The first day playing with death

At the mortuary the preproom (as we called it) was full of a mix mash of characters.  On my first day I met Ben out front of the preproom.  My heart was pounding not knowing what to expect when I walked through the front door.  It took all my muster to follow him into the unknown.  When I stepped over the threshold there was a large room with a washer and dryer, a scale, two sets of doors at the far end, a few gurneys standing in a line against the wall like parked cars and among them closed caskets.  This was the waiting area for items moving on to somewhere else.  I followed Ben through the set of doors on the left-hand wall into an office with two desks.  One was Brad's and the other was for a woman we shall call Candy.  Candy was a "death certificate coordinator."  For every death that we dealt with she gathered all of the vital statistics that the funeral director gathered from the family and typed up the hard copy of the death certificate for the "DC runners" to take to the doctors and get signed.  This was a feat all on it's own.  When I started there were 2 DC runners, John and Alan.  I got to act out their days a couple times and I have to say, they had the life.  Yeah, some doctors are real dicks but OMG! Their entire day included driving around in a Neon with a/c, calling doctors or their offices to see when they can meet them and taking death certificates out and picking them up, taking them to the coroners office if they were involved and then finalizing them at the county health department. That's it. Ok, sometimes they had a rush one and had to meet a doctor at target or a restaurant or wherever to get it signs but hey, that was easy! It was the best job at the mortuary. As we walked through another door at the other end of this room there was another large room where dressing and casketing happened. If you looked to the left there was a casket storage room and to the right there were two "refers" (refrigerators) and a door leading to the embalming room. There were three bodies laying on wooden tables that were used for dressing and cosmatizing. Looking at a deceased body dressed, casketed and cosmatized is like looking at a wax figure. They are cold, hard and appear fake. The essence of the human that occupied the body is gone and it really is just an empty shell. I tried to keep my cool but I was totally mesmerized. I couldn't get over how the process of death left this wax figure behind. Trying to get past my excitement I was introduced to four more people in this room. Doug was Brad's right hand man if the preproom. He made sure bodies were where they were suppose to be when they were suppose to be. Cheryl was the cosmetician who was making these bodies look so lovely and there were two "removal" men, Ted and Chad. Then I was led to the embalming room where I met Kurt and Helen. In front of them there were three stainless steel tables. Two of which had naked bodies on them. I was completely unsure at that point if I could handle this...

The last breath

I was infatuated.  After I met my soon to be future boss and asked him some of the questions for my report he told me to come back and meet with him for an interview.  I was ecstatic.  Everything I was envisioning for myself was falling into place!  A week before graduation I met with him and a colleague at the mortuary for my interview.  It wasn't so much of an interview of what I knew and wanted but how I interacted with them.  Let me give you some background into this mortuary I worked at to better understand.  I worked for a mortuary that (at that time) was the largest family owned mortuary in the United States.  They had their hands in everything except casket making.  There were many mortuaries, a memorial design center (where monuments are made), a flower shop and even low cost and religion specific mortuaries.  It was basically ran like the production line portrayed at the big corporation Kroner in the Showtime series Six Feet Under.  There were six facilities around one city that the company operated, one of them being strictly religion oriented and another the low-cost to gain the widest population appeal.  With all of these facilities there was one "main" hub in the center of the city that completed the preparation and sent them out to the other mortuaries.  I was interviewing to start in the "preparation facility" at the main location.  Each aspect of the funeral business was separate at these mortuaries.  There was the preparation facility that handled the care of the deceased only, the crematory was considered preparation as well but they had their own set of staff and separate building from the actually preparation facility.  The preparation facility was the start of everything.  We picked up, embalmed, bathed, dressed, casketed and delivered all the dead.  In the mortuary buildings there were divided departments as well.  There was a main coordinator who made sure all of the scheduling was in line and nothing would run into another, the event was staffed, the cars were ready and any other detail was caught by this department.  There was support services who filled out paperwork, answered phones, ran paperwork, etc.  Funeral directors only made funeral arrangements all day long.  There was a Funeral Service department who worked all the funeral and graveside services.  My dream was to eventually be a licensed embalmer/funeral director.  When I met with these two men, we shall call them Brad and Ben (names changed to protect identity), They were not looking at my lack of mortuary skills, but rather were seeing what my personality and sense of humor were like.  When you deal with death on a daily basis it changes you.  No matter how sympathetic you are or how much you care you have to find a way to deal with all of the tragedy for fear of having a mental breakdown.  Brad and Ben asked me a few questions and then took me out back and said we will see you two days after graduation.  I got the job.  To start I was working 3 days a week (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) at $10.00/hr.  For a new high school grad I was thrilled.  I left in anticipation of that first day.

How did you decide?

To start, you must be wondering how one finds a job at a mortuary when they know nothing about the business...  When I was sixteen years old my older sister died in a car accident on Christmas Eve.  I know... OMG!  How sad!  Life happens and it shapes who you are becoming.  When my family and I returned home to attend her funeral I remember looking at her in the Viewing Room, laying there in her casket, she appeared way too dark.  My sister was always fair skinned and the cosmetics they applied to her were not normal for her at all.  I judged everything about her.  Not just because I was so confused at that time how such a horrible act could occur but because I wanted to know how she could have been pinned under her van but still be viewable.  As my eyes cascaded around her figure I say a big blotch on her clavicle that appeared to be something smooth covering whatever lied beneath (later I would realize they used wax to cover her embalming incision because her husband had brought in a low-cut dress for her to wear).  Her hands were room temperature but slightly ridged and affixed in place.  How do they keep them like that?  The corners of her mouth were slightly turned upward as if she was trying to smile her last smile for us.  I was intrigued at how they can prepare someone for their last viewing.  When I returned home I began my research on death and the mortuary sciences.  I was in a vocational high school learning to become a CNA and my mind set completely switched at that moment in time.  I was staring at the computer explaining to me the procedure of embalming and realized that I what I want to do.  I want to help the patients after the nurses cannot.  As time passed my thoughts didn't falter.  Senior year we had a final project in school, we had to do a report on a health field of interest to us.  I went to my teacher and asked if Mortuary Science was still considered a health field and was given the "green light" to run with my new obsession.  When I went home and told my mom about my ideas she looked at me and said, "I know the right person for you to talk to."  By a stroke of pure luck from the Gods, my mom had a regular customer at her food-service job who waited for his wife to finish shopping and he was the boss of a mortuary!  How could I have been any luckier!?!  A couple phone calls later and a time set I had my interview set with one of the executives of a mortuary...

The past is always there to haunt you

My first career in life was working at a mortuary.  Although an odd profession it is one that will always be a staple of human society.  The things that Mortician's deal with on a daily basis would send most people to the nut house.  This is my blog about the best/worst six years of my life as a young female working at one of the largest mortuaries in the U.S.  I will rehash memories I have of first-calls I went on (deceased pick-ups), the numerous preparation fiascoes that happened in the preparation facility, some of the most disturbing things that no person should ever have to see as well as some of my memories that will haunt me for the rest of my life.  No matter how long or short of a time you spend working, if you ever work at a mortuary it will define your mind set for the rest of your life.  Every funeral you attend you critique the work and imagine ways it could have been better.  I still every now and again have dreams of some of the cases that tore my psyche in a way that it could never be repaired.  Follow my journey through my mind... The mind of an ex-mortician.