Down Among the Dead Men_ A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician - Michelle Williams [47]
I remained quiet and waited.
After a short while, he jolted upright and wiped his face with the back of his sleeve. I wasn’t going to ask him if he was OK because it didn’t seem appropriate. I let him speak and he asked me sharply where his daddy was. I told him he was in the viewing chapel, and Herbie requested that he see him before the rest of the family came in.
We walked towards the door and Herbie took a deep breath. He grasped the handle firmly and opened the door forcefully. He walked straight over to the viewing trolley that his father was laid on. He stood there for about thirty seconds and then, without warning, raised his hand and slapped his father across the face.
‘Why didn’t you say you were ill?’ he shouted. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? You used to tell me everything, then this. You’ve let me down, Dad. You’ve let me down. What am I supposed to do now?’ Herbie then paced the room a couple times mumbling under his breath.
I tried to explain to him that not everyone suffers long illness before they die and some people only complain of feeling a little under the weather, if anything at all. He approached his father once more, and I hoped to God that he wasn’t going to hit him again. ‘I suppose it’s up to me now to control the family,’ he said to him. ‘I’ll just have to hope I do it as well as you did.’
Herbie once again composed himself and turned to me. I asked him if he was ready for the rest of the family. He said that he was, and asked me how long they would be able to stay. I could have jumped for joy at that point; this was going to make my speech that Clive had prepared me for easier. I informed Herbie of the official time for the department to close, but also told him that we could extend it by two hours if they felt they needed it as a family. Herbie nodded and thanked me, and I held open the chapel door as he encouraged the rest of the family to enter.
The next problem I faced was fitting everyone in. The waiting area will hold ten people – and that uncomfortably – and waiting for Mr Diggins were at least thirty of his family members. We were going to have to do this in a shift system. I instructed Herbie on this, and then left them to it after showing them the bell to contact me on. There was no point me being in with this family, I was taking up room and they had enough support from each other.
When I went back to the office, which is only down a short corridor, Clive and Graham were getting ready to leave. ‘How did it go?’ Graham asked.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I don’t think they’ll be a problem.’
Clive winked at me as he walked out the office. ‘Ring me if you have any problems and, remember, six-thirty finish.’
‘OK,’ I replied.
They both left, and although there were a lot of people in the room along the way, there is something unnerving about being alone in the mortuary of an evening. Once it goes quiet and all you can hear are the fans from the fridges, no matter what you may have seen in the PM room and then tried to erase from your thoughts, your mind still begins to wander.
I could hear the chapel door opening and closing, and knew that the Diggins family were going to be a while and would probably use the extended two hours offered. I made myself a coffee and thought about what to do. It would be disrespectful to start banging about in the body store while a family were in the chapel, and the PM room was spotless; the office was also too close to the chapel to start hoovering. Not that it needed it. Clive ensured that we never left an untidy mortuary at the end of the day, especially at the weekend.
All I could do was