by Todd Harra
Time doesn’t wait. Cherish every day of your life.
CHAPTER 36
The Prodigal Son
Contributed by a jazz pianist
There is a natural order in the world. Sometimes the order is broken and the parent is burdened with the task of burying the child. Of all the things I have to deal with in my profession, this situation is always the toughest. It can happen organically, accidentally, or self-destructively. But whichever way you slice it, it’s still a bitter pill to swallow.
The story of the prodigal son is as old as written history, and I see it re-enacted too many times every year. Usually, it’s the wayward son or daughter coming home to mourn the loss of a parent, but sometimes it’s the prodigal son coming home on a flight for his own funeral; a flight in which I pick him up at the cargo bay at the airport, load him into the hearse, take him back to my funeral parlor, and lay him out for his parents to come mourn him.
A woman who we’ll call “Casey” contacted me a year ago. Casey’s son, “Jeff,” had died of a drug overdose while out in Las Vegas.
When Casey called me, she needed someone to listen.
“I was a single mom,” she said. “I dropped out of high school at the age of 17 to have Jeff. It was a bad situation. The man that impregnated me disappeared and my parents disowned me. I was left homeless with an infant.”
I made a sound of sympathy and she continued, “I earned my GED, got a job with the state, and even managed to buy a home, although it wasn’t in a section of town that was that good. I had to work a lot to keep my son and myself afloat and I wasn’t always there to keep an eye on little Jeffrey. He started running with the wrong people and getting messed up. Drugs.”
“Oh Jeez,” I said.
“I didn’t watch him close enough. It’s my fault. All of this… is my fault.”
“You can’t blame yourself.”
She ignored the comment. “He dropped out of high school and lived at home for a couple of years. He’d disappear for weeks on end and I’d never know where he was or even if he was—” She paused. “And I never knew where he got money, even though I had my suspicions. Jeffrey never worked. I begged him to get help. Really, I did. I begged and begged but he wouldn’t listen. He’d always say, ‘Ma, I don’t need help,’ but he did. He needed help.”
I kept quiet and let her talk.
“A couple of short stints in prison for drug charges and petty burglary didn’t straighten him out, but a laced batch of heroin that nearly killed him did. That overdose convinced him to get into rehab. Best thing he ever did. Jeffrey came out a changed person. He got a girlfriend, finished high school, not the GED thing like I did, actual high school, and held a steady job… for 18 months.”
“Oh no,” I said.
“Yeah. The high was too appealing. Jeffrey went back to it and it was worse than before. Way worse. I just couldn’t stand it anymore, so I threw him out of my house,” she said matter-of-factly. “I never heard from him again. It’s been almost a year since I threw him out. And then yesterday I got this call from this medical guy out in Vegas—” Her voice cracked.
I offered her some comforting words and assured her we’d get her son back so she could give him a proper burial. Her parting words to me that day before she hung up were, “I don’t even have any idea how he got out there or what he was doing there.”
Casey didn’t have a lot of money, but I was able to work with her so we could give Jeff a quiet, dignified burial. Casey and three of her friends were the only ones at the service in my chapel. After the minister performed his brief service, I ushered everyone out, leaving just Casey. She stood before Jeff’s casket, her trembling hand touching his. He looked peaceful. His long hair hid the autopsy incisions, as did the collared flannel shirt. Casey had been very calm up until this point, but now she broke down sobbing. I stood next to her and put my arm around her and held her gently.
Casey didn’t curse her son, or denounce him, but merely wept for a couple of minutes before digging into her large purse. She pulled out a bag of marijuana and threw it in, followed by bags of God-knows-what-else, a small bong, a couple of homemade pipes, some syringes without needles, and other things I didn’t even recognize.
“I cleaned out his room,” she said. “Leave them in there. If he wanted his drugs so much, then he can take them with him. Close it.”
I closed the lid. Casey composed herself and walked out to the lobby. We embraced in the lobby and she said, “Thank you for letting me put all this to rest.”
Later in the day I drove Jeff out to the cemetery. The men from the vault company helped me place him on the lowering device, and without a soul in the world who knew Jeffrey watching, I lowered his casket into the gaping hole in the earth.
The prodigal son had come home.
Broken families, fractured families, black sheep, and estrangement; unfortunately, I’ve seen it all. Is there really an issue that is so great you can’t mend that fence? Reach out. At the end of the day, family is all you have in this world.
CHAPTER 37
Duel at High Noon
Contributed by a guitarist
I had never heard of a gun battle disrupting a funeral until the day I found myself in the middle of one.
It was a spring day, clear and sunny, and after the entire winter of hiding in church vestibules during funeral services, I took advantage of the beautiful day to sit outside and kill time. The service was Orthodox, and those are usually good to go for at least an hour or more.
That church is in the city. I was lounging on the wide stone steps, keeping an eye out for straggling mourners, leafing through Car and Driver, and not really paying attention to the passers-by, when some yelling caught my attention. On the corner of the block, about one hundred fifty feet from where I was sitting, two men were arguing. Their faces inches away from each other, they both gesticulated wildly, obviously irate. Their argument was more interesting than my magazine, and I put it down to watch. They shouted and pointed for a few more seconds and then stormed away from each other, the argument seemingly over. I started to go back to my magazine when I saw guns appear.
The firearms were drawn from under their billowy white tee shirts—almost the way a magician produces a dove. I’m not too up-to-date on my firearms, so I have no idea what type of guns they were except that they were black. It was like a scene from an old western film. The two stood about fifteen feet apart, menacing each other with their weapons for what seemed to be a millennium, but was probably only a second before they just unloaded. They fired and fired, sparks spitting from the muzzles of the pistols, until the slides locked back. Gun smoke swirling around them, they looked down at themselves, stupefied to be unhurt, and within seconds of the cease-fire, took off like frightened jackrabbits in opposite directions.
I sat on the steps, stunned, as the smell of cordite stung my nostrils. Did I just see a gun battle? I asked myself. No! Shootouts were things on the front page of the local section, things of the night, things of abstraction. Shootouts didn’t happen in broad daylight… outside a funeral!
While I was still trying to process the scene that had just unfolded before me, an unmarked police car appeared from nowhere. It was joined seconds later by two marked prowlers, a fourth, and then a fifth. One of the initial officers to respond at the scene ran by and yelled to me, “Nobody comes out of that church!”
His order spurred me out of my trance and I hopped up to man the church doors.
The mourners, having heard so many gunshots in such close proximity, had all made a beeline for the door. My partner and I, along with the limo driver, were at the big wooden doors forcibly holding them closed. I felt like an actor in some ridiculous movie, holding these giant castle-like doors closed against the pandemonium inside. The priest bullied his way to the front of the crowd and I conveyed the situation to him. He managed to get everyone settled down to the point where there was no more shouting, but they still stood just inside the front doors, mi
lling like cattle, ready to stampede. They weren’t settling back down for a funeral when a war was raging outside.
The police cars were joined by a helicopter and two K-9 units as well as several bicycle and motorcycle cops. They searched for about a half hour, but to no avail. I gave a brief statement about what I had seen and the police finally gave us the okay to empty the church. We processed on to the cemetery and the priest did his best to include at the graveside the parts of the liturgy missed in the church.
I checked the paper the next day and it mentioned the shooting. I guess they never did catch those two men. Not to be glib or anything, but perhaps those two men would benefit from a membership to a local shooting range.
CHAPTER 38
Wives and Girlfriends
Contributed by a veteran
If there is one life lesson I have learned as an undertaker, it’s this: the lies and secrets we maintain in life cannot be perpetuated in death. There is an old saying that goes, “Dead men tell no tales.” That’s true, but the dead also can’t keep a secret. Whether it is a man’s secret stack of Playboy magazines, a couple’s titillating photos that were never meant to be shared with others, or a spouse’s secret bank account, it all floats to the surface once the dead person protecting the secret dies. Many a person has told me of the discrete removal of certain objects from their friend’s or sibling’s house before the parents or children go in to clean it out. But aside from objects, stuff that maybe we shouldn’t have or would be embarrassed to admit owning are the people.
The most common thing I see involving the secrets of the living and dead is the illicit sexual relationship. After a death relationships, which were previously buried in the shadows, are thrown into the light of day for all to see. When the secretkeeper is dead, so is the secret. It’s sad when a good man’s or woman’s name is tarnished after they have died because some information floats to the surface, but it’s human nature to have secrets, and it’s something I’ve seen too many times.
Consider the situation of a man with a wife and girlfriend; or a woman with a husband and boyfriend. Man dies. Come the day of the funeral, wife and children are sitting in the front row on one side and girlfriend is on the other side. Sometimes the girlfriend makes a scene. Sometimes the wife makes a scene. Sometimes it’s amicable. Either way, the girlfriend who was previously unknown, or only whispered about behind closed doors, is thrust into public display. Is it a disgrace to the dead man? I don’t have an answer for that. That’s a question you’d have to ask the dead man; I’m not one to judge the state of his marriage and infidelities.
I know what you’re wondering, and, no, the girlfriend usually doesn’t have the sagacity to stay away from her boyfriend’s funeral. After all, it is the funeral of somebody she loves. Would you stay away from the funeral of somebody you loved? I didn’t think so.
Now consider the other situation, a man with a girlfriend and a dead wife; or a woman with a boyfriend and dead husband. Wife dies. Girlfriend comes to wife’s funeral to support her boyfriend (and possibly future hubby). In fact, I just had a funeral not too long ago when the couple hadn’t been married very long. It was under two years. The wife died suddenly. The husband was ruined. Absolutely ruined. I haven’t seen anyone that distraught in a good while. So it was really surprising to me when his girlfriend showed up at the funeral. Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t obvious about it, but I could tell by the way she touched him (and some things I overheard) that she was his girlfriend. What was so puzzling to me was that this man was so grief-stricken I would have thought they had a perfect marriage. Obviously, it wasn’t so perfect that Mr. X wasn’t stepping outside his marital vows.
I think the kicker of my little relationship sightings was when a husband and wife died in a tragic car wreck. On the day of the funeral, sitting in the front pew opposite the children were the boyfriend and girlfriend of the couple! I found out when I was making the arrangements that “mom and dad couldn’t stand each other.” But I had no idea how complex their lives were. Apparently, the children knew about the affairs and each parent knew about the other’s partner and was okay with the situation as long as it wasn’t out in the open. Their marriage had slid into a marriage of convenience.
I’m not trying to say everyone is a philandering jerk. I just want to remind everyone to think about how you want to be remembered. Once you’re dead, there is no covering the little lies and secrets, and the truth has a nasty habit of finding its way into a funeral.
CHAPTER 39
The World Record Holder
Contributed by a volunteer in the Big Brother Program
I definitely hold the world record for having done the most embarrassing things (that’s right, things, plural) at work. I’m not talking about running out of gas on the freeway, splitting your pants and having nothing to change into, or falling asleep during an important meeting. All those things are embarrassing to a certain degree, but I’m talking about hitting the point where you want to crawl deep into a very dark hole and die. The type of embarrassment where you get heart palpitations and your mind goes blank and you can only focus on crawling into that hole. I’m sure everyone reading this has had moments of embarrassment, but see if they compare to a couple of my more glorious moments as the world’s most embarrassing funeral director.
I’ll preface the first incident by saying I spilled an entire cup of coffee down the widow’s dress the night of the wake. But that’s minor and can be solved with profuse apologies and a dry cleaner. If that were the worst thing that happened to me, I’d thank my lucky stars, but the incident happened while I was leading the funeral procession. The decedent was a pillar of the community, loved by all, and hated by none. He had quite a turnout for his send-off and there were at least fifty cars processing to the burial. The cemetery is in the next town over—a place I have been to many times during my career—but I was unaware there was road construction going on that day. The road I was planning on taking was blocked and I was forced to detour around it. I got hopelessly lost and led the entire procession down a dead end street.
You can imagine how I felt when I came to the barrier and had to do a three-point turn in the hearse, wait for the limo to do a five-point turn, and then wait for everyone else to turn their cars around and get back on their way. I finally found the cemetery by the grace of God, and let me tell you, I felt a lot of pairs of eyes on me that day!
It wasn’t too long after the dead-end-street incident (as my colleagues like to call it) that I decided to go for another Hallmark embarrassing moment. We were a little busy on a particular day and I made funeral arrangements with two families. I am generally very careful about making copious notes and keeping everything separate, but when I went to order the casket engraving for the first family, I put down the first name of the wrong man. I didn’t realize it when I faxed the order in. I didn’t realize it when I checked the proof. I even didn’t realize it when the casket arrived and I put the man in it. In my mind I had correctly matched their first and last names.
We had had the wake in the funeral home; celebrated the Mass of Christian Burial, and what I had done didn’t dawn on me until I invited the widow up to the casket at the cemetery. “Do you like the engraving?” I asked, hand on her back.
“That’s not my husband’s name!” she wailed.
I felt about six inches big that day. I postponed the burial, and ordered a new casket lid. But those two incidents can’t even hold a candle to the one incident that won me the title of having the “Most Embarrassing Moment in the World.” It went something like this:
I get a death call. “Mom” has passed.
I tell them I’ll be right over.
Of course, I stepped in dog poop in the front yard and didn’t notice until I managed to track it all over the house. It was a mess. Of course, it was a white carpet. Did I cut my losses and let another funeral director handle the call? No! I pressed on.
The family came into the funeral home the next day, and
after many, many apologies—I hope you see a pattern emerging—and insisting I hire a carpet cleaning company, I made the funeral arrangements with them. The family left and I started making the necessary calls to organize the funeral. One of my employees came in and started asking me questions about something and I got sidetracked. Later, when I went back over my notes, I made a mental checklist of everything I had done (or thought I had done) and everything I had to do. I finished making the necessary arrangements and left for the day.
Three days later we had a viewing in church followed by the funeral service. Everything went perfectly. After the service, my colleague and I got all the cars lined up, and we hopped into the hearse and headed for the cemetery. It is one of those big corporate memorial parks that are extremely well run and maintained, and because of that, it is a popular destination for the local dearly departed. Following a nice twenty-minute ride from the church, I pulled into the gates expecting a cemetery lead car to escort us to the grave. No cemetery lead car waited.
That’s not a big deal. Sometimes the lead car gets tied up or is running late. So I headed off through the sprawling cemetery in the direction I thought the grave was, looking for the tent. We drove and drove through the miles of cemetery road, until I turned to my colleague and said, “This is ridiculous. Let’s just go to the cemetery office and find out where the grave is. Maybe we can get someone to take us over there.” I led the procession back through the cemetery and to the office, where I jumped out and ran in.
The cemetery secretary recognized me as I walked through the door. “Oh hi, Rob. What brings you here today?”
