I-IV
I.
His eyelashes are long and dark, like some Disney doe, cast downward as he sits alone through the arrangement conference. She rattles through the questions on the fetal death certificate, inwardly wincing the more intimate they get. “First day of your wife’s last menstrual period?” She knows her own husband wouldn’t know the answer. “When was the last time you worked? Does your wife smoke cigarettes?” The nursing superviser and the fetal pathologist both refer to Clarita as “Baby Garcia” or “the baby,” never as Clarita. It makes her angry, a quiet, pulsing fury shown only in the tight clench of her jaw.
II.
When they come to pick up their son, he hefts the bag containing the urn up with an exaggerated swoop of his arm, expecting it to be much lighter than it actually is. As she closed the rental casket following the evening visitation, she mentally catalogued the items that would be cremated with him: the rosary, the Buzz Lightyear jetpack, the stuffed animals, the turquoise ring, the signed baseball, the mitt. A treasure trove of small presents any five-year-old would have loved, turning 45 pounds into 65. The family had neatly stacked the water cups on the back table and tied big, looping bows on the garbage bags before stepping out the front doors, the coolness of the night a welcome change from the sweltering heat inside the chapel. As she leaves, the thought flits across the periphery of her brain, “At least that’s overtime pay, right?”
III.
She’s invited to the national cemetery on Saturday morning, where volunteers are gathering to place miniature American flags on the neat rows of graves for Memorial Day. She can picture the color contrast when she closes her eyes, the uniform green against the dry umber of the surrounding hills. “I don’t think I can be anywhere near a cemetery today,” she answers. “It’s been a long week.” Feeling selfish as she says it; she’s only the funeral director, after all, and the brunt of her burden is temporary.
IV.
“Don’t they teach you in mortuary school to remove yourself from the situation?” He asks earnestly, a bit peevishly, frustrated with her moodiness through the week. They teach you about burnout, she thinks, but they don’t teach you that some weeks you start with a five-year-old and end with a stillbirth and you can’t do anything about what happens in between. Silence seems like the safest bet and so she simply looks at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, confronting herself instead.
V.
They’re driving home from some rendezvous to nowhere when she sees the dog, stock still in the opposite turning lane for only a moment before becoming a white dart across two lanes of fast traffic, narrowly missed by an 18-wheeler. She and her husband spend 20 minutes tracking him through the neighborhood before losing him, his speed intensified by fear. She gets home and feels utterly defeated: by the week, by her inability to change the things that are already done, by exchanging cash for funeral goods, by the fact that there’s a terrified 13-pound dog out in the dark. She’s sobbing in the garage next to the washing machine when her husband comes out with a tupperware of dog food. “Come on,” he says, and they hunt for him until the sky turns purple and pink, then fades to black, and even though they don’t find the dog she finally feels a semblance of calm.
NBA Postseason Graveyard
My friends, there is a nefarious and sneaky issue within this industry that is discussed but sometimes difficult to recognize in oneself: burnout. One of the things I didn’t realize about this job was that working 40-plus hours a week in a funeral home sometimes makes it difficult to come home and focus on spending several additional hours writing about that same industry for my blog. It’s not that there aren’t stories to tell - I have notebooks filled with ideas, and an e-mail inbox full of interviews simply waiting for me to craft them into cohesive and functional entries. But damn it if lately I’m not more interested in coming home and watching the NBA finals instead. So for anyone out there listening to me yell into the vast and empty spaces of the interwebs, I’m still here, even if my hollering has been directed at the television as of late.
Anonymous asked: i think i saw your thread on reddit from a while ago... very interesting stuff.
There have been a few funeral directors/removal specialists/embalmers. So if it was me - awesome! And if it wasn’t me - also awesome! Reddit is a killer place, I’m a bit of an addict.
“In memory of the girl in blue, killed by train, December 24, 1933 - unknown but not forgotten.”
The newer stone on the ground reads: “Girl in Blue identified as Josephine Klimczak, December 24, 1933.”
On Christmas Eve in 1933, a young woman wearing blue left a boarding house in Willoughby, Ohio, after asking about local church services. A few minutes later, she walked into the path of a train. No one knew where she had come from or who she was. The townspeople donated money for a funeral and a tombstone. She remained unidentified until 1993, when a newspaper article about her death created renewed interest and her name was finally found.
