by Todd Harra
Making a quick decision, I ran back up the ramp and got re-buzzed in. I found the surly nurse and explained my situation to her.
She looked at me like I was crazy. “Honey,” she said, “I just got off disability. There’s no way I’m going out and lifting something heavy like that. Once Mrs. Jardeen went through that door she was no longer my responsibility.”
“What?” I was incredulous that she could be that callous.
The nurse pursed her lips.
“Is there anyone in here that can help me?” I nearly screamed at her. I pounded on the counter, my eyes bulging. I stopped and collected myself.
The nurse didn’t seem concerned. She pulled a strand of hair and looked at the ceiling, deep in thought. After an eternity she said, “Nah. I can’t think of anyone on tonight that can help you.”
Oh, great, I had visions of jumping over the countertop and wringing her apathetic neck.
“Oh, wait,” she said. “Jamal, he can help you.”
My spirits rose, but she quickly dashed them. “No, wait, he called in. Ain’t coming in on account of the storm.”
“Wonderful.” I didn’t know anyone in the city who could help me. I’d have to call my partner and wait for him to drive the twenty or so minutes. “Can I use your phone?” I asked.
When she offered it up, I nearly ripped it out of her hands. As I told the dispatcher at the funeral home what had happened, I heard him mutter, “Christ,” under his breath. I wanted to strangle him. He was in his nice warm home sleeping and judging me! But I kept it together long enough to slam down the phone on him after he told me he’d put a call in to my partner.
I stalked back out to the van, so mad at myself I wanted to scream. I like things to work as planned. I think it’s the Army in me. When I screw up and the plan goes awry, it makes me furious. There was nothing I could do at that point. So I did the only thing I could do for Mrs. Jardeen—I dusted off the snow that was accumulating on the cot cover and got in the van to wait for my partner.
Several cars pulled up behind me flashing their lights and honking, and each time I had to get out and tell them to back up and detour. I wasn’t about to leave Mrs. Jardeen alone, even for a second. It took forty-five minutes for my partner to arrive due to the snow and ice. He later told me that he wanted to laugh, but after he saw the murderous look in my eye decided against it.
The next day Tom called me into his office. I thought for sure he was going to fire me, and to be perfectly honest, I was so embarrassed I wanted to quit.
“Nicholas,” he said to me, “I heard about your little incident last night.” He laced his fingers together and stuck them under his chin. His serious face melted into a mischievous smile. “Sounds like you had quite the little adventure in the city.”
“Yes,” I said, sitting rigid in the chair facing his desk. “It was an absolute nightmare.”
He laughed.
“What?” I demanded.
“You should see your face!”
“What about it?”
“You’re so serious.” Tom was belly laughing. “I bet you were a sight to see last night. Blocking the street… body laying on the sidewalk… nurses basically telling you to go chase yourself.” The laughter was shaking his entire body. “Nicholas, you’re too serious.”
“I like to be as professional as I can—”
Tom cut me off. “I can remember this one time I let a cot fall off a ramp into the bushes. The ramp had no railing and I drove the cot right over the edge.” Tears were coming to his eyes. “A pebble got caught in the wheel and it turned suddenly and I basically lost control of it. Boy, was my father mad at me that day! Man, oh man. He wouldn’t talk to me for the longest time. And you’re sitting here all upset because you slipped on the ice. What? Did you think I was going to fire you?”
“Well, yeah—”
“Nicholas, you’ve got to lighten up a little. I realize you do your best all the time, but this job is so unpredictable you have to laugh sometimes or you’ll cry. The important thing is you didn’t hurt yourself last night. That nurse should be tied and quartered, but what can you do? Honestly, Nicholas, what can you do? You did the right thing, and that’s all I can ask. I wish I had two more of you.”
“Thanks. I guess,” I said.
I left his office that day feeling puzzled but relieved. I did learn an important lesson about my limitations. Our motto in the 7th Infantry was volens et potens, willing and able. My new motto, a quote by Horace, is: mors ultima linea rarum est, death is everything’s final limit. Working around death sure has showed me some of my own limitations.
And I still hate watercolor.
CHAPTER 12
Human Wedge
Contributed by a shameless karaoke singer
Where do most unexpected home deaths occur? Think about it. The bathroom. Picture this: you’re not feeling well, so you get out of bed or your comfy chair and when you stand up, the feeling persists. You can’t put your finger on it, but the uneasiness is spreading. Something just isn’t right. What do you do? You head for the nearest bathroom, moving as fast as you can. Something is really not right. You walk through the bathroom door and keel over, dead.
I have hauled countless people out of bathtubs, off toilets, and off the bathroom floor over the years, all to the same tune of the spouse in the background saying, “I don’t know what happened. He/she was fine last night. I heard him/her get up and get a drink of water around midnight, and then I found him/her like this in the morning.” It’s always the same story, different bathroom.
The one incident I vividly remember is when I went in to do a removal, not through the bathroom door, but through a hole chopped in the side of the house.
An elderly gentleman lived alone. After a few days of not seeing the man, and the newspapers piling up, a concerned neighbor keyed herself in. The gentleman’s keys were on the kitchen counter as was his wallet, and there was a strange smell coming from his bathroom. The woman called out but got no answer. After trying the knob and finding it unlocked, she tried pushing on the door. It was jammed, as if a large weight was lying on the other side. Fearing for her friend’s safety, the woman dialed 9-1-1.
The police and firemen showed up. After some investigation, one of the cops, a friend of mine, called me to get over to the house. “I know decomp when I smell it,” he said. Decomp is short for decomposition. “I know he’s dead in there. The old guy must’ve had a heart attack in the bathroom and fallen against the door.”
“Family?” I inquired.
“Didn’t have any. I’m calling on behalf of the neighbor lady. She told me she’s going to be making the arrangements.”
“M.E.?”
“Medical Examiner already called the doctor. They don’t want the case. Old guy had a long history of heart problems. He was a ticking time bomb. Once we get him out and the paramedics pronounce, he’ll be all yours.”
“Be right over,” I said.
I puttered over in my hearse at my leisure. I knew it would be a while before the firemen took the door off its hinges and the paramedics pronounced his death from “the field.”
As soon as I walked in the house, I knew the man was dead; decomp has a distinct smell if you’re accustomed to it. The firemen and policemen were in an intense huddle.
I banged my cot through the door. “Pronounce yet?” I asked the group.
My friend broke off to tell me the news. “We haven’t been able to get the door open, even with four of us throwing our weight against it.”
“Can’t you take it off the hinges?” I asked.
“Hinge pins are mounted on the inside of the bathroom. And, of course, there’s no bathroom window.”
“Great. So now what?” That’s when I found out what the huddle had been about.
The firemen were in favor of cutting the door open with a chainsaw, but the police officers were worried about the dead man accidentally getting mauled in the process. The firemen were trying to reason with t
he officers about their skill level, but the officers were having none of it. I threw my two cents in and sided with the officers. I didn’t feel like doing any reconstructive work, especially from a chainsaw. It went back and forth until, finally, the decision was made to break in from the outside of the house so as not to harm the dead man. The firemen liked that solution; it gave them something more substantial to break than a simple door.
The firemen went to work with sledgehammers and wrecking bars, first on the brick, then the lath, and finally the plaster and tile. They made a huge mess and a tiny hole, right above where the pre-formed ABS plastic bathtub was. They didn’t want to smash the tub up and risk damaging the house too much so they refrained from making the hole any larger. Great idea—break through an exterior wall but leave the $200 bathtub alone, I thought.
The house sat on a raised foundation. The hole was a good five-and-a-half feet off the ground. Being the smallest person at the site and the one most accustomed to handling the dead, I was nominated by my cop friend to go through the hole. After a lot of bullying and cajoling by both the firemen and the cops, I accepted the dubious honor of being stuffed through a hole in the side of a house into a bathroom where a dead man lay.
I stripped down to my undershirt and suit pants, and then allowed them to hoist me up and stuff me through the wall. I sat on the biggest fireman’s shoulders and dove through the wall while the men pushed my legs in. I ended up in a dusty heap inside the mint green bathtub, no worse for wear, and from there, it was a cakewalk. The rescue men hadn’t been able to push the dead man out of the way because the bathroom was so cramped that he was between the tub and door and there was nowhere to push him. He had made the perfect door wedge.
I do a lot of different things and am exposed to a lot of unique situations in my job, but I think this one was probably the most off-the-wall.
At least it was a ranch house.
PART II
Where Art Meets Science
If I want to get my wife’s hackles up, I just ask her if she needs a little help with her makeup. She has never conceded my superior skills, but I point out that I have to be able to do both men and women, whereas she is a one-trick pony, so to speak. You’ll see a fantastic example of this type of situation in “Men and Makeup,” which relates the story of a male funeral director doing a (live) woman’s makeup under “interesting” circumstances.
On a more serious note, when people hear the term “makeup” in conjunction with the dead, they immediately think of Bozo the Clown. But the real trick to applying makeup to the dead is to make it appear as if it isn’t there (unless the woman was noticeably fond of makeup). That being said, there is a learning curve, and in my zeal I may have accidentally painted on people what looked like those children’s candy wax lips.
Makeup, body positioning, and arranging the clothes just so are all artistic aspects of the undertaker’s job with the end goal of creating a perfect memory portrait of the deceased. I think the term “mortuary science” is kind of misleading; it’s certainly a science, but it’s just as much an art—especially when embalming a body.
Embalming is the cornerstone of our business. The act of seeing a loved one dead is an important first step in the grieving process. Whereas a scientist follows strict protocol when performing an assay, an artist does the opposite, using whatever means necessary to achieve his vision. When preparing a body, the embalmer must be part scientist, part artist. My uncle likes to say, “Anyone can hit the fastball, but the true test is in that curveball.” Though a cliché, it’s very pertinent to the preparation room because you never know what you’re going to be up against.
The first story in this section is certainly a “curveball,” but not because of the preparation. The fireworks didn’t start until well after the body was embalmed, and the brother of the dead man came in to view the body. I think the problem was that he embalmed him too well; you can judge for yourself in “The Man Who Cheated Death.”
This section is a behind-the-scenes look at how we go about creating a suitable “memory portrait” (through embalming, dressing, casketing, and cosmetizing) of the decedent for the family. So come, join us for a little art, science… and makeup.
CHAPTER 13
The Man Who Cheated Death
Contributed by a member of the Sunday Martini Club
I remember well the first body I embalmed solo, but maybe for different reasons than other embalmers remember their firsts. I followed this particular call from the removal to the burial, and it was my first experience outside the classroom as a “real” bona fide undertaker.
The mortuary received the death call sometime in the early afternoon and I went with a colleague to the man’s house to make the removal. He died in a hospital bed set up in the living room. It had been a slow death; I could tell by the lines of pain frozen into the features of his face and the lines of worry etched into his widow’s face. The terminal illness had left a man dead and a woman not quite alive.
I offered my condolences. The widow wept. My co-worker and I did our jobs.
When we got back to the mortuary, my colleague had a bereaved family of his own coming in to make funeral arrangements and left me to my own devices. “You going to be all right?” he asked me.
“Sure,” I replied. “I know what I’m doing.”
He looked at me with concern. “You ever done one by yourself?” The man was a seasoned embalmer, and generally a nice person. The implication in his voice was: This could be a difficult case.
I sidestepped the question. “I’ll be fine. I promise. And if I need help I’ll just wait until you’re done with your arrangements.”
He nodded, seemed satisfied, and went to meet with his family. I had just recently gotten my license and had only started working for the firm two weeks prior. I had been closely monitored and trained during my first two weeks, but on this day we happened to be especially busy, so there was nobody to help me in the preparation room. This was to be my first solo embalming trip.
Death hadn’t spared this poor soul’s dignity—as it never seems to. “Death be not proud,” I muttered the line from Donne as I undressed the man on the embalming table, “though some have called thee—.” I had been a literature major at East Carolina, and after a brief, failed stint in the publishing industry, I had left disillusioned and broken. In the words of Wordsworth, I took a lesson from the dog and returned to what I knew; what I had grown up with—undertaking.
I washed the gentleman down and proceeded to embalm what was left of his earthly remains. Sometimes an illness can really destroy human tissues, leaving them difficult to embalm, but not with this gentleman. He took the embalming solution as though he had the vascular system of a man in his twenties. For my first solo job I was duly impressed with myself. His tissues were firm; he had good skin color and his facial features looked peaceful. Success. That night, I went home and made myself my favorite, an extra dry Kettel One martini with three blue-cheese-stuffed olives to celebrate my first solo embalming.
I made arrangements with the widow the next day. Together, we got all the details of the service set and then she proceeded to pour her heart out to me across the desk. Her husband had done everything for her. She was utterly lost without him. They hadn’t been able to bear children and he was all she had in this life. I felt for the woman; I really did, and I did my best to comfort her.
On the morning of the viewing, I dressed the gentleman in a three-piece navy blue chalk stripe suit, white french cuff shirt with gold engraved cuff links, and an Italian silk gold patterned tie. I laid him out in his solid-walnut, half-couch casket and arranged him so he looked comfortable in the plush champagne-colored velvet interior. I wheeled the casket up under the torchiere lights and applied his makeup, combed his hair, put his glasses on, and placed his rosary in his hands. I stepped back, and I remember thinking to myself, not too shabby for my first.
I set up the flowers around the casket and arranged the family photos so tha
t visiting friends could mosey around the parlor and look at them as though they were in the man’s own living room. I polished his alto sax and placed it on its stand near the head end of the casket. After that, I filled in a guest book, printed up service brochures and memorial book marks, and lit a personalized vigil candle.
The wife was coming in to spend some private time with her husband before the viewing began. As the time drew closer I set out a fresh pitcher of water, put the dead man’s favorite CD on at just the right volume, and checked and re-checked all my handiwork. Everything was perfect. I headed back into the office for my tie and jacket before I met the widow. As I bustled out of the office into the lobby, there was the widow with… the dead man!
There he stood in all his glory. Three-piece navy chalk stripe suit. White shirt. Gold silk tie. Glasses. The dead man was standing in the lobby with his wife. Alive! Talking to her! I felt like I had been sucker punched.
He turned and smiled at me.
The room started to spin, and I got tunnel vision. I grabbed onto the wall as my knees buckled.
To this day I’m glad I didn’t faint because the widow walked over to me and said, “Joe, I’d like you to meet Adam’s twin brother, Carter. Carter, this is the young man who has been so helpful to me.”
I wiped the sweat off my brow with my suit sleeve and staggered over to the deceased’s brother and introduced myself. After which, I stepped back, somewhat recovered, and said, “Do you have ESP or something? Your brother is wearing the exact same thing!” I laughed nervously, still wanting to go in the parlor and check to make sure that the casket was occupied, because I was beginning to have serious doubts. This man looked exactly like the man I had injected with four gallons of formalin solution.
