nation’s split from British tyranny.

Some people think the story of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams amazing, ironic, or even fanciful, but after working as a mortician for the better part of my adult life, I have found that death works in mysterious ways. People are connected on many different levels that can defy social, economic, and political backgrounds. And after dealing with the Peal family, I found that these connections can transcend time, distance, and even space, but most of all, logic and reason.

I received a call from a convalescent home at about one o’clock in the morning notifying me Ida Peal had died. I loaded up my SUV and went and got her. On the way back to the funeral home I stopped at a café and got a cup of coffee to go, drank it, and then set to work embalming. I had barely begun when the phone in the morgue rang. It was my answering service, relaying a message from the convalescent home I had just come from. I was to call them back immediately.

What could be so pressing? Perhaps I had left my pager or glasses there, but I was puzzled as to why they wouldn’t wait until a more sane time of day to call and let me know. I called them back anyway. The nurse on duty informed me that Evan Peal had died. Evan was Ida’s husband.

I retraced my steps to the convalescent home and picked Evan up. I laid him out on another embalming table beside his wife and used a Y valve to split the hose coming from the embalming machine into two hoses. I injected the embalming fluid into them at the same time.

Later that day I met with Evan and Ida’s grandniece. Her name was Omen. She explained to me that her now-dead mother had been a flower child of the ‘60’s, hence the unusual name. I took down the biographical information Omen provided. The details chilled me.

Ida and Evan had been married sixty-seven years. They had married in ‘37, both at the age of 21 on June 21st. I blinked twice and checked my calendar. Today was the 21st of June. I called my secretary to confirm Ida’s date of death because she had died right around midnight. Sure enough, she had died at 12:06 in the morning. I asked Omen for their birthdays. Their birth dates were both the same, but one month apart—Ida being the elder Taurus of the pair.

When Omen left I was mulling over the husband and wife who had been married for sixty-seven years and separated each other in death by only about three hours. In my tenure as an undertaker I have seen a lot of strange things, but this really took the grand prize. Frankly, it kind of bothered me. My visit to Monticello when I was a boy popped into my head. I vaguely remembered that Thomas Jefferson had died on the same day as someone else. I hopped on the Internet and found that other person had been John Adams and that they had died on the fiftieth anniversary of our nation’s independence. It made me feel a little better to realize that other people had that deep connection, too.

I read on, wanting to learn more, and eventually stopped at the epitaph on Thomas Jefferson’s tombstone. His year of birth was followed by the letters “O.S.”

O.S.?

It only took me a minute more to find out that the letters stood for “old style.” His birth had been recorded under the old British-used Julian calendar before the Gregorian calendar became widely used in 1752, and thus, we Americans used the Julian calendar until the British stopped. I was curious about the difference between the calendars and dug a little deeper. Apparently, the conversion rate from Julian to Gregorian is the addition of eleven days for when Thomas Jefferson was born; we would know him to be born on April 13, 1743. For the years 1900-2100, the conversion is the addition of thirteen days. I did the math figuring my, my wife’s, and my daughter’s birthdays by the Julian calendar. I figured a couple more dates and then added thirteen days to the Peals’ marriage/death date. I was floored. If their death date had been Julian and was being converted to Gregorian by the addition of thirteen days, they would have died on the 4th of July, the same day as Jefferson and Adams.

I told Omen about my findings three days later at the dual wake and she replied, “I’m not surprised. My mother, God bless her soul, was a transcendental. She smoked a little too much reefer, and dropped a bit too much acid, but she always told me things in this universe are all interconnected. I mean, look, I’m 37 years old now, and 1937 was the year my great-aunt and uncle were married. My mother told me my Aunt Ida’s name was Sanskrit in origin and Ida means “insight.” That is why she named me Omen. Apparently she had a premonition.” She laughed.

I chuckled too, but uneasily.

As I watched the Peals’ caskets being lowered on top of each other, I wanted to think it all coincidence, but the words of John Adams I had found on the Internet echoed in the back of my mind: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

The evidence to me is that death is not random. Death is the product of an underlying energy that transcends countries, ethnicities, men and women, and even the human race. For whom will death’s knell toll next?

CHAPTER 24 The Killer Customer Contributed by a scratch golfer

People love to tell me, “It must be nice. Your clients never complain.” Then they smile, wink, and nod at me, proud of their little joke. I don’t argue with them, but there couldn’t be a statement farther from the truth. The business is all customer relations and rapport. True, the dead don’t complain, but their families sure can.

I deal with people at their most vulnerable and emotionally volatile. People deal with grief in many different ways. Some deal with it with grace and others… don’t. The one thing I’ve learned in a trial-by-fire way is that an undertaker has to know how to handle difficult people. Most of them are just pushy and rude, but what about a customer who goes beyond? I had one who I honestly thought was going to kill me.

When the man showed up at my office, I knew immediately things weren’t going to go smoothly. He arrived nearly an hour late, reeking of booze, and didn’t bother taking his sunglasses off as he stalked into the office, sitting down opposite me at the conference table, leaving me standing, hand extended. I slowly withdrew my hand and sat down. I gave a slow nod at the man, who sat in his chair and stared at me behind his shades with an arrogant expression. I took note of the black leather vest with a riding club logo emblazoned on it.

I introduced myself and he gave me a one-word answer for his name. I doubt it was his real name unless his mother named him after something in the reptile family. “Okay,” I replied, and made a note.

We sat in silence and stared at each other before he decided to break the silence with a well-rehearsed, poetic verse. “This is some fucked up shit, man,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows and took the bait. “What is?”

“My old lady dyin’ is what.”

He reclined back in his chair, and folded his massive tattoo-covered arms.

“Well, Snake,” I checked my worksheet, “your mother was 83. Looks like she had a nice full life.”

He ignored me. “You know I just couldn’t go see her in that place,” he said, referring to the nursing home she was in. “Place stank like piss and all those old people, near death, just sitting around in their chairs waitin’ to die. I couldn’t see Ma there. Haven’t seen her in six or seven years.”

He was letting me see where his hostility and resentment were bubbling up from. Clearly, he was overcome with feelings of guilt and remorse. Believe it or not, that’s common in most people. They ask themselves, “Could I have visited the person or called them more?” With this particular gentleman, acute guilt coupled with the fact that he was a bear of a person and had an aggressive personality.

I had to play it cool.

I got him talking, calmed his feelings, and made some progress in the arrangements. We were about halfway through when Snake became agitated.

He stood up so suddenly that his chair crashed over. “I want to see Ma now!” he yelled, poking a meaty finger into the burled walnut conference table. I stared at the sunglasses covering his eyes, trying to appear cool though my heart was racing. The room was silent except for the chain at his waist clinking against the table.

“Your mother is in the preparation room. You can’t see her right now,” I said. “Maybe later.”

I moved my writing hand under the table so Snake couldn’t see it was shaking.

He leaned all the way across the table and put his finger right in my face. I could see the veins bulging out of his forearms. “Maybe you didn’t hear me correctly, Junior.”

Junior? Oh shit, I’m going to die!

His whiskey-scented breath washed over my face. “I haven’t seen Ma in eight years. I’m seeing her now!” He made a fist and pounded it on the table to accentuate his point. The table shook.

I only weigh a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet and have the physique of an infant, but I remained seated and spoke to Snake in the most authoritative tone I could muster. “Snake,” I said firmly, “you need to sit down right now. I told you, your mother is being prepared and you can’t see her until later. And if you continue to act this way this conference is over.” I closed my notebook, clicked my pen, and stared at him with a questioning look on my face. “What will it be?”

Snake’s finger was back in my face and it inched closer. Each finger was about the size of a hotdog and his nails were bitten to the quick. I thought for sure my windpipe was about to get crushed by his toilet-seat-size hands, but I continued to stare at him. My heart was in my throat and I couldn’t swallow. I eased my hand to the right where the telephone was sitting. I figured I could at least dial the “9” and one of the “1’s” before he ripped my head from my body. The meaty finger retreated and he quietly picked his seat up and lowered himself into it.

“Shall we continue?” I asked as if I were asking what the weather was like.

He nodded and hung his head.

I opened my notebook and clicked my pen. “So, where did we leave off?”

Five minutes later his shades were off. Ten minutes after that, he cracked a joke. On his way out he shook my hand and apologized for “being such a jerk,” and re-introduced himself as Dean. He offered his hand and I shook it.

Sometimes I need to pat an old lady’s hand and cry with her, and other times I need to stare down a 275-pound biker. The job is unpredictable like that, but the fact remains that I need to know how to handle difficult situations and difficult people. And, believe me, there is no shortage of difficult people.

CHAPTER 25 The Comedian Contributed by an open-mic night comedian

I have been a comedian my entire life. Funeral directing was my backup plan, still is, but until my comedy act can start paying the bills, I have to go out on night calls. It’s one thing to be up in the middle of the night hauling one of the dearly departed from bed, and an entirely different thing to be up at that same time of night in a smoky dive, clutching a whiskey-smelling microphone in front of a tough crowd. The latter gets my juices flowing a lot more than the former.

Death isn’t a laughing matter. But laughter does help the healing process. That’s my philosophy.

An older woman who showed up at my mortuary awhile back is still firmly planted in my memory—partly because she appeared in my life the same day I scored my first paying comedy gig (a hundred smackeroos) and mostly because she is not the type that one forgets. The woman had the innate toughness of someone who has lived a long time in a short number of years—you could see it in her face. Nary a tear was shed as she looked me straight in the eye and shook my hand firmly. She had come to see me because her only daughter was dead.

I ushered Mrs. Smith into my office. She walked with the slightest of limps, hardly using the cane she carried. Her gray hair was wound into a tight bun and perched upon the top of her head like a bird’s nest in danger of falling off. She hefted her plump rear end into one of the chairs facing my desk, folded her hands on the top of my faux-mahogany desk, and began to talk.

Mrs. Smith’s daughter was only 40 years old. She had died due to complications of diabetes. She was the only child, and Mrs. Smith’s husband had died a number of years ago. That much she told me. She didn’t fill me in on the when, where, or how. She had relatives in Florida, where she was going to be moving as soon as she buried her daughter.

It had been a long, hard, trying road and she was glad it was over. Apparently, toward the end things had gotten pretty bad. “I used to look like Jane Fonda before my daughter got sick,” Mrs. Smith said. “Now look at me!” She laughed sharply and sat back in her chair, pleased with her joke. I had yet to speak, but knew we were going to get along fine.

“Mrs. Smith, can I get you a refreshment? Coffee, tea, mineral water, soda… Manhattan?”

“Finally! A man after my own heart! Knob Creek, three cubes, no peel,” she rasped.

“Would you like that shaken or stirred, Mrs. Bond?”

She cackled. “I don’t care as long as it has lots of booze in it!”

“The only kind I know how to make.”

Her stony façade cracked and the floodgates opened. Mrs. Smith started regaling me with stories about her youth, when she and her husband had been an acrobatics team for the circus. “How I got this damned limp!” she exclaimed, pointing into the air and then tapping her bum leg. Then she proceeded to tell me the story of the nasty fall that had ended her career and nearly killed her husband. It was a long drawn-out saga that ended with, “I wanted to stay with the circus and the only thing I could do was become the bearded lady. That’s when my husband developed an affection for the sauce.” She leaned over the desk, pointing her cigarette at me, and whispered conspiratorially, “Me too! But it hasn’t killed me, only pickled me.”

The tales went on and on. Tales about her daughter, family trips, and her career teaching gymnastics with a bum leg at her studio. I laughed along with her, all the while performing my job of taking notes and gathering information for the funeral service.

Mrs. Smith seemed to delight in throwing out cheesy one-liners about the death profession. such as “You’re the last person to let someone down!” and “I bet people are just dying to get in here!” Then she would give her sharp, biting laugh that ended in a coughing fit from a lifetime of chain smoking, a habit she continued while in my office. My ashtray overflowed with lipstick-printed slim cigarettes.

While we were making arrangements, she kept saying “There’s something I want to tell you that I can’t remember.” Then she would get sidetracked on her life’s story. By the end of all her stories I had managed to get all the funeral details hammered out.

Once again she said to me, “There’s something I want to tell you that I can’t remember.”

“That’s all right,” I told her. “I’ll go over the price agreement with you and if you remember later, you can call me.”

I discussed all the itemized charges on the price agreement and had gotten to the total when she burst out, “I know what I wanted to tell you!”

I raised my eyebrows.

She leaned over the desk and whispered clandestinely to me as if there were other people who might overhear, “She doesn’t have any legs.”

Without missing a beat I stared back at her and whispered, “Same price.”

She sat back and laughed so hard tears came to her eyes. She started coughing and slapping her leg and I couldn’t tell where the coughing began and the laughter ended. I waited patiently with a big stupid grin on my face.

After Mrs. Smith composed herself and I was walking her out of the funeral home, she shook my hand and said soberly, “Thank you, Mr. Joke. You have made this so easy. I was really dreading coming in and doing this even though my daughter—” her voice cracked, “is in a much better place. I haven’t laughed this hard in ages. I really needed it. To be frank with you, I’m dreading moving to Florida. My cousins are all a bunch of stuffed shirts.”

“Mrs. Smith, if you ever want to laugh just call me and it would be my pleasure.” And I meant it. “As for your family in Florida, maybe they need a little humor in their lives. Something you can certainly offer them.”

CHAPTER 26 Hearse of a Different Make Contributed by a Eucharistic minister

Transporting the dead is a big part of my job. In our fragmented society, it’s not at all uncommon for someone to die hundreds of miles from the family plot. How do we get them to where they need to go? In the old days, the railroads were used. But today, if human remains need to be transported, it’s done via hearse if the distance isn’t too great, or more frequently, via airliner. Believe it or not, the last time you boarded a flight to Las Vegas to do some gambling, or California for a romantic weekend in Napa, or Florida to soak up the sunshine, you were more than likely traveling with a dead passenger in the cargo hold. It’s standard fare, although there are less conventional methods.

I once served a family who wanted to take “Dad” back to his final resting place themselves. And by that I mean in the back of a battered Dodge pickup truck. I really don’t think it was a matter of money, but rather a promise made. What could I do? I honored their request. These folks backed their pickup into the garage. We hefted the twenty-gauge steel casket into the bed, covered it with a quilt, and strapped it into place. I gave them the burial/transport permit and stood in the parking lot waving good-bye as they headed for a family plot in the Black Hills of North Dakota.

It’s not illegal to do something like that, though most people are uncomfortable transporting a dead loved one propped in the back seat or lying in the bed of a truck. It conjures up images of National Lampoon’s Vacation in my mind, and I’m sure in the minds of most other people. The typical family would prefer to let the funeral home take care of the livery services. But when I loaded “Dad” into that pickup truck and waved good-bye, I didn’t think in a million years a similar saga would unfold in reverse.

Several years later a family walked through my front door and told me their mother was dead. I offered them my sincerest condolences and ushered the two sons and daughter of the dead woman into my office. I served them coffee and fresh muffins and we sat and talked about the funeral service. I collected as much biographical information about the dead woman as they could remember—information I needed to complete the death certificate and file it with the state. Then I got around to the biggie: where is “Mom”?

The son offhandedly told me, “Around back.”

I was caught off guard and replied, “Huh?” With a dim-witted look.

The son took the last bite of his third muffin and reiterated, “Around back.” Then he added, “In the pickup.”

I guess I gave them a horrified look because the daughter quickly chimed in, “We brought her here in the truck. Thought we’d save you a trip.”

“Save me a trip?” I know I was repeating her, but it was all I could think of to say.

“Well, sure,” the son said, grabbing a fourth muffin. “She died. I picked her up an’ laid her in the back of my pickup an’ came on over here.”

I hopped up and practically ran outside, the three clients tailing behind me. The pickup was in one of our many parking spaces just like any other car visiting the establishment. I peered inside the truck bed and sure enough, a figure lay there swaddled in white sheets.

Hello, Mom.

CHAPTER 27 Shot-Putted Urn Contributed by a muscle car restorer

My merchandise display room was a very staid and elegant chamber until one woman decided to perform an Olympic event there.

I’ve worked very hard changing and tweaking things over the years to ensure that the display room isn’t too intimidating to my customers, yet conveys the message that their loved ones are going to get the finest products. I’ve found there’s no good way to display visual reminders of their loved ones’ deaths, but the impact of coming face to face with caskets, urns, and burial vaults can be minimized, and I’ve tried to present my merchandise in the least threatening way possible.

My display room is an L-shaped area with the urns, models of the burial vaults, and memorial jewelry visible as you first enter, and the casket display once you turn the corner. A bubbling fountain flanked by plush couches and potted plants softens the room, and, of course, I have classical music piped in.

The day I met the shot-putter, I had an appointment with a woman and her brother. Their father had died and his wish was to be cremated and then have a memorial mass at one of the local Catholic churches—after which, half of him was to be buried in the diocesan cemetery and the other half scattered in the ocean. Their father had been in the Navy during the Second World War, and he wanted to be with his wife (who already was in the cemetery) as well as his mistress, the sea. Fine, that’s the beauty of cremation; many wishes can be fulfilled regarding the remains, while with a traditional burial, the person can only be interred in one place.

In talking to the mourners in my office, I learned their father had been something of a Renaissance man. Not only had he been a rough-and-tumble sailor, but he had enjoyed building ship models, taught himself to play the piano, and in his later years, took gourmet cooking classes at the local community college. Before we went into the selection room, his daughter told me, “I think we should put Dad in something that will fit his personality: masculine, yet artistic, and blue… for the sea.”

I had just the thing for her.

I took the woman and her brother into the display room to a cerulean colored cloisonné urn that sat on a shelf where the two lengths of the L-shaped room come together. I thought it was perfect for what she was describing—masculine, and yet artistic. I picked it up and handed it to the woman.

She hefted the urn, as if to weigh it. “Okay, okay,” as she turned the multi-colored enameled container around in her hands. “May I open it?”

“Go ahead,” I replied.

She twisted the lid off, peeked inside, screamed, and hurled the urn down the length of the casket display area with a prowess that would have made a shot-putter at a track meet take notice.

The urn ricocheted off a sixteen-gauge steel casket at the far end of the room with a loud bing and then partially shattered when it hit the tile floor. A small furry form shot out of the wreckage and disappeared behind a casket. The woman’s brother cringed, and the woman stood there in horror as if she couldn’t believe what she had just done.

I’m pretty unflappable, so I turned to the woman, and said, “What? Wrong color?”

She gave a short laugh, as if she didn’t hear me. “Oh my—”

I cut her off. “Mouse? They tore down that old church next door a month ago and apparently it disturbed their nest. We’ve been having a mouse problem here for a couple of weeks. Somehow, that little guy managed to get into the urn. Weird. I’m really sorry to scare you like that.”

“It’s not your fault,” she protested.

“Nice toss though.”

“Thanks, I mean—”

“We’ll pay for it,” the brother chimed in.

“No. No. Don’t worry about it,” I said, waving my hand in a dismissive way. I didn’t want this family going around saying I had a mouse problem. “It’s no big deal. We’ll pick something else out. Something without a surprise hiding in it.”

“No, no,” the woman said, dazed. “That one was perfect. That was Dad.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“I’m sure.”

I ordered a replacement urn for their father and called the exterminator back. I thought he was going to have a seizure, he was laughing so hard when I replayed what had happened, acting out the motions in the display room and everything. Apparently a mouse in an urn was a first, even for his line of business, and he’s probably seen mice in all sorts of places. He thinks the mouse must have crawled into the urn when the lid was ajar and it closed behind him; he just got lucky we picked it up before he died in there.

I still have the partially shattered urn sitting on a shelf in my office. When people ask me why it’s there, I tell them about the day I had an Olympic shot-putter in my showroom.

CHAPTER 28 Last Wishes Contributed by a website designer

I met Claire Morgan, a woman who had founded a local hospice program, through a friend of mine. Claire was a former nurse who had lost her husband to a terminal illness at a young age. She was left with enough money that she didn’t have to work another day in her life. Instead of taking her money and moving to the Sun Belt as most people would have done, Claire decided to do something to help families going through the same thing she had gone through.

Relatively speaking, it was a small hospice—ten nurses and just under one hundred patients. Claire wanted to keep it small to maximize patient care and minimize stress on the families of the dying. It worked. Word quickly spread about this wonderful new facility, and Claire had to hire more nurses to keep the same patient/nurse ratio.

The first time I met Claire Morgan was at a Christmas party our mutual friend was hosting. She had never come before because she and her husband had always gone to his boss’s Christmas Eve party.

“My husband recently died,” Claire said to me, “and I just can’t stand the thought of going to a cocktail party and doing nothing but accepting half-hearted sympathies from his colleagues. The idea is simply macabre. I just wanted to… come somewhere slightly anonymous and soak up holiday cheer.”

I agreed. As we talked more, she told me of her plans to form a hospice organization. I encouraged her, telling her what she planned to do would provide an important step in the dying process, and that I, as one of the town’s many funeral directors, saw the importance of hospice work on a daily basis. She thanked me for my kind words and I didn’t see her until the next Christmas party.

I asked her how her hospice program was coming. She looked surprised that I had remembered, but then told me she had just opened her doors for business the month before. She had named her company Stone Hospice after her late husband, Stone Morgan. I congratulated her and reiterated my previous year’s praises of the work hospices do.

A couple of weeks later, Claire called my office and asked me if I’d be available to make some arrangements with one of her patients. I told her I’d be delighted. I met with Claire, the patient, and the patient’s daughter. The patient died a few weeks later and I buried him.

Over the following years I received periodic calls from Claire to make arrangements for her patients. Some would linger. Some would die quickly. And just as she had cared for them when they were dying, I would treat them with the same dignity once they had died.

Claire and I had been working together a long time when she called me down to her office to make arrangements. It was unusual, since I usually went to the patient’s house for such meetings, but I’ve found in my business nothing is unusual.

When I arrived I gave her a quick hug. “Where’s the patient?” I asked.

“Sit down, R.J.,” Claire said. “I have something to tell you.”

“Oh?”

“I’m the patient. You’re here to make arrangements for me.”

“No!” I said. “You?”

“It’s cancer. Inoperable.”

“Claire—”

She held up her hand. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, or if her cheeks didn’t look as full as I remembered. “Look, R.J., we both deal with death on a daily basis. It’s not something most people want to do, but it’s something that has to be done. There have to be people like us in society, people who aren’t afraid to look death in the face day in and day out. Sure, I’m angry that I feel like I’ve been cheated out of a full life, but I’m not scared to die.”

“Radiation and chemo?” I asked.

“Already tried. Didn’t work. I’ve got three months to live. I want you to handle things when the time comes.”

Claire told me the details of the funeral she wanted, and she asked me to care for her family as she had seen me care for countless grieving families that had passed through her program. She wanted assorted cheeses and wine offered at her viewing. She wanted a harpist and her favorite Beatles song played during the service. She wanted the pallbearers to wear white gloves and yellow ribbons, and most of all, she wanted two white doves released in the cemetery, one for her and one for Stone.

When I left, we hugged.

Claire Morgan died sixty-four days later. She was 58.

She is the only person I know who had the courage to face death with such grace when her husband died, and then face her own mortality with honesty, poise, and… courage.

The hospice has since flourished. I think it is a fine legacy to a courageous woman.