Mortuary Confidential

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 the 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 cliche, 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.