Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt

“What the hell is in there now?” Lucas demanded.

“A special mouth guard is in there to give him the appearance that his teeth are in.”

“You got that in, why can’t you put his teeth in?”

“It’s too late to remove the guard and put his teeth in.”

“Fine,” he said nastily. “Put the teeth in his pocket. At least put the eye in.”

“Lucas, I can’t do that either. You should have let me know this days ago, preferably before you gave me permission to embalm him. It’s simply too late now.”

Lucas’s voice had risen to a volume that I knew the back rows of the chapel could hear. “Why can’t you put dad’s eye in so he can go to his glory with it?”

My face was bright red and I was sweating. I was angry and embarrassed. Lucas was being obtuse. I didn’t want to tell him the gritty details of what I had to do to prepare his father for the funeral, but he wouldn’t be placated. “Look, Lucas,” I snapped. “I cannot put his eye in.”

“Then give it to me. I’ll do it.” His face was flushed and he had a wild look as he held his palm out to me as if he expected me to relinquish the eye. Under any other circumstances I would have gladly given him back the questionably clean prosthetic, but I was afraid of what would happen if I did.

“No,” I said.

“Give it to me. Now!”

“Look, Lucas,” I hissed. I dropped my tone down an octave. “Your father’s eye socket is packed to make it look like he has an eye because you didn’t give this to me days ago. If you want to make all these people wait twenty minutes I’d be happy to take your father in the back and see to it that his glass eye gets in. But this is something that I cannot and will not do in front of a crowd of people.” I added, “And something I’m not going to let you do.”

Lucas looked daggers at me. “This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!” he announced.

“Do you want me to postpone the funeral a few minutes? I’d be happy to accommodate you,” I reiterated.

“No, don’t bother,” he snapped and stormed back to his seat.

I slipped the teeth and eye into Mr. diAntoni’s suit pocket, hurriedly closed the lid, turned the service over to the minister, and ran into the back to scrub my hands.

I guess the moral of my little (but very public) confrontation is that people sometimes have expectations that can’t be met. These unreal expectations can also come up unexpectedly. You have to deal with them gracefully but honestly—as long as you’re honest, you can’t go wrong.

CHAPTER 18. Tattoo You?

Contributed by a Rolling Stones fan

The funeral directors at my firm do the makeup on their own calls. At some funeral homes the body comes out of the preparation room as a “finished product.” By that I mean the body is embalmed, dressed, casketed, and cosmetized. And at some funeral homes the women who come in and do the hairdressing also do the cosmetics. That isn’t the case where I work; the decedent comes out of the morgue embalmed, dressed, and casketed. Then, the funeral directors apply the makeup under torchiere lamps in the viewing alcoves. Torchiere lamps have special colored lights in them to compliment the tone of a decedent’s skin.

One day, I was doing a favor for a colleague of mine who had a doctor’s appointment and had to leave early. He asked me if I would mind putting some makeup on his call, and then receive the man’s daughter and let her see her father before the funeral the next day. I had nothing going on that afternoon and was happy to oblige.

I found my colleague’s call to be an old, gnarled man. He was peaceful looking enough, but I could tell life had been hard on him. His wrinkled face was a roadmap that told tales of intermittent joy, but also sorrow and hardship. His hands were tiny balls of arthritic pain, balled as if to prove he went out swinging. His family had brought in a nice dark blue polo shirt and khaki pants for him to be buried in; nothing pretentious; just practical. Practical, probably the way he had lived his life.

I began doing the makeup. It wasn’t tough. He had been embalmed well and had great skin color. Unfortunately, since he was wearing short sleeves, I had to use considerable makeup to cover up the bruising on his arm. This isn’t uncommon in elderly people, especially if they have been in the hospital prior to death. The intravenous needles can leave post-mortem discoloring. He had the dusky complexion of a Slavic person, and I had to use several layers of increasingly darker tan-tinted makeup before I was able to achieve a uniform color that blended well with his natural skin tone and covered the black bruises. When I was done I was pleased with how natural he looked.