I know it is the Christmas season, but this is on my mind, put there by a Christmas card.
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 in there time of need and to follow up with them. 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.
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 and remove the casket.
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 ended 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. Odd name, but his father was Wilford. He named his son Wilford. Everyone had called the dad Wil, so they called the son Ford. Dignified. Serious. A wicked sense of humor. Ford 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 winter 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 the cemetery 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 that weather. I ordered a cheese burger
and a pie and a water. Then I pulled around to the window. Imagine. You are a teenage 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 chauffeur's hat on. Not something
you see very often.
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 get seated. 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. Since it had boiler heat it would occasionally 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 only had four funerals that week, but 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 it 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, grabbed it 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.
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