Ungrateful Dead

Photo by Tyler Cancro

Yes, I'm a funeral director. That doesn't mean that I stand there in a jacket and skirt at someone's wake comforting the bereaved family. Nope. What I do is slave away in cold basements trying to prevent your loved ones' dead bodies from looking like mangled pieces of meat. But that isn't what this is about. I have a couple of other things I want to get off my chest about this fucking job. People want morgue workers to be invisible and mute (and no, Six Feet Under hasn't helped shit at all. It's just made people think we're all gay/depressed nymphos/creeps). I'm tired of being quiet. I have a couple of things to bitch about, and you're going to have to listen. If you don't, I'll be sure to lose a scalpel inside your brother's chest cavity or leave your mother's eyes wide open at her viewing. Got it? First off, doctors are lazy, uninformed rich kids who have no clue what an acceptable cause of death is. Everyone automatically thinks "old age" if the person is over 50, but New York State doesn't view that as sufficient. The long-winded version of "old age" is "cardiopulmonary arrest due to arteriosclerotic heart disease." That means your heart stopped because your veins and arteries were too ridiculously clogged to pump anymore. Every year, national reports say the number-one killer of just about everyone—statistically—is heart disease, but it's so not true! Are you sitting down? The number-one killer is really hospital infections. I once went to pick up a woman from a particularly skanky local hospital, and the death certificate (D/C) was filled out wrong. Her doctor came down and I asked what she'd died of. He told me she came in with a urinary-tract infection and that the bacteria went systemic and she died of sepsis (bacteria in the blood). So I said, "OK, well you have to write that she had the infection, the name of the organism and the medicine that it was resistant to, and that it became sepsis." He asked, "Is there an easier way?" I said, "Cardiopulmonary arrest due to arteriosclerotic heart disease." It's a blanket answer that you'll find on D/Cs everywhere. I can't tell you how many bodies I've embalmed without having any idea what the people actually died of! I'm soaked to the elbows in fluids that are leaking out of every orifice, and I have no clue what diseases, bacteria, and/or viruses are floating around. Not very many people realize what a huge health risk I take every time I embalm. Not to mention the harsh chemicals I have to use. There seems to be a running pattern among women who have been in the business for years and years—their children come out with neurological and sometimes physical problems due to prolonged formaldehyde and phenol exposure. My kids are going to be deformed! Awesome. One of the most telling things about this job is that morgues are always pressed up against the kitchens, laundry rooms, and garbage areas in the bowels of the hospital. When I ask where to park my car at a new hospital, they're inevitably like, "Oh, go around back by the dumpsters and the morgue door is right there." It's all about the hospital wanting to hide its failures. Doctors HATE morgue workers for just that reason. We are a living and breathing symbol of their failure to save someone's life. Trying to get a doctor to even sign off on a D/C on time is like the Nuremberg Trials. The second-worst thing I have to deal with is the dreaded "removal." That's when you go to someone's house, a nursing home, or a hospice and cart off their dead. It has to be done in professional attire—which means a suit and tie for guys. For me, it's a skirt and high heels. I'm tiny—all of five-foot-one, 120 pounds—and I'm in my early twenties, yet I'm hauling dead bodies out of beds and into minivans a couple times a week. These things often weigh twice as much as me. Families and orderlies are always astounded that a girl would be sent by herself to do this. Just imagine for a moment: It's 90 degrees and you're in a black suit—or it's 20 below and you're in a skirt—and you're wheeling a gurney with a body-bagged heap of dead person out to your "removal vehicle" while an entire family cries in the doorway and the neighbors peek out from behind their curtains. But don't think these families are all innocent sufferers! I can't tell you how many people I've removed who obviously haven't been shaved in months, haven't had their diapers changed in a few days, and have not been properly washed and/or cleaned in some time, either. And let's not forget bedsores. The technical term is "decubitus ulcer." It's really just a big, stinky hole on any number of pressure points of the body. Bedsores start growing and rotting from lying in one position for too long. It's that fucking simple. Next time you have a comatose relative in your back bedroom, please don't forget to turn them over every couple of hours. You'll save me a lot of time spent gagging while I wash these things out. I should mention—all modesty aside—that I am an excellent embalmer. I will trim ear and nose hairs, cut nails, clean out the months of dirt built up under the cuticles, polish nails on women, and then clean and suture the wounds and sores from all the various tubes and needles they've been subjected to. It never fails that once I get them all cleaned up, give them a haircut, dress them up, and display them, the family is all blubbering and crying and hysterical. Puh-leeze! When was the last time you visited grandpa at the nursing home? Have you ever changed one of his diapers? I do thank god all the time that I (so far) haven't had to handle a dead abused kid. One of my professors from mortuary school told us to wait until the day when we see a small child that we KNOW has been abused violently by his or her parents. You can't do or say shit about it, and you have to make arrangements with this family in a civil manner knowing that they probably killed their baby. Sounds like a good vibe, right? I have handled my share of nonabused babies, though. There's a fairly new law in New York City requiring that all infants be autopsied, so I've never had a baby come to me in one piece. They arrive at the morgue all chopped up, and I put them back together. Have you ever told the mother of a dead child that she can't hold her baby one last time because it might fall apart? Soooo, why the fuck do I do this? On top of all that I've just told you, the monetary compensation is quite inadequate. The real rewards are a little more intangible. The gratitude of the families means a lot, and so does the admiration of my colleagues. This is the kind of industry where people are always checking out each other's skills, and its cool to have 20-year veterans marvel at my handiwork. But the thing I like most is seeing the results of all my hard work. After three hours with a corpse that arrives dirty, reeking, covered in its own purge, mouth and eyes gaping, often toothless, it is truly rewarding to stand back and see it clean and neat, smelling good, with no tubes or other implements of modern medicine sticking out of any orifices. It is an art, and the final goal is making the dead person look at peace. If I can do that, the satisfaction is worth any number of asshole doctors and infected bedsores.