The Night I Crashed

It was a late night of being on-call. It had been quiet most of the night. I had just gotten to bed for the night when the on-call cell phone began to chirp. I flipped open the cell phone and spoke to the call service representative who had taken the call and had contacted me. She told me there was a pick up at a local nursing home. I got out of bed and put on my suit, grabbed my keys and headed out to the white, unmarked funeral van. It was very late at night. No one was out on the roads so my commute to the nursing home was quick and simple. I went in and told the receptionist who I was and why I was there. She pointed to room 134 just down the hall. I rolled my gurney down the quiet, florescent lit hallway. The door was open on room 134. The room was dimly lit, and the body of an elderly lady lay peacefully in the bed. I put her on the gurney, and rolled her out. As I was lifting the gurney into the van the cell phone chirped again. Death was coming alive in the wee hours of the morning. I answered the call. Another body to be picked up, this one at a local hospital morgue. I drove the van to the hospital, pulled around to the back loading dock where the hospital preferred us to enter and exit. They always said that funeral vans being loaded in the front of the building for all to see was bad for business. This was more of a covert operation. I made sure to lock the van while I went inside. Since there was a dead body n the van, it was precious cargo to some family who would be pleased to know I was locking it up while unattended. I strolled the gurney down the sidewalk into the back doors of the hospital. The hallways were similar to the nursing home – cold and florescent. I reached the morgue and pushed the button on the box next to the door. This would summons the security guarad who would have to sign me in and out. He arrived a few minutes later. Looking tired and bored, he made a witty comment about death and let me in to the morgue. It was a small room with 4 slide out drawer coolers. It was equipped for medical procedures such as embalming and autopsies. I sighed some paper work and placed the ankle ID tag on the corpse. I made note of the personal effects that had been placed in a bag by the hospital staff. This body was placed in a body bag, as was customary for most hospital deaths. I did not ever find out the story on the guy I was picking up. He was young. probably late 40’s. I wheeled him out to the van to be joined with the other deceased. It was time to head back to the funeral home and drop these two off so I could get back home an get back to bed. I had to be at the funeral home at 7:30 am the next morning. It would come all too fast. I was less than 1/2 a mile from the funeral home, stopped at a stop light when I noticed in my rear-view mirror, a car coming very fast toward me. I thought the car would most likely hit me so I turned my wheels to face the grass embankment to the right. Sure enough, the car hit my van from behind at 40 mph. The van lunged onto the grass and hit a small tree. The bodies, still on their gurneys had thrust forward and hit the dividing gate between me and them. I was a bit dazed form the impact and sat in the van for a few moments gathering my thoughts. The other car, now totaled, leaking some fluid on to the pavement, and smoking was sitting in the middle of the street. Just then, my cell phone rings again. I answer. Another body to be picked up. This time, it’s a house call – someone died in their home. I wrote don the information and hung up. I stepped out of the van to see if the other driver was still alive or hurt. She was dazed, but doing fine. Now standing, crying in the street. I had very little sympathy for her. She had been speeding, not paying attention, and appeared to be an idiot. I called 911. The police, fire, and ambulance were on their way. I could instantly ear their sirens approaching. I then called my back-up removal team member. I told him I had been in a crash and that he would have to resume my night shift. I gave him the information on the house call. I then called my supervisor, who was surprised to be called at home at 3 a.m. He said he only lived a few minutes away and would come to the crash scene. The fire and police arrived. I told them who I was and that there were two dead bodies in the van. The laughed. They said that they did not realize this was a crash with fatalities. Once my supervisor arrived, we had to devise a plan for getting the bodies out of the van. The rear door had been mangled and would not open. The only option was to get the bodies out of the side door, but that meant taking the bodies off the gurney and maneuvering them out. The was not easy. After a while of working on this, we managed to get the bodies out. We took them to funeral home prep room and checked the bodies to see if they had any signs of having been in this crash. We were hoping the did not since we did not want to have to explain to their families that, though they died peacefully in their sleep, the were in a car crash and the bodies would not be able to be viewed. They were fine, and we did not have to ever tell the families their loved ones had been in a crash. This was a strange night indeed, and I will never forget the events of this eventful on-call shift.

The Death-Effect

Some people often ask me about the psychological toll that a job like this has on an individual.  Seeing death everyday and dealing with it on such an extreme level seems unbearable to many people.  I believe that it all depends on who you are, what your personality is like, and perhaps even what your belief systems in the afterlife are.  As for me, dealing with death daily was never something that bothered me.  I found it intriguing mostly, and it was an adventure of sorts.  I have a string belief in God and in Christianity, which helped me deal with it differently than some of my colleagues who believed differently.

There were some nights at first when I would come home and lay in bed, replaying the images that I had seen that day.  But it never “bothered” me.  For many people, I don;t think they could handle this type of job.  I’m not entirely sure why I was able to handle it and why I found it so intriguing.  Then again, there are many jobs, such as surgeons and doctors, that I could never do.  The mere sight of someone in pain makes me queasy.  But the dead – they don’t have an effect on me.

Lost and Found

One day at work we had few calls, I guess no one was dying this day, and I was bored. I asked my supervisor if there was anything that I could do rather than sit and stare at the wall. He said there was a file cabinet full of old personal items of the deceased. The items had not been identified or returned to the families of the deceased because no one knew who they belonged to. The items included everything from jewelry, wallets, money, combs, loose change, eye glasses, and various other things that people had on their person when they died. These items were supposed to be written down on a form that accompanied the body and later went into a file so the items would be identified an returned to their new, living, owners.

He suggested that I go over to the records office and ask to see al of the old files. from there, I could go through each one, look under the “personal effects” area on te sheet and see what it said. If it said “gold watch with white trim” I could look and see if the item was in the box. Usually, the items on the form wold be notated with a star if the the item had been returned.

So I set off on my investigation. There were two boxes full of items. At first I thought this would be a lost cause. But as I began to look through the files I was able to locate a few of the rightful owners. Each item I found was fuel to keep me going. What was supposed to be a one-day project turned in to three days. I was able to locate every item and make arrangements to return them to the families. Everyone was impressed with my work, and several of the funeral directors were excited because some the families had been asking about certain items that had been “lost.”

The work was a nice change of pace, and I was able to make friends with some other people in the funeral home that I had never met. The records keeper, a man of about 72 years, was at first cold and uncooperative But once he saw I was being successful, he began to take an interest in my work. By the end of the 3 days we had become friends.

Suicide Clean-Up

Suicide is a common occurrence in the U.S. It brings with it grief and confusion, but for a funeral home, it brings money. Lets face it, tragic deaths often are the ones that result in grand funerals. More people buy flowers, more people attend the services, and families tend to buy top dollar items to deal with the grief. Not all funeral homes capitalize on people’s grief and confusion, but to say that it never happens would be naive.

One particular suicide I remember was a 44 year old man who had recently gone through a divorce. He had fallen into a depression over his circumstances and decided to end his life. He chose a gun as his means of death, and shot a bullet into his temple. After picking him up at the medical examiner’s office I rolled his gurney into the embalming room Met by an eager embalmer awaiting his chance to re-construct a gun-shot victim, we opened the body bag to see what was in store for us. His head, having a bullet gone through it, had cracked his skull, leaving his head deformed. There was not a large amount of blood, and the bullet hole was quite small. But the fact that his head was deformed would mean some re-constructive embalming would be required. I decided to stay late this day and watch as the embalmer worked on this guy. He began by the normal means of thoroughly washing the body to remove all the blood and and chemicals used by the M.E. earlier in the day. I noticed the man had a beard. It was manicured and was undoubtedly his “look” during life, so the beard would have to stay, maybe even be trimmed up a bit later for the public viewing. The goal was to make the man look as normal as possible to reduce the shock and sting of an unexpected suicide. We had been told he ad a 9 year old daughter who would attending the funeral. The embalmer did not want his daughter to see him for the last time with a sunken head – a contestant reminder of the way he died.

After cleaning the body, the artery located around the color bone was located as the embalmer (I am going to refer to the embalmer as “Ted” form here on). . .as Ted placed a large clear tube into the artery to drain the blood. It flowed out of the man quickly. Simultaneously, formaldehyde was being pumped into his veins with another tube that went into a vein located on his inner-thigh. This process took a while, but eventually the man was drained and re-filled with pink formaldehyde. Next it was time to reconstruct the head. Ted took a scalpel and scored his head into sections – like you would an orange. The peeled back the skin – like it was simply a hat the man was wearing. It reminded me very much of something you would see in a horror movie. It almost was as if it wasn’t real -which is how I was able to watch without passing out. Finally Ted located and revealed the man’s skull, which was cracked in three places. Ted took a saw and cut the skull removing it form the man’ s head. He took the skull pieces to the sink and washed them thoroughly. He then showed the marks on the inside of the skull indicating that the bullet had entered the skull and ricocheted around before settling into the mans brain. The skull was now in three pieces and would have to be reshaped. Ted was not sure how he was going to do this exactly, but he began by carefully applying a super-glue component to the three pieces and putting them back together. Next, he took some white gauze and wrapped the skull in gauze and applied a layer of glue over the gauze to give it strength. It was very much the way theatrical scene designers might reinforce a prop for a play. Once the skull was back to its original shape, be placed it back in the man’s head and stuffed it with more gauze to give it shape.  He carefully sewed the head back together, hiding the sutures with the mans hair. Very creative. Ted told me that he needed to use the original skull and restore it so that the man would look like himself. If he had removed the skull and replaced it with a foreign object the man might not look the same.

Now it was time for make-up. This would be required to fill the hole in the mans temple as well as give him color and life so his daughters last image of him would not be to horrific. A putty was used to fill the hole in his head and make-up was applied to the area.  It was so well done that no one would have every known where the bullet had gone in, even if they were looking for it.  Finally, he was ready for dressing.  I remember the suit as a grey pin-striped suit and a grey and blue tie.  I dressed him and got him situated in his casket.  It was an amazing transformation form the man I had picked up from the M.E. the day before.  He looked normal again.  The horror of suicide was no longer visible with blood and gore, but rather by a resting human body in a casket.  I always wondered what his family thought when they looked at him in that casket.  Were they mad?  Were they hurt?  Were they scared?  Probably all of the above.  But at least they never had to see the horrible sights we saw.  No one should have to see his or her loved ones in that way if it can be helped.

Dressing a Corpse

Dressing a body is not always easy.  Try it sometime.  Have someone lay flat on their back and tell them they cannot move in any way.  The must keep their arms and legs rigid and cannot help.  Then, try to put a suit or dress on them.  It’s not easy.  There are some tricks of the trade.  First, you must button the clothes in the front and layer them as if they are already on the body.  Next, you take large scissors and cut them down the back.  Finally. You drape the cloths over the body and simply tuck the clothes in around their back.  Technically, they are not fully “wearing” the clothes, but mostly have them draped over the body.  Most people don’t realize this, but it’s a pretty standard way to dress a corpse.

Depending on what the family brings, you can have to dress the body in some interesting frocks.  I was always amazed that often undergarments such as socks, underwear, bras, and undershirts were provided.  We always dressed them in these if the family brought them, even though only the outer clothes would be visible during the viewing.  If a body was badly mangled in an accident, we very often would pre-dress them in plastic clothes.  These were used to keep any fluid or gunk from escaping through their dress clothes during the funeral.

I will be describing this process on future stories, but have found a pretty good explanation of how to dress a corpse on another blog.  I hope they don’t mind me referencing their site:

Click Here 

Mrs. Bates

It was a normal day at work.  I arrived at my customary time of 7:30 a.m. to find the prep room bustling with energy as the others on my team were busily preparing for the day’s work.  Located just inside the prep room door was a large dry-erase board with columns.  The information written on the board included the name of the deceased, the type of casket they were to be placed in, and the funeral home location where the service was to be held.  The most important piece of information was the time when the body had to be delivered and ready for show-time.  On this particular day, there were three cases that all fell within 20 minutes of one another on the time schedule.  This meant that we would all have to hustle to get the bodies prepped and delivered in time.

I was assigned Mrs. Bates (name changed to protect privacy).  Mrs. Bates was a 82 year old woman who had passed away in a nursing home only 2 days before.  I had actually been the one to pick her up form the nursing home where she had died in her sleep.  Still laying in bed, her mouth was agape, and her eyes glazed over.  She looked as though she had been in mid-snore when she took her last breath.  Using the bed sheet she was laying upon, I fashioned her body into a “cocoon” and gently slid her into the gurney.  I placed another sheet on top of her, and finished up by placing a large blue cloth on top of that.  I quickly rolled her out to the van and loaded her up.  She did not have many personal effects, and the nursing home staff had told me she had very little family.

2 Days later, after she had been in a cooler then been embalmed for burial she lay ready to be dressed and prepared for the service.  It turns out she did have a distant relative who wanted to see she got a proper burial and had managed to locate a teal 1970’s style dress for her.   As was often the case, she looked better in death than she had in life due to her declining heath in the nursing home.

I was working with Todd (name changed to protect privacy) the day we got her ready for burial. We had several other tasks that day, so getting her prepped was to be done as quickly as possible.  We started by putting on her bra, panties, and a slip that accompanies the outfit.  We used a “roll” technique to put on a bra.  One of us would take one arm, and pull her toward us, rolling her on her side as the other would tuck the bra underneath.  Then we would trade and roll her on her other side and fasten the bra from behind.  Mrs. Bates was fairly light-weight so this was no problem.  Often large people were difficult to roll, sometimes taking several tries.  Next we buttoned her white dress shirt in the front and cut the back down the middle.  We put the shirt n (like a Kindergarten teacher would a child’s smock).  Next we pulled on her skirt.  The skirt, underwear, and slip were slid up her legs and under her bottom.  One of us would take her legs and pull them up toward her torso just slightly lifting her buttocks up off the table.  This made it easier to get the skirt on.  We found that skirts, etc stayed on better if we actually put them on and did not cut them.  Next, we buttoned the leisure suit style jacket in the front and cut the back up the middle.  We placed it on top if the dress shirt.  Next, a lady named Becky (name changed) came in and fixed her hair and did her make-up.  Becky was a hired beautician who came in each day and fixed hair for the women.  Once she was finished, we lifted her into her casket.  Her family member ad chosen a white and pink casket called the Primrose (pictured above).  Todd and I lifted her gently and placed her into the casket.  Since she was light-weight we were able to lift her.  Had she been larger we could have used a lift.   I’ll tell you about that another time.  Once she was in her casket, we tucked the clothes tightly around her back and positioned her hands folded on her stomach.  We closed the casket and rolled it out to our van.  We loaded the van and drove her about 15 miles to the funeral chapel where her services were to be held.  We unloaded the casket, rolled it into the chapel and parked it up front.  Our job from her was to make sure everything was perfect for the viewing and funeral.  The next ones to see her would be the family,  So we would straighten her outfit, adjust her hair if needed, and place flowers around the casket.  We would also check for “leaks” or “purging” which simply meant any fluids escaping from the body.  This very seldom happened because our embalmers were very good at their jobs.  Our work with Mrs. Bates was now finished.  I had been with her since the nursing home and was now leaving her for the family.  This was one of many, many days I worked in the funeral home.

Feature Builder

One of the most interesting things about body prep for a funeral is the attempt to ake the deceased look as they did during life. You often hear people say, “She looked better in death than she did in life.” This is often the case because often people who have been very sick for a long time preceding death will have sunken faces, swollen of baggy eyes, a pale skin-tone, and just and over-all fragility about them. Then once they die, the embalmers fill them with pink formaldehyde, which often restores some color in the skin, and they will often use a product refered to as “feature builder.” This is a liquid gel type aterial that is ijected into the sunken parts of the face with a syringe.  This get fills the sunked areas and “builds” it up to make it have shape as it once did when the person was alive.  It was very much like “botox.”  The interesting thing is that the results were instant.  As soon as the liquid was injected, you could see it filling up inside the skin.

There were many times I would pick up a body from a nursing home, where the patient had been ill for months.  They would often look like a skeleton, but by the time they had spend a few hours in our embalming room, they would come out looking like a different person.  As I have said before, we would often use photos of the deceases to make sure we were mimicking what they looked like when they were alive.   We had a professional hair-dresser come in each day and work on the more difficult hair styles often the women.  It was ery important to get the hair exactly styled the correct way.  This is not an easy feat to fix someone’s hair who is laying on their back.

Why do we make the dead look as they were alive? It’s all part of our grieving process.  Its important to have the last image of the deceased be a peaceful, pleasant image when possible.

Dignified Duds

I found it interesting while being on the removal staff that I was required to wear a suit and tie each day. This is funny because much of the time I was dealing with gross stuff like blood and body fluids. I guess the funeral home wanted us to look dignified and professional when being seen in public. There were times when I felt odd wearing such a restrictive outfit while trying to hoist a dead body onto a gurney.

When I got the job I only had one suit in my closet. So I went to the local thrift store and found four nice suits that fit. This way I did not have to worry about them being ruined. If they got a stain, I could simply throw them away. My ties, on the other hand, would often get soiled and had to be replaced frequently.

When I resigned from the job, I threw all of my shoes, socks, suits, and ties in the garbage. By this time they had been through a lot.

The Smell of Death

 

I learned very early on in my job that death has a smell. I attribute the smell to the intense heating and cooling of a body that occurs upon death. Keep in mind I am not a scientist, and am strictly speaking form opinion and experience. We often think of a corpse as cold, however the cold does not occur immediately after death, but is gradual. The body temperature can be very hot when someone dies, and in my opinion this creates a distinct smell that cannot be described. This smell, not disqusting but not pleasing is one that is very strong. Many bodies I picked up would be hot to the touch upon my arrival, in some cases only 1 hour after their death. The body temperature would often rise significantly upon their death and then start to gradually decrease. I seldom arrived to pick up a body so late that rigor mortise had set in, though there were occasions when this was the case. There were some occasions where death had occurred days or weeks earlier, and those smells were quite different than the immediate pick up of a body. Those smells required special face respirators (gas masks) that had been specially fit for my face.

I will always remember the smell of death – it is embedded in my memory forever.

Lives Cut Short

Anytime a call came in from the city medical examiners office for a body pick up we knew it would be bad. People normally were taken to the M.E. who had been murdered or in car accidents. My first M.E. pick up was a mess. It was a car accident victim: a 19 year old male and his 21 year old girlfriend. Both had been severely beaten up in the high speed wreck.

I pulled the van into the dimly lit M.E. garage. Once I was in, the garage door closed, so that the public could not see the horrific sights that would transpire. I entered through the glass double doors leading into the M.E. morgue. A large man wearing bloody scrubs, rubber gloves and a surgeons mask came in with a clipboard.  “Are you from the funeral home?” “Yes” I replied. “I haven’t seen you before, you must be new. I’m Tom.” He said. I was glad he did not extend his hand for a friendly handshake. Though I too had on rubber gloves (standard protocol for removals) I did not care to shake his bloody hand. “Let me get the personal effects, I’ll be right back.” Tom said as he disappeared behind a door that said “M.E. office.”

The bodies, both on gurneys and in body bags were to my left awaiting their trip to the funeral home. I had been trained that no matter how grotesque and mangled a body was, I would be required to unzip the body bag, locate the foot and compare the ID numbers on my paperwork with the ID on their tag. Then, I would be required to attach another tag, with the funeral home ID #, which would be different #. I would prepare the tags before arriving on scene at a removal so that the removal could be done as quickly as possible.

The body bags in the case were white. Though the zippers were closed, they were bloody, which meant that inside of the body bag would most likely be a mess. It was not only the car wreck that had caused the mess, but the autopsy that had been performed at the ME. Autopsies were standard in accidents and murders, and always included the opening of the chest cavity, which would often be re-sewn shut, but never cleaned up.

I unzipped the first bag. The smell was horrific. It smelled mostly of blood and body fluid. The bodies had not yet began to smell of decomposition, but the smells were very gross. My gag reflexes engaged as I tried to keep form throwing up. I was glad the M.E. was in the other room. I imagine he would have made fun of me had he seen me dry heave. Unfortunately the body bag had to be completely unzipped for me to find the foot. I located the guys foot, which was attached to a mangled leg that had been broken in three places. I attached the ankle tag quickly and re-zipped the bag. Now my rubber gloves were bloody as well.

I moved over to the second body, unzipped the bag, located the ankle and attached the tag. The girlfriend’s legs were not as badly damaged as her boyfriends. But her face was severely damaged.

The M.E. came out the office with 2 plastic zip lock type bags with their personal items. A wallet, some jewelry, and a watch. These items would have to be documented once back at the funeral home so that they made it back to the family.

I transferred the body bags onto my own gurneys and loaded them into the van. Upon arriving back at the funeral home I was met in the parking lot by 2 of the embalmers, who looked like kids on Christmas morning. They had spoken to the funeral director about the victims and were excited that they would have about 8 hours of reconstructive work to do on the bodies to prepare them for a viewing. We rolled the gurneys in and we immediately transferred them onto the embalming tables. Boyfriend and girlfriend, side-by-side for the last time. Kinda weird.

The Bodies were so badly mangled, I remember the embalmers placing broomsticks in their legs to give them shape and using a liquid gel that could be injected into the face with syringe. The gel was kind-of like botox, and would fill out features on a face that had “deflated” after the person died. This technique could make one look more the way they looked in life. I remember a lot of this being used on the car crash victims to make them look less banged-up. The bruising on the face was covered generously with make-up. A current photograph of the victim was set up next to the embalming table to use as a reference.

Once these two were embalmed, they were back in my care as another removal staff person and I dressed them in their burial clothes, and placed them into their caskets. Before the burial clothes could be put on, the bodies had to be “dressed” in plastic pants and shirt in the even that there would be some purging or leaking of fluids during the funeral. This was common for victims who’s bodies had been severely mangled and lots of embalming fluids and sewing had been done during the embalming process. The last thing a funeral director wanted was for the body to seep out fluid while a mourner was viewing the body. This could be a traumatic experience for the mourner, depending on who it was.

It was sad to see these two lives cut short. I was sure to drive safely and slow for the next several weeks as I would recall the horrific effects of careless driving. Though I never had any interaction with the families of these two, I know it was a sudden, tragic shock that rocked their lives. I did not envy their grief.