after conciderable review, time to make it public......
this story i wrote 4 years ago. it is therapy due to the fact that it is a true story about my life with my ex-husband. all events are true= except his death....
“WE PUT THE FUN IN FUNERAL”
Before I confess my entire sins dear listener, I need to say that I am innocent of all the wrongs that have blackened my good name. First off, I am a good man, that’s for sure. I have always thought of others before myself to show that world can be a better place to live in. Secondly, I have always tried not to judge other people knowing that I wouldn’t want the same done to me. And lastly, I have always had complete compaction and respect for all living things. This is imperative for my defense, and that you should know all this before I start my affirmation. You must listen to me carefully without any biases for these will only hurt me in the end. Once again, I beg of you, I am innocent…………………………………
> In order for you to understand my judgments, I must first tell you of my upbringing first. I was born in a large city valley that stretched out as far as the eye could see. In this vast populated area we were all nestled between the large Wasach Mountains and canyons that would tower to the heavens. My family lived in the old part of town that overlooked the cities endless streets and buildings called the avenues. We owned a large old white house on third Ave and were quite happy. Amongst my parents I had 7 other siblings that fit quite comfortably in our surroundings, without many complaints.
> My parents were Mormons and preached the lord’s works were ever they went. They also gave us the same religious values and this kept our house in good spirits. It’s strange how all my brothers and sisters never fought. We always got along. Anyway, after high school, I, like all my friends from church, went to the bishop to get orders for my missionary placement. When I ran home to tell my parents where I was to be sent, my excitement quickly turned to tears. They could not afford to send me to South Carolina for my mission due to my father layoff. This was not only detrimental to me, but for my brothers and sisters as well. It was the bottom line for all of us. I was the oldest, and I had to understand and set an example for my younger siblings.
After this event, our house started to loose its laughter and tight knit bonds. Then our religion became a grueling affair. After sending the Mormon Church money every month, my parents could not afford to do any longer. We were penniless and times were tough. The church did nothing to help our situation and my parents and I quickly resented what the church stood for. We stopped going to church, quire, and family meetings. I saw some friends of mine after graduation. They were leaving soon for their mission, and said their goodbye’s to me. I grew very bitter at this point. I spent little time at home and more time at work. I got a job working at a book store. I worked long hours to avoid my family until I saved enough money to live on my own.
> I moved out of the old white house on the north hillside and quickly found an apartment downtown. Not a bad little place for an eighteen year old. It was a dump, but it was my little dump. At that age freedom is more important than comfort and I liked my surroundings. I also had company; roaches came out during the night. I would hear their little sticky legs scouring the walls and ceiling. There was also a shelter near by and all the scummy Mexican illegal would sit in the alleyway of my building and get drunk off their mouthwash and forties. It was heaven! It was during this time that the Mormon religion and all religions for that matter became pointless to me. I began talking to the bums about where they were from and if they went to church. Their life did not center on church or God. They did not get any hand-outs from churches. People who attended church never went up and invited them in out of the cold to a warm bed and a hot meal. Those people were a bunch of hypocrites. They only helped people who didn’t need help. Those that were in their own social class. That old famous rule “Do on to others as you would have done to you” was a load of shit. Come to think of it, I never saw a smelly homeless person at my mass, singing joyfully to god. They had other things to worry about and it wasn’t sinning. Any bum’s major focus was on food, shelter, and getting drunk. This started to make since to me. All was quickly abandoned.
> I quickly grew into a state of a recluse. I stopped all contact with my parents. I denounced my Mormon ties and the church never saw me again either. I began going to clubs and started meeting new people I could relate to. I took up drinking and smoking cigarettes, and I did the occasional drug that was being passed around. I enjoyed the heavy drinks that had strange names. In the beginning I threw up a lot. I was never allowed to drink alcohol in my house. Hell, my parents never even tried it in their lifetimes. Here I was, drinking like a fish, swaying home at 3 in the morning, and going into work penniless and hung over, only to do it again the next night. I even had sex with girls, and lots of them. I had sex with anyone who liked my pickup lines. Fat ones, skinny ones, even the ugly ones that could never get a date. I would wake up with a girl and always think; now I was going to hell. The church does not allow premarital sex, but then again I was not attending it anymore. Besides I liked it too much to stop. After about a year of this pre-meditated debauchery I wanted out. I got crabs from a girl who told me she was a virgin. Scanky bitch! I also spent all the little money I had on going out. I had no ambition or desire for anything. What bothered me the most was the fact that I had no future goal of my own.
I signed up for community collage, got financial aid, and within four years I had my degree.
> Choosing my field was no small feet, it was extremely difficult. It’s not everyday someone says “when I grow up, I want to be a mortician”. I became a mortician because it still was in my blood to help people. I went to funerals; I saw the compation in the funeral directors eyes. They took a bad day and transformed it into a comfortable atmosphere. People went home with a feeling that the deceased was in a good place and for them to move on in life. Hell, giving the family peace of mind and that everything was going to be all right made me feel good about myself. Not to mention, it’s a booming business. All people die sooner or later, business will always be constant.
After school, I got a job at Deseret Mortuary two blocks down from where I was living. Little did I know what was to be expected of me? This was a hard job. I worked long, grueling hours that would last well into the night. People die, all the time. It was my job to drain their blood from the main artery and insert a catheter into it. Pump there body full of embalming fluid while I massaged their dirty shriveled up skin to cause the blood to flow out again. Insert the catheter in their belly buttons and suck out the organs that flowed like an ice cream shake down a toilet drain in the corner. We even had these little plastic looking buttons that were placed over the belly button to stop the leaking caused by the catheter. Sowing the jaw shut was no easy task. If someone dies, never look up into their nose, because you will see the slip knot holding the jaw shut. You see, we have to string it up through the nose for it to stay locked. I was also a beautician. I apply make up to their orange tinted skin and give them a smile, as if they were happy. Do their hair and dress them in the cheep polyester clothes their children picked out from their mouth ball ridden closets. If they got shot, I had to pack up the whole with cotton and fill it in to make it look like new. If they were coming from the coroners department, I had to take the white garbage bag of guts and put them all back inside the hollow chest, reinsert the breast plate and sow them up for immediate cremation. I sat on my lunch breaks and watched the fire come down from the kiln and shoot across their chest causing them to sit up. I would have to retrieve their hip replacements out of the ash and grind their bones into what looked like kitty litter. Day after day and night after night, I became desensitized from the living and the dead.
Within the second week, they had me move into a one bedroom apartment upstairs from the chapel. I had two front doors. One leaded to the outside, and the other opened into my office, the embalming room. This was the company’s way of saying “you can never call in sick because you don’t have to travel far to work”. Besides working 5-6 days a week, I would also be on call 4 nights out of that week. It’s nothing like getting woken up at 3 in the morning to pick up a dead one and cart his ass all over town and put him away in a cooler, walk 6ft, and slip back into your room. The cooler was too close to my pillow for comfort. Not to mention, scraping in enough time to fall back asleep.
This new occupation also affected my social life. My sex life quickly became stale and non-existent. When I did have the time to meet the women I was always being insulted. They would all say, “You smell funny!” or “What is that smell?” How do you answer that one? “Oh! It’s formaldehyde and body cavity fluid for men?” You could not get that smell off of you, and god knows I tried. This smell is unlike any other, very indescribable. It's the odder emanating from old people’s skin in the nursing homes. It’s that smell that resembles moth balls and dust that settled 10 years ago. That smells in the back of the closet. The smell of an attack in the middle of summer. Strange, when I get around the living, I can smell that smell of certain people, and within a week or so, I see their picture in the obituaries.
With all this mounting up on me, I soon became bitter and started to resent my job. Many of the guys I worked with all had the same characteristics that I then possessed. Yet, they all dealt with it with humor.
> One of the guys I worked with, Ron, would go down to the plasma clinics during lunch breaks. He would park the hearse out front and move into the back seat and eat his lunch with his girl friend. You could only imagine the response from the people inside. They would sit and laugh at the dirty bums that would get ready to walk in, take one look at the car, and walk away scared. His girl friend mairlie, decorated her house in stuff she took from the funeral home. Three blood red couches that were left in the bacement, were used in their living room. They also took and old embaulming machine, that looked like a 3ft blender, and used it as a fish tank. Not to mention the old lamps, candle ambras, and incense burners that gave the home a warm Victorian afterglow.
And then there’s Mike. He went as far as putting “we put the fun in funeral” on all of his business cards. Sick minds worked well together for we always had fun on the job. Being a mortician was not what I thought it was all cracked up to be. We were part of a weird occupation. There are not a lot of us out there, but we could be spotted if you were watching enough. I decided for fun, I would make up some bumper stickers. Sayings like, ”It’s not rape if their dead, or, Don’t call a dead girl fat, she bloated”, were hanging on my bumper. I had to park the damn car with the bumper hiding from the public view when I was at work though. People really freaked out some times from crap like that. All in all I know I was becoming more of a freak each day. People also looked at me differently. I was on the bus one day, going uptown to bring a death certificate to the newspaper office. A group of school girls got on, took one look at my clothes and started singing, “Here come the men in black”. I was so embarrassed. Hell, it’s not like you see many undertakers skipping merrily down the sidewalk yelling out “I’m a mortician yippy!!!!
> At the end of the week my apartment smelled like the other room. Most of my pay-check went to my dry cleaning bill. Every week I would bring 8 white shirts, 3 black pairs of pants, 3 black jackets, a mound of black socks, and a few black ties into the dry cleaners to be deloused. The girl that worked there was always friendly with me, but I was always too embarrassed to ask her out. How could I talk about my job to her? What if we did hit it off, got married and had children? Just picturing father son day at the mortuary. Yeah, that would be a special moment. Showing the kid how to draw the artery while he holds the catheter firmly in a dead mans stomach. I could only imagine him telling his fellow school mates his day with daddy.
She ended up asking me out, and I told her what I did before I said yes. She was great. Raven black hair, nose ring, and a long lovely vine tattoo that went from her breast right down to her navel. Now that’s my kind of chick. On the 5th date, I took her to my apartment. She blew me away because she did not mind the office in the other room. I gave her the tour of the mortuary. I showed her the embalming room, the cooler with a 14 year old girl who was missing a leg because she threw herself at a train, the old chapel, the coffin room, and the fleet of hearses. There is nothing better than having a quickie in the back of a hearce. Anyway, we were together 8 months when I finally pooped the question. To my surprise, she said yes. We decided to get married in the chapel at the mortuary. My family was not very happy about where it was to be held. Her family on the other hand thought is was quite funny. They came in from back east and joked about it. They even rearranged on the funeral homes viewing board, “now viewing Simon and Jenn’s (wedding) Viewing”. They all got a kick out of that, the business uses that board to tell family members where their deceased are to be put on display. After the honeymoon in New Orleans, things died down, we moved into her house. This was a lot better for me, and then I could call in sick.
Soon after, I became a man who really lost touch with reality due to my occupation. I joked about death as though it was only a job. I lost touch that it really was reality. I talked to the dead people, I told them jokes. I treated them as though they weren’t really real. Not that they were alive, just as though they were paper work. Does this make one look bad to the human race? Are we judged by what we are and what we do? If there is a god, does he know there are people so desensitized by what they do and allows them to go on believing it? Do people actually realize they fall into it blindly, and never even notice? Dear listener, this next part of my confession is crucial when deciding the judgment of my actions. I am innocent; as I have said earlier, please remember this.
> I got the call around 4:15 in the morning. There was a soft spoken voice on the other line." There is a pick up for you at the Sandy hospital. His name is Mr. Swift. Pick him and his death certificate up and drop them off at Deseret.” O.K I said, and I hung up the receiver abruptly. Pissed off over the fact that I was numb from the warmth of the sheets, and in the middle of a really great dream. I yanked the covers off and told my wife I had to go. I then stormed about the room looking for my dirty smelly clothes from earlier that day. I found them in a heap over in the corner where I discarded them and threw them on. That smell came back to my senses and I was quickly covered in it. As I locked the door, the air was crisp while autumn was in full bloom. I walked to the van that was clouded by the dark pitch of the sky. I jumped in and slammed the door shut. I sat swearing like mad under my breath while the van began to warm up. I just worked an 11- hour day, and here I was going to pick up some jackass who was problably too stupid to enjoy life. Problably keeled over his desk at work trying not to stress about the upcoming merger. Serves him right! I hope his wife was happy now that she didn’t have to deal with him anymore.
> I put the car into drive and turned the heater and the wipers on. The leaves had frozen to the windshield from a thick frost, and made a greasy glaze over the glass, making it hard to see through. I cranked the oldies station on the radio, lit up a cigarette and picked at my nail until I could see. In a few minutes I was off and going like a bad-out-of hell down the street. Thank god it was too early for people to be up at this hour. No one saw me skid to a stop at the stop sign before the on-ramp to the interstate. I figured the cops must be at Winchells having coffee avoiding the cold. They were smart not to be out in this shit. I made my way up the ramp, slipping around a bit due to the frost and the leaves. Within a minute or two I was finally on the interstate. The sky was grim and the clouds were hovering low to the ground. That made me angry because it took me twice as long to get there. All I wanted was to be back in bed like everyone else. The high-way looked like a vacant motel, even the truck drivers were all pulled over. Their night lights illuminating the highway as if it was a Christmas tree.
> It was 6 a.m. when I arrived at the rinky-dink little hospital. It looked abandoned by all at this ungodly hour. I turned down the music and threw my cigarette out the window. I made my way through the parking lot to the back- side of the stone building. Why is it that people hide death so much? I have to pick up dead people in an unmarked white van, drive to the back- side of a hospital and secretly load them in. Are people that stunned about the sight of death? Maybe, that’s why people can’t handle it when they have to go to a funeral. They need to see how a dead person looks after they are pumped full of body cavity fluid and the messy orange embalming fluid. How their natural skin turns orange and their lips look like wax. We do it with pickles, but why people. Not to mention how they have to be presented in a very expensive box, one that will guard against intrusion. Don’t they know that nothing lasts forever? And it’s our job, the funeral directors who have to lie and tell them they will be safe in the ground just to comfort them. While the whole time thinking about the mark up we just earned on the casket, the ceremony, and the last rights. God dam, what do they think we are, Shrinks? Were a business man, that’s all?
> The wind bit at my cheek when I got out of the van making me shiver. I went inside through the hard electric doors. I was immediately blasted from above with hot air. It quickly took the chill away from my body. I walked up to the nurse’s station, flashed my badge, and told her who I needed to pick up. Normally I don’t have to do this, but this one was new and boy was she ugly! “Short, fat, and wrinkly”. She turned away, thank god. She waddled her way down the hall to the morgue and gestured for me to follow. As I walked I was thinking the line Mike us to say when we went out to the clubs. He would pick out the ugliest girl and say, “Man, she not only fell out of the ugly tree, but hit all the branches on the way down!” She asked me what was so funny as we entered the dark room. I told her nothing, taking in that same rank smell that has fixed itself to every inch of my being. She looked over each toe tag in the room. There were four bodies. Each body was laid out in unison on a cot, covered as if sleeping under a thin white sheet. She was searching for the matching name I had given her. She found the man and I quickly made my way over and began wheeling him out as she handed me his death certificate. I said thanks, as I waved the back part of my hand in the air. This was taking to long, usually the regular nurse lets me back by myself and I’m out of there in seconds. But this time took like an eternity. I thought about calling in sick tomorrow, so I could get some long over due sleep.
I took Mr. Swift threw the doors slowly to get a brief taste of the warm flush of air before I had to make my way out into what seemed like the pins of the artic air. When I got to van, I opened the back doors and lifted up the sheet over his head. “It’s time for you taxi Mr. Swift!” I put the sheet over his face again and gave a chuckle. This guy was rather tall, bigger than me for sure. I pushed the cot inward and the front wheels collapsed. Rushing, I slid him in the rest of the way and slammed the doors. The sky was beginning to light up just a bit as I made my way to the drivers-side. I got in and sped out of there knowing that this trip was turning into a bad vacation. As I made my way along the high way I looked at the clock again, 7:50am. Up ahead I could see road rage quickly mounting. This was rich, no one out before and now everyone was speeding along their way merrily to work. I reached over and turned the radio on and started singing along to the gibberish blaring out of the speakers. As the cars began to pile up from afar, they quickly surrounded me from both sides and in the rear. This began to fuel my rage only because Utah drivers act like idiots on
The road. They love to slow down and speed up quickly with no one in front of them. “Way to much Prozac!”
> This continued for what seemed to be an eternity. I turned up the radio ever louder and began singing like a mad man while looking out the window at the passing cars. Some of them saw me and gave me a strange look; others were too busy applying their make-up. I just laughed and turned back my head asking Mr. Swift If he liked my singing? He didn’t answer, so I turned my head around and my eyes bugged out of my head with what was about to happen. There, not more
Than 3ft. in front of my bumper was a red car slamming on the brakes, and all I could do was slam on mine as fast as I could. I was going 80 mph it took all of my might to hold on tight to the steering wheel without going through the windshield. It was at that very instant that MR. Swift’s cot came flying towards the front of the van. The cot’s front wheels fell and his body slid down off the cot. I felt his body slam the back of my chair. Then I took a deep breath. It was in that instant I looked down at the speedometer noticing that the stick was moving from 65 to 70 back up to 80 and still rising. I could not figure out why I was going so fast until I noticed Mr. Swift’s feet on the gas peddle. My face broke out in a heavy sweat as the van was soon weaving in and out of the early commuting traffic like a jack rabbit avoiding instant death. While trying to drive in and around and out of up coming traffic I reached my hand down to try and dislodge his stone cold feet from the pedal, no luck, the dump stiff has rigamortis! Clutching the wheel with both hands I tried to dive through the gapes of two cars only to
Strike a hard sharp blow to the front bumper of the back driver. Instantly I sent her immediately to her right side to smash into another car, the same thing happened to the other driver. This continued from the back and front of her as well which turned into a full blown devastation. As I looked back quickly, I saw what looked like a heap of cars scattered about as if a child was playing with his match boxes.
>I had to do something, so I began kicking at the lifeless feet below me to try and break the bone and hope that I could move it. No luck! My speed was increasing and the other cars up ahead were slowing down to a dead stop due to construction. Tears rang out inside my eyes as I new what was going to happen next. I lade on the horn and closed them tightly. Flash of light………………………
>That is all I can remember. I don’t know what happened next except that I am laying here on a cold table and trying to make some since as to why I cannot move, why I cannot move my lips? The sting of the light above me, I can hear it. My brain is thinking, but no movement. Oh God, all is too still. Something is terribly wrong. There are bottles in the cabinet; I can’t quite make out what they say. What is it? Waite. Oh god!! No! Not that, not this place. I’m not in the embalming room, I can’t be!!! God help me please!!!
Blackness…..
All is quite still. Nothing has changed. I am still here. I have reviewed all of my life, all my hopes for penance into the afterlife. I have said my confession to you dear listener in hopes that I have done what a good person would do in life. I hope I will be judged accordingly. If there is anyone out there, it is up to you now to make that judgment with the knowledge of whom I am and what I had become. Please make your decision soon, for me now that any minute now, Mike or Ron will be in to continue their job.
this story i wrote 4 years ago. it is therapy due to the fact that it is a true story about my life with my ex-husband. all events are true= except his death....
“WE PUT THE FUN IN FUNERAL”
Before I confess my entire sins dear listener, I need to say that I am innocent of all the wrongs that have blackened my good name. First off, I am a good man, that’s for sure. I have always thought of others before myself to show that world can be a better place to live in. Secondly, I have always tried not to judge other people knowing that I wouldn’t want the same done to me. And lastly, I have always had complete compaction and respect for all living things. This is imperative for my defense, and that you should know all this before I start my affirmation. You must listen to me carefully without any biases for these will only hurt me in the end. Once again, I beg of you, I am innocent…………………………………
> In order for you to understand my judgments, I must first tell you of my upbringing first. I was born in a large city valley that stretched out as far as the eye could see. In this vast populated area we were all nestled between the large Wasach Mountains and canyons that would tower to the heavens. My family lived in the old part of town that overlooked the cities endless streets and buildings called the avenues. We owned a large old white house on third Ave and were quite happy. Amongst my parents I had 7 other siblings that fit quite comfortably in our surroundings, without many complaints.
> My parents were Mormons and preached the lord’s works were ever they went. They also gave us the same religious values and this kept our house in good spirits. It’s strange how all my brothers and sisters never fought. We always got along. Anyway, after high school, I, like all my friends from church, went to the bishop to get orders for my missionary placement. When I ran home to tell my parents where I was to be sent, my excitement quickly turned to tears. They could not afford to send me to South Carolina for my mission due to my father layoff. This was not only detrimental to me, but for my brothers and sisters as well. It was the bottom line for all of us. I was the oldest, and I had to understand and set an example for my younger siblings.
After this event, our house started to loose its laughter and tight knit bonds. Then our religion became a grueling affair. After sending the Mormon Church money every month, my parents could not afford to do any longer. We were penniless and times were tough. The church did nothing to help our situation and my parents and I quickly resented what the church stood for. We stopped going to church, quire, and family meetings. I saw some friends of mine after graduation. They were leaving soon for their mission, and said their goodbye’s to me. I grew very bitter at this point. I spent little time at home and more time at work. I got a job working at a book store. I worked long hours to avoid my family until I saved enough money to live on my own.
> I moved out of the old white house on the north hillside and quickly found an apartment downtown. Not a bad little place for an eighteen year old. It was a dump, but it was my little dump. At that age freedom is more important than comfort and I liked my surroundings. I also had company; roaches came out during the night. I would hear their little sticky legs scouring the walls and ceiling. There was also a shelter near by and all the scummy Mexican illegal would sit in the alleyway of my building and get drunk off their mouthwash and forties. It was heaven! It was during this time that the Mormon religion and all religions for that matter became pointless to me. I began talking to the bums about where they were from and if they went to church. Their life did not center on church or God. They did not get any hand-outs from churches. People who attended church never went up and invited them in out of the cold to a warm bed and a hot meal. Those people were a bunch of hypocrites. They only helped people who didn’t need help. Those that were in their own social class. That old famous rule “Do on to others as you would have done to you” was a load of shit. Come to think of it, I never saw a smelly homeless person at my mass, singing joyfully to god. They had other things to worry about and it wasn’t sinning. Any bum’s major focus was on food, shelter, and getting drunk. This started to make since to me. All was quickly abandoned.
> I quickly grew into a state of a recluse. I stopped all contact with my parents. I denounced my Mormon ties and the church never saw me again either. I began going to clubs and started meeting new people I could relate to. I took up drinking and smoking cigarettes, and I did the occasional drug that was being passed around. I enjoyed the heavy drinks that had strange names. In the beginning I threw up a lot. I was never allowed to drink alcohol in my house. Hell, my parents never even tried it in their lifetimes. Here I was, drinking like a fish, swaying home at 3 in the morning, and going into work penniless and hung over, only to do it again the next night. I even had sex with girls, and lots of them. I had sex with anyone who liked my pickup lines. Fat ones, skinny ones, even the ugly ones that could never get a date. I would wake up with a girl and always think; now I was going to hell. The church does not allow premarital sex, but then again I was not attending it anymore. Besides I liked it too much to stop. After about a year of this pre-meditated debauchery I wanted out. I got crabs from a girl who told me she was a virgin. Scanky bitch! I also spent all the little money I had on going out. I had no ambition or desire for anything. What bothered me the most was the fact that I had no future goal of my own.
I signed up for community collage, got financial aid, and within four years I had my degree.
> Choosing my field was no small feet, it was extremely difficult. It’s not everyday someone says “when I grow up, I want to be a mortician”. I became a mortician because it still was in my blood to help people. I went to funerals; I saw the compation in the funeral directors eyes. They took a bad day and transformed it into a comfortable atmosphere. People went home with a feeling that the deceased was in a good place and for them to move on in life. Hell, giving the family peace of mind and that everything was going to be all right made me feel good about myself. Not to mention, it’s a booming business. All people die sooner or later, business will always be constant.
After school, I got a job at Deseret Mortuary two blocks down from where I was living. Little did I know what was to be expected of me? This was a hard job. I worked long, grueling hours that would last well into the night. People die, all the time. It was my job to drain their blood from the main artery and insert a catheter into it. Pump there body full of embalming fluid while I massaged their dirty shriveled up skin to cause the blood to flow out again. Insert the catheter in their belly buttons and suck out the organs that flowed like an ice cream shake down a toilet drain in the corner. We even had these little plastic looking buttons that were placed over the belly button to stop the leaking caused by the catheter. Sowing the jaw shut was no easy task. If someone dies, never look up into their nose, because you will see the slip knot holding the jaw shut. You see, we have to string it up through the nose for it to stay locked. I was also a beautician. I apply make up to their orange tinted skin and give them a smile, as if they were happy. Do their hair and dress them in the cheep polyester clothes their children picked out from their mouth ball ridden closets. If they got shot, I had to pack up the whole with cotton and fill it in to make it look like new. If they were coming from the coroners department, I had to take the white garbage bag of guts and put them all back inside the hollow chest, reinsert the breast plate and sow them up for immediate cremation. I sat on my lunch breaks and watched the fire come down from the kiln and shoot across their chest causing them to sit up. I would have to retrieve their hip replacements out of the ash and grind their bones into what looked like kitty litter. Day after day and night after night, I became desensitized from the living and the dead.
Within the second week, they had me move into a one bedroom apartment upstairs from the chapel. I had two front doors. One leaded to the outside, and the other opened into my office, the embalming room. This was the company’s way of saying “you can never call in sick because you don’t have to travel far to work”. Besides working 5-6 days a week, I would also be on call 4 nights out of that week. It’s nothing like getting woken up at 3 in the morning to pick up a dead one and cart his ass all over town and put him away in a cooler, walk 6ft, and slip back into your room. The cooler was too close to my pillow for comfort. Not to mention, scraping in enough time to fall back asleep.
This new occupation also affected my social life. My sex life quickly became stale and non-existent. When I did have the time to meet the women I was always being insulted. They would all say, “You smell funny!” or “What is that smell?” How do you answer that one? “Oh! It’s formaldehyde and body cavity fluid for men?” You could not get that smell off of you, and god knows I tried. This smell is unlike any other, very indescribable. It's the odder emanating from old people’s skin in the nursing homes. It’s that smell that resembles moth balls and dust that settled 10 years ago. That smells in the back of the closet. The smell of an attack in the middle of summer. Strange, when I get around the living, I can smell that smell of certain people, and within a week or so, I see their picture in the obituaries.
With all this mounting up on me, I soon became bitter and started to resent my job. Many of the guys I worked with all had the same characteristics that I then possessed. Yet, they all dealt with it with humor.
> One of the guys I worked with, Ron, would go down to the plasma clinics during lunch breaks. He would park the hearse out front and move into the back seat and eat his lunch with his girl friend. You could only imagine the response from the people inside. They would sit and laugh at the dirty bums that would get ready to walk in, take one look at the car, and walk away scared. His girl friend mairlie, decorated her house in stuff she took from the funeral home. Three blood red couches that were left in the bacement, were used in their living room. They also took and old embaulming machine, that looked like a 3ft blender, and used it as a fish tank. Not to mention the old lamps, candle ambras, and incense burners that gave the home a warm Victorian afterglow.
And then there’s Mike. He went as far as putting “we put the fun in funeral” on all of his business cards. Sick minds worked well together for we always had fun on the job. Being a mortician was not what I thought it was all cracked up to be. We were part of a weird occupation. There are not a lot of us out there, but we could be spotted if you were watching enough. I decided for fun, I would make up some bumper stickers. Sayings like, ”It’s not rape if their dead, or, Don’t call a dead girl fat, she bloated”, were hanging on my bumper. I had to park the damn car with the bumper hiding from the public view when I was at work though. People really freaked out some times from crap like that. All in all I know I was becoming more of a freak each day. People also looked at me differently. I was on the bus one day, going uptown to bring a death certificate to the newspaper office. A group of school girls got on, took one look at my clothes and started singing, “Here come the men in black”. I was so embarrassed. Hell, it’s not like you see many undertakers skipping merrily down the sidewalk yelling out “I’m a mortician yippy!!!!
> At the end of the week my apartment smelled like the other room. Most of my pay-check went to my dry cleaning bill. Every week I would bring 8 white shirts, 3 black pairs of pants, 3 black jackets, a mound of black socks, and a few black ties into the dry cleaners to be deloused. The girl that worked there was always friendly with me, but I was always too embarrassed to ask her out. How could I talk about my job to her? What if we did hit it off, got married and had children? Just picturing father son day at the mortuary. Yeah, that would be a special moment. Showing the kid how to draw the artery while he holds the catheter firmly in a dead mans stomach. I could only imagine him telling his fellow school mates his day with daddy.
She ended up asking me out, and I told her what I did before I said yes. She was great. Raven black hair, nose ring, and a long lovely vine tattoo that went from her breast right down to her navel. Now that’s my kind of chick. On the 5th date, I took her to my apartment. She blew me away because she did not mind the office in the other room. I gave her the tour of the mortuary. I showed her the embalming room, the cooler with a 14 year old girl who was missing a leg because she threw herself at a train, the old chapel, the coffin room, and the fleet of hearses. There is nothing better than having a quickie in the back of a hearce. Anyway, we were together 8 months when I finally pooped the question. To my surprise, she said yes. We decided to get married in the chapel at the mortuary. My family was not very happy about where it was to be held. Her family on the other hand thought is was quite funny. They came in from back east and joked about it. They even rearranged on the funeral homes viewing board, “now viewing Simon and Jenn’s (wedding) Viewing”. They all got a kick out of that, the business uses that board to tell family members where their deceased are to be put on display. After the honeymoon in New Orleans, things died down, we moved into her house. This was a lot better for me, and then I could call in sick.
Soon after, I became a man who really lost touch with reality due to my occupation. I joked about death as though it was only a job. I lost touch that it really was reality. I talked to the dead people, I told them jokes. I treated them as though they weren’t really real. Not that they were alive, just as though they were paper work. Does this make one look bad to the human race? Are we judged by what we are and what we do? If there is a god, does he know there are people so desensitized by what they do and allows them to go on believing it? Do people actually realize they fall into it blindly, and never even notice? Dear listener, this next part of my confession is crucial when deciding the judgment of my actions. I am innocent; as I have said earlier, please remember this.
> I got the call around 4:15 in the morning. There was a soft spoken voice on the other line." There is a pick up for you at the Sandy hospital. His name is Mr. Swift. Pick him and his death certificate up and drop them off at Deseret.” O.K I said, and I hung up the receiver abruptly. Pissed off over the fact that I was numb from the warmth of the sheets, and in the middle of a really great dream. I yanked the covers off and told my wife I had to go. I then stormed about the room looking for my dirty smelly clothes from earlier that day. I found them in a heap over in the corner where I discarded them and threw them on. That smell came back to my senses and I was quickly covered in it. As I locked the door, the air was crisp while autumn was in full bloom. I walked to the van that was clouded by the dark pitch of the sky. I jumped in and slammed the door shut. I sat swearing like mad under my breath while the van began to warm up. I just worked an 11- hour day, and here I was going to pick up some jackass who was problably too stupid to enjoy life. Problably keeled over his desk at work trying not to stress about the upcoming merger. Serves him right! I hope his wife was happy now that she didn’t have to deal with him anymore.
> I put the car into drive and turned the heater and the wipers on. The leaves had frozen to the windshield from a thick frost, and made a greasy glaze over the glass, making it hard to see through. I cranked the oldies station on the radio, lit up a cigarette and picked at my nail until I could see. In a few minutes I was off and going like a bad-out-of hell down the street. Thank god it was too early for people to be up at this hour. No one saw me skid to a stop at the stop sign before the on-ramp to the interstate. I figured the cops must be at Winchells having coffee avoiding the cold. They were smart not to be out in this shit. I made my way up the ramp, slipping around a bit due to the frost and the leaves. Within a minute or two I was finally on the interstate. The sky was grim and the clouds were hovering low to the ground. That made me angry because it took me twice as long to get there. All I wanted was to be back in bed like everyone else. The high-way looked like a vacant motel, even the truck drivers were all pulled over. Their night lights illuminating the highway as if it was a Christmas tree.
> It was 6 a.m. when I arrived at the rinky-dink little hospital. It looked abandoned by all at this ungodly hour. I turned down the music and threw my cigarette out the window. I made my way through the parking lot to the back- side of the stone building. Why is it that people hide death so much? I have to pick up dead people in an unmarked white van, drive to the back- side of a hospital and secretly load them in. Are people that stunned about the sight of death? Maybe, that’s why people can’t handle it when they have to go to a funeral. They need to see how a dead person looks after they are pumped full of body cavity fluid and the messy orange embalming fluid. How their natural skin turns orange and their lips look like wax. We do it with pickles, but why people. Not to mention how they have to be presented in a very expensive box, one that will guard against intrusion. Don’t they know that nothing lasts forever? And it’s our job, the funeral directors who have to lie and tell them they will be safe in the ground just to comfort them. While the whole time thinking about the mark up we just earned on the casket, the ceremony, and the last rights. God dam, what do they think we are, Shrinks? Were a business man, that’s all?
> The wind bit at my cheek when I got out of the van making me shiver. I went inside through the hard electric doors. I was immediately blasted from above with hot air. It quickly took the chill away from my body. I walked up to the nurse’s station, flashed my badge, and told her who I needed to pick up. Normally I don’t have to do this, but this one was new and boy was she ugly! “Short, fat, and wrinkly”. She turned away, thank god. She waddled her way down the hall to the morgue and gestured for me to follow. As I walked I was thinking the line Mike us to say when we went out to the clubs. He would pick out the ugliest girl and say, “Man, she not only fell out of the ugly tree, but hit all the branches on the way down!” She asked me what was so funny as we entered the dark room. I told her nothing, taking in that same rank smell that has fixed itself to every inch of my being. She looked over each toe tag in the room. There were four bodies. Each body was laid out in unison on a cot, covered as if sleeping under a thin white sheet. She was searching for the matching name I had given her. She found the man and I quickly made my way over and began wheeling him out as she handed me his death certificate. I said thanks, as I waved the back part of my hand in the air. This was taking to long, usually the regular nurse lets me back by myself and I’m out of there in seconds. But this time took like an eternity. I thought about calling in sick tomorrow, so I could get some long over due sleep.
I took Mr. Swift threw the doors slowly to get a brief taste of the warm flush of air before I had to make my way out into what seemed like the pins of the artic air. When I got to van, I opened the back doors and lifted up the sheet over his head. “It’s time for you taxi Mr. Swift!” I put the sheet over his face again and gave a chuckle. This guy was rather tall, bigger than me for sure. I pushed the cot inward and the front wheels collapsed. Rushing, I slid him in the rest of the way and slammed the doors. The sky was beginning to light up just a bit as I made my way to the drivers-side. I got in and sped out of there knowing that this trip was turning into a bad vacation. As I made my way along the high way I looked at the clock again, 7:50am. Up ahead I could see road rage quickly mounting. This was rich, no one out before and now everyone was speeding along their way merrily to work. I reached over and turned the radio on and started singing along to the gibberish blaring out of the speakers. As the cars began to pile up from afar, they quickly surrounded me from both sides and in the rear. This began to fuel my rage only because Utah drivers act like idiots on
The road. They love to slow down and speed up quickly with no one in front of them. “Way to much Prozac!”
> This continued for what seemed to be an eternity. I turned up the radio ever louder and began singing like a mad man while looking out the window at the passing cars. Some of them saw me and gave me a strange look; others were too busy applying their make-up. I just laughed and turned back my head asking Mr. Swift If he liked my singing? He didn’t answer, so I turned my head around and my eyes bugged out of my head with what was about to happen. There, not more
Than 3ft. in front of my bumper was a red car slamming on the brakes, and all I could do was slam on mine as fast as I could. I was going 80 mph it took all of my might to hold on tight to the steering wheel without going through the windshield. It was at that very instant that MR. Swift’s cot came flying towards the front of the van. The cot’s front wheels fell and his body slid down off the cot. I felt his body slam the back of my chair. Then I took a deep breath. It was in that instant I looked down at the speedometer noticing that the stick was moving from 65 to 70 back up to 80 and still rising. I could not figure out why I was going so fast until I noticed Mr. Swift’s feet on the gas peddle. My face broke out in a heavy sweat as the van was soon weaving in and out of the early commuting traffic like a jack rabbit avoiding instant death. While trying to drive in and around and out of up coming traffic I reached my hand down to try and dislodge his stone cold feet from the pedal, no luck, the dump stiff has rigamortis! Clutching the wheel with both hands I tried to dive through the gapes of two cars only to
Strike a hard sharp blow to the front bumper of the back driver. Instantly I sent her immediately to her right side to smash into another car, the same thing happened to the other driver. This continued from the back and front of her as well which turned into a full blown devastation. As I looked back quickly, I saw what looked like a heap of cars scattered about as if a child was playing with his match boxes.
>I had to do something, so I began kicking at the lifeless feet below me to try and break the bone and hope that I could move it. No luck! My speed was increasing and the other cars up ahead were slowing down to a dead stop due to construction. Tears rang out inside my eyes as I new what was going to happen next. I lade on the horn and closed them tightly. Flash of light………………………
>That is all I can remember. I don’t know what happened next except that I am laying here on a cold table and trying to make some since as to why I cannot move, why I cannot move my lips? The sting of the light above me, I can hear it. My brain is thinking, but no movement. Oh God, all is too still. Something is terribly wrong. There are bottles in the cabinet; I can’t quite make out what they say. What is it? Waite. Oh god!! No! Not that, not this place. I’m not in the embalming room, I can’t be!!! God help me please!!!
Blackness…..
All is quite still. Nothing has changed. I am still here. I have reviewed all of my life, all my hopes for penance into the afterlife. I have said my confession to you dear listener in hopes that I have done what a good person would do in life. I hope I will be judged accordingly. If there is anyone out there, it is up to you now to make that judgment with the knowledge of whom I am and what I had become. Please make your decision soon, for me now that any minute now, Mike or Ron will be in to continue their job.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home