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.