Does This Mean You'll See Me Naked?

by Robert D. Webster

  BODY ART

  Sometimes we funeral directors do occasionally marvel at the physical oddities we encounter. As a college student working in the county morgue, I saw several decedents whose attributes were, well, noteworthy. Some took the form of off-the-wall embellishments.

  A navy man lay on the table one morning; he sported tattoos over nearly every inch of his body, save for his hands and face. A detailed battleship, complete with billowing smokestacks, festooned his chest. On his back, from neck to buttocks, was an intricately designed butterfly. Around his neck was a broken line with the words Cut Here in bold letters. The stereotypical Mom was emblazoned on each bicep, and on each forearm was a buxom lady, each one naked and well endowed. On each leg, from groin to ankle, were hissing snakes with open mouths and forked tongues. And, of course, he had the prerequisite love on his four left fingers and hate on the four right ones. (All such body art is considered a distinguishing mark and is therefore noted and photographed by morgue personnel.)

  I entered the morgue another day to find the coroner holding a magnifying glass to the private parts of a naked man. As I stood next to the body, the coroner handed me the magnifying glass and told me to check out the head of the man’s penis. In full detail was a tattoo of a housefly.

  A few months later, we used the magnifying glass again to observe another penis tattoo, this one reading Cherry Buster. I had to wonder just how drunk that person must have been when he decided to get that tattoo. Perhaps the finest tattoo I have seen to date, though, is a red-and-white barber pole design, no doubt meant to resemble a candy cane.

  Tattoos on deceased women are usually less brazen—flowers, butterflies, and the occasional Harley-Davidson insignia. However, I’ve also encountered Jimmy’s Toys emblazoned above a woman’s ample breasts; Honey Pot, complete with an elaborate arrow directing the viewer to the vaginal area; and most incredibly, Deliveries in Rear inscribed just above a young lady’s buttocks.

  Back when I got started, there were not many piercings of note, unlike today. Now men have rings attached to their penises and scrota, women have rings in their clitorises, and both males and females sport nipple rings. Among the more elaborate piercings I’ve seen was that of a young woman who had both nipples and her clitoris pierced, and all three were connected. A gold chain attached to her nipples hung downward in a U shape across her chest with another chain attaching the center of the nipple chain to the ring located between her legs. When her mother asked me for any jewelry her daughter might have been wearing, I nervously explained my findings. Although upset, she graciously accepted the items following the funeral.

  FACE DOWN AND NAKED

  In my business, prurience, or at least the suggestion of it, is an ongoing issue. I once prearranged the funeral services of a man who insisted that he be placed in his casket completely naked and face down. At first I assumed that this was his interpretation of the old cliché, “Lay me out face down and naked, so the whole world can kiss my ass.”

  However, his explanation was far less dramatic. He’d always slept on his stomach and in the nude, he said, and he desired to be positioned that very way for burial. Also, his casket should be closed, for obvious reasons. I drew red asterisks all over the front of his prearrangement sheet, so that in case I was away when this gentleman passed on, others would be aware of his wishes.

  When he died two years later, I informed his daughter of his request, and she readily agreed to it. I placed the man on a dressing table, covered him with a sheet, and then allowed the daughter to view her father and say good-bye before proceeding with the aforementioned arrangements.

  Honoring requests of the deceased is something we pride ourselves on, and those requests take many forms. Many family members have expressed to me that their deceased loved one would have enjoyed a less-than-traditional send-off—more of a party atmosphere than the normal visitation and ceremony complete with traditional hymns and a consoling sermon from a man of the cloth. Although many mention a desire to do something different, I can think of very few who have actually carried out such a plan.

  There was one memorable one, however. Twenty years ago, I arranged for a visitation and service to be held in the social room of an exclusive retirement center. The facility was ahead of its time, without peer. Separate condominium-like housing was available for those who were still active and could drive their own cars, and there were also assisted living areas and a nursing home setting. The gentleman who had passed away was a wealthy business owner. His three grown children applauded his zest for life and preference for the finer trappings. His oldest son told me that his father always wanted to have a send-off that involved his Dixieland bandmates, with whom he had played for many years. They had marched on the field at Cincinnati Reds and Bengals games, and the group had remained quite close into their old age.

  So the social room at the retirement community was bedecked not with black bunting but with bright green ribbons and noisemakers normally reserved for New Year’s Eve. The kitchen staff strolled around with serving trays, offering finger food and alcoholic beverages. I stood at the room’s rear, pleased by what I observed—folks of all ages eating, drinking, and toasting the deceased. Here was the life of the party, the one they’d all come to honor, lying in a solid bronze casket, dressed in a pair of black tuxedo trousers, a white ruffled shirt, green satin bow tie, and a red-and-white striped sports jacket. His bandmates were off to one side loudly playing “Sweet Georgia Brown” and having the time of their lives. When the band took a break, they all congregated at their late friend’s casket, each tipping a glass in his honor.

  The deceased man had left behind a wife and a wealth of memories, especially from their annual trip to Hawaii. At the funeral the next day, in recognition of his love for our fiftieth state, I was asked to play the music of Don Ho. His favorite song? “Tiny Bubbles.” Everyone in attendance received a small bottle of soap bubbles and the obligatory wand. As the mourners and family members passed the casket, they administered a bubbly tribute as the song wafted in the background.

  Sometimes, associates of the deceased attempt to honor certain requests without considering the presence and possible opposition of family members. A motorcycle gang once approached me at a visitation and ordered me to take their late friend out of his casket and place him onto a chapel sofa so that he would appear to be relaxing with his buddies. I refused—and amazingly I had to explain to this band of drunks that perhaps the man’s parents and grandparents might take offense. The group’s mouthpiece adamantly claimed that the deceased had always insisted that he did not want to be in a casket for his visitation and asked me to place him on the couch immediately. After a few more minutes of explanations, the others finally conceded my point, apparently realizing how disrespectful such a move would have been.

  Disrespect can take many forms. A young man killed in an auto accident reposed in his casket with gospel hymns playing softly in the background. His parents were very religious and appreciated the solemnity of Christian music for a churchlike atmosphere. But the decedent’s hoodlum friends requested that I instead play the rap CDs they had brought along. I looked over the cases and discovered warnings proclaiming that the talentless ramblings contained extremely explicit, profane, and sexually degrading lyrics, obviously inappropriate for a funeral. I showed the CDs to the parents, and to my surprise, they said to go ahead and play them. Well, after about three minutes into the first selection, the father frantically begged me to go back to the hymns. He and his family had probably never heard the bittersweet recollections of a “ho” shaking “the junk in her trunk” and feverishly fondling many male appendages until they “shot their spunk.”

  When a fun-loving seventy-year-old attorney died, his widow expressed to me his desire to have no minister present. One of her late husband’s law firm partners would officiate at the funeral instead. Once everyone was seated in the chapel, I escorted the speaker to the podium, noting that he had clearly had a few too many martinis
. Not overly concerned, though, I took my position outside the chapel doors to watch the ceremony on a closed-circuit television screen.

  What I saw and heard was most amazing. This fellow began the ceremony with offensive jokes about Jews, blacks, homosexuals, and Mexicans. It turned out that this was the daily water-cooler banter of the deceased and his colleagues; therefore, such material was deemed perfectly appropriate for his funeral. His widow did not even seem offended. Quite a few attendees, however, succumbed to embarrassment and departed, red-faced, through the rear chapel door. Many more left in disgust as the speaker began an X-rated appreciation of various female attributes.

  Bury Me with Buster

  Honoring last requests is often a simple matter of inclusion. Over the years I have placed myriad items inside caskets—fishing rods, a bow and arrow, golf clubs (sometimes a whole set), golf balls, basketballs, autographed baseballs, baseball gloves, and other sports memorabilia, along with complete baseball, football, and basketball uniforms. Unloaded handguns, rifles, and shotguns often find their way into the casket—sometimes because the deceased was an avid hunter, but just as often because someone apparently didn’t want certain family members to take possession. I’ve included playing cards, bingo cards, lucky pennies, room keys from hotels in Las Vegas and other destinations, cigarettes, marijuana joints, pet rocks, favorite books, a tape recorder, a glass eye, sexual devices, jewelry (some expensive, some not), apples, oranges, buckeyes, walnuts, photographs, leaf collections, coin collections, Penthouse and Playboy magazines (once, an entire collection), and occasionally even a racier publication.

  Then there are the dead animals—cremated remains of beloved dogs and cats or the recently euthanized dog, which is placed in a plastic bag and laid at the feet of the deceased.

  One recent casket-depositing incident caused quite a furor. The late gentleman was thrice married and divorced, and all three of his ex-spouses insisted on attending the services. His current female companion abruptly requested that I remove one of those ex-wives from the funeral home as soon as possible. “Why?” I inquired. She informed me that the woman had just peeled off her panties and placed them in her late ex-husband’s hand.

  The majority of gestures are loving, however. An elderly gentleman friend contacted me when his wife passed away. After the service and with the room empty of mourners, he and I approached the casket. He then handed me a $50 bill and requested that I slip it into his wife’s bra. Apparently it was a tradition of sorts—whenever she went someplace without him, he would playfully slip $50 into her bra so she would always have some money with her. This time would be no exception.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In most cases, the deceased human body is not the most pleasant sight to behold. Immediately after death, many changes begin to take place: discoloration, bowel and bladder evacuations, drainage from the mouth and nose.

  Only once can I recall a time when a dead body was actually good looking. On Christmas Day, 1978, I was called to a newly constructed apartment complex to remove a twenty-four-year-old suicide victim. A young woman, apparently distraught over a recent breakup with her boyfriend, had hung herself in a clothes closet. This was long before CSI, Cold Case Files, and Drs. Henry Lee and Michael Baden. So the responding life-squad personnel cut the woman down and laid her on the bed, coincidentally just as a funeral director would—on her back, a pillow under her head, legs together, and hands across her abdomen, left over right. They had called the coroner, but he did not respond—it was 1978, remember. He simply phoned me and verbally released the body. Since there would be no autopsy, I could make the removal immediately.

  The figure lying on the bed was at first breathtaking. She resembled Marilyn Monroe, and her breasts protruded straight upward from her chest like twin Mt. Fujis. There was no droop to one side, which is normal in death. There was no sheet covering her, because life-squad personnel and the police photographer were as utterly stunned as I was. The only other woman in the room was a paramedic. She touched them and testified that those breasts were indeed not God given but saline implants. I had never heard of such a thing. By 1970s standards, this young woman was something of a trendsetter.

  A closer examination of her body revealed that, except for her breasts, there were the usual damning influences of death—her mouth and nose were full of foamy lung material; a deep, ear-to-ear gash reddened under her chin from her ligature of choice (a Venetian-blind cord), and the increasingly pungent odor of body wastes filled the room. So much for beauty. So much for leaving a good-looking corpse, as the actor John Derek said in the film Knock on Any Door. Within moments of death, that’s usually an impossibility.

  DEATH BY DEFECATION

  I learned another valuable lesson once when removing a nude, deceased man from his second-floor bathroom: There are never enough linens on a mortuary cot. The man in question had just drawn a bath and was sitting on the toilet. He died while he was still on the commode.

  My assistant and I draped a bed sheet across the bathroom floor, then placed the decedent on the sheet and wrapped it around him. We had left our mortuary cot at the foot of the stairs near the front door, since it was not possible to carry it up to the bathroom. We began to hoist the decedent to move him downstairs. My assistant’s left arm was under the nape of the man’s neck to support his head. His right arm was under the small of his back. I had placed my left arm there, too, with my right arm under his knees. As we made our descent down the stairs, I felt a warm sensation on my thigh, followed by more warmth on the top of my right foot, accompanied by a familiar odor. I strained against the weight in my arms in an attempt to discover the source. Just as I suspected, the decedent’s bowels had given way in a shower of feces that trailed all the way down the carpeted steps and all over our pants and feet.

  After placing the decedent on the mortuary cot, I asked the family if I might use their telephone. I called several carpet-cleaning companies and ultimately reached one that would come to the residence right away. Of course, I paid the carpet cleaner myself, still resplendent in my odiferous attire. But from then on, I always made certain I brought an extra three or four sheets along with the cot. If we had wrapped the man in several sheets, rather than just one, the problem would have easily been contained within the linens. And in most situations, people normally are wearing some sort of clothing, at least pajamas or underwear.

  A house call to remove a decedent from a private residence, as opposed to a medical facility, often involves entering the person’s bathroom. Such scenarios used to dumbfound me. However, an obvious case can be made in that the elderly sometimes experience difficulty with their bowel movements, and the inherent strain may be a contributing factor in their deaths. We call it “death by defecation.”

  Many years ago, the county coroner summoned me to a residence. As I wrote down the street and house number, it sounded very familiar. Once I turned onto the street, I realized that I was on my way to the home of a kindly old minister friend. Over the years, I had driven to his house several times to take him to the funeral home to preside over services.

  As I pulled in front, I noted an ambulance parked nearby. The EMTs and two police officers stood on the minister’s porch smoking cigarettes, waiting for me to arrive. Everybody smoked back then, so usually we all lit up and discussed our plan for removing the body. But the assembled group appeared to be sizing me up. I quickly discovered why. It seems that my friend had expired while perched on the commode, and he had subsequently slumped against the door of the tiny bathroom, his full weight pressing it closed.

  We all ventured inside to allow me to survey the situation and offer my expert evaluation of possible procedures. The EMTs and police officers decided that, since I was the skinniest one present and familiar with the decedent, I should be the one to climb inside a small window, squeeze my way into the tiny bathroom, move the man away from the interior door, and thus allow for proper removal.

  I took off my fairly new, double-knit suit coat an
d, with some assistance, delivered myself into the bathroom through a window never designed for a six-foot-three man. In those days, I was agile enough to stick my left leg into the room first, and then swing my right leg and stand upright without even banging my head on the upper window frame.

  I was certainly saddened to see my friend deceased—but also to encounter him in such a state. He still held a Newsweek magazine, clutched in his motionless right hand. I have since removed many decedents from bathrooms, but more often they are lying on the floor. However, it is not uncommon to have to pluck a person from atop a commode and then place him on a mortuary cot.

  Still, a house call (when death occurs at a private residence) tests the strength and sometimes the ingenuity of those doing the removal. A ranch-style home or any residence in which the deceased is located on the ground level is a huge plus. In at least half the cases I encounter, however, my hopes are dashed when I learn the person is on the second or third floor.

  New home construction considers not the lowly funeral director. Wide doorways and high-ceilinged atria in the living areas often give way to narrow upstairs hallways and doorways barely wide enough for a mortuary cot, let alone an ambulance gurney. People should keep this in mind—they’re likely to need ambulances long before they need funeral directors.

  Long ago, when I was a young and foolish teenager, I assisted my older brother, then also a budding funeral director, on several occasions to run ambulance calls and make removals. One morning we were called to the home of a wealthy family. The homeowner’s drunken black sheep of a brother had died on the mansion’s third floor. So we left our cot near the front door (it weighs nearly one hundred pounds and is difficult to maneuver to higher floors) and clambered up the steps to survey the situation. We had brought with us a collapsible device called a litter, which is basically three steel poles supporting a thick canvas sheet, and commonly used to traverse stairs.