Clean navels for all

There are some things that I get to experience that aren’t in the general public’s realm of experience.

Mondays tend to be busy at the funeral home, and whenever we have services scheduled for a Monday we try to have part-time workers work them so that us full-time directors can be available to meet with the new families that we got over the weekend (some of the families we meet with over the weekend, but not much can be done with them since cemeteries, doctor’s offices, and churches don’t have office hours on Saturdays and Sundays). So, this morning I’ve been working on the family I met with Saturday, calling the church and cemetery, getting the flowers and musicians, etc., and tying up the loose ends from this weekend. Well, Buck, the director that was on call this weekend, must have felt bad that I came in to work on my day off because he and Tank are meeting with the new families today, and I’ve now got nothing to do.

So, back to the experiences that I get to have: Since I have nothing to do I decided to go into the embalming room (also called the prep room) and hang out with Jane, the embalmer that does most of the embalming here. She’s about 50 years old, and we get along very well. She’s been in the business for about 25 years and is an AMAZING embalmer, and has taught me quite a lot in my time at this mortuary, which is handy since the man that originally trained me was a woman-hater and didn’t want me in his prep room (“You have such a pretty face, Doll, you shouldn’t waste it back here with the dead. And the chemicals will hurt your ability to have healthy babies.” Really?? What??). So, she was getting ready to start a case, and I helped her get the body undressed and on blocks, and we were chatting about the weekend. After a bit more preparation we start injecting and bathing the deceased, and I noticed something that I know I’ve seen her do a million times before, but never really noticed. Jane always washes inside the deceased’s belly button. Maybe that won't seem strange to non-embalmers (or maybe it is such a strange thing to think about that it does sound strange, as does all of this), but it is. And it’s funny. I'm talking hilarious. It took just about all of my self-control not to just laugh out loud there at her. It’s like a trademark of hers I suppose. I mean, I wash the bodies, but I can’t remember sticking my finger in someone’s navel to clean it out. K, so that’s my experience. Maybe I shouldn’t have shared now that I re-read this, but wev, right?

In which I love my job and over-use parentheses

Warning: I did not attempt to write this very clearly. I wrote it exactly the way I would have said it, and do not feel like making it easier for y'all to read. Sorry

So, it isn't my weekend on call at the mortuary, but there was a family that came in yesterday like 5 minutes before we closed to get prices on a full traditional Catholic service (okay, so since I'm the Irish (raised by a) Catholic and no one else at the funeral home is Catholic (or knows anything about the religion apparently) I usually get to do all of the Hispanic (usually Catholic, but I'm not trying to sound stereotype-y) arrangements, which would be this family that walked through the door) and I didn't want to make them see a different director if they ended up choosing our funeral home (nor did I want to hear about how much work it is to arrange not only the funeral (Mass) but a fracking Rosary as well (yes, I work with a complainer or two)), so I gave the grandson of the deceased my cell phone number so that if his mom had any questions or wanted to make arrangements they could just call me directly.

(Side note: our funeral home is not the cheapest in town, but we aren't the most expensive either, and I am honest with families about this when they are shopping for prices. I also am very sure that I am the best funeral director out there (although I dont say that to families) and tend to keep price-shopping families even when they find a cheaper place to have a funeral. I dont know why that is really, I just decide its because of my bad-assness and level of professionalism (frack, I'm concieted), and damnit, families just like me.)

Okay, back to it: So, not 15 minutes after the family (and I) leave the mortuary does my phone ring with a number that I don't recognize. And yes, it's the grandson (who, if I can just let you all know, reminds me a LOT of what I imagined Jacob from the Twilight books to have looked like before the movie ruined my imagination of him) and he is telling me that they liked me (surprised?) and that they wanted to come in to make the arrangements on Saturday afternoon.

And that's what I just did, made arrangements with this family (the grandson was the only English speaker, so he translated for his mom and aunt, making me have to look at him most of the time, and let me say, for such a young guy he really was very man-esque in his wife-beater and jeans) and now I'm getting ready to go home and was just thinking this: I love my job.

P.S. Yes, I, a 29-year-old, have read those Twilight books. Also, I loved them.

Interesting people

I met with a guy today about pre-arranging his funeral services. He is young (okay, by young I mean 45), and when I walked into the arrangement office I saw that he wore a "free hugs" button on his plaid shirt. Anyhoo, I had assumed that he must have some sort of not-life-threatening-right-now-but-I'll-die-young-of-what-I-have-early diseases/disorders, and it turns out I was right. I mean, it's rare for someone who is only 45 to make their funeral arrangements, because people that age don't tend to think about their own death too often. So, here he is with his free hugs and his disease, and he's happy as a clam, telling me that his 61 year-old caretaker will outlive him and not seeming to have any problems with that. He also told me what a stud he used to be, and how even though he's alone (for the most part) now, that he sure has time to read and work in his garden (he's been on disability for years now so has quite a bit of free time), which apparently is the greatest garden in town.

It's strange, you know, the things that are important...

Things I'm tired of people asking

1. Oh, (hee hee) you see dead people??

2. Does your hair really keep growing after you die?

3. People move, like, they sit up, after they die, right? Isn't that scary?

4. Aren't you freaked out?

5. What do you do with all the guts?

Argh! Just use your BRAINS!!!! Sheesh.

A lesson: Copy and Paste

I just finished typing up instructions on something really hard to do. Wait for it…yes, folks, copying and pasting in Microsoft programs.

So, Big Bird is a bit old, and by a bit old I mean that she isn’t technically old (62), but she is technologically old. She has a hard time comprehending anything computer related and I’m even a bit surprised that she can use her cell phone.

The programs we hand out a funeral services are all saved in our computer as templates using Microsoft Publisher. We have a template for each of the poems/verses that are commonly chosen by families. When a family decides to use a custom program however, something say, with a photo on the cover, we have a local print shop do the printing and photo editing for us instead of printing them in house. Now, in keeping with Big Bird’s controlling nature, she has to design all the wording for the folders before we give this other company any of the details to the program they are to print for us. I have been the one to do this in the past, be the go-between for the print shop and the funeral home, but Big Bird insisted this week on learning how to do it (which I am all for not being the only one that knows how to do something, especially since I’m not really an office worker anyway). So, I explained yesterday to her that the print shop does not have Microsoft Publisher (I tried to tell her that they are a Mac-based people and we are not, but noticed that she thought I was speaking Swahili, so I just said that they couldn’t open the ‘attachment thing’ if we sent it to them like that), and that we would need to save the Publisher file as a picture file when we were ready to email it over to them. I quickly showed her how to do that (she took notes) and then opened the picture file so that she could see what it would look like when the print company opened it. Well, this started a discussion about why they couldn’t then edit it and all that mess. Argh.

So now I am typing up instructions on how to copy the Publisher words and paste them into a Word document, save it, attach it in an email, and send it to the print shop. Swear to Buddha, I might just die.

Busy Bee

So, the funeral home is quite busy this week. It's always a bit strange to me that we have busy weeks/months and slow weeks/months. I mean, really it shouldn't be, a lot of industries are that way, but something just seems off about death not being more of a constant rate. Aren't births that way? Or maybe I just don't notice the sporadicness of births because I'm not an OB/GYN. Anyway, we're busy.

Also, I've been reading a lot more lately, mostly teen science fiction. It's always been my favorite genre, and with the success of all the Twilight books the science fiction books have really taken off, a lot of which have strong female characters, which traditionally has not been the case in teen sci fi. And luckily those books are a lot of times in a series, which makes for easy what-do-I-read-next decisions.

Anyway, I will try to post more regularly now... I think I'm getting the hang of it

Big Bird

The lady that runs the office has been here for years. 26 years actually, and she is highly organized and very capable of keeping the office in shape. God love her, she is actually a royal pain, but the office might cease to be if she weren’t here. I will describe her now:
- tall and fairly thin
- good dresser (even for an older woman)
- squeaky voice
- poor sense of humor
- prude
I really could go on, but you get the general idea. The last woman that worked here quit because of this office manager, she was just so hard on her (because of what I don’t know, but the rest of the staff liked the gal that quit) that it would make her cry, and finally she couldn’t take it any more.
So, back to what I was going to discuss in the first place: Big Bird (as she is called by the office staff) was gone this afternoon. There was going to be some large gathering at her house and she wanted to take off after lunch to prepare, and we weren’t busy enough to warrant her staying. Anyway, not five minutes after she leaves is it a whole different atmosphere around here. I know it shouldn’t really be a surprise, but it was, and even a few comments were made about how nice it is when she isn’t here. And we aren’t trying to be mean, but it can be hard to be serious all the time, especially in dealing with death day in and day out, and it was nice to be a goof ball.

Not part of the story, but a bit of background on the worker bees here:
Tank:
- He is about 58 years old or so (but looks younger), tall, and fairly fit.
- Been a funeral guy for a long time, probably 30 years at least.
- Married to a crazy feminist, who talks a mile a minute and is one of my favorite parts of the Christmas dinner the company has each year.
- Very private, doesn’t talk much a bout family (although getting a bit better, as he has learned that I tend towards the non-judgmental side)
- Also a licensed embalmer, but doesn’t embalm mush any more.
- He is the manager, and meets with a number of the families we serve
Buffy:
- He’s the other young person in the office, 28 or 29 years old
- works full time, although has one weekday a week that he takes off to work on his Master’s Thesis (in English, I think)
- Does quite a bit of office work, death certificate filing, phone answering, funeral service products, etc.
- Likes beer, one of the things we have in common.
- Plays in a band out at bars and clubs in the area. I went to see him perform once, and it was good, although his music style isn’t one I willingly chose very often
Buck:
- Been here for about 10 years, and worked in a cemetery office prior to becoming a funeral director/accountant for our place.
- Also is a pastor of a very small Christian church
- Banters constantly with Buffy, about everything from religion to war
- Was in the Vietnam War, and never fully recovered to a normal state of mind, although isn’t the typical Vietnam Vet the way we see them in movies. Was exposed to Agent Orange.

So, that’s about it for now…