A/N: I had hoped to post this on the anniversary of my friend and mentor's death, but between work and family blogging hasn't come very easy. So in honor the two year anniversary of "Lurch's" death-this is for him.
In Thomas Lynch's book "The Undertaking: Life's Studies from the Dismal Trade", he reflects back on the removal of Milo Hornsby. As he remembers that after his divorce was finalized, while others were bringing over food, taking his kids out, and bringing their sisters over, Milo would do the laundry for him twice a week. After two months, when Lynch was finally able to find a housekeeper, he went to pay the bill and, "...asked what the charges were for pick-up and delivery, for stacking and folding and sorting by size, for saving my life and the lives of my children, for keeping us in clean clothes and towels and bed linen his answer was simple "Never Mind" that is what Milo said. "One hand washes another."
One hand washes another. From the time we are born, our parents and grandparents, friends and family, even complete strangers that enter into our lives do just that: they take our hand into theirs and wash it. Yet, sometimes in life, just washing our hand isn't all they do. Sometimes simply washing our hand is the first thing on a journey to something greater, something special and different. Something unique.
Two years ago, I lost a close friend that was truly special and unique in his own way. He was a husband and father. A son and a brother. A friend, mentor, funeral director and embalmer. But in order to honestly appreciate what I lost and what Heaven gained, you simply needed to know this person.
As I write this, his picture hangs on the wall above my desk, and I can't help but smile when I look at it. Perhaps it has something to do with the song playing in the background with Dean Martin singing about "Real Live Girl." a song that my friend use to sing in the drama club shows he use to do when I was little and that everyone associated with the club remembers and laughs at since Tom was singing about doing stuff with a real live girl when he was an embalmer. Regardless, I know what he's screaming from beyond the grave which is "What the hell are you thinking!?!" (his trademark line with me). "I can't seem to keep you outta the business so now you're gonna write a paper about me instead?" But, I also know that he'd probably be proud and even honored that I am.
When I had finally found my calling in life, which happened to be the funeral business, I was finally introduced to the man that would eventually become both my mentor and friend. I had just experienced my first baby funeral, and being so young and new to the business, I was having a hard time with the emotions that come with that part of the job. After spending a week talking to others in the business, one of them told me to call Tom Winterich because he had buried his own daughter years ago, so if anybody could help me, it would be him. For Tom, it had been seventeen years since he had last seen or heard from me, but that didn't stop him from helping me with my problem. I explained everything to him, and he gently told me that I'd always have questions and raw emotions when dealing with the death of a child, and that I would simply have to keep them in check while at work or I should consider a new profession. It was my first experience with Tom and I hated that he would even question my ability to be in the funeral business, but it showed me that I had a lot more to learn, and that because he was so honest with me, he would be someone that could help me through.
After that phone call, now knowing what kind of a person Tom was going to be regarding the business, I would occasionally call him and ask him random and sometimes stupid questions and he would answer them in true Tom form: smartass answers with his trademark grin. That's just who Tom was. One minute he could be having a good time and making people laugh to being deadpan serious the next. In my opinion, that's what made him one of the best director and embalmer I know.
It would be at a breakfast date that would I actually meet Tom for the first and sadly, the only time since we had reconnected. We had met for breakfast because he was helping me, yet again, with a research paper for school and in the three hours we spent together, Tom and I formed the student-teacher bond I desired. When I needed help, I always knew I could turn to him for help and he would help me no matter what. It was also after this day that our nicknames "Lurch" and "Morticia" started, and we started joking more about work and "The Addams Family" that made us smile on our down time. Our student-teacher style of mentoring was different, especially since we never worked side by side, even though one day I had hoped we would. Instead, he saw something in me that he knew he could nurture in this different way. Sometimes he'd give me the answer to a question and other times he'd point me in the right direction to find my own answers, not because he didn't have them or didn't want to give them to me, but because he wanted me to know how to find them so I could when he wasn't able to help me.Yet, no matter how hard I try to forget the day I found out he had died, I find that I can't and sometimes I don't want to. It's one that I doubt I ever will. It was already a bad day because I was running late, and dreading the fact that w had yet another infant under the age of one being waked the next day. The simple daily habit of reading the death notices slipped my mind and so I got the bad news when my boss asked if I had seen that Tom died. After looking at the notice, I was useless and destroyed. My boss could see that, but didn't understand why. Nobody did. When the grief at one point had become to much to hide, I went and cried in the prep room. Later, as I waited from the baby's parents to show up with his clothing, I stood staring at the prep room doors and thought of everything that would have happened to Tom after he died. How his jaw would have dropped and his eyes would roll back. That he would be cold and possibly naked in a body bag in Fairview's cooler until his own boss picked him up. And finally, how he would be embalmed, the same tools and fluids used on him that he used on so many countless others. It was then that I realized that even directors and embalmers die, except that when they die, somebody else would have to step up and work on them. It wasn't a sense of maturity at that point that had taken over me, as it had been suggested. It was a deep, dark reality setting in that nobody gets out of here alive.
Later that night, when my boss went out for a few hours, I offered to stay behind and dress the baby so he wouldn't have to. He agreed. I was terrified to do so. I had seen other babies before and I knew what even opening my heart a little would do to me for weeks-nightmares, lack of sleep, and pounding, unending headaches. All of that on top of the sudden grief of losing Tom, I knew that sooner rather than later, I'd be in a psych ward. Yet, for whatever reason, I managed to dress and casket the baby with a sense of comfort and a lack of tears. Tom might have been gone, but I swear to this day that he was watching over me. That night, his hand was washing mine with a strength and a sense of peace, allowing me to finish my work, so I could fall apart later in my dad's arms for them both.
At tom's visitation, instead of washing my hand with peace, he was washing it with comfort and even love. He had never said anything to me about being sick, and he had never said good bye. I was so mad at him for it. I hated him, but he must have known what he was doing. He must have known that it would make me stronger and that after a while, when I was ready, I would pick up the pieces and move on, determined to prove to him that I could become the best embalmer I can be.
One hand washes the other. Something that both Tom did and embalmers do as part of their duties in preparing the deceased for visitation. It is something that Tom did with me that one day I will pass on to others. By him washing my hand with knowledge, he taught me lessons I might have never learned, with the biggest one beings that it's not what you've done. It's not how many times you made people laugh or said "I love you" to those that matter. What matters is how you wash the hands of others. Do you simply wash it was lukewarm water and a little antibacterial soap, or do you wash it with warm water and gentle words of wisdom and guidance?
I'm never going to forget "Lurch." He was too special and our time was too short for me to ever forget him. I have so many memories that I'll always be able to look back on and smile, including his singing "Real Live Girl." It is a song that I listen to almost every day, and one that helps to bring back the memories Tom and I made and the lessons he tried to teach me, because in the end, all that anyone has left are the memories and the lessons of the one they love.
Yet, for Tom, his death freed him to find the peace of the grave and his own little girl waiting up in Heaven for her daddy, a place that Tom has probably wanted to be since the moment she left him all those years ago. Tom was also sick physically and in doing research, would have probably gotten sicker and maybe suffered. No matter how much I or anyone else here on Earth will miss him, his death found his peace from the pain.
In the end, everything, everywhere everyone ends. It's a proven fact. The question is though, how will you wash the hand of another?
Now, if you'll excuse me. I'm late to go visit Tom. Today's the two year anniversary of his death, and I've got a few lingering questions to ask him...
In Loving Memory of
Thomas "Lurch" Winterich
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