I mean, what the hell is going on? (Part One of Two)

So there is another case on my desk at the funeral home. Normally that doesn't bother me, as I get most of the cases from the week on my desk at one time or another for various reasons, but the case on my desk, the one that had me almost in tears yesterday and kept me tossing and turning last night was another baby death. The first one of the year. Baby deaths are nothing new to me. I've been exposed to them before. And after every exposure, I feel like crap. I have sleepless nights, and headaches, my heart feels like its a thousand pounds and I'm moody. For a week, the death of an infant screws with me. Sleepless nights have me repeating the line "The Lord is Kind and Merciful" over and over for hours each night, hoping that I can finally make some sense of the meaning behind that statement. I listen to siblings who work with me in the business tell me I should be grateful that the baby I'm helping care for isn't mine. My mother tells me to suck it up and get over it or get out of the funeral business because if I can't keep it together, I can't do the job properly. Normally that all lasts until I've had just about enough and blow up like a bomb and tell them all to shut the hell up before I storm out of my house, get into my Explorer and blaring the radio, find the first highway where I can do 70 plus until I calm down and can come back home like a normal person. If that doesn't work, than a trip to the cemetery where my former mentor is buried normally does the trick. Sitting in the grass and the mud, crying normally and screaming at him like a manic works...usually. But this time, so far none of that has worked. Tears I want to cry don't come. They threaten to fall, but in the end, they don't. Journaling hasn't helped either. Picking up a pen to write only works when you know what to say and how. Blaring a radio in the past forty eight hours hasn't helped either. My head has been pounding now for days with either a cold or sinuses, so after a few minutes, I'd rather punch out the radio then listen to it. So I've been trying to figure this out....figure out what to do this time to save what little sanity I still have left, but there's nothing left. So what do I do? How do I move forward? This is the question I ask. 

In the funeral profession, we're expected to show no emotion. We're portrayed as cold, hard people. Always in black, lurking in the shadows. But we're not. We're human. We have emotions. And most of the time, we're good about keeping them under control. Keeping them in check. But for me, the deaths of babies have always played mind games on me. Perhaps it is the maternal instincts that it has been said every woman has. Or perhaps it is because with this case, I see a bit of myself. The fact that the woman is a few years younger than me, and the same age (as the child's father) of my younger brothers. Or the fact that she's aborted several babies before having a miscarriage while I sit on the sidelines and watch all of my friends my high school having children like it's nothing, while my own doctor tries to determine if I have a disease that may prevent me from having the two little boys and the daughter I hope to one day have. It's selfish, I know, but in the end, is it really? Or is it natural instincts kicking in again? As I type this, the walls around my computer are covered with photos; photos of my parents, grandparents, siblings and their "significant others", friends, the basketball team I coached this year with a coworker, and of my girl friend's little boy. Photos from when he was first born till a few weeks ago. From nights when she needed me to babysit and I had to do so at the funeral home because I was so busy at work that I couldn't break away for a few hours to watch him at home. On a push pin along one side of the bookcase/shelf hangs a pacifier that got left behind from babysitting that I mean to get back to her. I find I am surrounded by reminders of my own "biological mortality" as I refer to it. Consistent reminders that I may always be on the sidelines when it comes to the baby game if my worst fears happen to come true. 

And then there's this case...prying at me now for just over a day.

One Hand Washes The Other: In Memory of Lurch

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

The death of a baby

A/N: This was wrote in the middle of last year for a college English class. Baby deaths hit me the hardest at my job, and normally writing helps me to work through things I see, experience, etc. After writing this piece, all 100% truth and honest, it all made sense to me. So remember, just because funeral directors, embalmers, and their staff don't always show emotions at work-they all have emotions and they are normally far from being cold. 

His name is one I still remember, and before he ever got to take his first breath and live, he was gone. His mother, a woman who had carried his tiny 16.5 inch body in her womb for eight months, was no older than me and the over-sized band that accompanied his tiny body proved it. From the moment his aunt called, you worked your way into my heart, left your named carved into my mind with the countless others I've dealt with over the years. The one's that have gone too soon. Nothing has changed for me. All of you nearly drive me insane with grief and tears. You all make me hate my job and at the same time appreciate and understand my job more. Even though you're gone, you make me learn to fear. Fear that one day, I too might become your parents and never come back from the loss of losing a child. Babies and little kids aren't suppose to die. You aren't suppose to die. It isn't fair. It isn't right. Do any of you have any idea what your deaths do to me? They kill me. They aren't suppose to. I'm suppose to be stronger than that, but it kills me. I see the grief on your parents faces, and the emotions my boss tries to hide while remembering when he was in the same spot they are and I crack under pressure. I hold it together while I'm at work, but when I am home, that's when the emotions and the toll begins to show. And every time one of you goes, I spend nights crying into my pillow because I don't understand why God is cold enough to do this and when i'm not crying, I'm re-reading Thomas Lynch's words about your deaths. About how your tiny little graves are never big enough to hold all the pain and grief, and how you don't give us memories, you give us dreams. You make me question everything about myself, about my future in this profession and just when I'm back up on my own two feet, you all manage to kick me back down because someone else has died. You do it every time. Always have, always will. You make me lose my mind. Turn me into a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Make me sometimes just want to curl up and hide, pretend that its not happening again. You make me weak until the only thing left to do is to cry so I can recharge. From the very first one, I remember all your names. I can't seem to forget them. I try, but always fail. And when I walk into the prep room and see you lying there on the cold, porcelain embalming tables, I only want to see you breath. Touching your cold skin always brings tears to my eyes and you've  no idea how much I want to pick you up and cradle you in my arms. None of you have been mine, but the moment I see you, you're part of me and I've yet to find any way around that, especially with you. You're the first one he's ever let me take some sort of charge on, at least when it came to picking you up from Metro's morgue. You were so tiny when she brought you out of the cooler, wrapped so small in a blue cotton stretcher sheet. Closing the suitcase and putting you in the dark was super hard, but there was nothing I could do. Removal rules can't be changed no matter how much I want them to. But I never let you go after that. I held the case in my lap the entire way back to the funeral home and into the prep room myself. Laying you out on the cotton upon the table, I was asking "Lurch" to help me through all that.I can close my eyes even at this moment and see you lying there in front of me. You were so tiny and so small. Your feet fit in the hollow of my hand. Your entire hand was tinier than my index finger and later when I saw you wrapped up in your blanket with your Simba in your casket, I broke every rule in the book by looking at you, and even then, you held my finger for one brief second before I left, locking your casket for the final time and somehow I was at peace. I don't know how you did it, but it surprised even myself. You're never going to be far from my mind, that for sure will be a given, but I know you'll be somewhere in a state of peace. 

Will He Say Yes, Part 2

Hands trembling she swallows hard. He's sitting right across from her at a meeting their both at. No reply yet from her email. Did she possibly make him mad? "Focus on the meeting dumb ass. The minutes are more important than whether he's gonna say yes." My mind screams at me, trying to keep me in line. "You know you want him..." "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" I'm screaming inside. Oh no, he's looking right at me. He's smiling at me. DAMN IT! Why must he be so good looking?

Now it's after the meeting, and everyone is visiting. I'm holding my breath, wanting desperately to talk to him. Apologize for the email I sent him. Trying to convince myself that it didn't mean anything, even though it did. Why, why, why won't this other guy I'm talking to leave me alone so I can go and talk to him? He's standing right behind me, talking with the guy I'm talking to, but OH NO! He's leaving the room. He's about to go home. "Excuse me...I need to catch him. Can we resume this in a moment?" I ask, praying that I'm not too late. Soon I find myself calling his name. "Hey, can I talk to you for a second?" "Time to run away princess. He's coming right for you." "Don't run you dimwit. Just say what's on your mind."

"What's up." he asked, my mind screaming inside. DON'T DO IT!" Swallow hard and find your voice, avoid blushing, though that doesn't happen. "Hey, do you maybe want to go and get a cup of coffee sometime?" OH NO. I spilled the beans too fast. Quick, time to recover. But wait a minute. He's smiling. Why is he smiling?
"Why?" he asks, rather flattered. Now I have to explain. "I want to apologize."
"For what?" he questions. Now I feel like everyone left is looking at me. Take it slow...one step at a time. "I sent you an email a few weeks ago asking if you maybe wanted to go out for coffee sometime and after I sent it, I sent a few other emails regarding work and I never heard back from you. I thought maybe I had crossed the line was coming to apologize." He's still smiling. Maybe he's going to say yes!!!
"Don't worry. I won't cross the line. Maybe if you were to ever leave the group, then we could go for coffee. And don't worry. I'm not mad. I actually never got your email." "So then we're okay?" "Yeah, we're okay." Then we say goodbye and he walks away. My mind is screaming "See, I told you." while my heart is more understanding "It's okay. He didn't say no, just that he wants to wait until you're not a colleague anymore."
So now here I am, writing a reply to my first wish. Last night I was sad, but okay with that he said. I understand why he said it, and its nice to know he cares. Soon, very soon, I'll be asking him again. Until then though, we'll just remain friends and I'm okay with that. So until then my friend...I think I'd rather just be friends then lovers...
                                             

Will He Say Yes? Part 1

Author’s Note: This was wrote about a funeral director I had a crush on while I was exposed to a group he was part of. Since The Crypt will be featuring all of my funeral related posts, I figured this would work well here. Stay tuned for part 2 and perhaps some day part 3!

Will he say yes? My heart starts thumping in my chest, slamming against my chest as I go to hit the send button for the email I’m about to send. Will he respect my feelings or turn them away? Time will only tell. Does he even know who I am? I see you almost every day, for one reason or another, but do you notice me? Do you notice that when I’m around you, I turn into a shy little girl, blushing like mad when I see you, and my heart fluttering like a butterfly when I hear your voice? That anytime I talk to you in a room full of people, I’m shy…almost distant from you in fear of making the wrong mistake?

Be still my heart, only time will tell if we are meant to go further in this game know as a relationship, a game of love.

“Hit the button, send the email!” my heart is screaming at me, while my mind is saying, “Don’t do it. You’ll only be hurt again. Listen to reason, don’t hit that button.”

Wait…wait till you’re sure…wait…wait for the dawn…for day to break…

Don’t wait…wait to long…he will be gone

“SEND IT!!!” my heart is on overload. “DON’T LISTEN TO YOUR BRAIN FOR ONCE, GO WITH THE HEART!”

Finished writing the email, sit back and read it…take the mouse and click send.

Now, will he say yes???

© Victoria Shea, 20 April 2011