The old saying goes, “laughter is the best medicine.” It may not cure (although there are many stories where a person gets better after a good, heartfelt laugh) but laughter will certainly make you feel better, at least for the moment. Most folks don’t think about workers at a funeral home needing the blessing of laughter, but they need it more than most. Every day they are dealing with someone else’s grief and sometimes they deal with their own at the same time. But, they need to keep it together for the families they are serving. My job working with a funeral home for nine years was supposed to be to lift up families. However, my co-workers were often in need as well. Many prayers were given in our offices or in the funeral home itself before families arrived. And, in some cases, I wasn’t the one doing the praying. There were times when one of them was praying for me.

          But there was humor, and there was laughter. We got a Christmas card Tuesday from one of my favorite goofballs. Eric, one of the funeral directors, was always trying to make me laugh. We had a special relationship. He was same age as my son and I had sort of become a ‘father figure’ to him. If he could get me to crack up, he felt he had accomplished something. His Christmas card got me to remembering. Not just Eric’s weirdness, but the whole experience.

          People assume that funeral home humor is dark humor, but that is not really so. There were things that happened that would only be appreciated by someone in that business, but the humor mostly made everyone laugh.

 Most funeral homes no longer keep caskets in stock. The family picks one out and then you order it overnight. It arrives the next day, which is in plenty of time. Occasionally, though, one of the directors had to go to the warehouse and pick the casket out visually. There came a time when one of the directors needed to make the trip and there were no vehicles available to drive. All of the vans were being used and the ‘lead cars’ were being serviced. So, this director got the keys to the hearse and took off in it. This wasn’t usually done. Actually, it was never done. This director just didn’t want to wait a bit for one of the vans to return. He got to the warehouse and explained to the manager there what he wanted and, surprisingly, they had exactly the one he wanted in stock. He had them load it in the hearse and he headed back to the funeral home. By the time he got back it was well after hours, so he parked the hearse in the garage and figured he would get some help in the morning to pull it out.

It was that gentleman’s custom to sleep in occasionally. He picked the next morning to do so. We had two funeral homes, the main one in Madison, Ohio, where all the vehicles were kept, and the other was in Geneva, Ohio. There was a funeral in Geneva that morning. A prominent man in the community and a World War II vet who was very active in the local American Legion. The hearse driver for that funeral arrived at the Madison location to get the hearse ready. It was dirty, which didn’t make sense to him since, as far as he knew, it hadn’t been driven since the last funeral. (The hearse was washed after each funeral so it would be ready for the next one.) The driver, Bob, was now rushed. On most hearses, the rear windows are darkened to the point that you can’t see in. Bob hurriedly washed the car, but never looked in the back of the hearse. When he got in he found it was nearly out of gas. He had to stop on the way to Geneva. By the time he got there he was cranky and irritated. He had to sit for a spell in the funeral home and collect himself. By the time the funeral was over, Bob was doing better. But he still had not checked the back of the hearse. It wasn’t something you did, really. No one was supposed to use it between funerals.

The funeral over and the people filed out of the funeral home. The American Legion guys took their place to form a corridor for their fallen comrade. In that part of the country, it is customary for the family and anyone else who wanted to, to stand between the building and the hearse to pay final respects. A nice wide path was there for the pall bearers and the casket to pass through. Bob stood at the back door of the hearse ready to open the door at just the right moment. As the honor guard snapped to attention, Bob opened the rear door. To another casket. A gasp traveled over the people.

The funeral director for that funeral was named Ford. I spoke of him a few weeks ago. He stepped around the pall bearers and up to the hearse. He took hold of the rear handle of the casket which was in the hearse and lifted slightly to see if it was empty. Of course, it was empty. Without a word, Ford began to pull the casket out. Bob waited until he could reach around and take hold of the other end and they walked it over to the grass. (Metal caskets are much lighter than wood and easy to move.) Still without speaking, they set it down and then took their places at the hearse and the funeral continued. It was done in such a way as to look perfectly normal. The gathered people weren’t sure what they had seen, but went along with it. What really seems funny to me, though, is that for the next two hours a casket sat on the front lawn of the funeral home at a spot where it might have rolled out of the hearse. I wondered what people driving by thought.

I had my own experience with the hearse. I rarely drove the thing. My duties took me elsewhere. I didn’t like driving it. Handled kind of weird, as you might guess. But it seemed that when the weather was bad and it was a long trip to the cemetery, I was behind the wheel.

One such day the cemetery was a seventy mile drive and the forecast called for severe Lake effect snow. Last week I was driving to Ft. Wayne and the weather said Lake effect snow, with accumulations of four to five inches. In the Cleveland area, when they called for Lake effect, it was almost always followed by the words, “up to a foot or more expected with more accumulation in some areas.” It held off till we got to the cemetery, then we found out that the cemetery was in the ‘some areas’ designation. In fact, it was like that all the way home. The funeral director for the day was Ford again. After the graveside was over, he told me to get the hearse out of there while I still could. He would stay and make sure the grave was taken care of. When he left he found a motel and hunkered down for the night. Meanwhile, I am trying to get home.

Two hours later I had gone about fifteen miles. Being a diabetic, I need to eat at certain times. I was starting to feel it, so I got into the glove compartment to get my stash of candy out, since my sugar was dropping. I kept a little candy in every vehicle and everyone understood that it was mine and knew what it was for. No one ever touched it. Except that day. The candy was gone. A couple of wrappers. I had to make a new plan. Up ahead, through the falling snow, I saw the golden arches of McDonalds. I don’t like McDonalds, except for their coffee, and we were strictly forbidden to pull the hearse into a restaurant of any kind on a trip of less than one hundred and fifty miles, but this was different. I got off and pulled into McDonalds.

I got into the drive through lane and got up to the squawk box right away. No one was out in tat weather. I ordered a cheese burger and a pie and a water. Then I pulled around to the window. Imagine. You are a teenaged girl in the drive up. It is a creepy day, snowing so hard you can’t see beyond your little parking lot. Hardly anyone on the road. Then, a large white vehicle is emerging. It looks odd and then you see the light on top and the length and the funeral emblems on the side. As the window rolls down you see a man in a suit and an overcoat with a chauffer’s hat on. Not something you’ve ever seen.

Her eyes were huge as I pulled up. I looked at her and held up a finger as if to tell her to wait a second. I turned in my seat and yelled to the back of the hearse, “DO YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT?” She actually threw the bag of food at me and I didn’t get my water.

Another time we were in a cemetery on another such snowy day. I wasn’t doing the hearse that day. I was there to help the family, which was typically my job. I was helping the family to their seats under the tent. In those situations, you try to hear everything that is going on so you can be ready for anything. I heard the sexton explaining to our director that there was a very large hole where an old, dead tree had been pulled out. The snows had come before they had been able fill it in and now it was completely covered. It was necessary to take the casket around a different way. I heard this, but I was helping the family, so I didn’t see where the hole was located. When the family was seated I made my way to the director to find out where the hole was located. I found it on my own before I got to him. It was in plain view of the family as they were faced forward. The hole was covered by snow. I walked right into it and vanished from sight. It was a BIG hole. As far as the family knew, I had fallen in a grave. Actually, I wasn’t sure I hadn’t fallen into a grave. The sexton, director and hearse drive hurried over, reached down and pulled me out. The director, Trevor that day, noticed everyone was staring. “Thanks for marking the grave for us, Mr. Wade.” "Not a problem, sir.” And we went on with the service.

I eventually became the manager of the Geneva funeral home. It was beautifully remodeled but quite old. Occasionally it would make strange noises, sometimes loud enough to be heard even over a full house. On those occasions someone would rush up to me and say, “What was that noise?” I would always look at them and say, “What noise?” Banging and creaking and, when the wind was just right, an eerie whistling noise. “THAT NOISE!” I would listen, smile a little and say, “Oh, that noise. Nothing to worry about.” The other person would look at me oddly for a minute, then turn and start to walk away. Then I would mutter under my breath, but loud enough for them to hear, “At least I hope not this time.”

Sadness and grief at a funeral is always present. But sometimes, God gives us a little blessing to ease our minds. It had been the worst week I could ever remember. We had four funerals that week and all were children. All the staff was exhausted and tense. We all had kids ourselves. With a situation like that you couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like for you. I had a family to meet with, so I wasn’t supposed to be involved with the calling hours for the fourth funeral, which was to be my first break from this stretch of services. I had just wrapped up my meeting with the family when my cell phone beeped. It was one of the staff at the calling hours. She was frantic. There was a bat in the funeral home. Nate (the director in charge) needed my help. I went over to the funeral home expecting to see chaos. But everything was fine. None of the visitors had seen the bat and the staff had kept quiet. For the next half hour, everyone on staff walked calmly and quietly around and in among the people, all looking up. We were all trying to look natural, but we were really just looking creepy. All of a sudden, I saw Nate sprinting through the lounge and outside. He came back in a minute, flushed and shaking. He had found the bat and had wrapped it up in his handkerchief, then rushed it outside. He tossed it into the air and it flew away, trailing the handkerchief behind. I suppose it was the stress of the week and the tenseness as we look for the little guy, but the entire staff crowded into the small office, shut the door and then laughed ourselves silly.

            Every Wednesday morning, at 7:30, almost the entire staff would gather in the funeral home to give an unpaid hour over to our weekly Bible study. During the week it was common to see them praying together. Good, good people. Respectful of the living and the dead. For them, laughter was a blessing, one we cherished. Psalm 126:2-3---Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”  The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad.