Mortuary Confidential

I cut her off. “Don’t be.”

She knelt down and traced the name engraved into the granite while talking to me. She must have gone on for five minutes or more about how much she missed her son. I listened. When she was done with her monologue she asked, “May I give you a hug?”

Without hesitation I answered, “Sure.”

We embraced and I felt her crying softly. When she let go, she stepped back and said, “Thank you for that. You remind me so much of him. Kind. Polite. Well mannered. Your mother must be so proud of you. I—I needed a hug from my son today. Thank you for giving me that.”

I never did ask her name, and she never asked mine. We parted ways and I haven’t seen her since.

You can touch someone’s life in a profound way every day if you just slow down and recognize the opportunity.

Give someone a hug. Give someone hope.

CHAPTER 32 Wake Combat Contributed by a collegiate swimmer

There’s something about a funeral that makes it the perfect venue for a fight. I’ve seen all sorts of different fights take place at my funeral home, from little verbal skirmishes to knockdown, drag-out fistfights. I’ve even had to hire security (at the behest of the family) to keep the peace.

Money. Lovers. Attention. The list of things that families fight about is endless, but instead of facing the problems as they come, most people choose to bottle it up and wait. The pressure builds and a death in the family can cause the pot to boil over.

The most violent fight I can remember is one that happened years ago. I can’t remember the name of the family, but I remember the two sons of the dead man as vividly as I can picture my own sons. It was an Irish family. They had a McSomething type name. The two sons, Brian and James, came in to make the funeral arrangements without their mother. She was too distraught over the death of her husband to come in. The man was in his late forties and the death was entirely unexpected.

The boys were in their late twenties. I couldn’t tell if they were twins or not. They looked an awful lot alike except Brian was slightly taller than James and had a large scar over his right eye.

The brothers came into my office, sat down, lit up, and immediately started in at each other. They were heavy smokers, and I wasn’t an hour into the arrangements before the ashtray on my desk was full of cigarette butts stubbed out in anger. They used the gesture of stubbing out a cigarette like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence, getting louder and more animated as our arrangement conference progressed. They couldn’t agree on anything. The air was blue and thick with language and smoke.

The brothers’ anger grew with the pile of stubbed butts until the ashtray couldn’t hold one more butt. Brian screamed some obscenities at his brother and stormed out. Over the next two days I played mediator and got them to agree, for the sake of their mother, on a funeral that suited everyone.

In those days the world wasn’t so “sue-happy” and I allowed booze in my funeral home. It was the typical Irish wake. They brought all sorts of food and drink and partied for most of the evening with music, singing, joking, and carrying on—the dead man lying in the parlor almost an afterthought. It was a big crowd, and the two brothers were pretty well behaved except for some yelling and pushing that was quickly broken up by friends. But they kept their distance from each other for the entire night. The wake ended and everyone left the party in good, drunken spirits.

The next morning the brothers showed up separately. Brian came first, escorting his mother. He reeked of cigarettes and whiskey and looked the part, too. He obviously hadn’t shaved or combed his hair, and his eyes were bloodshot and had the look of a hunted animal about them. I escorted them into the private family room, got them settled, and greeted the rest of the guests as they arrived. James arrived much later wearing the same clothes he had worn the previous evening. He obviously hadn’t been home. He too reeked of rye, and attached to his arm was a garishly dressed young lady whom he introduced to me as his girlfriend.

I escorted James and his girlfriend to the family room and outlined to the McSomething family how things would go that day so we would all be on the same page. Immediately, the two brothers started verbally sparring. I tried to nip it in the bud by saying, “Gents, could you please just behave today for the sake of your mother and in memory of your dead father?” That seemed to work. They stopped arguing and merely glowered at each other. Their mother sat silent, looking shell-shocked. I got the family seated right before service time and gave a colleague the task of getting the funeral started; I had other plans.

While the service was going on I wanted to embalm a body that had come in during the night. I went into the basement, where the prep room is, took off my coat and tie, put on a gown and pair of gloves. I knew that if I hurried I would be able to get done before the service ended and go back upstairs to say goodbye to everyone. It was wintertime, and in my area of the country you can’t bury in the winter. Everyone gets stored in a vault until the spring thaw, which sometimes doesn’t come until early June. I had just gotten the body undressed and was giving it a preliminary wash when the entire funeral home shook like it had been hit by a plane. BOOM!

I tore off my gloves and gown and rushed upstairs in my shirt-sleeves to find a circle of people in the parlor yelling and screaming. I pushed my way to the center of the circle to find James standing over Brian. Brian was laid out on the floor, blood gushing from his nose. As I floundered into the circle James yelled, “Don’t talk about my girl like that!” He circled his motionless opponent, shaking his bloody fist and ranting like a madman.

I knelt over Brian and slapped his face. “Hey! Can you hear me?” I yelled. Then I looked up at James, “Are you crazy?”

Brian opened his eyes.

“You all right?” I asked.

Brian shook his head, pushed me out of the way, and sat up. Bright red blood ran from his nose like a faucet, gushing down the front of his suit and onto the carpet.

James yelled, “You better stay down if you know what’s good for you.” He continued circling his prey, waving his bloody fists.

Brian ignored him and got unsteadily to his feet. He took a couple of tentative steps, before he spit a huge bloody loogie onto the carpet, put his dukes up, and said, “C’mon.”

The crowd exploded in yells and jeers, and Brian took a mighty swing at his brother. It caught him in the arm, but with enough force that James reeled backwards into a lamp on a table, smashing both.

“Hey! Hey!” I yelled desperately at seeing my funeral home being destroyed. “Take it outside or I’m calling the cops!”

Surprisingly enough, the mob listened. A couple of burly men in leather jackets grabbed them and said. “You heard the man, lads, take your grievances outside.” They marched them outside like truant children.

The crowd rushed outside, leaving only a crying Mrs. McSomething alone in the parlor with her dead husband. I was torn. I didn’t know what to do. Console the widow, or try to break up the fight.

I ran outside.

There was at least a foot of snow on the ground and the two boys were out in the front lawn just swinging away. The clean, white snow was dotted with little crimson drops of blood. They were still going strong; I had never seen men take such hits before and still be able to stand. I rushed in to break it up but was intercepted by the burly arm of one of the men who had carried them outside. “Let them fight,” was all he said to me.

I decided to listen to the giant, and stood and watched as Brian and James beat the—for lack of a better word—shit out of each other. Brian was wearing a black shirt but I could tell it was covered in blood by the way the sunlight reflected off the wetness saturating it. James was wearing a white shirt that looked like he had worn it while slaughtering a pig. They slowed down until, at the end, they were just taking wild swings at each other.

Finally, James landed a solid blow to Brian’s jaw. Brian dropped into the snow and lay there motionless. James turned away from his conquest, tripped, and face-planted into the snow where he, too, remained