Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt

By a reflex my foot pressed the gas pedal and the station wagon shot forward in the drive-thru chute. Out of the corner of my eye I think I saw a puzzled counter attendant bringing my food to the window. All that person found was a cloud of blue smoke.

I’m not sure how I jockeyed that big wagon out of the lot without jumping the curb. It all happened too fast. I just knew I drove. The next thing I knew I was back at the mortuary listening to the decedent’s chest like an idiot, trying to figure out if I heard a heartbeat or could see the chest rising and falling. Nothing. In a panic, I called the manager and told him what had happened. I felt like an even bigger idiot when he told me it was just escaping air rattling through the throat.

I guess they’re still waiting at the drive-thru with my food.

That night was pretty eerie, but not nearly as much as the night a former classmate of mine died. His name was Jack. He and I went to high school together and were on the wrestling team. Jack contracted poliomyelitis—or polio—at the age of five. The disease crippled his legs and he was forced to use crutches for the rest of his life. As a result, his upper body was massive. When we wrestled, anyone could knock him off his feet, but down on the mat was his territory. He was as strong as a bear, constantly underestimated because he was a cripple. He had a winning varsity record.

I don’t know if the childhood polio had anything to do with his failing heart, but Jack began having cardiac problems in his mid-thirties. A heart transplant did little good, and by age 41 he was on hospice care. He made me promise I would take care of him when he passed, and since I was close to his family, I gave them my private number to reach me as soon as Jack died. I wanted to handle everything personally.

Jack died and I received the call and went to the house to perform the removal. I loaded him onto the cot with some difficulty due to his muscle mass and took him back to the mortuary. Once in the preparation room, I flicked on the lights, wheeled the cot up next to the embalming table, and stepped out to get gowned up. When I stepped back into the room a few minutes later my heart flew into my mouth. The cover over the cot was rustling like the contents were trying to escape!

The same thought from twenty years before rushed through my head: He’s alive!

I staggered back and hit the doorjamb. The bright fluorescent preparation room tunneled into a pinpoint of light, as my eyes tried to tell my brain to wake up and process what it was seeing. It took me a few seconds to get my wits about me before I rushed over and unzipped the cover. At that point the rustling had subsided, and I realized what had happened. I had only heard about it before, but there is a phenomenon in which the dead undergo sudden involuntary muscle contractions called cadaveric spasms.

I told my colleagues about my momentarily terrifying experience and they decided to plan a little surprise for me. The next time I went to do a removal from the hospital, I volunteered to go up to the first floor to get the paperwork signed. When I returned to the basement, I found my colleague standing in the hallway with the body already on the cot.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said and prepared to turn heel and go.

That’s when the morgue attendant threw off the cot quilt, leaped off the cot, and screamed, “BOO!”

My heart stopped. I’m not kidding. It literally stopped for a couple of seconds. I think I even put the back of my hand to my forehead as women do when they’re having a hot flash and did a giant Lemaze-type exhale. While the two jackasses stood there laughing their heads off, I had to sit down and catch my breath.

Apparently, my colleagues had all pitched in a couple of bucks to bribe the morgue attendant. It worked. They nearly had to wheel me out of that damn hospital that day, and I think I had to throw my underwear away too.

Now, even with nearly thirty years under my belt, I still find it hard to admit that I’ve had the crap scared out of me by corpses. The dead won’t hurt you, even if they do move a little. It’s the living you have to watch out for. 

PART III Family Matters