Stories Form the Funeral Home- Final/Part 5

The Purge 

This will be my final story for the "Funeral Home Stories" series.
I was so nervous about telling this story. I asked my husband, Jason, twice, "Should I actually write about the purge?". To which he said with a resolute calm,  "Yes..." both times. So here you go.
   WARNING!
**If you have a weak stomach, or have recently lost a loved one, don't read this.**

     I was often going to the "care center", where all of the loved ones were brought after being picked up from their place of deaths. I would be there to drop off/pick up paperwork, cremated remains, or to just check on the progress of a loved one that was going to be in our chapel for a service.
    It was a place where they were washed, dressed, made up and placed in a casket, or cremated for their families.  So it wasn't unusual for me to see several deceased individuals, all in different shapes, some a bit mangled from dying in odd positions, wide open mouths, sunken eyeballs.

No matter what they looked like, I still walked through the care center extending my love and respect to each of them. Yes, I was curious, but not like I was when I was a child (when I used to look at books so I could look into the eyes of the dead to try and figure out where they went). It was no longer a fascination. I would look at some and wonder how or why they died, what their life had been like, who they loved, and wondered if they had felt satisfied with their life when they left it. I would look upon the children, the teenagers, and the men and women who never had a chance to live a full life, and it would affect me. I would feel such sadness, love and respect for them.
    Who I respected most though, were the people who work(ed) at the care center. Day in and day out their subjects were dead.
Always dead.
   So I understood why some had to keep an emotional distance in order to get through their day.
    But one thing you should know, funeral home people, the morticians, the funeral arrangers, the drivers, the office folks, all of them....they are all a special breed. They care for your loved one not in a callous or flippant manner- but with precision, care and love, being fully aware of what has been lost.
    I have no idea why I was born with a curiosity about dead people, which eventually led to my working in, and loving the funeral business. I don't know why I can handle seeing a deceased person mangled and torn, but cannot bear seeing a hurt animal. I think that some of us are just made this way so we can handle what a majority of the people cannot.
   I mostly worked with the families of the deceased. And my heart went out to them as I helped them with their final services for their loved one. I sat and let them vent, ask "why", and gave them the kindest love I could. They were the ones having to live with the empty hole their loved one had left.

   As I said in one of the other blogs in this series, when a loved one was brought to our funeral home from the care center, those that were embalmed came already made up. But sometimes, due to a lack of information, or the difference in the lights, I would have to touch up the loved one to make sure they looked somewhat similar to what we knew the family was hoping for.
    The care center would not do make up on the un-embalmed.

There was a great deal of risk and it was simply the company's policy not to. However, a few of us at our funeral home didn't agree with that policy. No matter how long the family was staying to see their loved one, I would try to, at least make them look a little less dead. With the un-embalmed, they do not have preserving embalming fluids in their systems so depending on the manner in which they died, they can still manage to look fairly natural. Some even look like they are just sleeping. Honestly, it was the un-embalmed deceased that I was sometimes creeped out by. Because some really did look like they were just napping and looked like they were going to wake at any moment. Unnerving... that's probably a better word. So if there was no embalming, the skin was not preserved with that added "plastic factor".
So it, like the entire body, was going through the stages of breakdown. The skin became almost like tissue paper on the face. Push just a little too hard and the skin would literally be swept right along with the makeup brush. Additionally, you had to be very careful not to jostle an un-embalmed loved one as the fluids in the body, along with the blood was stirring, and breaking down. Kind of like the magma, stirring with a vengeance, underneath a volcano.
   The story I am about to tell was one of the more memorable moments for me. It's not one of those knee slappers, or even something one can make fun of.  But what does become humorous is when you look back on it and think of the utter shock and panic that ensued.
             None of us expected this...
    My co-worker and I had were receiving a woman into our care for what was called an "I.D. View". In other words, the family is seeing their loved one for the last time, then signing a paper for us that says, in fact, that was their loved one. Then they were back to the care center for cremation.
    Usually we would allow 15-20+ minutes for a small number of family members to come and do the I.D. View. It was not a service, nor was it a "viewing" with a lot of invited people. Just small, but intimate.
    For these views, the deceased were brought in by two drivers on a cart, similar to this one in the photograph. We had soft, cozy blankets we kept at the funeral home and would cover the deceased and try to cover as much of the cold cart that we could.

    In this case, a woman, who was only in her mid 30's, was brought in. She looked to be a little overweight, but it was fairly clear that she had been dead for a couple of days at least, as she was VERY bloated. My co-worker said she smelled as well (remember that I have no sense of smell), so we lit candles and sprayed one puff of perfume on her.  We had the doors to the chapel closed as we never wanted a family member to show up early and see their loved one before they are ready. Then I started work on her face. It was going to be very minimal, just a little powder and blush on her cheeks, nose and forehead. Anything to bring a little color to her. We were already concerned that the family was going to be in shock because of how bloated she was.
    The drivers that dropped her off stayed around, as they normally would when it was just a short I.D. View. That way they could just bring the loved one back as soon as the family was done spending time with them. So they were in the chapel, quietly chatting with my co-worker and I while we made sure the woman looked as best she could, under the circumstances.
   I was done with the make-up and my co-worker was done making the chapel pretty and smelling good. Then, my co-worker had a thought...
  "Her double chin is so smashed up on her face and she looks like she is shrugging her shoulders... Maybe if we gently pull her upper body up just a bit, then we will be able to see that she had a neck. It might look better for the family." 
    As I said, EVERY EFFORT of care and love is made to help families be able to see their loved one looking as good as possible. In this case, what she was suggesting wasn't at all unusual.
    "But we have to be careful", she said, "she is REALLY bloated".
               And we all knew what that meant.
    So we set out, along with the drivers, to make a plan to adjust the woman. We all had our jobs to do so that it would be done with minimal movement. Soft and swift. Both me and my co-worker would gently pull the upper sheet that were under her and try to lift her head a bit. One of the two drivers were down by her feet.
1...2....3!!!
We gently pulled and we caught a glimpse her neck for a split second. Then, almost like a volcano she ERUPTED!!!

She was purging bloody, foamy, and gooey lava from her mouth, her nose, her eyes!!!  It went everywhere and it kept coming!! 
    I am positive there were a couple of curse words blurted out, as well all scrambled. I am sure mine was, "SHIT"!!!
  My co-worker ran for tissues, and I told one of the drivers to go in the back to get paper towels, as we tried to get the purging-run-off to stop, shoving tissues wherever we could around her mouth and nose, and down by her neck... It was mayhem, everyone running this way or that and desperately trying to end the purging!
    This woman was a mess! There now was foamy, gooey, gelatinous dark bloody substance all over her face, in her hair, on her top, on the cozy blanket......
 THEN WE HEAR IT..... DING DONG... The front door of the funeral home. "Shit" again.
   Fortunately for us, our Office Manager came down the stairs, intercepted and greeted the family of the woman. Then he came in to check how we were doing- BEFORE HE LET THE FAMILY IN. Whew!
He saw and heard about the purging mess and went and let the family know we were going to need a few more moments to prepare her for their viewing. He never let on that there was a problem at all as that would have been incredibly upsetting for any family to hear.
   We wiped as gently as we could making sure we didn't tear her skin.  I got out the make-up again and touched up her face, then cleaned and brushed her hair. My co-worker got a fresh blanket and tucked it in all around below her neck so they didn't see the mess on the neckline of her top.
        Even after all that, we still managed to make her look beautiful for her family. But we were incredibly nervous that someone would put pressure on her stomach, or try to hug her or kiss her and it would happen all over again, right in front of the family. So we had to explain to the family about her bloating, and what it meant. And that they should not try to touch her too much.
             And I stood watch over this viewing. Like a lingering, creepy funeral home girl, I stood about two feet away from the head of that dead woman the whole time her family was there. Normally, they would have had private time with their loved one.

But not this time.

Lesson: Don't try to move bloated dead people. At least not without gloves on.

__The End____but_____Not the End___

Shelly with Black Beauty

I have more stories... Like the time I co-trained in the embalming room and saw a man who had just gotten back from the coroner. He was completely opened with no internal organs. They were all in a black bag... That was the one and only time that I was weak with grief and a little sick. He was a son, father, brother, grandfather. And his organs were in a bag.
   Or like the time that a dead guys eyes started to open a little during the service (faulty glue, I guess). And how the family came to me and asked me to close them. There I was with an "audience" of concerned family members, trying to crazy gluing a dead guys eye shut. Talk about pressure....
    Or how much I love hearses. I call them "Black Beauty"...
FOUR dreams- THREE met. One: To drive a hearse with a loved on in the back (CHECK!), Two: To lay in the back of a hearse and see what the view of the deceased is (CHECK!)  Three: To lay in a casket (CHECK!), And Four: to make love in the back of a hearse (No check on that one, yet).
____________________________
But I would like to move on from this series.  Talk about living things for a while. Perhaps I'll get back to it if there is some requests.
I hope you have enjoyed this.
By telling you these stories, I can pretty much guarantee that I will NEVER be hired to work in a funeral home again. Even though that was my heart's desire. Now I have a new heart's desire. And it has to do with helping people through YouTubing and Blogging.

Would love to hear from you,

Shelly


Shelly Livingston
Wife, Mama, Nana, YouTuber, Blogger, Woman Who Digs Hearses
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