The Business of Dying

My grandfather was a drunk. He was loud, abusive and unfaithful to my grandmother. He smoked vile smelling cigars, told dirty jokes, kept nudist magazines in his bedroom, and cheated at poker. He frightened everyone but somehow had built a successful business - a funeral home - and appeared to be idolized by everyone he served.
His own funeral was a packed house. He had, so it seemed, been kind and comforting to a great many families, just not his own.

My daddy had gone to work for him not long after marrying my mother and took over the business when he died. He was made for it - a soft spoken, gentle man who understood loss and pain, who could comfort the most grief stricken family members with kind words and kinder silences. He led them through the process with
patience, empathy, dignity and grace. People responded to him instantly and as naturally as if they'd known him all their lives. He listened, he cared, he attended to every small detail, and he was always there, always smoothing the way. He knew when to step in and when to back away. He never rushed mourning or tried to hurry grief or healing. He never acknowledged death as an ending, simply an inevitable transition.

I never thought it strange that we spent so much time there. My mother spent several evenings a week out and we were simply packed up and taken back to work with him. While wakes or visitations were going on downstairs, we did our homework in the tv room. When the downstairs services were over, we had the run of the place - the offices, the chapel, the autopsy room - Cambridge had no city morgue at the time so bodies were brought to the funeral home. Gunshot victims, stabbings, suicides, people who died in hotel rooms and car wrecks, the homeless who froze to death in the back alleys, the addicts who overdosed, all ended up in the autopsy room. I saw death early and was taught to be respectful but not afraid.

After my mother decided that the city had become too hot to live in, she bought a small cottage on a small lake in New Hampshire. Dad lived with my grandmother for a time and after her death, he lived at the funeral home and became a weekend commuter to the country. He said he found it restful and and free of all the material things that we work so hard to aquire. He had a roof, a bed, a small radio, several books, and his work. He said it was all he needed.

And the business he gave so much of his life to? Cambridge came under siege from renovation, a rising crime rate, urban blight, and a failing economy. My grandfather's business had had it's glory days and faded into a slightly shabby and shopworn relic. Sometimes change comes too little and too late.