Mortuary Confidential

Do undertakers have a private life? Good question… I don’t know. Maybe you can answer that question after reading this section and weighing in on some of the contributors’ answers. But to be a little more objective, let me clarify.

As the handlers of the dead, we don’t get off Christmas Day, New Year’s, or the 4th of July. We may have some hours to devote to our family on those holidays, or on Sundays, but if you call us we’ll be over. We have 24-hour business hours. We never close for re-modeling, have a snow day, or cancel events due to inclement weather. We socialize with a pager attached to the hip and sleep with a phone next to our bed, and, as you’ll see in one of mine, “The First Date,” we sacrifice love for work.

I guess you could say that our private lives are inextricably intertwined with our professional lives. That kind of commingling can lead to some… odd, private moments. Ken still has the feather in his desk that you’ll read about in “Feathers and Fridges.”

Not only do we eat, sleep, and breathe our ministry—our calling—some of us, hell, most of us work with family and live at the funeral home. Can you imagine living where you work? Pitching a tent in your cubicle? It would be the same thing! Because it’s often hard to walk that line separating our business and personal lives, it is important for us to have activities outside the profession. That’s why we identified contributors by their outside hobbies or interests. And believe it or not, we do have interests outside of our thanatological (translation: death and dying) pursuits.

The stress of the job can sometimes lead to strained family situations and personal problems. Ken is a perfect example. The daily stresses of running the mortuary he started almost fifteen years ago gradually built up and manifested themselves in a disease that is common in a lot of high-stress jobs—alcoholism. In a recent conversation we had, he was recounting stories about both his grandmothers, who sadly died during the writing of this book. He told me one grandmother, to whom this book is dedicated, told him before he started in the profession, “If you’re going to be a funeral director, make sure you watch your drinking. Every funeral director I know is a raging alcoholic!” After their deaths, Ken had an epiphany and started treatment. He is now taking one day at a time and has a new, positive outlook on his life and profession.

I hope that if you take anything away from this book, it’s a new outlook on those of us that ply the death trade. When we come home every night (or, in some cases, upstairs in the funeral home) and take off our hats and kick our feet up, we’re just the same as you… but call us, and we’ll gladly put that hat right back on for you.

CHAPTER 41 Feathers and Fridges Contributed by a community philanthropist

I began handling Mrs. Bingen’s family about ten years ago when her son unexpectedly died. I just happened to be assigned to make the funeral arrangements that day. It was a tough funeral, the kind that tears at the emotional fabric of the soul. Tragic death. Young man. Mrs. Bingen and I connected on an emotional level during the time we were together. It’s never a joyous occasion when you need the services of a member of my profession, but it’s nice to find someone you can trust to make sure your loved one is taken care of properly. Mrs. Bingen found me and from that point on I’ve been handling all of Mrs. Bingen’s family.

Those ten years since her son’s death were tough ones. I handled her parents, an aunt, and finally, her husband. I think the strain of all the deaths combined with her advancing age may have affected her mind. Towards the end of that ten-year stretch, I really didn’t even know her anymore; she got a little loopy.

One morning I pulled into the parking lot of the funeral home and I could’ve sworn I saw Mrs. Bingen leaving in the backseat of a taxi. I waved. The woman in the taxi didn’t. I pushed the thought from my mind and went inside.

“Hi Fiona,” I greeted the receptionist as I usually did.

“Er, Ken,” she said. “I have something for you.” She held out a battered shoebox.

“What is it?” I demanded. I was suspicious it was some kind of prank.

“Some strange lady just dropped it off. Said you’d know what to do with it.” Fiona shrugged.

“What was her name?”

“Mrs. Birmingham, I think.” She shrugged again. Fiona shrugs a lot, like she’s never sure about anything. “She was talking really fast, and not making too much sense. Kept saying, ‘Ken will know what to do.’”

“Was her name Bingen?”

“Could have been.” She shrugged. “Like I said, she was talking really fast.”

I took the shoebox and took a peek inside. There, lying in a bed of crumpled newspaper, was a dead green bird. It was pretty good sized, maybe the length of my hand. I showed the contents of the shoebox to Fiona.

“Eww,” she said and wrinkled her nose. “A dead bird!” The tone of her voice suggested that this woman had brought a dead bird to a bakery instead of a mortuary. I didn’t bother pointing that out to Fiona.

“Did she say what she wanted me to do with this?” I asked Fiona, who had now pushed her chair back from her desk to get as far away from the shoebox and the offending bird as possible.

She offered me one of her patented shrugs. “She said she was moving to Illinois and that, ‘Ken will—’”

I finished the sentence, “Know what to do with it. Okay, okay, I get it.”

I called the most recent number I had for Mrs. Bingen. The number had been disconnected. So I pulled up files from the past ten years when I had handled her relatives and found some phone numbers. I called a couple of Mrs. Bingen’s distant relatives listed in the files. Nobody had a forwarding phone number or address, but I left my phone number with each of them. I had no idea what she wanted me to do with her bird, but I knew I’d hear from her eventually, so I left the bird in the box and labeled it and put it on a shelf in our walk-in refrigerator and kind of forgot about it. We got busy at work, I started some remodeling in the house, and one of my dogs cut his paw on a piece of glass and needed twenty stitches.

About six weeks after Mrs. Bingen dropped her dead bird off, something jogged my memory and I remembered the bird in the refrigerator. I couldn’t leave it there. If the State Board happened to do one of their inspections, they would fine the funeral home for having an animal in the refrigerator, so I went down and retrieved my little charge. The bird at this point was mummified. I took it home in its shoebox, put it on the windowsill in my garage, and once again forgot about it.

Another six weeks passed, or maybe more, and I arrived and greeted Fiona in the same manner I always did.

“Ken, got a message for you,” she said. “Mrs. Birmingham called.”

“Bingen?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. She sounds nuts.”

“She leave a number?”

“No. She just said that someone would be here tomorrow to pick the bird up and drive it to Illinois so she could bury it in a pet cemetery near her new house.”

I laughed, relieved, thankful I hadn’t taken the initiative of having the bird cremated or burying it myself. “Alright. Thanks, Fiona. We get all kinds, don’t we?”

“We sure do,” she replied.

I wrote myself a note, and when I got home that night I put the note under my keys so I would remember to retrieve the bird before I left for work the next day. In the morning I went out to the garage; the door was slightly ajar, almost like it hadn’t closed properly. That’s strange, I thought, and hoisted up the door. My two dogs greeted me from inside the garage. They weren’t supposed to be in the garage. The chocolate Lab ran over, panting and wagging his tail. He was pleased with himself. A green feather hung out of the side of his mouth.

I snatched the green feather from Remus’s jowls and stared at it, incredulous.

Frantic, I ran over to the window and found the shoebox on the ground. It was torn to shreds. My two little angels must have discovered the open door during the night and raided the place. When I picked up the tattered shoebox, the smarter of the two, Vixen, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, cowered in the corner. I was sure she was the one that led the raid, and she was ashamed. Not Remus, he’s the mischievous (and stupid) one. Remus pranced and danced around me happy as a lark, almost as if to say, Yeah, it was me. I ate that bird and it was delicious!

“No!” I cried. I had saved the stupid bird for this woman for the better part of three months and my two dogs had ruined it! Why hadn’t I put the bird in my car last night? Why hadn’t Mrs. Bingen called a day earlier? Why hadn’t one of the workmen closed the garage properly? Visions of cremating my two little angels flashed briefly before my eyes, but looking at their cute faces, Vixen’s shame, and Remus’s sheer idiocy made me forgive them. There was only one thing I could do. I hopped in my car and sped off toward the pet store.

Halfway there I realized there was no way I could buy Tweety bird and then break its neck. I loved animals too much. So I altered my course and drove the back roads looking for some kind of road kill bird to put in the shoebox.

I searched and searched and found no dead birds on the side of the road. Then I went home and searched through my dogs’ droppings hoping to find some evidence of the bird. There was none. Defeated, I went to work and tried to think up a lie to tell the driver who was coming for the bird.

The driver never came for the dead bird, and I never heard from Mrs. Bingen again. To this day, I’m still not sure, what I would have said to the driver when he or she arrived. But I still keep the green feather I snatched from Remus’s mouth in my desk drawer.

CHAPTER 42 Till Death Contributed by a Harley rider

Unfortunately, the occasion on which I had to meet one of the strongest, most caring people I have ever known, as well as someone I easily call my best friend, involved the death of that person’s husband. Tragic, yes, the husband’s death, but in reality—not to get too philosophical—we’re all actively dying. Some of us just slip into the great beyond with greater suddenness than others, and Kristy’s husband was one of those unfortunates.

It was the luck of the draw, if you can call it that. I showed up for work one fine Monday after a fantastic weekend riding in the Mojave. The weather that morning was perfect and that always puts me in a good mood in the morning. Nothing ruined a day like having to drive my car to work.

On this Monday I was assigned to make funeral arrangements with the Morris family. The widow was coming in at ten o’clock. The decedent, a man, had died suddenly the day before of a suspected heart attack. His body was at the local hospital. The case was being referred to the medical examiner. I stowed my leather jacket and helmet in my locker, put on my tie—I couldn’t ride my Soft Tail in good conscience with a tie on—and gathered my papers.

The woman who walked through the front door of the mortuary was far too young to be a widow. I’d guess her to be in her early thirties and she appeared to be quite tall, though it was hard to tell for she was leaning heavily on another, older, woman. Normally, I would assume the older woman to be the widow. But it was the younger woman, her wide, soft facial features distorted by emotional turmoil, which cued me to the fact that she was the widow. I strode up to the pair and introduced myself.

“Mrs. Morris. I am so sorry for your loss. My name is Geary and I’ll be handling the funeral arrangements for your husband.”

My name is a good icebreaker, especially in tough situations like this. My real name is Rudolph, but everyone calls me Geary because I’m such a little gear head.

Both women liked that and I even drew a smile out of the widow, especially when I told them how the deaf old ladies that call the mortuary always ask for Gary.

Mrs. Morris brushed a lock of blond hair out of her face, stared me right in the eye, and said, “Please Gary, call me Kristy, and I’ll do my best to remember your name.”

The three of us laughed.

I don’t know how to explain it other than we clicked. Yes, we had instant chemistry—I don’t mean romantic chemistry—but a kindred spirit kind of chemistry.

I invited them into my office and began the delicate business of making her husband’s final plans. During the course of the arrangement process, I found out that Kristy was a 38-year-old mother of two girls aged 11 and 13. And I, always an open ear, heard her life story and cried and laughed along the way. She was an orphan, raised in various foster homes around the Catskill Mountain region before going to beauty school. She met her husband when he sat down in her chair one day. A month later they were married. Kristy’s husband had been a sergeant in the army and had just been stationed at Fort Irwin two months ago after spending the past ten years at Fort Bragg in North Carolina—the place she called “home.” Both of his parents were dead, she had no family to speak of, and she knew nobody here in California. The elderly woman who accompanied her was her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Logan, who had known Kristy for two months.

Normally, I can sympathize with my families, but with Kristy I could empathize. Being a quasi-orphan myself, I could relate to her feelings of isolation; I was an only child. My father committed suicide when I was nine, and my mother was locked up for drugs shortly thereafter. I was raised by my maternal grandmother, who though loving, I know now was showing the early signs of Alzheimer’s when I showed up on her doorstep at age twelve. So, other than my German shepherd, Chloe, I have no other family in the world. My grandmother died two years prior and last I heard, my mother was slowly dying of the drug addict’s disease in some group home in Santa Barbara.

After I ushered Kristy and Mrs. Logan out, I loaded up the panel van and went down to the local forensics lab, where Mr. Morris had been transferred. He had been autopsied. I spent the rest of the afternoon carefully piecing his body back together so his young widow and two daughters could see their husband and father at peace. We laid him out in his uniform, and I even managed to coax a small smile onto his face during the embalming. Kristy liked the smile. The service was small because they didn’t have many friends here in California. We buried him in Riverside National Cemetery, a fitting setting for one of our country’s heroes.

I called Kristy a couple of days after the funeral to follow up. She asked me if it was all right to call me periodically—at work, of course—just to talk to someone. I offered to refer her to a grief counselor. She declined, saying she just needed another grownup to have a normal conversation with from time to time. I gave her my cell phone number and told her to call me any time she needed to talk.

And thus, our friendship started.

She, the newly widowed, lonely orphan and I, the young undertaker ten years her junior who had recently buried her citizen-soldier husband, became fast friends. We talked nearly every other day and began to “instant message” over the course of many an evening. What started as pity, on my part, blossomed into one of the most beautiful and fulfilling friendships I have ever experienced.

Our casual chats turned into morning coffee at a local café that turned into casual lunches that turned into barbeques over at Kristy’s house on lazy Sunday afternoons. I got to meet her two beautiful daughters, Cindy and Jacqueline, and took my “child,” Chloe, over too. The girls loved Chloe and fussed over her like she was their baby. Chloe loved the attention the girls bestowed upon her and would grow very excited when I loaded her in the car because she knew she was going to the Morris house.

I gave the girls rides on my bike around their neighborhood and began taking Kristy for long rides out into the Mojave. We both loved the loud silence and solitude a motorcycle can offer, the desert scenery whipping by. I think initially Kristy might have harbored some romantic feelings for me, but I made sure to steer well clear of anything of a suggestive nature. I didn’t want to complicate our beautiful friendship. The two orphans had found each other and now felt complete and whole. It was as simple as that. We were each other’s missing family.

I had the first Christmas I could remember that I looked forward to. It was the first time in my six years at the mortuary that I didn’t volunteer to work so others could be with their families on Christmas Day.

Then, six months after meeting Kristy, I got a call from Mrs. Logan.

Kristy had been killed in a car accident.

Just as suddenly as Kristy had appeared in my life, she left. I drove down to the forensics lab and picked up what remained of her body and gave her the last gift I had to give; I embalmed her.

Kristy’s was the only funeral I have ever cried at. I shed not a tear as my father’s casket was lowered into the ground or when my grandmother’s frail form lay in the front of the chapel. But I sat between Jacqueline and Cindy in the nearly empty chapel as the minister proffered his words and bawled harder than I can ever remember. Chloe sat crouched on the floor at the feet of the three orphans, her ears flat against her head. When we lowered Kristy’s simple wooden casket into the ground above her husband’s, I felt as though a piece of me was being buried in that hole.

The next day, I unloaded Chloe on my neighbor for a few days, called out of work, and took my Soft Tail out on the road. I wasn’t sure where I was headed, but I ended up at Death Valley National Park. The barren vista spread out before my bike as it ate up the open road as fast as I could push it. I could almost feel Kristy’s arms wrapped around my body, holding on.

Jacqueline and Cindy are now 18 and 16, having been taken in and raised by Mrs. Logan and her husband. I still take Chloe over to visit, and even though her muzzle is gray and she is a little stiff, she still jumps around a little when I open the car door. She loves those girls almost as much as I do.

CHAPTER 43 Date Destination: “The Morgue” Contributed by a paintballer

When I served my apprenticeship I lived in an apartment on the second floor of the funeral home, a big old mansion that had been converted to its current purpose. The owner’s family used to live on the second floor, but they had long since moved out and the space had been turned into arrangement offices and the casket selection room—and, of course, my little dungeon room, referred to by the owner as the apprentice’s apartment.

My “apartment” was twelve feet square with a tiny bathroom and kitchenette. I didn’t care in the least that it was small, in fact, I loved it. It was like having my own place. I had the walls plastered with rock ’n’ roll posters. My giant stereo system, set up on cinderblocks and plank shelving, dominated one wall and I had the place all decked out with tapestries, black lights, lava lamps, and the like. It was truly a bachelor’s paradise.

In return for living for free at the funeral home, I had to work all the wakes and answer the business phone on weeknights. On Saturday and Sunday nights the owner of the funeral home answered the business phone to give me a couple of nights off. I looked forward to those nights, when I could go out carousing. I was single and liked to party. Contrary to most people’s perception of funeral directors, some of us do let our hair down on occasion.

Unfortunately, my living situation sometimes hindered my luck with the fairer sex. I could never bring girls back to my place; they’d think I was a total creep. Whenever I met a girl out at a bar or club, I’d always talk her into going back to her place. It’s kind of hard to get a girl in the mood when she’s scared of a dead person popping out of every corner. To me, there is nothing even remotely spooky about a funeral home, but I’m sure to the average person (let alone a drunk female), a funeral home can be a very creepy place. So, to use a baseball metaphor, I always liked to play on the away field. That is, until the night I met the girl of my dreams, and the situation forced me to use the home field advantage.

What a disaster.

It was a Saturday. I had to work late into the evening. By the time I escaped the funeral home and managed to get to Cues, one of my favorite haunts, my friends were already a couple of pitchers deep. Cues is a dark, smoky little dive at the edge of the city whose only redeeming value is that it has the perpetual special of free pool and two dollar pitchers of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

After I lost a goodly amount of money at pool, my group migrated over to a brewpub for steaks and micro-brews. We were eating and drinking and having a good time. Next thing I knew, it was last call. We all ordered one more round before I piled as many as could fit into my Honda. The rest were left to hail a taxi. I had no business driving, but times were different then and somehow I managed to get us to a late-night club called Rewind. There is nothing particularly great about Rewind. It’s just your basic club: loud music, overpriced drinks, crazy lights, and loose women. The main reason we always went there is that I knew the bouncer and he let us bypass the line.

The club was just filling up when we arrived. The ubiquitous techno music blared, and the emcee was inviting girls up to dance on the giant clear Lucite blocks on stage. I located my favorite bartender and ordered the usual, Knob Creek, neat. I stood and chatted with some of my friends at a high-top table for an hour or so, throwing back a couple more bourbons until the club had filled up and it was just one big sweaty, throbbing, throng of people. I went out and danced for a bit and did my thing.

After I got the cold shoulder from three chicks, I decided it was time to go. I was drunk, and obviously going to be unlucky on this weekend. I sidled up to the bar next to a raven-haired beauty for one more drink. The girl was gorgeous, and had legs that went on forever up into her black mini-skirt.

“Can I buy you a drink, sweetheart?” I asked, offhandedly, expecting her to tell me what I could do with myself.

“Sure,” she replied perkily. She smiled, exposing a mouth full of even white teeth, dimples lining her cheeks. “Whatcha drinking?”

“A double Knob Creek, neat.”

“I’ll have what he’s having,” she called to the bartender, holding two fingers up. Then she turned to me and smiled slyly. “What’s the occasion?” Her crystal blue eyes sparkled with mischief.

I was speechless, and a little stupid from too much booze. “Uh, no occasion,” was all I could think of.

The drinks came, and the girl knocked her double bourbon back in one gulp, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and said, “C’mon, let’s go dance.”

I had no choice but to gulp mine down as she grabbed my hand and dragged me out onto the dance floor. As the wee hours of the morning progressed, and the drinks kept flowing, the dancing got more risqué. I’m not a great dancer by any stretch of the imagination, but this girl made me feel like a rock star. By the end of the night when the club lights went up, my head was swimming and I was in the middle of the dance floor making out with the gorgeous girl, whose name I learned was Paula.

“Let’s get out of here,” she panted.

“Good idea,” I agreed. In fact, I couldn’t think of a better idea. I was really digging Paula.

We ran out onto the curb before the mobs made their exodus and I hailed one of the taxis waiting in the queue. “Where to?” I asked. “Your place?”

“No, yours,” she said.

“I don’t want to go there. My place is just a small crappy apartment. Let’s go to yours,” I urged.

“We can’t,” she said. “I live at home with my parents. I’m on break from Ohio State. They aren’t cool with this.” She made a little turning motion with her index finger. “So, it’s your place or none.” To accentuate her point she put her hand on my thigh.

I froze. I didn’t know what to do. I sat there for a few moments.

“Well?” Paula asked. She massaged my thigh harder, imploring me with her blue eyes.

I knew what I had to do.

“Okay,” I grudgingly agreed. “My place.” I gave the taxi driver the address and off we went.

We made out the whole ride to the funeral home, our hands exploring. The ride was a blur. I remember her raven hair shrouding my face and the spicy smell of her perfume. The next thing I knew, the driver had the dome light on and was demanding his money.

We piled out and Paula exclaimed, “You told me you had a tiny apartment. Look at this place! It’s huge! You live alone?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I live alone.” She obviously was too intoxicated to notice the giant sign that read “Funeral Home” and I didn’t point it out to her. I was too excited at the prospect of what was going to happen once we got up to the apartment to want to ruin it. I had been sampling the goods in the taxi, and I liked what I had sampled thus far. Paula was sumptuous.

I fumbled with the lock on the back door and led her down the hallway to the back staircase that led up to my apartment.

“You have a real nice place,” Paula commented, looking at the artwork on the wall in the darkened hallway. “I love how you’ve decorated it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said distractedly as I opened the door that hid the back staircase as well as the door to the preparation room, “real nice, isn’t it?” I wanted to get her upstairs as quickly as possible and continue what we had started in the taxi.

Behind me, Paula let out a blood-curdling scream. “What the fuck?” she screamed. “I’m in a morgue! Oh God, I’m in a morgue!” She took off down the hallway, banging off the walls like a pinball.

I saw someone had left the preparation room door propped open. Shit!

“Paula, wait!” I called and took off after her.

She hit the crash bar to the back door and it swung open. She ran into the middle of the front yard and staggered around in small circles like a punch drunk boxer.

“Settle down, Paula. Come on back in,” I called from the back door. “It’s a funeral home. Not a morgue—”

“I saw a sign that said morgue!”

“Yeah, a sign on the preparation room door. We’re not going in there; we’re going upstairs to where I live.”

“You brought me to a morgue!” she screamed.

I tried to quiet her down.

She was having none of it. “You live at the morgue!”

“I work here. It’s okay. I promise.” I beckoned with my hand. “Come on. It’s safe.”

“I don’t care!” she cried. “You brought me to a place where there’s dead people, you psycho!”

“Keep your voice down,” I hissed, looking around at the neighboring houses. It was just starting to get light out and I didn’t want to cause a scene on the front lawn of the funeral home. “People live around here.”

“I don’t give a shit, psycho! There is no way in hell I’m going back in that morgue.”

“It’s not a—”

“I need a ride home!” she demanded.

“Look, Paula,” I pleaded. “We came in a taxi. I have no way to drive you home.” My mind momentarily flashed to the hearse in the garage, but immediately nixed the idea. “My car is in the city,” I continued. “Just come in and we’ll go right to my apartment. There are no dead people up there. It’s safe.” I saw my chances of romance slipping away before my eyes and there was not a damn thing I could do about it.

Paula stood there swaying in the front yard of the funeral home, under the big elm tree, her eyes half-lidded and clouded over with hatred. “I’ll walk then. I’m not stepping foot in that morgue.”

She set off unsteadily down the road. “Wait,” I called after her. “Do you even know where you’re going?”

She threw up her middle finger over her shoulder as she marched down the road. I stood at the back door, slightly bewildered, and watched her go.

CHAPTER 44 Gobble Gobble Contributed by a vintage LP collector

I made settlement on my dream house on the Monday before turkey day. It’s a Cape-style house with all the amenities: random plank hardwood floors, stainless appliances and frameless cabinets in the kitchen, and copious amounts of marble in the bathrooms. My new digs are certainly a step up from my starter house on the West End and certainly a far cry from the fleabag apartment I used to rent in downtown Richmond when I first got my license. It’s in the kind of neighborhood where you’d expect June and Ward Cleaver to exit the house next door at any minute and welcome you to the neighborhood with a fruit basket and bottle of bubbly. I had been saving for this house since… forever.

Naturally, eager to showcase my new bastion, I insisted to my family that I would host Thanksgiving dinner that year. Many of them had already made plans, but I begged, pleaded, cajoled, and threatened, and eventually got my way. It was settled. Word circulated throughout the family; Thanksgiving was going to be at Amy’s new house. I was thrilled.

I pushed all the boxes into the basement, tidied up as best as possible, bought a Martha Stewart cookbook (my first cookbook ever), and set out to work in the kitchen. It was only a minor disaster, seeing as how my sister, who was little Miss Easy-Bake Oven when we were kids, came over and saved my ass—and my turkey’s. The dinner was a smashing success second only to the glory of my new house. The booze flowed—though not for my boyfriend and me who were working—and I gave tours of the house while my pup, Izzy, raced around her new yard. Right before dessert, I received a knock at the door.

I opened the door and greeted a woman who held an extremely large covered roasting pan. Her dazzling smile suggested thousands of dollars of orthodontic work and many whitening treatments.

“Hi. My name is”—I’m not kidding you—“June. I’m your new next door neighbor.” She nodded her head perkily as in affirmation of her own name. Not a single stand of hair in her perfect hairstyle moved.

Did you bring Wally and the Beav? I thought derisively, but instead held out my hand and said, “Hi! Nice to meet you,” Then, realizing June’s hands were full, I withdrew it quickly, feeling foolish. “I’m Amy. Would you care to come in?” I stepped aside and motioned her in.

“Oh no, dear, I’m just so sorry to meet you under these circumstances, but I thought this would help… on behalf of the entire neighborhood.”

I was puzzled. Help? But I took the pan from her hands. It was so heavy that I had to set it down on a side table to peek under the foil. It was a giant roasted turkey. Seeing the look on my face, June chimed in, “Twenty-five pounds, dear.”

I hated it when people called me “dear.” I straightened up, cocked my head, and said, “Well, thank you, June. You didn’t have to do that. It’s awfully extravagant, a whole big turkey.”

“I know, but I had an extra one in the freezer and I thought you wouldn’t feel like cooking one. So I’m just glad I can give you some semblance of a Thanksgiving Day.”

“How do you mean?” I asked, now clearly lost.

“It’s always tough when a family member dies. I know. I lost my father two years ago.” She reached out, took my hand, and made a hand sandwich.

“Nobody died,” I said slowly as understanding began to dawn on me.

“The hearse—”

I cut in, beginning to laugh. “I’m a funeral director.”

“But the cop car, the medical examiner’s truck,” she stalled, and her perky manner fizzled into bewilderment.

“My boyfriend is a county cop. We’re both working today, so I have the hearse in case I get called out and my boyfriend is ‘code seven,’ or on a meal break, right now. My good friend works for the Central District Division of Forensic Science, and like me, is on call today, which is why the Department of Forensic Science truck is here.”

June looked absolutely deflated. The battle story she had been planning to tell the garden club had been ruined! I put an arm around her. “Come on in for a drink. You look like you could use one,” I teased.

She shook her head. “No. I have to get back to my family,” she said. “But I guess it’s good nobody died.” The white smile was back, this time fake.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Means I can have a peaceful meal with my family.”

June’s smile tightened in her face of foundation and lipstick.

“You’ll get used to seeing the hearse. I bring it home every night I’m taking death call and unfortunately, it won’t fit in the garage.”

“Oh,” June said in a tone that made it clear she abhorred the idea of a death mobile parked next to her house.

“Want your turkey back?”

“No. Consider it a welcome-to-the-neighborhood gift, and Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Gobble gobble to you too!” I called after her.

Chuckling, I walked into the dining room holding the covered pan and announced, “Guess what’s for dessert?”

CHAPTER 45 The Tapestry of Life Contributed by a homemaker

My husband is a funeral director in a small town. We’re pretty much the only game in town. Everybody knows us and we know everybody. When I first moved to here it was suffocating. I grew up in the city—where I met Anthony while he was attending mortuary school—and thrived in the cosmopolitan atmosphere. Here, the only thing open after six o’clock is the billiards hall if you’re game for a pitcher of cheap beer. But I’ve grown to love the small-town atmosphere. This is my home now.

I often help out at the funeral home. I usually go over for a couple of hours a day and do the bookkeeping and help clean the place up. Since I don’t work, other than volunteering at the elementary school library, I don’t mind lending a hand. Sometimes I’ll even greet people at the door; it’s the type of town where I can almost greet everyone who walks through the door by name.

My husband and I have two children, a boy and a girl, who are exactly a year apart. Kelli is a senior and Trevor is a junior in high school. Four years ago, when the kids were in middle school, I had my first dose of providing service to a loved one when we got that middle-of-the-night call from an Indiana State Patrolman. I guess I always viewed Anthony’s profession as serving the families of little old ladies and stately old gentlemen of the community. Clean death. Timely death. Theoretical death. Anthony is a little more steeled in dealing with death, but for me, the experience was all at once confusing and devastating. But even in the shadow of death, I ended up learning a lot about life.

It all began with the dreadful call.

It wasn’t unusual to receive middle-of-the-night phone calls, and it wasn’t until my husband sat up and exclaimed, “Oh, my God! Where? When?,” that I knew something was terribly wrong. Anthony scribbled something on a scrap of paper and said, “Thank you, officer. Please pass along to the family that we’ll be there as quickly as we can.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked. There was a knot in my stomach, though I didn’t know why.

“Marie,” he said. His face was white. “There’s been a terrible accident. Jim and little Jimmy are dead. Grace and Phoebe are in intensive care.”

I felt like I had been punched in the gut. Jim and Grace Brewer are close friends of ours. Jim and Anthony had been friends in high school and when Grace and Jim had started going together shortly after Anthony and I married, we had double-dated a lot. Their son and daughter were exactly our son and daughter’s ages and they went to school together.

“How?” I managed to get out.

Anthony put his glasses on, got out of bed, and clicked the light on. “On their way back from Jim’s parents in Chicago, they got into a car wreck. That’s all I know right now.” His voice was unusually tight. “Get your clothes on. I’ll call my mom and see if she can come over and watch the kids.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you’re going.”

“What? Why?” I was confused, and scared.

“Your friend’s husband is dead and she’s laying in a hospital somewhere. She needs you. We’ve got to go take care of our friends.”

I got out of bed and mechanically put my clothes on. I felt like Tom Hanks in the movie Saving Private Ryan when he landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day; sounds were muted and everything moved in slow motion. It took me forever to put my clothes on and brush my hair back into a ponytail. By the time I got downstairs Anthony had every light in the house blazing and was gone.

I sat at the kitchen counter. Anthony and his mother and father pulled up simultaneously, Anthony in the hearse, and his parents in their Buick. “Hi Mom. Hi Dad,” I said automatically as they trooped in. Anthony’s dad was still in his pajamas and his mom in her nightie. They had obviously been roused from a deep sleep.

His mother rushed over and gave me a giant hug. “Oh, Marie!” she said. “We’re so sorry. Jim was such a nice boy!”

“You okay here?” Anthony asked his parents. He was all business.

“Of course, Tony!” his mother said. “Go, go.”

“Get the kids up and off to school. Bus comes at ten of seven.”

“Where should we tell them you’ve gone?” his mother asked.

“I don’t know, Mom,” he said. He sounded tired all of a sudden. “Make something up. Marie and I will tell them about the Brewers when we get back. No sense you having to do that.”

We said goodbye and Anthony and I got in the hearse.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Looks like it’s going to be a four or five hour ride from here. Hopefully, traffic won’t be that bad this time of night.”

I looked at the clock. It read 11:49.

“How are you going to get two bodies into the back of this thing?” I asked, craning around to peer through the little window partition separating the cabin from the bed of the hearse. It looked like there was only one cot in the back.

“Reeves cot.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a collapsible cot that folds up. Like a reinforced yoga mat, I guess.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll put the boy on that. They’ll both fit.”

I noticed how he didn’t call Jimmy by name, but “the boy.”

“Okay,” I said, still numb.

As we drove up through Kentucky, Anthony and I were both silent. I wracked my brain for something to say to Grace. Anything. I couldn’t think of any words of encouragement or sympathy that fit this situation. Her husband and child were dead! Dead. For the longest time I just sat in silence, thinking, but not thinking. The tension built in me as I searched and nothing came. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer and blurted out, “What am I supposed to say to her, Ant?”

He kept his eyes glued to the road. “What can you say? Say something from the heart.” He fell silent again.

“What are you going to say?” I asked him. My words issued like gunshots in a library.

“Dunno.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose and cleared his throat. “I’ll think of something, I imagine.”

I shut my mouth. The silence descended back over the hearse. When we passed from Kentucky into Indiana, Anthony and I had not broken the silence and I was still drawing a blank. There was nothing I could say. We passed Indianapolis in silence and still I could think of nothing to say to my friend.

Anthony consulted a map stored in the door pocket a couple of times and a scrap of paper several times over the course of the next hour before we pulled under the portico of the hospital.

“Here we are,” Anthony announced. “I’ll go check things out. Wait here.”

The interior light of the hearse flicked on and then off; I was left again in darkness.

I was alone with my empty mind. The hot engine ticked loudly. I began to panic. We had driven over five hours and I hadn’t thought of a single thing to say! I hoped I would be spurred into some deep thought or philosophy to share with Grace, but the panic just compounded my mental block. I could think of nothing but my friend and her little girl lying upstairs with tubes and monitors attached to their broken bodies while her husband and son lay on slabs in the morgue. I shivered and clenched my fingers so hard in my palms I drew blood.

So engrossed was I in my thoughts that when Anthony swung the hearse door open, I jumped.

“Marie, everything all right?” he asked.

He had a concerned look on his face, but I could tell his mind was elsewhere.

“Sure. Fine,” I said quickly.

“Okay. Why don’t you go on in.” It was a command not a question. “The lady at the reception desk will tell you where to go. I’ve already told her our situation. It’s not normal visiting hours, but she’ll let you go up. I have to take the hearse around back and park it. This will save you from having to trudge through the basement.”

I nodded and got out of the hearse. Anthony dropped it in gear and roared away. I put my arms around myself and walked through the front door of the hospital.

It was worse than I thought it would be. Grace lay propped up in bed with tubes and wires covering every inch of her body. I couldn’t imagine a human was under all the bandages and dressings. Her head was half covered by a giant bandage. The gauze had a giant brown spot of dried blood on it.

The room held the pungent smell of hospitals: powerful disinfectants and fear. Grace’s room was dark save the glow of the monitors. One of the machines gave off a constant beep beep sound. The sound, marking the passing time, was maddening.

To my relief, Grace was asleep. I dragged a chair next to her bed and laid my hand upon her tube-covered hand. She stirred. I’m not sure if she could see me as her face was so swollen, but she could certainly sense me. She tried forming words around the tube going down her throat.

I swallowed and tried to speak, offer my sympathies, something, but my words sounded clumsy so I just finished with, “Anthony and I are here for you and Phoebe. Just rest. We’re here for you.” I made quiet shushing sounds and just stroked her hand until she seemed to drift off again.

After a bit, Anthony strolled into the room. “How is she?”

“She knows we’re here.” I looked at him. “That’s all that matters.”

“I stopped and checked on Phoebe. The nurse told me her prognosis is much better than her mother’s.”

“That’s good,” I replied. It didn’t feel like it was me speaking the words. I felt so disconnected.

We stayed for a couple more hours until it was time for Grace’s first scheduled surgery of the day. Anthony loaded Jim and Jim, Jr., into the hearse and we began the long trek back to Tennessee. The return ride was just as silent as the previous one. When we got home, Anthony went right to the funeral home to perform his work and I crashed in bed. I woke hours later, still tired, and made my way down to the kitchen, where I found Anthony.

“Ant?”

He gave me a look of pure exhaustion. Anthony was used to late nights, but I had never seen him this tired before.

I massaged his shoulders. “How was it?” I asked.

“Tough.”

“Want to talk about it?” I wrapped my arms around him. The sweet smell of formaldehyde lingered on his shirt.

“No.”

He was silent. I knew it had been hard on him. His employee, Violet, had called to say she had found him crying in the garage in his embalming suit. I knew Anthony was too tough to ever admit it to me. I’d press the issue at a later time; give him a little space for now.

“Ant,” I said tentatively.

“Yeah?”

“I think I need to go back—to the hospital.”

“Really? Don’t you think Jim’s parents will drive down? And obviously Grace’s will fly out to be with them.”

“I’m sure they will.” I paused. “I just need to go be with her.”

“How long are you going to go?” he asked.

“However long it takes.”

“And the kids?”

“We’ll tell them before I go. Then you can get some sleep. I’ll ask your mom and dad to come over and sit this evening.”

“Okay,” he said. I could tell he was too tired to even function.

“Kids—” I called.

I sat next to Grace’s bed. She wore a number of casts, and the bandage on her head was fresh. The head nurse assured me the surgeries had been as successful as one could hope, and they were guardedly optimistic about her recovery.

The tube had been removed from Grace’s throat, and when she woke she tried talking. Some of the swelling on her face had subsided, but she would definitely need an oral surgeon sometime in the very near future. Her voice came out in raspy whispers. “Did Ant take care of Jim and little Jimmy?” she asked, tears rolling down her face.

I nodded, tears running down my face, too. I couldn’t speak.

Grace tried speaking again, but I interrupted her, “Grace, don’t talk. Please. Just rest.” I squeezed her hand.

“You know, Marie,” she said, ignoring my protest. I had to strain to make out the words. “I sometimes think life is like a tapestry. And—” She stopped and winced as her tongue traced over broken teeth. “And… we’re looking at the back. We’re looking at the mess of tangled threads—knots and threads going every which way. It’s seemingly meaningless.”

Tears flowed freely down my cheeks, and I held my friend’s hand tightly as she continued, “Walk around that same tangled mess and on the other side is a breathtaking piece of art. I think—I think we only get to look at the back of the tapestry most of the time. Right now, I’m only seeing chaos and knots and loose threads. I know though, I know, that one day I’ll get to look at the front and it’ll all make sense. It’ll all make so much sense… I’ll get to see the beauty of God’s work.

“Thank Ant for me. He bore his cross.”

CHAPTER 46 The Gay Man in the Wine Bottle Contributed by a vintner

My partner and I met Charles and Jacques when we were touring the Bordeaux wine region for the first time. We ran into these Americans at an outdoor café, started talking, and found out that not only were they from the same state, but they lived about ten minutes from Wes’s and my house. They live in Concord and we live just north of Manchester. We exchanged numbers and have since become good friends and travel buddies.

I am a funeral director and Wes is a general surgeon at one of the local hospitals. In between our hectic schedules we don’t have as much time together as we’d like, but we make time for our shared hobby, making wine. We’ve been making wines for over twenty years now and have gotten to a point where we can turn out a pretty good bottle of vin. We make all sorts of whites and reds, depending on what’s in season when we’re making a batch. Our friends rave that our wines are better than store-bought, but mostly I think they’re blowing smoke.

Since Wes and I are wine freaks, we naturally like to tour wine regions when we go on vacation. After we became friends with Charles and Jacques, they started tagging along on our wine touring extravaganzas, not necessarily for the winery tours, but for the destinations. Wes and I would go and do our wine thing and they’d go off on their own sightseeing thing. We’d been traveling together for fifteen years with destinations including Melbourne, Napa, Sonoma, Bilbaon Rioja, and Mendoza, to name a few.

Charles came to me one day and asked me to handle his funeral arrangements. He had HIV. This was before the antiretroviral drug cocktails; the disease had progressed to such a point that the available drugs could only prolong his life. He lasted four years, six months, and nine days.

Charles had moved from his home state of Louisiana the day he turned eighteen. He needed to be somewhere a little more liberal than the Deep South, and he ended up in Massachusetts. As soon as Charles’s family found out about his “affliction,” they disowned him. Charles hadn’t spoken to his family since. When his father died in the mid ’80s, Charles received a letter in the mail, months after the fact, from an aunt telling him what had happened. She told him not to send his sympathies to his mother.

The day Charles came into the funeral home to make arrangements for himself, he told me, “I want to be cremated and my ashes to go to Jacques,” who, at the time, had been his companion for seventeen years. “I am going to extend the same courtesy to my family that they extended to me when daddy died.”

He handed me a sealed envelope addressed to his aunt.

“Promise me you’ll mail it after—” He choked off the rest of the sentence.

I nodded and patted him on the back.

“She’ll tell my mother and even though I haven’t spoken to that woman in twenty-nine years, I know she is going to come north, playing the mother card, and demand my ashes,” he cautioned me. “Curt, under no circumstances are you to give them to her. I have made Jacques the executor of my estate; the beneficiary of every earthly possession I have, and have had my lawyer draw up an affidavit that says Jacques gets my remains. Promise me you’ll give them to him.”

I promised him.

With a twinkle in his eye, he added, “I’ve also done a lot of thinking—this disease makes you do that—about my urn. Will you bottle me?”

“Huh?” I replied, shocked.

“You know, put me in one of your wine bottles and cork me. I figured since I like to drink wine, and I like to drink your wine, it’ll be perfect. Besides, it looks less threatening than,” he did air quotes with his fingers, “an urn.” He rolled his eyes in the fashion that only women and gays can.

I laughed, but Charles assured me he was serious.

“All right,” I acquiesced. “I’ll bottle you. You want a label?”

“Nah, just cork me.”

That conversation was the beginning of the end.

Wes did all he could for him over the four years, but at the time our knowledge of HIV wasn’t what it is now, and Charles withered and died.

On the day of his death, Wes’s care stopped and mine started.

I fulfilled Charles’s wish and cremated his earthly remains. I also dropped the letter to his aunt in the mail.

Two weeks passed. I finally found it within me to take one of the empty glass wine bottles and the corker to the funeral home. Human cremains can range in color from white to gray to even a pinkish color. Charles’s were gray. I ran a magnet over the cremains to pick up any metal fragments and then ran them through the processor that crushes any big bone chips and turns them into the type of “ashes” the general public would be familiar with, fireplace-looking ashes.

I put the bottle under the funnel of the transfer machine and poured the ash from the transfer can until the wine bottle was full, setting aside the small amount left over for myself. I was going to scatter them next time I was in Napa, Charles’s favorite wine region. I corked the green glass bottle and set it on a shelf in my office.

Charles sat on my shelf for at least another week while Jacques summoned the courage to come pick up his former partner. It was during this time that I was sitting at the reception desk in the lobby, breaking the receptionist for lunch, when a pleasant-looking elderly woman walked in. The woman, who was quite plump, was dressed neatly in a light pink, old-lady-type pantsuit. She strolled up to the reception desk.

“Hello,” she said in a Southern drawl.

I curiously stared at her big hair, but only for a moment. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Constance de Baptiste.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Okay.”

“I’m here to take my Charles back to the family plot in L’isiana.”

I paused, stunned, and my heart stopped beating as Jacques walked in the front door behind her, but I recovered enough to say to Charles’s mother, “Okay, ma’am. Why don’t you take a seat over there and I can help you in five minutes. A gentleman who has an appointment to pick something up has just arrived. It shouldn’t take long.”

“That will be just fine, young man,” she said.

Charles’s words echoed through my head, Curt, under no circumstances are you to give them to her, as Jacques walked up to the counter, and for a moment Mrs. de Baptiste and her son’s lover were side by side, though neither knew it. Charles didn’t keep any pictures of his family around, so Jacques couldn’t know what she looked like, and Mrs. de Baptiste had no idea what her son’s lover of almost twenty-two years looked like. They glanced at each other the way strangers do, then Mrs. de Baptiste walked across the lobby and plunked all of herself down in one of our couches and opened a magazine.

I held my hand in such a way that my pointing finger was shielded from Mrs. de Baptiste as I pointed to her and mouthed Charles’s mother. Jacques’s eyes got real wide and his mouth dropped open in an “Oh, my gosh” expression.

“Could I get you something to drink while you wait, ma’am?” I called over Jacques’ shoulder.

“Dear no,” she replied. “I won’t even be that long. But thank you.”

She went back to her magazine and I hunched over the counter so Jacques and I could talk in conspiratorial tones.

“That’s really her?” he asked. “No joke?”

“Seriously. It’s Charles’s mom.”

“I expected some hillbilly with no teeth wearing overalls!” Jacques exclaimed.

“Shhh! She’ll hear you, but yes, she is quite unlike what I pictured. And she speaks like she’s very well educated.”

“I never would have thought it,” Jacques said, shaking his head. “Charles always made them sound like they were backwoods type people.”

“Just backwards thinking people,” I said.

Jaques repeated, “I never would have thought it.”

“Me neither,” I said, putting my hand on top of his in a friendly way. “That aside. How are you doing?”

“Hanging in there… I guess. I miss him a lot, especially at night when I’m alone. He was such a large presence. There’s nothing now.”

“Wes and I are here for you. You know that.”

“I know.”

“Let me go get him. I’ve got him all bottled up for you.” I disappeared into the back and returned with the bottle, which I handed to Jacques with great fanfare, and said loudly enough that Mrs. de Baptiste could hear, “Here’s a bottle of the finest. The finest I’ve ever known for sure.”

“Thank you, Curt,” he said with tears in his eyes that he quickly dashed.

“Bye,” I said quietly.

“Now ma’am,” I called to Mrs. de Baptiste. “What did you say I could do for you? I got sidetracked with that gentleman who came to pick up a wine bottle.”

Mrs. de Baptiste got up, and as she did, her estranged son came within mere feet of her as Jacques passed her on his way out the door. She looked curiously at the bottle cradled in the man’s arms; its contents hidden by opaque green glass.

She trundled over to the counter. “A bottle of wine?” Her Southern drawl made her sound as though she was talking with a mouth full of syrup.

“Yes. A little unusual, but I make wine in my spare time, and sometimes my patrons will ask for a bottle.”

“Isn’t that marvelous,” she said as if she wasn’t sure if it was or not. “But I have no time to be drinking wine at a funeral parlor.” Parlor sounded like par-luh. “I have come for my Charles and then I have a flight to catch back to L’isiana.”

“Your Charles? I’m sorry, ma’am, but his cremains are no longer here,” I said truthfully. The door closed behind Jacques. “His partner came to pick him up already. That’s what Charles wanted; I have a signed affidavit allowing me to release his cremains to his partner if you would like to see that document.”

The Southern belle façade cracked.

She spluttered. She threatened. She menaced.

I stood staunch and collected.

In the end, she flew back to Louisiana without her dear Charles, but what matters is that Charles is where he should be, where he wanted to be.

CHAPTER 47 The First Date Contributed by a writer

My parents had been away on vacation to the Cajun capital—New Orleans—and I was meeting them to eat when their flight landed. It was summertime, and, as usual, thunderstorms had delayed their flight. I was already at the restaurant when they called me from the tarmac. It was a nice night so I got myself a drink from the bar and decided to wait outside. I ran into an old friend and his girlfriend outside. We reminisced for a few minutes before they went in to eat, and I gave him my phone number. We’d catch up, I told him.

I ordered another drink, my parents arrived soon, and I promptly forgot about the encounter.

A couple of weeks later I was at my parents’ beach house and received a call from the old friend. His girlfriend’s parents had rented a house the next town over, and would I be interested in going out to the bar? Would I? Does the Pontiff live in Rome? Of course I would! I spent the night out at the bar with him, his girlfriend, her sister, and a couple of other people. We had a great time. The next morning I had a raging headache, but I had the sister’s phone number and thus ended my weekend at the beach.

That Monday began my week on call—the week when I had to take night calls and go out on death removals. I generally don’t like to get involved in things I can’t be readily torn away from when I’m on call, but I didn’t want to wait another week before I could take the sister out on a date. I decided to set up a date. What are the chances I’ll get a death call during a two-hour dinner? I rationalized.

So, I called Melissa and asked her out to dinner.

She accepted.

At the time of our proposed first date, Melissa happened to be working at a pharmacy right across the highway from the funeral home. Naturally, I suggested a restaurant that shared the same parking lot with the pharmacy for convenience’s sake. I also made the verbal disclaimer that I would be on call that night, and might have to leave. She seemed fine with that. We agreed to meet when she got off work at eight o’clock.

I met Melissa at the restaurant and we were seated immediately. Due to the lateness of the hour, the place was fairly empty and the service was fast. The waiter came up and asked for our drink orders.

“I’ll have a margarita,” she said.

“Club soda with lemon,” I said. The waiter left. Melissa looked at me strangely, as if to ask, Why didn’t you order a drink also? “I don’t drink,” I said, deadpan.

“But you were drinking last weekend—” she said, obviously confused.

I laughed. “I know. Just kidding. I don’t drink when I’m working.”

“Oh.” She nodded like she understood, but still had a puzzled look on her face.

We sipped our drinks, talked, and ordered our food. I was really enjoying her company. It’s quite different to talk to someone one-on-one in a quiet setting, sober, than yelling over the din of a packed beach bar at each other, totally smashed. I was glad I had gotten her number. Our food came and about five seconds later my pager buzzed.

“Excuse me,” I said and whipped out my phone.

I called the familiar number. Someone was dead. I had to go on the removal.

“Listen,” I said, signaling to the waiter, “I have to go.”

The waiter trotted over. “I need the check please. ASAP,” I said to him, handing him my credit card. He scurried off.

“I need to go on a removal. Sorry to cut the date short—” I signed the check that the waiter thrust in my face. “But I’ll call you later when I get home.”

I hopped up, leaving Melissa sitting alone in the booth with two piping hot entrees and a baffled look on her face.

She later told me that when she arrived home at eight thirty, looking confused, her father said to her, “You know, there are services out there that a guy can hire to call him so that he can abort the date if it’s going bad.”

Apparently, when I had told her I had to “work” that night she didn’t know what I was talking about because she didn’t know my profession. But since then she’s gotten used to my having to drop everything and go to work. For some reason, the first date wasn’t bad enough not to say “yes” fifteen months later. We’re now happily married and love recounting the tale of our inglorious first date.

In fact, we ran the story of our first date along with the announcement of our wedding in our local paper.

CHAPTER 48 Ironic Injustice Contributed by a woodworker

Building a business from the ground up is hard work. Ask anyone who’s done it; they’ll tell you.

I liken a business to a newborn. At first you have to do everything for it. Everything. But as it grows and matures you have to do less and less, until, if you’re real smart, you set up a business system where you can just sit back and reap what you’ve sown.

At the time of this story I hadn’t gotten to the reaping point yet; my business was still an infant.

My shingle had only been out for about thirteen months when I had the opportunity to go on my first vacation as business owner. I started with a phone call from Dani. It was a Wednesday. The call went something like this:

“Hey Topher, how’s the old swordsman? I haven’t talked to you in, like, six months,” Dani said.

“Nice to talk to you too, Dani.” I tried to put on an air of indignation. “You know that hurts. Really hurts. Just because I like to see what’s out there on the dating scene you automatically tag me with those hurtful labels.”

“How long did Rachel last?”

“I—”

“How long?” she interrupted.

“Six weeks… but that’s not the point!” I huffed.

Dani laughed, airily, the way she always did. “So, seriously, what’s going on with you?”

“I’m so stressed!” I groaned.

She laughed again. Dani laughs a lot. “Why’s that? No squeeze?”

“No, thank you very much,” I replied with mock anger. “I haven’t had a day off in thirteen months is why I’m stressed!”

“Stop being so dramatic. I’m sure you’re just fine.”

“You know that grandfather clock I promised to build for Rob? Just like the one I built for your wedding present?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“I built the frame thirteen months ago but haven’t had the time to do any of the inlay.” I paused. “What I’m saying, Dani, is that I haven’t done anything but work with dead people for the past year and I need a break.”

“That bad?”

“I might as well pitch a tent here in the office.”

“Poor you.”

“Poor me. I can’t even find the time to go do a little speed dating, much less finish a stupid clock.”

“Speed dating.” She snorted. “Is that what you call it these days?”

“Oh, shut up.”

She ignored me as she usually did. I think Dani thought I was too dramatic.

“If you’re so stressed then why don’t you take a long weekend this upcoming weekend and use my place in the Keys?”

“Are you serious?” I asked.

Dani had a beautiful condo in Lower Matecumbe Key that we used to go to all the time before she had kids. I loved going to her place. It was great for doing nothing and relaxing on the beach, or if you wanted to do something, Key West was just an hour and a half drive down the coastal highway.

“Yeah, sure,” Dani said. “Take it. Enjoy yourself. I’ll drop the key off at your office tomorrow on my way to the gym.”

“Oh my God, Dani, you’re a life saver!”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but thanks, Toph. One condition though—” she trailed off.

“What would that be, my dear?” I asked coyly. I knew what was coming.

“No strange women in my bed.”

“Why Dani, I would never—”

She cut me off. “Save it, lover boy. Gotta run. I’ll drop the key tomorrow.”

We hung up.

I had met Danielle Brown, or Dani, as her friends call her, about twelve years earlier when I first got into the mortuary business. She worked for the Omega Counseling Center. I was looking for a place to refer clients of mine. We met and became friends.

Dani left Omega to open her own clinic, The Hope Clinic, that specializes in drug and alcohol recovery counseling, something closer to her heart than what she had been doing as a general family counselor at Omega.

Dani found her life’s calling after her own bout with alcoholism in her late teens. Her mother and father had both been alcoholics. Her mother died in a drunk driving accident when Dani was ten years old, and her father died of liver cirrhosis about three years ago—I buried him. Now fifteen years sober, Dani is a big advocate for local chapters of AA and MADD programs. Though Dani specializes in addiction counseling, she still takes my referrals as a favor to me; I don’t trust my clients with anyone else.

I was embalming a body the morning after our conversation when Dani dropped the keys off with the receptionist, so I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. I couldn’t wait to get down to Lower Matecumbe and enjoy some quality time on the beach sipping a Rum Runner and listening to Ziggy Marley. So excited that I wasn’t even bothered when I was awoken at some god-awful time the following morning to make a removal.

I hired a trade embalmer to cover for me, gave explicit instructions to my apprentice, told my receptionist to hold all my calls, and headed for the Keys. It’s about a six-hour drive from my mortuary to Lower Matecumbe. I put the top down on my car and made it to Key Largo in a little less than five hours. Since I knew Dani’s house would be bone-dry, I stopped at a liquor store for some supplies and then drove another hour down Route 1, where I made a stop in Islamorada for a couple bags of ice. From Islamorada, Dani’s condo is just a couple of miles. I parked my Mustang in the palm-shaded lot and left my small gym bag in the car in favor of unloading the essentials.

I threw open all the windows and immediately set to work pouring Bacardi and Malibu rum over ice in the blender, adding cranberry, orange, and pineapple juice, and topping my creation off with a splash of Bacardi 151 rum. In minutes, I was sitting in a chair on the beach enjoying my Rum Runner and watching the sunset. Honestly, watching the sun go down over the gently lapping waves in the Keys is one of the most beautiful things in the world. All the stress of the past year melted away.

I was about halfway through my cocktail when I felt my phone vibrate. I cursed and decided not to answer it, but checked the caller I.D. It was Dani.

Probably just checking to make sure I arrived all right, I thought. I decided to answer it.

It wasn’t Dani. It was Leo, her husband.

“Topher,” he said. His voice sounded strange. Strained. “You need to come back.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

There was a long pause and then he said, “Dani was involved in a drunk driving accident this evening. She’s dead.”

My head swam. “But how—”

“She was on her way home from my mother’s. She had just dropped the kids off for the weekend—” He gulped. “The driver of the other car hit a guardrail on the freeway and swerved into her. His blood alcohol level was 0.28; he’s fine. But Dani—” There was a pause. I thought I had lost the connection. “They said it was instantaneous…” Leo trailed off.

I sat stunned for a moment. I mumbled something into the phone. I heard a garbled, “Thanks,” and the line went dead.

With a heavy heart, I retraced my steps north to give Dani the last gift I had to give in our friendship.

The world is filled with injustice, but Dani seemed to have been dealt an especially cruel fate after all she had worked for and achieved. Her death was a bitter pill to swallow. I still kick myself that I didn’t come out to say hello to Dani that day she dropped the keys off. I guess what I’m trying to say is: always make your peace with your friends and family because you never know when the last time will be.

CHAPTER 49 Windsor or Prince Albert? Contributed by a club cricket player

When I was a boy I had to get dressed up for everything. Today, everyone is casual. I see kids in church on Sunday wearing jeans, people in fine dining establishments wearing shorts, and of course, people coming to services at my funeral home in any number of… costumes. I see tee shirts, ripped jeans, sneakers, tawdry mini-skirts, and the like. Gone are the days of dark suited men and elegantly dressed women wearing big hats clustered in the funeral parlor under clouds of blue cigarette smoke, whispering in hushed tones. Casual is in, even at a funeral.

Things sure have changed. For the better, I can’t say, but I know when I was a boy my mother insisted I wear a suit for just about every occasion. I can remember wearing a suit on the boardwalk at the shore during family vacations. Can you imagine putting on a suit to go get ice cream? But, growing up as the son of an undertaker, I don’t so much remember having to wear my suit for every outing as I do having my father tie my necktie for me.

I would struggle into the starched white shirt with the detachable collar, and then pull on my ill-fitting little dark blue suit. I grew too fast and it always seemed the sleeves were a little too short and the cuffs of the pants a little too high above the tops of my wingtips. Then, tie in hand, I would run to find my father so he could tie it for me.

“What kind of knot are we going to do today, Sport?” he’d ask. “Windsor or Prince Albert?”

“Dad,” I’d protest. “Just do the normal!”

“All right, Sport,” he’d say, twinkle in his eye. “You know the drill.”

I’d lie down on the couch or the floor and he would hover over me, tongue peeking out the side of his mouth as he laboriously swirled the ends of the tie around into the fancy knots my hands could never seem to master. Then, when he was finished, he’d say, “All done, Sport,” and I’d hop up and off I’d go, all pressed out in my little suit.

I was so used to this almost daily ritual, that sometimes when I lie on my back, to this day, I expect to see my father’s face above mine, the scent of his Old Spice aftershave, his large hands fumbling with my tiny tie.

I could never understand why my mother scolded my father for tying my tie. If she caught my father in the act she would say, “For heaven’s sake, stop it, George!” or, “That’s terrible, George, it’s our son!”

And my father would invariably reply, “What, Mary? It’s the only way I know how to do it on someone else! If you don’t like it, you do it then.”

My mother would then grow silent because she didn’t know how to tie a tie, and the issue would be dropped.

It wasn’t until later in life that I figured out what my mother was talking about.

My father enlisted in the Army at age 18 and served for three years in a graves registry unit before the two bombs were dropped. I can only imagine how horrific his job was as the Allied forces plowed through Europe and he followed in the war machine’s gruesome wake. The job, he told me, gave him compassion for the families of the soldiers he bagged and tagged and then buried under French soil. When the war ended, and he was discharged, he opened up a funeral home in his home state and married my mother. I think helping others deal with death must have been his way of coping with the atrocities he saw during the war.

My father confirmed my theory right before his death in a rare candid conversation. My mother had long since died, and my father lay dying of pancreatic cancer in a nursing home. He told me that he couldn’t stand the fact that “The only thing I could do was collect their tags and properly identify them while their family was about to see a sedan pull up outside their house somewhere in America.”

We talked and reminisced some more. I asked him if he remembered how he used to make me lie down to tie my ties when I was a little boy.

“Yeah, I remember,” he replied.

“Could you really not do it unless I was lying down?” I asked him.

“Hell, no!” he had replied. “I can tie my own tie without lying down. I did it just to get a rise out of your mother!”

“So all those years—”

He cut me off. “Yup, all those years I was just giving your mother a hard time.”

We both had a good laugh.

I tied a Windsor knot in his necktie less than a week after our conversation.

CHAPTER 50 Thaleia Contributed by a fisherman

People are insatiably curious about the particulars of the business I work in. I still haven’t figured out if it’s the mystery surrounding death or the sheer fact that most people are generally ignorant of the basic workings of the business. I get bombarded with all sorts of crazy questions. When I am with a group of people I don’t know I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut when the subject of work comes up because I know the questions that are going to follow. No, the dead do not sit up; no, I have never seen a dead person move, it’s impossible; and yes, I am a man who can do makeup. Then the stupid ringer question always follows: “Do you believe in ghosts?”

I hate this question because not only do I feel compelled to answer truthfully, but it opens up a whole other line of questioning. I tell people that not only do I believe in ghosts, but I can prove their existence. This floors them… always.

“How can you prove it?” the offended party then asks.

“Well, for starters, my wife refuses to sleep at home alone—”

Thus begins my dissertation on how I know ghosts exist. It’s really simple. Allow me to explain:

My wife and I bought a townhouse in the section of the city that’s undergoing an urban renaissance. It’s a massive old run down Victorian we spent the better part of six months renovating. In the chaos of working on the house it was hard to detect the paranormal activity, but once we moved in, we realized that our house had come with its very own ghost.

Before I moved into our new house I didn’t believe in ghosts; it just wasn’t logical. I work in a business where I am around dead people all day. My thought was, once you were dead, that was it, you were dead, end of story. That changed starting with our first night in our new house.

My wife, Sara, and I were awakened sometime in the middle of the night.

“What time is it?” Sara asked.

“I have no idea, our alarm clocks aren’t working,” I said scratching my head, puzzled.

“Do you hear that?” Sara whispered.

“Yeah, sounds like a party,” I said.

And indeed we could hear music downstairs.

“You think it’s some sort of surprise?” she asked. “It sounds like there are a lot of people in our house.” Sure enough, over the music, the sound of muted laughter, talking, and the clinking of ice in glasses wafted up the stairs.

“Who would have thrown it, especially so late like this?” I fumbled for my watch on the nightstand.

“My parents?” Sara suggested.

I looked at my watch irritably. It read after midnight. “Don’t they realize tomorrow is a work day?”

“I don’t know. They’re random like that.”

“Well, let’s go check out the party.” I sighed and swung the bedroom door open. The light from downstairs filtered up into the upstairs hallway.

Sara put on her robe and followed me.

We went downstairs and found nothing but an empty first floor, all the lights on, and the stereo blaring at near full volume.

I ran over and clicked off the stereo receiver. The silence was deafening.

“You did hear the people, right?” Sara said, standing in the middle of the foyer, looking around, bewildered. I just nodded and began turning off the lights.

“Sonofabitch!” I said when we got upstairs. Our alarm clocks were both glowing their red digits. I fingered the softball bat I had retrieved from the basement, a great sense of unease settling over me.

After that, we were very careful about keeping track of which lights and appliances we turned off. The problem persisted. I wondered if my house experienced weird electrical surges that turned things on. I had an electrician come and look at the wiring. He certified my electrical system to be in perfect working condition and suggested, “Maybe you have a ghost.”

I was beginning to think we did. When my car keys started getting hidden, I was sure.

It seemed our ghost had a sense of humor.

My new morning ritual included searching for my car keys. I always hung them on the hook next to the kitchen door when I got home. Every morning they were gone. They were never hard to find. I just had to look a little. Sara, a high school English teacher, nicknamed our ghost Thaleia after the Greek goddess of comedy. She thought it was funny that Thaleia hid my keys. I was glad she was amused.

“Wouldn’t be so funny if it were happening to you,” I grumbled on more than one occasion as I tore through the house, late for work.

In addition to Thaleia’s little jokes, like turning on the televisions, getting into bed with us, and the occasional smell of potpourri in different rooms of the house, she liked to play bigger tricks on us. The biggest one I can recall was during the summer after we moved into our house. Sara and I were going on a week-long cruise to Bermuda. The morning before we were set to leave, Sara called to me from the guest bedroom. “Dan, did you move my dress?”

“What dress?” I replied, frantically packing all my stuff last minute, my usual M.O.

“The one I wanted to wear on one of the formal nights,” Sara said. “It was white with the big red and black polka dots on it.”

“Never seen it.” I had no idea what she was talking about.

She strolled into our bedroom, hands on hips. “Well, damn it, Dan, I left it right there hanging on the frame of the closet in the guest room not more than fifteen minutes ago!” She stamped her foot. “You had to have moved it. It didn’t just get up and walk off on its own!”

“I’ll help you look for it, but I promise, babe, I didn’t touch it.”

We searched high and low and ended up heading off to catch our flight one dress short.

Upon our return a week later our next-door neighbor, Mr. Williams, greeted us from his usual spot on his front porch—leaning against one of the pillars. He tipped his cabbie hat. “Hi there, Sara.” He tipped it again. “Dan. You all coming back from the beach?” He scratched his grizzled face and took a drag of his cigarette. He smoked it out of a holder.

“Nope,” Sara chirped, “just coming back from a wonderful trip to Bermuda.”

“Huh,” Mr. Williams said, and scrunched up his face.

I could tell something didn’t sit well with him. He spent a lot of time on his front porch watching the world go by, and was, essentially, the neighborhood watchman.

“How long you been gone?”

“A week,” Sara replied.

“Well, someone had one hell of a party in your house two nights before last. Lots o’ carrying on, talkin’, laughin’ and such… it went on until all hours. I thought about going over there and havin’ a highball.” He laughed a phlegmy, smoker’s laugh.

Sara and I looked at each other and exchanged glances. We knew who had hosted the party.

“Must have been my brother having his friends over for a party or something,” Sara said.

“Or could have been the ghost,” I chimed in, joking with Mr. Williams.

We all laughed, but for different reasons.

“Well, I hope your brother didn’t ruin the house too much. Sounded right wild,” Mr. Williams said.

We agreed.

When Sara went upstairs to drop her bags, I heard a scream. I ran up the steps and found her pointing to her polka dot dress hanging in the middle of her closet; the other clothes seemed pushed away from it. “Holy—”

“Take it easy, babe. Maybe Thaleia wanted it for that party she threw,” I said.

“Not funny.”

What could we do? We had a ghost. She liked to play with the electricity and hide things from us, end of story. The incident with the dress really got me thinking, though. I began to think about all the people that must have been born and died in the house over the past 120-plus years and I decided to do a little research. I went downtown to the local historical society and located the builder for all the homes on the block and then located the tax records for my house dating back to 1879. On a hunch, I wrote down all the names of the owners of the house and the years the property changed hands.

The next day when I went into work, I went down into the basement where the records are kept and took a look at our funeral service records dating back to 1891, when the company was founded. They are big, dusty, leather-bound ledgers with one gilded page dedicated to each entry. Back then, the owner only did fifty calls a year, so I was able to blow through the records pretty quickly. I knew the names I was looking for. It took me a little over an hour and a half to go ten years and find it.

In 1901, the tax records indicated, a man by the name of S. Roemer sold my house. The 1901 ledger listed an entry for a young girl, aged 17, named Juliana Roemer. Her father’s name was Samuel, and her address matched mine. Cause of death was listed as “cholera.”

In those days, the founder of the mortuary would have driven his horse and buggy out to the house, embalmed Juliana in her bed, and most likely would have laid her out in the parlor of the house for one, two, or three days for the wake. After that, she would have been loaded up on a horse-drawn hearse and taken to the cemetery where real gravediggers, not backhoes, dug her hole and bricked out a grave liner.

I ran my finger down the dusty gilded page and located the section and lot in the old city cemetery where Juliana was laid to rest.

These days, my wife and I go out once a year to the old city cemetery and lay flowers on Juliana’s grave on the anniversary of her death, and though things really haven’t changed at home, I no longer have to hunt for my keys in the morning anymore.

Sara still won’t sleep alone with a ghost in the house.