Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory

Mike had not gone to mortuary school himself, the fortunate beneficiary of a California state law that doesn’t require classwork to become a licensed funeral director. A degree in anything (looking at you, BA in basket weaving), a lack of felonies, and a passing score on a single test, and you’re in the club.

But now that I had embraced my calling as a mortician, I wanted to know everything, understand everything. I could run to the fringes or I could go back to school for another degree, learn how to embalm, and see firsthand what they were teaching. As much as the death midwives’ practices appealed to me, I didn’t want to throw pebbles at an iron fortress. I wanted to be on the inside. I decided to apply to mortuary school. Just in case.





SOLO WITNESS





It was November when Mike took a two-week fishing vacation with his wife and child, leaving me—deer-in-the-headlights me—in charge of the crematory. Worse yet, Mike had scheduled a witness cremation for first thing Monday morning. With him gone, I would have to perform the dreaded witness by myself.

“Dear God, Mike, reiterate all procedures and dispense positive reinforcement immediately!” I pleaded.

Mike took a different approach: “Don’t worry, man, it’s a real nice family. From New Zealand. Or Australia? Whatever, the son is cool, and I think he’s straight. He likes Six Feet Under, so there you go. Try to look nice on Monday. He’s coming into like twenty pieces of property. I’m trying to set you up.”

It was the beginning of a Jane Austen novel, if Mr. Darcy was a grieving son/HBO enthusiast from Perth and Elizabeth an entry-level cremationist.

Disaster lurked around every corner during a witness cremation. Just a few weeks earlier, the conveyor belt that’s used to roll the body into the cremation retort had developed a problem with its electrical system. The short caused the belt to stall occasionally. The stall was not much of an issue if I was alone; I could solve the problem by taking a running start and ramming the cardboard body box into the retort. But if the conveyor belt stalled during a witness, that option seemed far less viable.

I practiced what I would say if the worst occurred: Oh, yes, that conveyor always stops right there. This is the part where I take a sprint across the crematory and slam myself into the box containing your mother and shoot her into the flames. Common procedure, sir; worry not.

The night before the witness I had nightmares about the conveyor belt breaking or, worse, the machine turning off as I loaded in the body. That had never happened before, but theoretically it could—and with my luck would—happen that day.

As another bit of fodder for my nightmares (besides telling me he wanted to set me up with the deceased’s son), the only other information Mike had given me was “Heads up: she’s not looking so good.” The whole family was flying in from New Zealand (slash maybe Australia) and the deceased was “not looking so good.” What did that even mean?

What it meant, as I discovered Monday morning, was that Mother’s cheeks had developed strange patches of bright-orange rot and her nose was covered with a hard brown crust. Her face was puffy and smooth, like an overripe peach. Human skin is confined to a dull color palette of cream, beige, taupe, and brown when people are alive, but all bets are off once someone is dead. Decomposition allows skin to flower into vivid pastels and neons. This woman happened to be orange.

As soon as I arrived at work I started on her makeup. I used whatever was available in Westwind’s makeup kit—half special mortuary makeup, half bottles from the drugstore down the street. I tried primping her hair to distract from the decomposition. I placed white sheets around her face, which was the size (and color) of a basketball, in an attempt at a flattering angle. After rolling her under the rose-colored lamplight of the viewing room, she didn’t look half bad.

“Not too shabby, Cat. Not bad,” Chris reassured me. “She was looking . . . unwell.”

“Thanks, Chris.”

“Look, I gotta pick up Mr. Clemons from the nursing home on Shattuck. They don’t hold bodies for anything; the nurse has already called squawking three times.”

“Chris, there’s a witness right now. I’m the only one here!”

“I know, I know, I don’t agree with it either. Mike shouldn’t have left you like this. He thinks everything’s easy. You need backup.”

True as this might have been, my old “Nope, got it” reflex kicked in. The fear of looking weak or incompetent was worse than any make-believe disaster involving stalled conveyor belts or orange skin.

“Go, Chris. It’s fine. I got it.”

Shortly after Chris’s departure, the woman’s son (Yenta Mike’s dream date for yours truly) showed up with ten family members in tow. I escorted them into the viewing room and led them over to the body. “I’ll leave you alone with her. Take all the time you need,” I said, backing respectfully out of the room.