Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt

There’s a beautiful old cemetery in my area that reminds me of a scene in a movie. Every time I drive through the gates of Manhattan Heights Cemetery, I think of Rain Man. I’m sure everybody has seen that movie. It stars Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman and won the Oscar for best picture in 1988.

In the scene where Cruise’s character goes to meet his brother in the institution for the first time, the camera pans the oak-lined driveway. This is how Manhattan Heights is; roadways lined with giant old oaks stand like timeless sentinels, flanked by rolling fields where grave markers nestle in the perfectly trimmed grass. The cemetery is a lovely, tranquil place.

When I was just starting my apprenticeship, I was given the task of going out to Manhattan Heights to do a headstone rubbing. It was a clear, sunny, spring day. Everything was green, and the leaves on the trees were full, causing the sunlight to fall onto the cemetery drive in intermittent pools. I cruised through the gates slowly, enjoying the weather and the solitude. As I crested the hill, I saw an old woman standing over a fresh mound. The funeral flowers piled on the mound weren’t wilted yet, so I knew the grave was only a day or two old.

The woman was alone, and I assumed she was the wife of the deceased. Despite the warmth of the afternoon, she wore a heavy wool skirt and sweater. She held one withered hand to her forehead as though she had a headache, motionless as she looked at the patch of freshly disturbed earth.

A woman pushing a baby emerged from an intersecting drive and turned towards the elderly woman. The mother was young looking, twenty-seven or twenty-eight would be my guess, and based on her pace, was simply out for a leisurely stroll. She wasn’t visiting anyone today. The baby was swaddled in a pink cotton blanket. I thought it strange for a woman to be walking her child in a cemetery, but I guess it’s a better place than most. It’s quiet, usually clean, and there isn’t much traffic.

As the mother and daughter passed the elderly woman, neither party seemed to notice the other. But, I, in my car, saw the continuum of life. Grandmother. Mother. Daughter.

At one point in time, not in the too distant past, the grandmotherly woman had been that little girl being pushed in the stroller. She had blinked, and now she was burying a husband. Her spring has quickly turned to winter, and another spring was fast approaching.

Time doesn’t wait. Cherish every day of your life.

CHAPTER 36 The Prodigal Son

Contributed by a jazz pianist

There is a natural order in the world. Sometimes the order is broken and the parent is burdened with the task of burying the child. Of all the things I have to deal with in my profession, this situation is always the toughest. It can happen organically, accidentally, or self-destructively. But whichever way you slice it, it’s still a bitter pill to swallow.

The story of the prodigal son is as old as written history, and I see it re-enacted too many times every year. Usually, it’s the wayward son or daughter coming home to mourn the loss of a parent, but sometimes it’s the prodigal son coming home on a flight for his own funeral; a flight in which I pick him up at the cargo bay at the airport, load him into the hearse, take him back to my funeral parlor, and lay him out for his parents to come mourn him.

A woman who we’ll call “Casey” contacted me a year ago. Casey’s son, “Jeff,” had died of a drug overdose while out in Las Vegas.

When Casey called me, she needed someone to listen.

“I was a single mom,” she said. “I dropped out of high school at the age of 17 to have Jeff. It was a bad situation. The man that impregnated me disappeared and my parents disowned me. I was left homeless with an infant.”

I made a sound of sympathy and she continued, “I earned my GED, got a job with the state, and even managed to buy a home, although it wasn’t in a section of town that was that good. I had to work a lot to keep my son and myself afloat and I wasn’t always there to keep an eye on little Jeffrey. He started running with the wrong people and getting messed up. Drugs.”

“Oh Jeez,” I said.

“I didn’t watch him close enough. It’s my fault. All of this…is my fault.”

“You can’t blame yourself.”

She ignored the comment. “He dropped out of high school and lived at home for a couple of years. He’d disappear for weeks on end and I’d never know where he was or even if he was—” She paused. “And I never knew where he got money, even though I had my suspicions. Jeffrey never worked. I begged him to get help. Really, I did. I begged and begged but he wouldn’t listen. He’d always say, ‘Ma, I don’t need help,’ but he did. He needed help.”

I kept quiet and let her talk.