Sorrowful Work

I often wondered about the interns that came to work at the funeral home - why anyone would choose to work with the dead was something of a mystery.  There were the old and tired jokes, of course -"The customers never complain" was a perennial favorite - but the fact remained, it was sorrowful work, body removal could be physically exhausting and grieving families were wearing on the nerves.  You could be called out anytime of the day or night to any place - people died in hotels and on golf courses, they were shot or stabbed, mangled in accidents or found dead in nursing homes.  They killed each other and themselves with alarming regularity in the city and homicide was an every day affair - there were brutal gang murders, simple domestic disagreement murders, bloody mafia murders, loss of temper murders in bars and at intersections and in workplaces.  There were sad suicides and drug deals gone bad and killings of children, so much death and destruction, so grimly needless.  And between classes and studying and being on call all through the nights, the interns witnessed and became part of it, joked about it, took it all in without taking it to heart.  Sorrowful, sorrowful work - but as the interns liked to point out - steady as sin and just as inevitable.

Most were young, in their early 20's and slightly adrift.  They attended mortuary classes during the day and studied in their spare time, sleeping when they could in a tiny, shabby, second floor bedroom, snatching meals from the delicatessens and the cafeterias in the square.  Some found the work too depressing or too gruesome and they moved on after a few months.  Others were able to detach and distance themselves.  A handful stuck it out, finished their schooling and found careers in the industry, caring enough to want to ease the pain of those left behind and make a respectful living of it.  All found ways to cope and for those who stayed, death became a reality, an adversary, a transition and sometimes a friend.  They read chemistry and anatomy and Kubler-Ross in the same breath, learned to arrange flowers and write death notices, how to comfort families and embalm bodies.  They perfected the art of sad smiles and sympathy and they understood but accepted loss.  Most believed in some sort of a reward/punishment afterlife but were rarely if ever preachy.  

We are here to attend to details, my daddy often told them, to make the process smoother and the grief a little more bearable.  God only comes into it if invited and we respect all beliefs.  Leave your personal religion or lack of it at home.  

And so there were Catholic masses, Irish wakes, gypsy send offs and Protestant services.  There were pine boxes and mahogany caskets with satin lining.  Families grieved and said goodbye each in their own way under the discreet and often invisible eyes of the interns and the established funeral directors who stood on the sidelines and gently, quietly, guided and watched over it all.  

It's a gift to serve the dead, I'd heard my daddy say, But it's a responsibility to serve the living.

But it was still sorrowful work.

Now and again, one of these young interns - being so serious and well dressed and bright, not to mention reasonably attractive - would catch my hormonal pre-teenage eye and for a time I would lose myself in a world of fantasy where he would sweep me off my feet and carry me off to a distant land where there were live flowers all year 'round and no one ever died.  There would be art and music and books and white horses to ride into glorious sunsets.  Inevitably, I would then catch sight of my knight in shining armor in a rubber apron and gloves and plastic goggles, elbow deep in blood and guts with the scent of formaldehyde in the air.  It wasn't the sort of vision that sustained a crush.

Sorrowful work.