Down Among the Dead Men_ A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician - Michelle Williams [65]
The pleasure of the weekend dimmed, overshadowed not by what we saw but by what we could only guess had happened. For Ed and me, it was especially depressing because we had vividly in our minds the kind of injuries that those bloodstains represented, and we knew at first hand the pain that the relatives would now have to endure.
On the way back we called in again at a service station for coffee and a rest, just sitting in the restaurant and making idle chitchat. The joy of the weekend – as good as it had been – was now placed firmly into context. It might be that what we did in the mortuary was unseen by almost everyone, but I now fully appreciated just how important and relevant it was.
THIRTY-THREE
In my very first days at the mortuary, it never dawned on me to wonder how the deceased would be removed from us. Totally new to the job, I had never even thought about it. Who would? People die, and how they get to the funeral parlour is something that most of us don’t consider. I certainly did not.
Within my first week I had met several undertakers who had come to collect bodies for their final journeys, and watched how Clive had gone through all the procedures to make sure that he was releasing the right person to the right undertaker, but doing it while chatting away about everyday topics. He made it seem a doddle. As the weeks passed, and I was trusted to release the deceased without Clive or Graham looking over my shoulder, I got to know the undertakers individually and on a personal basis. I became almost friends with many of them and, if not quite the sort of friends that you would socialize with, they were certainly people who you would put on a step above any other outside colleagues.
Because of the small, intimate environment we work in, it is inevitable that this will happen, but it is also extremely useful to have a good solid relationship with the undertakers as you never know when you will need them, and they take the same view. They treat us well (or most of them do) as they too never know when they are going to get a demanding family who want a quickie funeral, in which case they rely on us to turn the paperwork around in as little as twenty-four hours. Since funeral arrangements normally take three to five working days (involving two doctors, the bereavement office, porters transporting the notes and relevant legal forms to us, the body going in and out of the fridge to check identification, and us chasing the pathologists to complete their part of the form – and they already have enough to do anyway), this is a big ask. It means a lot of extra work and grief, a lot of nagging of doctors, and the use of a lot of staff right across the hospital who are tied up with the sick and needy.
So, when I got to know the various undertakers, personalities shone, and some of them shone big time. You have to remember that in this trade we are surrounded by death five days a week, and sometimes seven if you get a bad weekend on call. Respect for the deceased patient is our utmost concern, but for us – the living and breathing in the mortuary – interaction is vital, as it is for any human being. And so the banter began, and the jokes started to creep in; the conversations would become more in-depth, more personal, and most of the undertakers became like old friends. This led me to think about which firm I would use for myself and my family once the time came; one of the few perks of the job is that, more than anyone else, you know where to go to get a decent send-off for your kith and kin. Strange how you accept these things while doing this job, things that nobody else ever thinks about until they have to; I suppose it’s because you come to appreciate that death is the one thing certain in life and just hope that, when the time comes, you embrace it with dignity.
Of course I have my favourites, undertakers who greet us with a smile when we open the door, respect the times that they know we are busy in