ALWAYS WEAR GLOVES

Just stopping by to drop off the cot and head off to pick up a loved one at air cargo. (NO, not my loved one, their loved one.) Haven't posted in awhile again. Let's see if I can bring something up that will do nicely. ... Nope. There is talk of getting DSL at home. that would be nice wouldn't it. OK, here is what I have: I meet people at their most vulnerable. I am in the the wrong place, at the wrong time. I try not to make it worse. Dead people look better when they are embalmed. Embalming is an art-form. Twenty years from now, no one will be embalmed. People need to have funerals, (or at least some ritualized event that calls attention to the passing of a loved individual and celebrates their life and mourns their death. that is a funeral .) The Flaming Lips rule.

Been awhile. Things have happened. My best friends father died last week. It was a very sad turn of events. I could go long and detailed into the aspects of my friends father's death but I will not. Let us just say that it is a terrible tragedy and has made me reevaluate parts of my life. This was the first time that I had to play the dual role as "friend" and "undertaker". I have taken care of friends loved ones before but not to the extent that this man is to me. I think of him as the brother I don't share an extended family with. He is, and has been intregral to my life for the last ten years or so. SO, needless to say, this was a hard one. We basically did things like we had talked about doing things for years now. Kick out the formal B.S. and get down to the very essense of what makes the funeral ritual a positive one. He did everything at his house, and he did it very well. There was almost no place in ________'s house where you could not ...

Who am I to think that google ads won't bother you? Why shouldn't I try? Luckily no one ever reads this anyway and has become mostly an excuse for me to wonk merrily along in my own private cyber confessional. It has been a long time since my last confession... We are a funeral home that still shows full caskets. we have a room that allows one to peruse the boxes, kick the tires, open and close the lids, (with help from me please, THOSE HINGES WILL BEND IF YOU ARE NOT A PROFESSIONAL SUCH AS I!), touch the fabric, etc. I like those caskets in all of their glory. It is my "reality room". Nothing brings it home like 25 or so open mawed-wood-steel or cardboard caskets screaming "A DEATH HAS OCCURED!". It helps me do my job of bringing a sense of "why we are really here". However, caskets are large and when you bring 25 or so of them into a room you tend to take up a whole bunch of room. SO, we at ______ - ________ Funeral Chapel are inching sl...

I sit here and forget what it was I was going to write. I have been going through some "training" lately that involved clergy leaders and hospice/social workers. The last two days have been sort of exausting and now I think I am finnally getting the sickness from my family unit that I thought that I had evaded. Let's see, something poignant...something wise...hmmmm..... Well, I am sitting here at work tonight tending to a Pentecostal Russian service. That is pretty interesting isn't it? The singing is beautiful. I can't understand Russian. They are pretty self-serve folks. I have tried to be very attentive to their needs in the past and it seems to be of little consequence. In the end, the service will start at some undisclosed time, a man will preach, they will sing, another man will preach, they will sing, another man will preach, they will sing, it will end. Oh, there doing the one thing again, the man will start preaching with a sort of pleading and get ...

I am losing a colleague this week. He is moving on to greener pastures. I have known for some time that he might leave and it is strange to finally confront this fact. This person was here when I got here and has been here for a long time. 10 years I guess. He has seen much over his tenure and I have attempted to download this knowledge to the best of my ability. He has made comments this week that have troubled me, and that is why his leaving has left me with a strange taste in my mouth. He said that while looking for a job he realized that the employment opportunities were plentiful. He said that if you needed a job, that they were everywhere. What is troubling me is that he seems to simply consider this profession “just a job”, a simple set of skillsets learned that could be applied “anywhere”. while that logic is true to the most extent it seems to ignore the fact that this “job” is so much more than that, (at least in my mind). To put in 10 years at a place and realize, in h...

I am awakened at 3:30 AM by my pager. I climb out of bed and call the number listed on the screen. it is the number of the other funeral director that I share my “on call” duties with. He tells me that we have a “house call” and to meet him at the funeral home. we meet and then embark on a journey to a house that is somewhere in the valley. This could be anywhere from the _____of ______ to ______ to the ditch on Mile Marker 87 . If the death occurred at a hospital or care facility I would be going alone For the sake of the scenario we will say it is a house in _____. After arriving at the home my colleague and I will gather some limited information from the family present at the house and then “remove” the deceased’s body from the house. We use an ambulance-like gurney to do this. The reason we have two people go on these calls is typically because you never know where someone is going to die. Most of the time it is in a bed, but many times it can be in the tub, or on the toilet, or we...

When people ask you, “How can you do what you do?” what do you tell them? If you say, “Well, someone has to do it” PLEASE QUIT NOW. GO SELL CARS. If you do not think that you are the luckiest human on earth to be given the privilege of caring for the bereaved and their dead then I am not sure the industry needs you any longer. When someone asks you, “Doesn’t this job get you down? Are you depressed all of the time” and you reply, “No, nothing really bothers me anymore” GET OUT OF THE BUSINESS, YOU ARE NO GOOD TO US ANY MORE. LEARN TO CUT HAIR. This job absolutely has to weigh you down on a day to day basis. We need to cry when funerals touch our hearts. That is how we know that we are still caring. When I go to someone’s home at 3:30 AM and I meet a person that is so lost in terror and grief because their loved one has just died. My heart BETTER go out to them. When I get that same person into the arrangement room the next day and we begin the process of creating a meani...

Vociferous Definition: [adj] conspicuously and offensively loud ; given to vehement outcry ; " blatant radios "; " a clamorous uproar "; " strident demands "; " a vociferous mob " Synonyms: blatant , clamant , clamorous , noisy , strident Bush said it during the last debate. I don't think he meant it the way he said it. In other news: the week goes well. I created a memorial video last night. My most effecient endeavor to date. I have the process relatively "dialed in" now. I was accosted (in a most friendly way) today by a Jehovah's Witness. He told me all sorts of things about the truth. I listened for awhile, nodded and smiled, listened intently, and then decided that I had had enough. I explained to him (in a most friendly way) that what he spoke of as "truth" was a simple reflection of his faith. He believed it, and that made it true. I don't believe it, so I don't thin...

Back from days off and glad for it. Walked into work this morning to be greeted with a slow house and a fresh family to meet with at 11:00. Perfect. I love being able to come in here after days off and get my feet wet slowly. It always takes longer to adjust when its balls to the wall before you get your first cup of coffee. Family this morning was sweet. Kind, caring, TIGHT little unit that obviously was going to miss the old guy. They kept him at home for as long as they possibly could. He spent most of his time dying at home on hospice with only a few weeks in a nursing home when it just got to be too much for his wife. I respect that highly. So many people these days are willing to shuttle "mom" off to the home before they even attempt to try and take it on themselves. I suppose it could be an indication of how much investment "mom" put in, but most of the time it seems like it's simply a matter of convenience for the family. It is not always about conven...

I work 10 days in a row, then get 4 days off. 6 of the 10 days are spent being "on call" at night. This means that at any given moment of the night/early morning, I must get up out of bed, put on a tie, and go to gather a loved one from wherever they might pass on. Home, hospital, care facility, side-of-the-road, 2nd story-no elevator-three-hundred-pounds. any time, night or day, now questions asked. I am about a half an hour away from my highly coveted 4 days off and am looking extremely forward to it. It can be said, however, that I do not dread my "days on" though. I just need the 4 days to recharge the old batteries. It was a good week.

I am promising myself to really sit down and pound out my manifesto on this thing in the next couple of days. Right now I am waiting for my colleague to show up so that we can go to a house and pick up someone's loved one. I really need to wake up early one morning and sit down with a cup and explain myself. That won't be happening right now but I do foresee it in the future. For now let's postulate on presence... I had a service today with a particularly good minister. Two things that he did impressed me greatly. One: he didn't use the podium or the microphone. He didn't need to! there were only about twenty people in the chapel. Not everyone would be able to step out form behind that box and just talk to the "congregation" (I still don't really know what to call a group of people at a funeral. "the grieving" doesn't work and "the crowd" seems to cold so we'll just have to keep mulling that one around for awhile. ) Two: ...

Today has been a very normal day at the mortuary. I had no families to meet with but have plenty to do right now. I really should not be wasting my time posting. I really need to get this thing started though. I think this will be good for us. SO! I have two bodies to cosmetize and place into their caskets for tomorrow and the next day. Neither one is going to have a very extended viewing, (an hour before the service) but I would like to get it done so I won't have to worry about it later. I need to think up names for everyone here....Maybe they will all get avatars of some sort...hmmmmmmm...I will have to get back to this later.