Todd Harra - Mortuary Confidential

“You’ll miss him, huh?”

“I will, but I won’t. Jim is all around me… here. This place gave me another twenty years with him.”

“I understand,” I said, but in fact I didn’t understand her not missing her husband. Her acceptance of his death and her total peace were puzzling to me.

“After he’s laid out so our few friends and acquaintances can come pay their respects, I want him cremated so I can pour his ashes on the land he loved… the land that gave him—and me—his life back.”

I stared at her, waiting for her to go on. She did.

“We had the cars. The money. The clothes. But that’s about it. We didn’t realize it at the time—you know—what we were missing. When we moved to Oregon we found that the void was our relationship. Out here we discovered the simple joys of just living an unhurried life, together. Jim and I created a world out here where money is of little consequence and folks don’t call each other after regular business hours.”

Taking another drink of iced tea, I realized she was right about what really matters. After that, whenever Howdy Doody tormented us with his boring rants, I pictured myself on Mrs. Brewer’s porch, enjoying the tranquility of nature’s beauty.

Death is a fact of my life. I’m around it all day—everyday. But I had never buried a family member until my grandmother died.

When she passed away my relationship with death shifted from professional detachment to real human grief. Burying my grandmother was a strange and humbling experience. And, surprisingly, it was my grandmother who got me through it.

Grandma Talk-Talk helped raise my sister and me and was a real presence in our lives. She did all those grandmotherly things like letting us stay up late (blazing a trail of candy wrappers across her nice rugs), and slipping us a one-dollar bill to spend on even more candy. But she also did things that I didn’t understand until much later.

She encouraged me to pursue my dreams. When I told her I wanted to be a funeral director, I can still hear her saying to me, “Kenny, open up your own mortuary. I know you can do it. Make something of yourself. You’ll never go anywhere working for someone else.”

I took her advice and now own a successful mortuary.

My sister, as a five-year-old, said about our grandmother, “all she does is talk, talk, talk…,” hence the nickname. Grandma Talk-Talk had the same soft accent as Blanche on the Golden Girls—but Grandma Talk-Talk had more bite. There was a crispness to her speech that matched her dry humor. She danced with elegant, lightning speed from one subject to the next, wasting no time on breathing. Her “talkees” never stood a chance of talking.

When the mortuary phone rang and it was Grandma Talk-Talk, I knew I had to clear my schedule for at least an hour. I’d hear what food is being served in the retirement community; what birds she spotted that morning; what those “scoundrel Republicans” were up to; and the line she never failed to say, “Kenny, when I die, I want you to take care of me. I don’t want some stranger who won’t do nearly the job you do. You promise?” That request always made me uncomfortable, but, luckily, I knew she’d change the subject fast.

Burying a family member was still an abstract concept to me. Friends and neighbors, sure, but family? I figured that Grandma Talk-Talk had always been there—and would always continue to be there.

Then the day came when I felt for the first time that she wouldn’t always be around. Her retirement home called my mortuary: Grandma was in the healthcare center and was fading fast.

Her retirement community is a seven hour drive south from where I live. With a cot and my dog, Roxy, I reluctantly set off. After Roxy and I were on the interstate for a bit, I started to notice the pavement whizzing by, butterflies collecting in my stomach, and I felt an uncontrollable urge to turn around. Instead of running away, though, I took deep breaths and slowed down. I wasn’t sure I was ready to do this, but knew I had to. I was about to provide a woman who gave me so many gifts with the last gift I could give her.

I thought about trips to the beach with my sister and Grandma Talk-Talk. Grandma Talk-Talk in the driver’s seat with no regard to (minimum) speed limits. Her giant boat of a Cadillac with its enormous front bench seat that the three of us shared, inching at 7mph while she talked nonstop. My sister and I hanging our heads out the window like happy summer dogs.

I dreaded the next few days. It would be so quiet. I had never been with my grandmother without her talk-talk. Roxy sat on the passenger seat, staring at me. She liked to stick her head out the window during car rides but, despite my offering a rolled-down window several times, today she just sat still.

By the time I arrived, Grandma Talk-Talk was dead.

My mother and sister greeted me at the door of her room.

“Kenny,” my mom said, coming to hug me, “Grandma Talk-Talk is gone.”

I nodded, didn’t say anything, and opened the door. The lights were off but it was bright and sunny in her room. In the air hung the heavy smell of disinfectant and death. Dust motes swirled in the shafts of sunlight. Her oxygen machine had been unplugged and unhooked. The room was silent. I have seen thousands of dead people during the course of my career. This was the only one I can recall fearing to see.

I crept up to the bed and pulled down the sheet covering the still form. Grandma Talk-Talk looked peaceful, like she was asleep. Looking at her wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. She almost looked like she was smirking in her sleep. I breathed a sigh of relief and pulled the sheet back over her face.

My sister took Roxy for a walk while I performed my job. I didn’t want to dally; I had another job to do back at the mortuary. Thirty minutes after I pulled into the retirement community, I drove out of the parking lot yelling to my mom and sister, “I’ll call you tomorrow!”

Roxy knew something was amiss. She lay down on the front seat and covered her head with her paw, something I had never seen her do before. The light was low as dusk set, and I headed for home with my dead grandma in the back.

I flipped on the radio to try to fill the void, but no matter how loud I turned the volume, it couldn’t cover the lack of her talking. I sighed, turned the radio off, and rode in deafening silence.

As I hit a beltway and merged into rush-hour traffic, my grandma’s voice popped into my head. “Kenny, take the HOV lane. You’re allowed. We’ve got three!”

“What the hell,” I muttered.

The silence wasn’t so bad as I hurtled down the HOV lane reminiscing with Grandma Talk-Talk.

Iwork in a business traditionally recognized as a man’s trade, and though I’m just a little girl playing in the big boy’s club, I can handle it. I’m a Southie. And Southies are tough as nails.

Where I come from in south Boston, each group sticks to its own kind. It’s more a matter of comfort level than prejudice against another ethnicity. The Jews go to the Jewish undertaker, the blacks go to the black undertaker, the Asians to the Asian, and so on. The undertakers for each group are familiar with the customs, rituals, and procedures at their places of worship.

At our company, we service the Irish Catholics. That’s it. Don’t get me wrong. Every once in a blue moon we work with a family that’s Italian Catholic, Irish Protestant or even Russian Orthodox, and we are glad to provide them service. It’s just a simple fact that when a family picks up the phone to dial the undertaker, they usually dial the firm down the street, not the one across town.