Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory

The younger babies—fetuses, if we’re being more accurate—were no bigger than your hand. Too small for the blue plastic wrap, they float in plastic containers of brown formaldehyde like a middle school science experiment. In English, with our plentiful euphemisms for difficult subjects, we say a child like this is stillborn, but speakers of other languages are rather more blunt: nacido muerto, totgeboren, mort-né—“born dead.”


These babies arrived at the crematory from the largest hospitals in Berkeley and Oakland. The hospitals would offer parents a free cremation if their baby died in utero or shortly after birth. It’s a generous offer on the hospitals’ part: cremations for babies, while often discounted by funeral homes, can still run several hundred dollars. Regardless, it is the absolute last thing a mother wants the hospital to give her for free.

We would pick the babies up and bring them to our little garden: sometimes only three or four a week, sometimes quite a few more. We would cremate on a per-fetus basis and the hospitals would send us a check. Unlike the procedure for an adult, the hospitals would file the babies’ death certificates with the state of California before the bodies even arrived at our crematory. This kept us from having to ask a newly bereaved mother the required bureaucratic questions (“When was your last period? Did you smoke during your pregnancy? How many packs a day?”).

Once, when Chris was across the Bay in San Francisco picking up a body at the Coroner’s Office, Mike told me I was being sent to fetch the week’s babies. I asked Mike for very specific instructions. The job seemed horribly easy to mess up.

“You just pull the van up to the back loading dock and go into the nurses’ station and tell them you’re there for the babies. They should have the paperwork and stuff there; this one’s easy,” Mike promised.

Ten minutes later I pulled the van into the loading dock behind the hospital and removed my gurney. It was a bit of a farce to use a full-sized adult gurney for a few babies, but I didn’t think walking through the corridors with my arms filled with them was a particularly good plan either. I had an image of fumbling and dropping them, like a stressed-out mom carrying too many grocery bags to avoid the extra trip in from the car.

Per Mike’s instructions, my first stop was the nurses’ station. At this point, addressing the topic of death was still a struggle for me. My natural inclination when meeting new people is a warm smile and a little small talk, but when the goal is to collect baby corpses, any smile seems gauche and out of place. “How are you today? I’m here for the baby corpses. By the way, girl, your earrings are fabulous.” On the other hand, if you keep your head bowed and your hands crossed and glumly state your reason for being there, you become the creepy girl from the funeral home. A delicate balance is required: happy but not too happy.

After the nurses conferred and decided I had the proper authority to abscond with the babies, I was escorted by security to the hospital morgue. The security guard was a stern woman who knew my dastardly purpose and would have none of it. After several botched attempts and small slams into the wall, I successfully wheeled my gurney into the elevator and we began our awkward descent to the morgue.

The guard’s first question was reasonable: “Why do you have that gurney?”

“Well,” I replied, “you know, um, for the babies—to get them out?”

Her reply was quick: “The other guy brings a little cardboard box. Where’s the other guy?”

A cardboard box. Bloody genius. A discreet, portable, and sensible multi-baby conveyance. Why had Mike not mentioned this? I had failed already.

The security guard unlocked the morgue to let me in and stood there with her arms crossed, her distaste palpable. The rows of identical stainless-steel coolers gave me no inkling of where the babies might be hiding. As much as it pained me, I was forced to inquire where they were.

“You don’t know?” came her response. She slowly raised a single finger, pointing to a cooler. She proceeded to watch as I removed the babies one by one and strapped them to the gurney in the most nonsensical way possible. I silently prayed my fairy deathmother would magically turn my gurney into a cardboard box or a milk crate or something so I wouldn’t have to roll these formaldehyde fetuses down the hall on a gurney made for a full-sized adult.

I thought I was going to be able to slink away with my babies, head hung low but dignity intact. And then, she dealt the final blow: “Ma’am, you’re gonna need to sign for those.” Had I remembered to bring a pen? No, no I had not.

Noticing several pens hanging from the guard’s shirt pocket, I asked, “Well, could I borrow your pen?” Then came the look—perhaps the most derisive, scornful look that has ever been directed at me. As if I had personally taken the lives of each one of these infants with zero regret.