Down Among the Dead Men_ A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician - Michelle Williams [92]
We stayed for half an hour, sitting either side of the coffin; occasionally, we spoke to Gramp and chatted between ourselves over him. All the time I was there, at the funeral parlour, it had been making things better for me. Although I knew that this was not about me in the slightest, I had been struggling with what to feel and how to react. I needed to come to terms with Gramp’s death and accept it, and had thought I would know how. For God’s sake, I worked with the dead after all, and had done so for quite a while now; I had thought that I was becoming the expert, the expected expert, and that was how I had felt.
But how wrong I had been.
When it came to the point that it was happening to me – and well and truly happening – I had no idea what to do, and this frightened and confused me. I couldn’t understand it. I had spent the last few months surrounded by dead people, dealing with them and dealing with their grieving kin. I knew how it worked and knew what to expect because I had seen it on so many people’s faces and heard it in their voices. But it turned out to be quite different. Nothing I had seen or done or learnt in the mortuary prepared me for not being the detached professional who shut up shop and went home in the evening still surrounded by all the family that I knew. There was no getting away from this, no popping down the pub for a few beers and a laugh; Gramp was dead and would remain so for ever.
So did I put on the front that I thought everyone would expect, that I was not fazed by it and understood that these things happen to us all, the one thing guaranteed in life is death? Or did I show how I truly felt? How I wanted it all to go away and to have him back again? Neither seemed quite right, somehow. I didn’t want to be too cold, but also I thought that the family were relying on me to help them through this terrible time.
Of course I was starting to understand the whys and hows of death, but that was other people, other people’s relations, not my Gramp.
FORTY-NINE
It was about a three-hour trip from where I live to the examination hall in London. The examination was due to start at two in the afternoon and, although the Trust would have paid to put me up in a hotel in London the night before, I decided to travel up that morning. Mum volunteered to keep me company so that I wouldn’t be lonely. We got the nine o’clock train and I spent the journey leafing through the ‘red book’ doing a bit of last-minute cramming while Mum chatted randomly and, I know, tried to take my mind off what was to come. Bless her, she had no effect whatsoever; my stomach was churning and I was having so many hot flushes I thought I was going through the change. I drank so much black coffee I had to make three trips to the toilet, the last time just leaning against the mirror after I’d washed my hands, breathing deeply.
When we got off the train at Paddington, my legs felt as though someone had taken the bones for organ donation they were so rubbery. I felt sick and, what with the crowds and the smell of the diesel, ready to faint. Mum asked if I was all right, so I smiled and said, Yes, feeling anything but. The Tube ride was even worse – how do people cope with that every day? – so that by the time we got to the exam hall I felt hot and dirty and ready to collapse.
As we still had well over an hour to go, I suggested to Mum that we stop for a coffee; not that I wanted another one, only to sit down and try to regain some normality. Mum had a sandwich but I just sat and stared at another bloody cup of coffee. All that morning I had been receiving texts wishing me good luck and now that the time for the exam actually approached, they got more and more frequent. At quarter to two I received a text from Ed telling me that I had nothing to worry about, which