Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt

My friends say that I remind them of Pigpen from Peanuts because I have this cloud of junk that follows me around. It leaves behind everything you can imagine: pens, papers, keys, candy wrappers, used latex gloves, and little pieces of trash, to name a few. Truthfully, I’d leave my fingers on my nightstand most mornings if they weren’t attached to my hand.

I’ve accepted my Pigpen status because I’ve been that way my entire life. I honestly don’t know how I kept it together long enough to get through school. I’m a mess. And I’m not embarrassed to tell you that it’s almost a weekly occurrence for my live-in girlfriend to call me at work to let me know that somehow I have her car keys on my person and that I need to return home ASAP so she can leave for work. Sadly, she’s always correct.

I’m like a human black hole and pitching machine rolled into one. I manage to simultaneously collect and discard things throughout the day with reckless abandon. So it wasn’t out of the ordinary when I lost my wallet. I have probably lost my wallet dozens of times during my tenure on this earth. Seriously. Dozens. It’s happened so many times I don’t even get upset anymore. It’s a fact of my life.

I called and cancelled my credit cards, got a new health insurance card from Human Resources, and found some new photos of my girlfriend and cats to put in my new wallet. Problem solved. What was puzzling was when a couple of months later a funeral director from Utica, New York, called to say he had my wallet. Utica is over 2300 miles from me. This was a new record for Pigpen.

After talking to the funeral director in Utica, I figured out through brilliant detective work and interviewing my fellow colleagues how my wallet managed to travel 2300 miles by itself. One of my “clients” had unwittingly smuggled it.

It was right around Valentine’s Day when I initially lost my wallet. I know, because that day at the mall I first discovered it was missing when I went to pay for the little bauble I was getting my girlfriend. Earlier that afternoon I was in the back preparing a “ship out” body. A “ship out” is a body whose removal and embalming we do for a funeral home across the country, and then load up on an airplane. The funeral director on the receiving end usually coordinates the services and burial. That particular day, I was coordinating with a funeral director from…Utica.

I had Mr. Foster in his casket, dressed, and was finishing up some quick makeup before we loaded him on his US Air flight to New York when Kaylee, the apprentice, popped her head in.

“Hey, Eric. You have five bucks for Paul’s ‘get well’ arrangement?” she asked in her usual perky manner.

Paul is a co-worker of ours who is a real health nut but had suffered a massive heart attack a couple of days before.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. I snapped my gloves off and reached for my wallet. I pulled out a five spot and handed it to her. “Spend it wisely.”

She laughed and winked. “Thanks, Eric.”

Kaylee can’t be more than twenty and is very attractive; exactly the reason the office manager sent her around to collect money. I would have given Kaylee a fifty if she had asked me for it. As Kaylee flounced out, I put my wallet down on the pillow next to Mr. Foster’s head and called after her.

“Yeah, Eric?”

She was the only person in the firm who didn’t address me as Pigpen.

“I’ve got to meet with a family. Could you see to it that this is put on an air tray and packaged up so I can drive it to the airport later on this afternoon?”

“Sure,” she said, and flashed me a winning smile.

I left to go meet with the family and promptly forgot about my wallet on the pillow next to Mr. Foster’s head. Later in the evening I drove Mr. Foster up to the airport and on my way back stopped at the mall to pick up my girlfriend’s Valentine’s gift, or not—because I had lost my wallet.

I received the call from the funeral director in Utica in mid-April. When they went to move Mr. Foster out of storage, where he had been until the frost had thawed and he could be buried, they heard the sound of “change falling.” The funeral director went digging under the pillow and came up with my wallet. Luckily, I keep paperclips, safety pins, metal shirt stays, collector’s coins, and any number of other metallic objects in my wallet; some of them fell when the casket shifted. Otherwise, my wallet would have been missing until the Apocalypse (like all the other dozens I’ve lost).

I guess my wallet fell to the side of the pillow, and then Kaylee had some people lift the casket into the big wooden tray that protects the casket during air travel. It got jostled down between the side of the pillow and interior of the casket where it stayed on its journey from Oregon all the way to New York State. I’m just surprised it went unnoticed during the two-hour wake and funeral.

Maybe I’ll get one of those wallets with the chain on it like rock ’n’ roll stars have.

CHAPTER 15. Men and Makeup