Mortuary Confidential

I had just the thing for her.

I took the woman and her brother into the display room to a cerulean colored cloisonne urn that sat on a shelf where the two lengths of the L-shaped room come together. I thought it was perfect for what she was describing—masculine, and yet artistic. I picked it up and handed it to the woman.

She hefted the urn, as if to weigh it. “Okay, okay,” as she turned the multi-colored enameled container around in her hands. “May I open it?”

“Go ahead,” I replied.

She twisted the lid off, peeked inside, screamed, and hurled the urn down the length of the casket display area with a prowess that would have made a shot-putter at a track meet take notice.

The urn ricocheted off a sixteen-gauge steel casket at the far end of the room with a loud bing and then partially shattered when it hit the tile floor. A small furry form shot out of the wreckage and disappeared behind a casket. The woman’s brother cringed, and the woman stood there in horror as if she couldn’t believe what she had just done.

I’m pretty unflappable, so I turned to the woman, and said, “What? Wrong color?”

She gave a short laugh, as if she didn’t hear me. “Oh my—”

I cut her off. “Mouse? They tore down that old church next door a month ago and apparently it disturbed their nest. We’ve been having a mouse problem here for a couple of weeks. Somehow, that little guy managed to get into the urn. Weird. I’m really sorry to scare you like that.”

“It’s not your fault,” she protested.

“Nice toss though.”

“Thanks, I mean—”

“We’ll pay for it,” the brother chimed in.

“No. No. Don’t worry about it,” I said, waving my hand in a dismissive way. I didn’t want this family going around saying I had a mouse problem. “It’s no big deal. We’ll pick something else out. Something without a surprise hiding in it.”

“No, no,” the woman said, dazed. “That one was perfect. That was Dad.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“I’m sure.”

I ordered a replacement urn for their father and called the exterminator back. I thought he was going to have a seizure, he was laughing so hard when I replayed what had happened, acting out the motions in the display room and everything. Apparently a mouse in an urn was a first, even for his line of business, and he’s probably seen mice in all sorts of places. He thinks the mouse must have crawled into the urn when the lid was ajar and it closed behind him; he just got lucky we picked it up before he died in there.

I still have the partially shattered urn sitting on a shelf in my office. When people ask me why it’s there, I tell them about the day I had an Olympic shot-putter in my showroom.

CHAPTER 28 Last Wishes Contributed by a website designer

I met Claire Morgan, a woman who had founded a local hospice program, through a friend of mine. Claire was a former nurse who had lost her husband to a terminal illness at a young age. She was left with enough money that she didn’t have to work another day in her life. Instead of taking her money and moving to the Sun Belt as most people would have done, Claire decided to do something to help families going through the same thing she had gone through.

Relatively speaking, it was a small hospice—ten nurses and just under one hundred patients. Claire wanted to keep it small to maximize patient care and minimize stress on the families of the dying. It worked. Word quickly spread about this wonderful new facility, and Claire had to hire more nurses to keep the same patient/nurse ratio.

The first time I met Claire Morgan was at a Christmas party our mutual friend was hosting. She had never come before because she and her husband had always gone to his boss’s Christmas Eve party.

“My husband recently died,” Claire said to me, “and I just can’t stand the thought of going to a cocktail party and doing nothing but accepting half-hearted sympathies from his colleagues. The idea is simply macabre. I just wanted to… come somewhere slightly anonymous and soak up holiday cheer.”

I agreed. As we talked more, she told me of her plans to form a hospice organization. I encouraged her, telling her what she planned to do would provide an important step in the dying process, and that I, as one of the town’s many funeral directors, saw the importance of hospice work on a daily basis. She thanked me for my kind words and I didn’t see her until the next Christmas party.

I asked her how her hospice program was coming. She looked surprised that I had remembered, but then told me she had just opened her doors for business the month before. She had named her company Stone Hospice after her late husband, Stone Morgan. I congratulated her and reiterated my previous year’s praises of the work hospices do.

A couple of weeks later, Claire called my office and asked me if I’d be available to make some arrangements with one of her patients. I told her I’d be delighted. I met with Claire, the patient, and the patient’s daughter. The patient died a few weeks later and I buried him.

Over the following years I received periodic calls from Claire to make arrangements for her patients. Some would linger. Some would die quickly. And just as she had cared for them when they were dying, I would treat them with the same dignity once they had died.

Claire and I had been working together a long time when she called me down to her office to make arrangements. It was unusual, since I usually went to the patient’s house for such meetings, but I’ve found in my business nothing is unusual.

When I arrived I gave her a quick hug. “Where’s the patient?” I asked.

“Sit down, R.J.,” Claire said. “I have something to tell you.”

“Oh?”

“I’m the patient. You’re here to make arrangements for me.”

“No!” I said. “You?”

“It’s cancer. Inoperable.”

“Claire—”

She held up her hand. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, or if her cheeks didn’t look as full as I remembered. “Look, R.J., we both deal with death on a daily basis. It’s not something most people want to do, but it’s something that has to be done. There have to be people like us in society, people who aren’t afraid to look death in the face day in and day out. Sure, I’m angry that I feel like I’ve been cheated out of a full life, but I’m not scared to die.”

“Radiation and chemo?” I asked.

“Already tried. Didn’t work. I’ve got three months to live. I want you to handle things when the time comes.”

Claire told me the details of the funeral she wanted, and she asked me to care for her family as she had seen me care for countless grieving families that had passed through her program. She wanted assorted cheeses and wine offered at her viewing. She wanted a harpist and her favorite Beatles song played during the service. She wanted the pallbearers to wear white gloves and yellow ribbons, and most of all, she wanted two white doves released in the cemetery, one for her and one for Stone.

When I left, we hugged.

Claire Morgan died sixty-four days later. She was 58.

She is the only person I know who had the courage to face death with such grace when her husband died, and then face her own mortality with honesty, poise, and… courage.

The hospice has since flourished. I think it is a fine legacy to a courageous woman.