Okay, another day, several more bodies…

I’ll get back to myself later. Stories…stories….hmmmmm…..

One of the stories that always seem to come up is a little number that occurred to me early on in my career.

I was at home and on call. Basically, when I started funeral directing, I was given six weeks to get my apprentice license and get to know the town. Then I was turned loose to learn in a baptism by fire, and bodies. I went home after nine o’clock and sloughed off my suit and tie and got comfy with the phone nearby. We didn’t have pagers or cell phones, just drove fast to get home and hoped the answering machine didn’t have any messages on it when you arrived. It was insanely primitive by today’s standards. I’ve actually taken a death call recently while out to dinner with my family. Dessert? No thanks, I’ve got a body to embalm…gotta get going!

So about ten-thirty my phone rings…my sheets were barely warm. It was one of the college age night attendants who lived at the funeral home. “Got a call for ya.”

“OK, anything I should know?” I asked through my fog.

“Nope. First call card’s on the board, I’m going to bed,” was the reply.

So I got up, donned the suit and got rolling.

The call was at County Hospital. Strangely, the deceased wasn’t in the morgue, but in a wing reserved for indigent nursing care. Basically, it was a county run nursing home. I had just learned about a new place from where I might get future calls.

So I signed out a seventy five year old woman and transported her back to the funeral home and got her on the preparation (embalming) table. I then started to go through the steps to get her embalmed.

I heard the phone ring and kept plugging along. The night attendant on call, who was almost as awake as the person I was working on walked in and said, “There’s some guy on the phone, says that woman is his wife and…well you need to talk to him.” He left with a smirk on his face.

I snapped off my rubber gloves and picked up the phone. “Good evening, how may I help you?”

“Uhhh, yeah, this is Don (not his real name) Smith. I think you’ve got my wife there?” came a real twangy deep voice.

“Yes sir, I do. I’ve called for her at County Hospital and she’s here now. How can I be of service?”

“I gotta ask you something…Is my wife dead?”

My heart goes out to people who have to ask that question. They are the ones having the hard time accepting the fact that their loved one is gone.

But this guy sounded different. He actually sounded…suspicious? It’s not like I go off into the night and nab old feeble people from random nursing homes or am in cahoots with an unscrupulous nursing home to harvest the still living organs of the almost dead!

I leaned back into the prep room. She hadn’t moved an inch. I hadn’t felt a heartbeat or seen her twitch. “Yes sir, I can confirm for you that she is indeed dead.” I replied nervously. Where was this guy coming from?

“Well don’t go embalming her or anything…I think she needs to be autopsied or something,” came the reply.

My heart attempted to leap out of my mouth and my bowels almost left the other end.

I had just committed an error. Remember, I was only about four months into my apprenticeship and severely undereducated about how things really work. I had forgotten to obtain permission to embalm. Thoughts of lawsuits and firings flashed across my brain. Time to improvise.

“OK sir, I won’t,” I stammered.

I technically hadn’t started embalming. She had just had her old lady mustache shaved off and her mouth wired shut. Oops, I had also put in eye caps, essentially large plastic contacts with serrations on the front to keep the eyelids closed. And…dammit…I had also placed a canula (metal tube) into her carotid artery and a forceps into her jugular vein. The fluid was mixed and waiting….but the machine was off. This was a near embalming in every sense of the word. One flip of a switch and I was embalming. To this point I had merely started getting her ready to embalm.

“Yeah, an autopsy. I also need a vial of her blood. I think the doctor gave her something to help her along to die,” he said.

Oh Lord! One of those people that I had to this point only heard about. They blame the doctor for the death. A person who doesn’t look at things like pre-existing conditions (Alzheimer’s), lifestyle (read morbid obesity or smoking) or just failing health due to time and abuse. Going to get the doctor back because it’s his fault the person died. Lawsuit and big money around the next corner!!

I sighed inwardly, took a deep breath, and said “That’s fine sir, I’d be happy to arrange an autopsy for your wife. All you need to do is select where you’d like it done and make sure her medical records get there too.” I was talking outta my behind at this point. I was just parroting back what I had heard on a previous call.

Then the closer. “You’ll need to pay for the autopsy in advance as well. It’s about two to three thousand dollars.”

Nothing but silence. “You mean I’d have to PAY for it?”

“Yes sir.”

“The hospital just won’t do it?”

“No sir. Not unless the doctor orders one.” Most hospitals, in fact, have stopped offering autopsies to people due to expense considerations. Private autopsies cost so much because if they didn’t, eighty percent of the families I serve would be asking for unnecessary post mortem exams and undermining the skill and opinions of the doctors who actually have a history with the patient and can make a fact based decision on caused of death without opening up the body.

Don’t get me wrong, if a family needs to know about Alzheimer’s in the lineage or a bad heart condition that seems to claim the lives of the men in the family early in life (both I’ve seen) then go for it. It’s better to be informed and able to take precautions against a genetic bomb than be ignorant. Just stop trying to cash in on the insurance of the doctor. They (almost) know what they are doing.

“Can I put it on my funeral bill?”

“No sir. We don’t allow for that kind of outside work to be put on our contract.”

What I had just done was shut him down completely. Thankfully, this type of situation had already occurred and I was paying attention. My preceptor (think teacher and funeral babysitter) had entertained a call a week earlier and shared the details.

Here’s what I learned. If someone wants an autopsy, we do none of the leg work for them other than transporting the deceased person. We do not accept charges for outside contractors, in this case a medical facility, because their services they are providing don’t affect our bottom line. It’s the same as if you would call an auto mechanic, tell him your car is there, you intend to use his services, but he needs to get your car detailed

somewhere else pay for it and put the charges on his bill. You’d get funny looks at any garage I’ve ever been to.

We don’t become the collection agency.

I also learned that if people balk at the cost or payment, they probably cannot afford it anyway. We’d never get paid, and then the funeral home would be responsible for the autopsy charges.

“So I’d hafta pay them and then you?” he asked.

“Yes sir. It’ll take a few days to get it done, but if you’d like I can make some calls tomorrow morning.”

“So what happens to my wife? Does she start to turn black and purple?”

OK, I can work with that. “She could start to discolor sir, it’s always better to get to the embalming as soon as possible. It’s unlikely to happen, but I cannot guarantee her condition once she leaves our care.”

“Huh. Go ahead and embalm her I guess…I want her to look nice for all the people who will be seeing her. Can I still get a vial of her blood?”

“It’s an unusual request sir; I’ll collect a sample and inquire with my boss in the morning.”

“OK then…ya gonna call me in the morning then? He asked.

“Yes sir. One of the directors will contact you after 8 am.”

“All right then, call me and we’ll get this done.” He hung up.

I hung up too and took a few moments to stop shaking. My first real test with a potentially difficult client. At least one who has a lot going through his head.

So, as promised, I collected a sample. We don’t keep sterile vials around the place so I rinsed out an embalming fluid bottle and filled it with her blood. Probably shouldn’t have used that one. Any blood test would have residual formaldehyde in it. Her blood work would have come back saying she had been embalmed to death, or at least advanced methanol and formaldehyde exposure.

She embalmed, I slept and got into the funeral home early the next day. I walked in and explained to my boss what had happened. He walked into the prep room with a curious look on his face.

I handed him the bottle, now one huge clot, and he looked at it. He went, without saying a word, and threw it in the trash.

“We don’t give out biological samples to anyone. Only to the coroner,” he said patiently, “Plus thank you for not putting it in the refrigerator with everyone’s lunch.”

I didn’t tell him I hadn’t even thought of that. I just left it where it could be found.

I went home and told my roommate about it. John just sighed and said “Thank God I’m a teacher.”

Postmortem:

It turns out the family was using County Assistance to pay for the funeral. My tax dollars paid for a casket, concrete box, two hours of visitation and a funeral for these folks. My instincts had been right. They were trying to cash in.

The family was what could be best described as poor white trash. The husband was either drunk or incoherent every time we saw him and the daughters scared the hell out of me. They were dentally challenged, flabby, tattooed and I think one wore a tube top to the funeral. Don’t try to picture it, you’ll not feel well for a while.

But what we did do was provide them with the best possible service they could ever had hoped to have. Our funeral home provides ONLY professional service of the highest caliber. We treated these folks like any other family. We treated them as though this funeral was the only important thing we had to do that day. We gave their mother the perfect funeral because that’s the only way we know how to do funerals. We give EVERY SINGLE FAMILY perfection, professionalism, courtesy and care.

So there it is, my first story. Hope you like it! Feel free to ask questions or post comments. It’ll give me an idea of what my (I’m being hopeful here) audience wants. Plenty more where that came from.

The Director