Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory

Relatives of the deceased asked us to do this all the time. As long as there’s nothing explosive among the objects, we’re happy to include them; the items just burn up with the corpse. After loading Matthew onto the mechanical belt to place him in the cremation chamber, I opened the bag to empty its contents alongside him. Inside were a lock of Maureen’s hair, their wedding rings, and maybe fifteen photographs. Not photographs of the brittle, wheelchair-bound man I had met, but a healthy young man and his blushing bride. Maureen and Matthew: happy, young, beautiful, married over twenty years. They had friends, dogs, what looked like an incredible amount of fun. And each other.

One more item slipped out of the bag. It was the metal identification tag from Maureen’s cremation, the one I had burned with her just a few weeks before. These tags stay with the body through the whole cremation, and leave stuck in with the ashes, which is how sacks of cremated remains found in old storage lockers and attics can still be identified years later. The tag I found was identical (except for the ID number) to the one I was putting in with Matthew now. I imagined his hands sinking into the gray mulch of Maureen’s bones and finding the tag. I imagined him pulling the tag out and brushing the dusty metal against his cheek. It was a bizarre honor to have been a part of their private last moment together, the last act of their love story.

I cried (sobbed, if we’re being honest) standing over Matthew’s body, moments before it was loaded into the chamber. Even if all we love will die, I still ached for a love like theirs, to be adored so completely. Had not Disney guaranteed all of us such an ending?

In the fourteenth century Dom Pedro, the heir to the Portuguese throne, fell in love with a noblewoman, Inês Pérez de Castro. Unfortunately, Dom Pedro already had a wife, meaning his affair with Inês was carried out in secret. Several years later, Dom Pedro’s first wife died, freeing him to be with Inês at last. Dom Pedro and Inês had several children together, children who were perceived as a threat to the rule of Pedro’s father, the king. While Pedro was away, the king had Inês and her children executed.

Furious, Pedro revolted against his father, eventually taking the throne. He ordered Inês’s executioners brought back from Castile and had their hearts ripped from their chests as he watched He declared that Inês was his legal wife and instructed that she be disinterred, some six years after her death. Here, legend mixes with reality, but it is said that Inês was placed on her throne, a crown set upon her skull, and the members of the king’s court made to kiss the skeletal hand of their rightful queen.

King Dom Pedro longed for Inês; I longed for Luke. The Portuguese have a word with no equivalent in English, saudade, which indicates a longing, tinged with nostalgia, madness, and sickness over something you have lost. The ghastly image of Luke’s face detached from his skull was a preview of his death; at any moment, he might disappear. I needed him now, for tomorrow is not promised. But I was willing to play the long game. No matter how long it took, I had to figure out a way to be with him.





BUBBLATING





The day started innocently enough. “Caitlin!” Mike hollered from the preparation room, “Hey, come in here and help me get this big guy on the table.”

Actually, I remember him saying, “Hey, come in here and help me get this big Mexican on the table.” But that cannot be right. Mike was always politically correct in his terminology. (He once referred to the victims of Oakland’s gang violence as “young urban men of color.”) I have trouble believing “this big Mexican” is not just a trick of my memory. Regardless, the man we transferred from the stretcher to the prep table was neither big nor Mexican. He was massive and El Salvadorian, an insurance salesman who weighed well over 450 pounds. Should you ever wish to understand the phrase “dead weight” in all its gravitational glory, attempt to lift the corpse of a morbidly obese man off of a perilous, wobbly stretcher.

Juan Santos died from an overdose of cocaine. His body went undiscovered for two days in his apartment in the East Bay. He was autopsied by the medical examiner and his chest sewn back up leaving a dramatic Y-shaped stitch stretching from his clavicle to his stomach. “Did you catch this guy’s bag of viscera in the back of the reefer?” Mike asked.

“Viscera? All his organs and stuff?”

“Yeah, the medical examiner takes the organs out and piles them in those red hazmat bags. Comes in to the funeral home with the body.”

“Just, like, tucked up next to ’em or something?” I asked.

Mike grinned. “No, Chris carries them slung over his shoulder like Santa Claus.”

“Really?”

“No, man, no. What the hell—that’s gross,” Mike said.

Ah, Mike in a jovial mood. I tried to play along with his yuletide-themed organ humor. “So that’s where the legend of ‘Chris’ Kringle comes from? Is it the good or bad kids that get internal organs for Christmas?”

“I guess it depends on how morbid a kid you are.”

“Does it all get put back in the body?”