Todd Harra - Mortuary Confidential - Undertakers Spill the Dirt

Contributed by a Red Sox fan

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.

I was born to second-generation immigrants. My grandparents came from the town of Carrick-on-Shannon in the county Leitrim in the late ’40s following the war and settled on the west side of south Boston. My grandfather worked as a machinist and my grandmother was a housekeeper. My grandfather is retired but still drinks full-time and my grandmother hasn’t missed a day of work in almost twenty years. My father, whom I have never met, is rumored to have dealings with the IRA. He disappeared before I was born—a deadbeat (I’ll leave out the adjectives I normally use). My mother worked for a meat packer for several years before landing herself in jail when I was five years old. I don’t remember anything from when she was around other than the beautiful steaks we ate every night in our dingy little apartment. After my mother went away, I moved in with my grandparents and they raised me.

I went to work for an Irish-Catholic funeral home right out of mortuary school. I was the first woman funeral director they ever had in their fifty-plus esteemed years of business. I had it easy in some respects because the men went out of their way to help the “helpless” woman, but in other respects I had it much harder. I had a lot to prove in the all-boys club.

One morning, when I was as fresh in the business as a newborn babe in the woods, Kevin, the supervisor of the funeral home, came charging down the hall. “Katie!” he shouted. “I need you to head up to Lawrence today and pick up a trade job we got in last night.” Kevin never speaks ; he shouts.

“Who got it?” I inquired.

“The firm we always use up there.” He looked at me like I was stupid, and his nose glowed like a red turnip on his flat face. “Turnbull Funeral Home.” Kevin, though a blunderbuss, dresses impeccably, and on this day, already had his custom-made Cambridge suit jacket off and had sweated completely through his shirt. He’s a real sweaty type guy.

“Oh,” I said. I had been there once before and didn’t realize Turnbull was the one we always used. But I kept quiet about that and filed that tidbit of information away. “You have the information?”

“Here it is,” he said, pressing a slip of paper into my hand along with a twenty-dollar bill. “For tolls,” he explained and winked.

Though Kevin sometimes has the temperament of a hibernating bear that has been woken, he can be a real sweetheart, too. “Thanks, Kevin,” I said. “You’re a doll.” We both knew that as soon as I pulled out of the funeral home, I’d be pulling into the 7-Eleven to fortify myself with cigarettes and coffee.

He smiled at the praise and his bulbous nose wrinkled.

I loaded up the mini-van with a cot and was off, after stopping at 7-Eleven of course. The funeral home I work for sits outside of the city of Boston in one of the many suburbs, so when a death call comes in late at night from somewhere as far away as Lawrence, we call the local undertaker in that area to do the removal and, if necessary, embalming. There’s no sense tying one of our directors up for three or more hours in the middle of the night, especially if we had a house call come in; the director on-call would have no way of getting back in time to make a speedy removal. Besides, the funeral home we use up in that area knows the hospital procedures, and can do the removal much more efficiently.

The drive took me the better part of an hour, during which I smoked damn near half the pack out of sheer boredom. I drove into the circular drive of the converted Victorian mansion and pulled around back. The grounds lining the drive were immaculate and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a full-time groundskeeper.

I backed the van onto the ramp leading down into the basement and hopped out. After popping into the office to let them know I was there, I went and waited by the van. One of their directors, the young guy I met last time I had been there, appeared. “Hi Charlie!” I said, perking up. I had the biggest crush on him. He was about my age—22—and looked like he played football in high school. I love burly guys.

“Hi.” He flashed me a smile. “What’s your name again?”

I was crestfallen. “Katie,” I replied. We had had at least a twenty-minute conversation the last time I had been to Turnbull. Obviously, I hadn’t plied my charms as well as I thought.

“Oh right,” he said. “Who you here for?”

I didn’t want to talk about that. I wanted to talk about giving him my phone number. But instead, the only thing that came out was, “Mrs. Walters.”

He made a face. “Oh,” he muttered, “I got her last night. What a night.”

I changed the subject to something flirtier as I unloaded the cot from the van and followed him down the ramp.

He didn’t take the conversational bait. He was only interested in business. “Here she is,” he said and peeled back a sheet covering one of the many bodies in the morgue, just enough so the wrist tag could be read. I noted Mrs. Walters was a very handsome looking African-American woman, but I was too busy sweet-talking Charlie to glance at the tag. I just nodded.

He lowered the sheet.

I was grabbing at straws. I had already been through weather, traffic, and work. “Sorry we got you out of bed last night,” I said and I cringed hearing my own cheesy laugh.

Charlie made another face. “Yeah, thanks.”

I grinned.

“Let’s get her moved over.” Charlie consulted his watch. “I have a wake that’s wrapping up in twenty minutes.”

Damn, he’s too preoccupied with his service to think about me, I thought dejectedly.

We transferred Mrs. Walters and I was on my way without Charlie’s phone number. Next time, I promised myself. I really needed to meet Charlie somewhere more conducive to flirting than a morgue, though I wasn’t sure how I was going to orchestrate it. Wasn’t like I was going to run into him at the neighborhood pub. I smoked the other half of the pack of cigarettes on the return trip and tried to formulate a plan.

When I arrived at my funeral home I unloaded Mrs. Walters and wheeled her into our morgue. “Hey, Kevin,” I called, running after him as he charged up the hall.

“Everything go all right?” he called over his shoulder, not stopping but slowing down.

He was getting to the point in the day where his neatly pressed clothes had long since lost their crispness.

I shrugged. “Yeah. Fine. This is the first black woman we’ve had since I’ve been here.”

He stopped in the hallway, turned and just stared at me. His face was bright red. “McCullough, you dumbass!” he exploded. “You got the wrong person!”

I froze. “Huh?” I replied dumbly. A million thoughts raced through my head. I hadn’t been cautious and checked the tags as I should have. I had been too busy flirting. Charlie had given me the wrong person! “Are you sure?”