Todd Harra - Mortuary Confidential - Undertakers Spill the Dirt

I snatched the green feather from Remus’s jowls and stared at it, incredulous.

Frantic, I ran over to the window and found the shoebox on the ground. It was torn to shreds. My two little angels must have discovered the open door during the night and raided the place. When I picked up the tattered shoebox, the smarter of the two, Vixen, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, cowered in the corner. I was sure she was the one that led the raid, and she was ashamed. Not Remus, he’s the mischievous (and stupid) one. Remus pranced and danced around me happy as a lark, almost as if to say, Yeah, it was me. I ate that bird and it was delicious!

“No!” I cried. I had saved the stupid bird for this woman for the better part of three months and my two dogs had ruined it! Why hadn’t I put the bird in my car last night? Why hadn’t Mrs. Bingen called a day earlier? Why hadn’t one of the workmen closed the garage properly? Visions of cremating my two little angels flashed briefly before my eyes, but looking at their cute faces, Vixen’s shame, and Remus’s sheer idiocy made me forgive them. There was only one thing I could do. I hopped in my car and sped off toward the pet store.

Halfway there I realized there was no way I could buy Tweety bird and then break its neck. I loved animals too much. So I altered my course and drove the back roads looking for some kind of road kill bird to put in the shoebox.

I searched and searched and found no dead birds on the side of the road. Then I went home and searched through my dogs’ droppings hoping to find some evidence of the bird. There was none. Defeated, I went to work and tried to think up a lie to tell the driver who was coming for the bird.

The driver never came for the dead bird, and I never heard from Mrs. Bingen again. To this day, I’m still not sure, what I would have said to the driver when he or she arrived. But I still keep the green feather I snatched from Remus’s mouth in my desk drawer.

Contributed by a Harley rider

Unfortunately, the occasion on which I had to meet one of the strongest, most caring people I have ever known, as well as someone I easily call my best friend, involved the death of that person’s husband. Tragic, yes, the husband’s death, but in reality—not to get too philosophical—we’re all actively dying. Some of us just slip into the great beyond with greater suddenness than others, and Kristy’s husband was one of those unfortunates.

It was the luck of the draw, if you can call it that. I showed up for work one fine Monday after a fantastic weekend riding in the Mojave. The weather that morning was perfect and that always puts me in a good mood in the morning. Nothing ruined a day like having to drive my car to work.

On this Monday I was assigned to make funeral arrangements with the Morris family. The widow was coming in at ten o’clock. The decedent, a man, had died suddenly the day before of a suspected heart attack. His body was at the local hospital. The case was being referred to the medical examiner. I stowed my leather jacket and helmet in my locker, put on my tie—I couldn’t ride my Soft Tail in good conscience with a tie on—and gathered my papers.

The woman who walked through the front door of the mortuary was far too young to be a widow. I’d guess her to be in her early thirties and she appeared to be quite tall, though it was hard to tell for she was leaning heavily on another, older, woman. Normally, I would assume the older woman to be the widow. But it was the younger woman, her wide, soft facial features distorted by emotional turmoil, which cued me to the fact that she was the widow. I strode up to the pair and introduced myself.

“Mrs. Morris. I am so sorry for your loss. My name is Geary and I’ll be handling the funeral arrangements for your husband.”

My name is a good icebreaker, especially in tough situations like this. My real name is Rudolph, but everyone calls me Geary because I’m such a little gear head.

Both women liked that and I even drew a smile out of the widow, especially when I told them how the deaf old ladies that call the mortuary always ask for Gary.

Mrs. Morris brushed a lock of blond hair out of her face, stared me right in the eye, and said, “Please Gary, call me Kristy, and I’ll do my best to remember your name.”

The three of us laughed.

I don’t know how to explain it other than we clicked. Yes, we had instant chemistry—I don’t mean romantic chemistry—but a kindred spirit kind of chemistry.

I invited them into my office and began the delicate business of making her husband’s final plans. During the course of the arrangement process, I found out that Kristy was a 38-year-old mother of two girls aged 11 and 13. And I, always an open ear, heard her life story and cried and laughed along the way. She was an orphan, raised in various foster homes around the Catskill Mountain region before going to beauty school. She met her husband when he sat down in her chair one day. A month later they were married. Kristy’s husband had been a sergeant in the army and had just been stationed at Fort Irwin two months ago after spending the past ten years at Fort Bragg in North Carolina—the place she called “home.” Both of his parents were dead, she had no family to speak of, and she knew nobody here in California. The elderly woman who accompanied her was her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Logan, who had known Kristy for two months.

Normally, I can sympathize with my families, but with Kristy I could empathize. Being a quasi-orphan myself, I could relate to her feelings of isolation; I was an only child. My father committed suicide when I was nine, and my mother was locked up for drugs shortly thereafter. I was raised by my maternal grandmother, who though loving, I know now was showing the early signs of Alzheimer’s when I showed up on her doorstep at age twelve. So, other than my German shepherd, Chloe, I have no other family in the world. My grandmother died two years prior and last I heard, my mother was slowly dying of the drug addict’s disease in some group home in Santa Barbara.

After I ushered Kristy and Mrs. Logan out, I loaded up the panel van and went down to the local forensics lab, where Mr. Morris had been transferred. He had been autopsied. I spent the rest of the afternoon carefully piecing his body back together so his young widow and two daughters could see their husband and father at peace. We laid him out in his uniform, and I even managed to coax a small smile onto his face during the embalming. Kristy liked the smile. The service was small because they didn’t have many friends here in California. We buried him in Riverside National Cemetery, a fitting setting for one of our country’s heroes.

I called Kristy a couple of days after the funeral to follow up. She asked me if it was all right to call me periodically—at work, of course—just to talk to someone. I offered to refer her to a grief counselor. She declined, saying she just needed another grownup to have a normal conversation with from time to time. I gave her my cell phone number and told her to call me any time she needed to talk.

And thus, our friendship started.

She, the newly widowed, lonely orphan and I, the young undertaker ten years her junior who had recently buried her citizen-soldier husband, became fast friends. We talked nearly every other day and began to “instant message” over the course of many an evening. What started as pity, on my part, blossomed into one of the most beautiful and fulfilling friendships I have ever experienced.

Our casual chats turned into morning coffee at a local café that turned into casual lunches that turned into barbeques over at Kristy’s house on lazy Sunday afternoons. I got to meet her two beautiful daughters, Cindy and Jacqueline, and took my “child,” Chloe, over too. The girls loved Chloe and fussed over her like she was their baby. Chloe loved the attention the girls bestowed upon her and would grow very excited when I loaded her in the car because she knew she was going to the Morris house.