CONFESSIONS OF A FUNERAL DIRECTOR
Writing the Dark Chapters
By Caleb Wilde
I walk into a room at 6 a.m. and all eyes fix on me and my
next move. I am, after all, the odd one
out in the room, the one whose face isn’t stained with tears; the one wearing
dress clothes, who’s there in body, but whose soul isn’t in the depths.
I’m the colonialist, walking into another culture, ready to
impose society’s desire for a clean picture of death.
Those who are sitting around the bed of the deceased aren’t
thinking about what you and I are thinking about at 6 in the morning. They aren’t wondering how they will get their
kids dressed in time for school; or how they’re going to pitch their project to
coworkers at work.
Everything is on hold.
Time has slowed at a pedestrian pace and they sit in grief …
resisting the reality that what was their husband, their wife, their son,
daughter, grandfather, friend is no longer present to hug, laugh and live with.
Death creates its own culture … its own world.
A world where time seems to altogether stop, where language
is often spoken with less words and more tears, hugs and contemplation, where
the regular dress code doesn’t exist and where the norms and mores of society
are put on hold. Here, in this sacred
space at 6 a.m. in the morning, God seems nearer; family and friends surround
you; you can let your emotional inhibitions go.
This is the world that was never meant to be and yet is everything you
wish it could be. It seems we have to go
back through death to get to Eden.
With tie draped down my dress shirt, if I can’t imagine a
world unlike mine … if I can’t picture a context outside of me … if I can’t
remove myself from the all too obvious facts that it’s 6 a.m., I’m tired,
didn’t get my Dunkin Donuts medium coffee with cream and sugar, and that I’ll
be even more tired tonight when I’m supposed to go to Chili’s with my wife; if
I can’t imagine the family’s story; the story of the deceased and his life and
the loss this represents, I can’t be a good funeral director.
Funeral directing is a lot like writing. It involves alterity, imagination and the
ability to make a lot of the detail and little of the obvious. I write the story as I walk into the sacred
space of grief.
I notice the one closest to the decease’s body. ”That’s probably the NOK”, I think to
myself. Granted, the story is easier to
imagine if I already know the family, but this morning I don’t. The closest one to the bed is oft the main
character in this play; and I can write a story of comfort, by entering the
narrative with a warm hug, maybe even a kiss, a kind smile and eyes that speak
of the compassion my heart is feeling; or, I could write a story as a narrator,
standing back, observing and not entering.
What does this specific family need?
I wait as the drama unfolds, as my very presence evokes the
supporting characters who will inevitably point me to the protagonist.
Asking questions; feeling out the room. I enter in and I – at this very moment – have
the privilege and responsibility of helping to write this chapter.
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