Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt

Tom and I nodded. Tom has a chocolate Lab, and I have a Yorkshire terrier, so we know what it’s like to be attached to a dog. People who don’t have pets don’t realize what a big presence they are in the house, but they each have their own personalities. They become part of the family.

We expressed our sympathies to the Drakes and Mr. Drake escorted the still crying Mrs. Drake out of the kitchen while we loaded the eighty-pound husky onto the cot and took him back to the funeral home. The Drakes stood on the front stoop and watched as we pulled away. Mrs. Drake hugged herself while Mr. Drake stood with his arm around his wife’s shoulders.

The next day I took Clear to the animal crematorium, and later in the week transferred his ashes from the little plastic box that held his remains to a small blue painted steel urn.

I got busy, and it was two weeks before I was able to deliver the urn to Mrs. Drake. When she saw the urn with the name Severe Clear on the brass nameplate, she started to cry. “I thought the color was fitting,” I told her.

She just nodded through her tears. Finally, she regained her composure enough to ask, “How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing. Just count this as a favor from one dog owner to another.”

“Thank you so much,” she gushed. “Could I invite you in?” I declined, saying I was busy. As I turned to leave, Mrs. Drake said, “We miss him so much, you know. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Gabe. You have made this really easy.”

I thanked her for her kind words and bid her goodbye, and chalked the whole thing up to good karma.

Now, I’m not trying to toot my own horn, telling people they’ll “get something” for doing a good deed. I certainly wasn’t looking to get anything from the Drakes. But in the ten years that have elapsed since I went to their household in the middle of the night to get Severe Clear, both of Mrs. Drake’s parents have died and she called me, remembering my kindness. And recently, when Mr. Drake died, Mrs. Drake called me to take care of him. We placed the blue urn in his casket.

“It just seems fitting,” Mrs. Drake said.

I agreed.

CHAPTER 11. Roadblock

Contributed by a retired infantry officer

I grew up in the city. My favorite time of year is winter. There is nothing more beautiful than a snowy cityscape. The whiteness blankets the filth and urban ugliness with cleanliness and soft edges while the urbanites run for the shelter of their giant buildings, leaving the streets deserted. The only problem is that the snow makes my job damn near impossible to do, or so I found out the hard way one night when I nearly quit, but I’ll get to that later.

I was a career infantry officer in the Army. Got commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant, saw some combat, got decommissioned with silver oak leaves—a light colonel. I traveled around the world several times over and saw a lot of things. Some good. Some bad. But it was all interesting. My career propelled a troubled eighteen-year-old boy out of an equally troubled area, gave him an education, and gave him a life. I shudder to think what would have become of me if I hadn’t joined the Army. I’d probably be in prison, or worse.

When I retired from the Army at age fifty-four I didn’t know what to do with myself. I still got up at 5 A.M., I still kept my hair high and tight, and I still rolled my socks the Army way. It’s hard to know what to do when nobody’s giving you orders, if all you know is how to take orders. My wife finally shooed me out of the house. I was driving her crazy.

I took some classes, volunteered, and even tried a new hobby—watercolor. I found I hate watercolor. My colors always ran together and I all I ever got was a big brown mess and elevated blood pressure. The classes bored me, and the volunteering…let’s just say I’ve found that I’m too old to change the world, or too tired. I can’t decide. I was like a ship in a storm without a tiller.

Then my mother died and everything changed.

We called the undertaker my family has used in town for ages: Pickering and Sons, Inc. They came to my house, where my mother had been living with us, and did the removal. The next day I went in and met with the owner, Thomas F. Pickering, V, to make arrangements.