Down Among the Dead Men: A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician

by Michelle Williams

  It was a cold March evening, and we had an appointment at Phelps & Stayton for four o’clock. It was only up the road from the hospital so I met Mum there. With her she had a packet of playing cards, twenty cigarettes (‘just in case he fancies one,’ although he had given up when Nan got ill after twenty-five years of smoking) and a lighter. These were going in the coffin with Gramp. ‘I’m not putting any photos in with Gramp, Michelle; he won’t be forgetting us,’ Mum said to me before we went in.

  When we entered, Tony treated me as bereaved family, and not like his colleague from the hospital that was with her mum. He took us into the chapel of rest and said he would leave us and to take as long as we wanted. I was amazed by the chapel. Soft lighting, soft music being pumped in the background, that scent of lilies again, but this time serving a purpose by taking away the smell of embalming fluid, as well as heavy, clean carpets and plush office-type chairs.

  In the middle of the room was Gramp, laid out in his coffin. The lining of the coffin was pure white satin. When we had been to Phelps & Stayton to meet with Tony to arrange the funeral, we had a choice of three colours for the lining, baby blue, baby pink or white, all of them being in a strange-looking so-called ‘satin’ material. I had asked Tony if there were any other options available, like possibly cotton padded lining, but no.

  So there was Gramp, looking very smart in his favourite suit, which was now too big for him. I knew that Tony would have pinned it at the back to make it a better fit, and was sure that Mum must have figured this out too, but it was left unspoken, although Mum did check to see if he had his underwear on. I understood this fully, and her reasons why.

  Before Gramp went into the hospice, Mum and Dad had taken on his care. He had a home help a couple of times a week, but my parents decided this was nowhere near enough. So, Mum would go to see Gramp before her shift started at nine in the morning. She would take him the daily national paper, any groceries he needed, daily stuff like bread and milk, make him a cup of tea, help him with any personal necessities, ensure his bed was clean – which had been moved into his living room for the heat and the TV – then she would go off to work only to return at two thirty to do it all again, but this time bringing the local paper. Dad would also go up every evening at six and sort out his mail, make more tea, compose a shopping list for the ‘big’ weekly shop day by day, and ensure Gramp was settled for the evening with good access to the telephone if he needed it. Dad did curse himself for this action one evening though, when Gramp had rung the police to ask them for a cup of tea, as he did not want to disturb Dad.

  So, as in life, Mum needed everything to be right for Gramp, because this made her settled.

  Thank God, he was wearing the underwear that Mum had so meticulously folded and placed into Gramp’s overnight bag for Tony. I had thought at one point that Mum was going to request that she dress Gramp, but no. I was pleased that I had gone to see him. He looked so peaceful. No heavy make-up to hide the imperfections that death brings, just carefully adjusted lighting to present him in the best way. Dressed to perfection, thanks to Tony, and his suit had definitely not been cut up the back and placed over him and tucked under (another trick that some undertakers pull), which I had checked while Mum was faffing with her handbag; as I knew he would, Tony had taken time to dress Gramp properly. Mum placed the packet of playing cards in Gramp’s top pocket, and his cigarettes and lighter on the inside pocket. We were both fully aware that these were going to end up in the fire with Gramp at the crematorium, but it was comforting for us and we needed to do it.

  We stayed for half an hour, sitting either side of the coffin; occasionally, we spoke to Gramp and chatted between ourselves over him. All the time I was there, at the funeral parlour, it had been making things better for me. Although I knew that this was not about me in the slightest, I had been struggling with what to feel and how to react. I needed to come to terms with Gramp’s death and accept it, and had thought I would know how. For God’s sake, I worked with the dead after all, and had done so for quite a while now; I had thought that I was becoming the expert, the expected expert, and that was how I had felt.

  But how wrong I had been.

  When it came to the point that it was happening to me – and well and truly happening – I had no idea what to do, and this frightened and confused me. I couldn’t understand it. I had spent the last few months surrounded by dead people, dealing with them and dealing with their grieving kin. I knew how it worked and knew what to expect because I had seen it on so many people’s faces and heard it in their voices. But it turned out to be quite different. Nothing I had seen or done or learnt in the mortuary prepared me for not being the detached professional who shut up shop and went home in the evening still surrounded by all the family that I knew. There was no getting away from this, no popping down the pub for a few beers and a laugh; Gramp was dead and would remain so for ever.

  So did I put on the front that I thought everyone would expect, that I was not fazed by it and understood that these things happen to us all, the one thing guaranteed in life is death? Or did I show how I truly felt? How I wanted it all to go away and to have him back again? Neither seemed quite right, somehow. I didn’t want to be too cold, but also I thought that the family were relying on me to help them through this terrible time.

  Of course I was starting to understand the whys and hows of death, but that was other people, other people’s relations, not my Gramp.

  FORTY-NINE

  It was about a three-hour trip from where I live to the examination hall in London. The examination was due to start at two in the afternoon and, although the Trust would have paid to put me up in a hotel in London the night before, I decided to travel up that morning. Mum volunteered to keep me company so that I wouldn’t be lonely. We got the nine o’clock train and I spent the journey leafing through the ‘red book’ doing a bit of last-minute cramming while Mum chatted randomly and, I know, tried to take my mind off what was to come. Bless her, she had no effect whatsoever; my stomach was churning and I was having so many hot flushes I thought I was going through the change. I drank so much black coffee I had to make three trips to the toilet, the last time just leaning against the mirror after I’d washed my hands, breathing deeply.

  When we got off the train at Paddington, my legs felt as though someone had taken the bones for organ donation they were so rubbery. I felt sick and, what with the crowds and the smell of the diesel, ready to faint. Mum asked if I was all right, so I smiled and said, Yes, feeling anything but. The Tube ride was even worse – how do people cope with that every day? – so that by the time we got to the exam hall I felt hot and dirty and ready to collapse.

  As we still had well over an hour to go, I suggested to Mum that we stop for a coffee; not that I wanted another one, only to sit down and try to regain some normality. Mum had a sandwich but I just sat and stared at another bloody cup of coffee. All that morning I had been receiving texts wishing me good luck and now that the time for the exam actually approached, they got more and more frequent. At quarter to two I received a text from Ed telling me that I had nothing to worry about, which was nice but a long way from the truth. Before I switched the phone off, the last text I received was from Luke. We left the café and walked the two hundred yards to the examination hall. I couldn’t believe I was having to sit an exam again. It felt like a dream, and not a nice one at that.

  The building was huge, and the room we were shown to was also massive. High ceilings and big windows. There were about twelve of us in total, and we were each shown to a small individual desk that had a sheet of plain paper and a name tag with a number on it, our own personal candidate number. There was a man walking around, and he asked us all to put our bags and coats into the corner of the room. I thought I was going faint, but luckily we all had a glass and a small jug of water on our desks, which I do believe saved me. We sat quietly and scanned each other. What I noticed most was the age gap. Although there were three people who looked about the s
ame age as me, there was no one younger. And, without sounding rude, all the others looked forty plus. The males in the room were big. Tall men with big arms, very burly-looking but with gentle faces and nothing like Graham and Clive in the muscles or stature department. You could feel the tension in the room, but I was pleased I could sense that everyone was in the same boat and feeling the same pressure. The large door to the room opened and in walked a portly, smartly dressed lady in high heels carrying a large brown sealed envelope. The exam papers had arrived.

  There was a lot of shuffling in seats and the portly lady must have felt everyone’s eyes following her to the front of the room. She positioned herself behind a large desk and turned to face us all, and welcomed us. It was at this point that I wanted to curl up and die. This was it. No going back. My main thought was that I was going to flunk this completely. I was going to be given this exam paper and not know a single answer. Panic had well and truly set in, and as I looked around the room, it was obvious that I was not the only one feeling that emotion.

  The portly lady introduced herself as Miss Rayne, the examinations officer. She informed us that we would have two hours, starting at 2 p.m., to complete the paper. We should attempt to answer every question, but under no circumstances write on the exam sheet that was about to be handed out. She walked around the room placing on every desk a thin exercise book with a cover that had space to fill in all our details and contained several A4 lined pages with a margin on each. She made it clear that we were to number the questions we were answering in correspondence with the exam paper.

  Once she had handed out the exercise books, she opened the brown envelope and did the same lap of the room, placing an exam sheet face down on everyone’s desk with the instruction that it should not be turned over until we were told to do so. I was glad I was sitting down. I think if I had been standing I would have fallen over by now. My cheeks were glowing and, although it was not a particularly hot building, my body temperature was certainly above average. As Miss Rayne placed the green examination sheet on my desk, I saw there were two questions on the back. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to look at them, but being the sort of person that if placed in front of a big red button and told not to press it . . . well, I just had to.

  The two questions both asked me to pick one of the three choices given, and answer in essay style. The relief was so massive that I could have cried. I was actually confident I could answer at least one on both after quickly scanning them, which was all I needed. I knew that this was at least 50 per cent of the exam paper and, although it had different levels of awards, 50 per cent was a pass, and that was all I wanted. I wasn’t worried about honours or merits; just a pass would be fine by me, and that was all my family, Luke and work would want.

  We were (again) informed by Miss Rayne that we could answer the questions in any order we felt comfortable, as long as they were numbered. This was obviously very important. The second hand on the large clock on the wall reached the hour and we were given the command to begin. I started with the back of the paper, almost fearing the front, and answered one question on admitting bodies to the mortuary and the relevant paperwork. This was a doddle and repetition played a big part as I ran through in my mind what Maddie and I did every morning, then just put it on paper.

  The second of the essay questions I chose to answer was on how you would take extra precautions when performing a high-risk autopsy, which means one on someone who has died from a highly infectious disease such as hepatitis or HIV. Clive began to speak loudly in my mind.

  All your PPE as you would anyway, Michelle, but wear a chain-mail glove on the hand you retract the organs with . . .

  Not your knife hand, the hand that is in the body, because that is the one you will most likely cut . . .

  Do not leave the post-mortem room under any circumstances . . .

  Keep your table free of blood splashes and make sure you keep the floor clean, and don’t think twice about wrapping the mop around the pathologist’s ankles if they spill blood on the floor, they can be messy buggers, mind, up the walls, ceiling and everywhere, keep it clean . . .

  The infections are in the blood, Michelle, and it only takes a drop, NO needle stick injuries either, under any circumstances, and continue to disinfect as you go along . . .

  But most importantly, you cover yourself up, keep yourself protected as you are important, don’t do anything you feel is a risk to yourself or others, and take your time. Always ask a senior if you’re not sure, they like that in the exam as well if you mention it . . .

  As I came out of my thoughts, if Clive had been there I would have kissed him. The question was answered and half of the task done. Then, the fear came back and I took a couple of minutes before I turned the page. This was ‘fill in the gaps’ time. Written on the paper were twenty-five answers with blanks in the sentences; some had one blank, some had two. All we had to do was write down the answers in the exercise book. Luckily I knew about seventeen of these answers and had a random guess at the rest. By the time I had finished and read through, it was three thirty. Half an hour to waste. I placed my pen down and just sat there. Miss Rayne picked up on this and came over to me and whispered that I could leave if I was finished. I was out like a shot.

  The fresh air hit me like never before when I came out of the building, and the relief that it was over was surreal, but within minutes I began to feel I needed to go back in and tweak my answers, because I was seriously starting to doubt myself. There was no way this was going to happen though, and my chance was over. I switched my phone back on and, between the late text messages coming through, rang Mum, who was in a café just down the street. When I met her, she had an empty coffee cup and I insisted that we headed for the nearest pub for some food and something to calm my nerves.

  There was nothing I could do now apart from wait and try to forget all about it.

  FIFTY

  And then, during the seven weeks I had to wait for the results of my ordeal in the exam hall, it went really quiet; it’s like that in the mortuary – people dropping dead like it’s going out of fashion for a few weeks, then suddenly they decide that they want to hang on for a bit, so we have nothing to do. I used to long for days like this – in my previous job, any down time from the stresses of dealing with special needs people was a plus – but in the mortuary, there is only so much cleaning, tidying, ordering and paperwork you can do. After that, it tends to be sitting in the office, drinking coffee, gossiping and seeing to undertakers and relatives coming for viewings.

  On days like this, Clive amused himself and us with stories and observations about what was going on around us. The mortuary office has a window that not only looks across to the A&E department but also allows us to see who is coming into the back entrance of the pathology department. Clive had nicknames for a lot of them – but his favourite was Ray, the man who came in every morning to sweep and clean the floors and put out the rubbish. Ray was about seventy years old and possibly the most miserable man in the country. He had only two topics of conversation – the weather and the football – and on both of these he could bore for England. He was a rabid Everton supporter and his life was therefore full of woe, which he spread around with great relish; a rainy weekend on which Everton got hammered four nil by Liverpool, and we knew that if he caught you in the corridor you’d feel like slashing your wrists after ten minutes. Being a rugby girl with no interest in football, I would avoid him like the plague. But there was no real malice in Clive. He liked to enjoy life, even if much of it was spent doing things that would turn most people’s stomachs.

  We knew that the quiet period wouldn’t last and, sure enough, it ended quite suddenly with a multiple pile-up on the M5. It happened during the morning rush hour, and just before I left the house, I saw the first news flashes on the morning TV. There was carnage with at least six cars and an HGV involved; it looked from the pictures as if there had been a bad fire, so I figured we’d be getting some work from it. The traffi
c in the town centre was heavy because they’d closed both lanes of the motorway and a lot of the northbound traffic was being diverted that way.

  When I got in (fifteen minutes late), Clive was already on the phone to the Coroner’s office, looking serious. Maddie and I made coffee and listened in on his side of the conversation, from which we gathered that there were three dead, all from one car. It had gone under the HGV and then caught fire, with all three of them trapped inside. I felt sick when I heard this and I could see that Maddie felt none too good either. Neither of us had seen a fire death before and we weren’t looking forward to our first experience.

  The undertakers brought the bodies in just before noon and, instead of the normal banter, no one said anything much. The dead were in body bags made of thick black plastic so you couldn’t see any of what was inside, or even judge the shape, but the ash and charcoal on the outside of the bags gave me all sorts of nightmares about what I would see when we opened them. And there was a smell, too; it was one I’d never encountered before in the mortuary, but it was very familiar. It brought back memories of summer meals, when you’ve eaten everything you want and the meat left on the barbecue is too far gone to be rescued. When we transferred the bodies from the undertakers’ trolleys to ours, two of them were light – perhaps only half the weight of a normal adult – and the feel through the body bag was all wrong, as if these bodies weren’t made of flesh but of something harder.

  Later that afternoon, Neville Stubbs sent through the E60 forms from which we could see that the dead were a mother, father and seventeen-year-old daughter, by the name of Franklin. They had been returning from a short break in Devon where they had been visiting friends. Ed, who was going to do the autopsies the next day, came down and read what Neville had sent. Then he got on the phone and rang the Coroner’s office, telling Neville that before he started the PMs he wanted to see the police reports on the accident, as well as any photographs of the scene that SOCOs had taken. Then he turned to us with a sad smile on his face. ‘It’s not going to be nice in there tomorrow, but it’s got to be done. I’m sure you’ll cope.’