By Finn Lynch
I see a dead body at least once a week.
The decedent in front of me today is an old man who died in hospice care. We have him dressed for viewing in a dark suit and his favorite striped tie. His clothes are a little too big for him now. We placed a bit of clay under his bottom lip, allowing us to glue his lips together in a peaceful, pursed position. We’ve closed his eyes, and fixed them closed with spiky eye caps hidden under his lids. I stand and stare at him.
My manager enters, and tells me the decendent’s daughter, waiting downstairs, would like us to shave him. I have the razor in my hand. I stare at the man laying on the porcelain prep table. His wrinkled skin is soft and lies delicately over his bony features. His beard is patchy but his mustache is more defined, and it’s really only the bit under the chin that looks unseemly. I’m not sure whether I should shave his whole face or not.
We go talk to his daughter. She’s waiting in the arrangements room, sitting at an old desk with papers in front of her, focused on the information my manager has given her. We’re at Hill & Wood Funeral Service in downtown Charlottesville, where I work as a funeral assistant.
When I ask how much of his facial hair I should shave, she says we should have him clean shaven. My manager assures her we’ll have him looking his best.
As we leave to finish preparing him, the daughter sheepishly asks us for a favor. She reaches out and places two mint candies into my manager’s palm, and asks if we could tuck them into her father’s pants pocket.
This isn’t the first time we’ve had this kind of request. Families often like to honor their loved ones with little tokens—lipstick, tobacco, stuffed animals, and candies. Something comforting to take with them, something to make them feel loved.
This man always had something sweet with him, she says. So we make sure he has sweets for the next life, too.
My job is hardly ever a pretty one, and only sometimes a happy one, but the work I do is nevertheless humanizing and loving. It shows me how much people care for one another—love can be stored in little mint candies.
Another decedent I worked with was a woman who died at home. I went with my co-worker to pick her up and take her into the care of the funeral home. She had spent her final moments surrounded by parents, brothers and sisters, nieces and cousins; all there to make her feel safe and loved.
There was one issue. The front door and hallway were too tight for our stretcher to enter. We wouldn’t be able to move her onto it, and wheel her out as efficiently as we could with other decedents.
We have a tool for that, however. We left the stretcher just outside the house and used the Reeves stretcher, a dark canvas with handles all along the edges. We tuck it underneath decedents, so we can lift and carry them in a hammock-like style. As my co-worker and I went through this process, the woman’s family assisted us—the weight of a person is difficult to maneuver, even after they’ve passed. The family helped us get her onto the purse, wiped her nose when she dripped blood, and carried her onto the stretcher with us. I covered her with a sheet and a soft red blanket, then I watched as her brother carefully tucked them around her feet. He saw me looking. “I don’t want her to get cold,” he told me.
Once my co-worker and I got the woman into our removal van, we said our farewells to the family and let them know how to reach us. As we began to drive away, the decedent’s father approached our vehicle. He thanked us again and asked, somewhat hesitantly, if we could play songs from her favorite musician on the way back to the funeral home.
I hooked my phone up to the aux cord, and we listened for the entire ride back. Even when we were out of sight of the family, even when we were miles away, I made sure that the woman in the back of our vehicle knew she was safe with us. Later, when she was lying on a prep table in the funeral home and I was washing blood out of her hair, I found myself singing the lyrics she loved.
The families we help in the funeral industry mourn loss and celebrate life in different ways. They choose cherrywood or mahogany caskets, or urns made of Himalayan salt or Grecian marble. Some have groups sing songs at the funerals, some release birds. They are almost all guided by a common central thought: It’s what they would have wanted.
Some gather for a formal ceremony, united in love and loss. Others scatter ashes in a river, reconnecting with each other on the journey. Some families pay tribute by donating the deceased’s organs and bodies to save lives and educate the next generation of doctors and surgeons. We always try to honor the wishes of the dead.
People like to think the funeral industry and these rituals are meant for the dead. And of course we do take care of the decedents. We clean them up and make them look decent. We put their favorite cufflinks on their stiff wrists or apply blue eyeshadow to their closed lids. But this isn’t for the benefit of the deceased—as much as people like to claim their loved ones would insist on being seen a certain way. All of the work is for the living.
Everything we do is for the people left behind. We make sure that families feel reassured as they arrange services. We help them figure out how to make their budget work, where to hold the service, what kind of prayer cards or music or flower arrangements might be needed. Our job is to take care of the deceased, but it’s also to take the worry off the shoulders of their families.
I’ve found that people in mourning often don’t think of funerals this way. The living think they don’t need a ceremony to be reminded that their loved one is gone. They tell themselves the trouble they’re going to and the money they’re spending is dedicated to honoring the deceased—during this process, people can fail to see how these services and ceremonies bring the living comfort, ease, and closure.
Loss can be frightening, whether you’re the one leaving or the one left behind. But our funeral rituals help ease the struggle, the loneliness, the grief. We use these small details to make our loved ones feel remembered and comforted in their next life, and those small details do the same for us. We remember our departed in their favorite eyeshadow or cologne, in the lyrics of their favorite song, in the taste of their little mint candies.