Sometimes the living seem worse than the dead...

I can vividly remember several of the pick-ups I made in my time at the mortuary.  There are lots of gruesome things I have seen and not so pleasant things to smell or touch but some of the worst things I've seen are the families.  There are stereotypes placed on different cultures of people all the time in life, but those stereotype sometimes play out in death as well.  The only time I ever saw someone pass out at all in my life was during a first call to an African American home.  Now quite often people cry and/or throw fits when we leave with their loved one.... I have never seen theatrics top this call.  A man in his early 20s was dead, his mother and large family in the home as well.  Everything was going ok until we came into the home with the gurney.  The mother started yelling, "Oh, god!"  The other family members were making loud unidentifiable moans and wails.  We got back to where the boy was and did our thing and got him back on the gurney to take him out.  The police went out and prepared the family for us coming out.  As we started to round the corner into the living room where everyone was the mother ran up to our gurney and threw her body overtop of her son.  As we held on to the gurney with our death grip (no pun intended) we stopped it from collapsing on its side to the floor.  The father came up and tried to pull the mother back from the cot and as we started moving again she lunged and fell short as her gasping had made her pass out.  We were told by the coroner to continue out the door so we high tailed it and left.  I felt so bad for that mother who lost her son.  It's amazing how some people deal with their grief so very differently.  To this day I still wonder what ever happened after we left.