Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt

“A couple of short stints in prison for drug charges and petty burglary didn’t straighten him out, but a laced batch of heroin that nearly killed him did. That overdose convinced him to get into rehab. Best thing he ever did. Jeffrey came out a changed person. He got a girlfriend, finished high school, not the GED thing like I did, actual high school, and held a steady job…for 18 months.”

“Oh no,” I said.

“Yeah. The high was too appealing. Jeffrey went back to it and it was worse than before. Way worse. I just couldn’t stand it anymore, so I threw him out of my house,” she said matter-of-factly. “I never heard from him again. It’s been almost a year since I threw him out. And then yesterday I got this call from this medical guy out in Vegas—” Her voice cracked.

I offered her some comforting words and assured her we’d get her son back so she could give him a proper burial. Her parting words to me that day before she hung up were, “I don’t even have any idea how he got out there or what he was doing there.”

Casey didn’t have a lot of money, but I was able to work with her so we could give Jeff a quiet, dignified burial. Casey and three of her friends were the only ones at the service in my chapel. After the minister performed his brief service, I ushered everyone out, leaving just Casey. She stood before Jeff’s casket, her trembling hand touching his. He looked peaceful. His long hair hid the autopsy incisions, as did the collared flannel shirt. Casey had been very calm up until this point, but now she broke down sobbing. I stood next to her and put my arm around her and held her gently.

Casey didn’t curse her son, or denounce him, but merely wept for a couple of minutes before digging into her large purse. She pulled out a bag of marijuana and threw it in, followed by bags of God-knows-what-else, a small bong, a couple of homemade pipes, some syringes without needles, and other things I didn’t even recognize.

“I cleaned out his room,” she said. “Leave them in there. If he wanted his drugs so much, then he can take them with him. Close it.”

I closed the lid. Casey composed herself and walked out to the lobby. We embraced in the lobby and she said, “Thank you for letting me put all this to rest.”

Later in the day I drove Jeff out to the cemetery. The men from the vault company helped me place him on the lowering device, and without a soul in the world who knew Jeffrey watching, I lowered his casket into the gaping hole in the earth.

The prodigal son had come home.

Broken families, fractured families, black sheep, and estrangement; unfortunately, I’ve seen it all. Is there really an issue that is so great you can’t mend that fence? Reach out. At the end of the day, family is all you have in this world.

CHAPTER 37. Duel at High Noon

Contributed by a guitarist

I had never heard of a gun battle disrupting a funeral until the day I found myself in the middle of one.

It was a spring day, clear and sunny, and after the entire winter of hiding in church vestibules during funeral services, I took advantage of the beautiful day to sit outside and kill time. The service was Orthodox, and those are usually good to go for at least an hour or more.

That church is in the city. I was lounging on the wide stone steps, keeping an eye out for straggling mourners, leafing through Car and Driver, and not really paying attention to the passers-by, when some yelling caught my attention. On the corner of the block, about one hundred fifty feet from where I was sitting, two men were arguing. Their faces inches away from each other, they both gesticulated wildly, obviously irate. Their argument was more interesting than my magazine, and I put it down to watch. They shouted and pointed for a few more seconds and then stormed away from each other, the argument seemingly over. I started to go back to my magazine when I saw guns appear.

The firearms were drawn from under their billowy white tee shirts—almost the way a magician produces a dove. I’m not too up-to-date on my firearms, so I have no idea what type of guns they were except that they were black. It was like a scene from an old western film. The two stood about fifteen feet apart, menacing each other with their weapons for what seemed to be a millennium, but was probably only a second before they just unloaded. They fired and fired, sparks spitting from the muzzles of the pistols, until the slides locked back. Gun smoke swirling around them, they looked down at themselves, stupefied to be unhurt, and within seconds of the cease-fire, took off like frightened jackrabbits in opposite directions.

I sat on the steps, stunned, as the smell of cordite stung my nostrils. Did I just see a gun battle? I asked myself. No! Shootouts were things on the front page of the local section, things of the night, things of abstraction. Shootouts didn’t happen in broad daylight…outside a funeral!