Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory

As soon as doors were shut, I put my ear up next to the wood, anxious to hear their reaction. The first thing the son said, quite emphatically, was, “She looked better before. Mom looked much better before all this makeup.”


My immediate instinct was to fling the doors open and yell, “You mean when she was visibly decaying, buddy?” but I was aware that wasn’t the best customer-service move. After I had calmed down and overcome the insult to my handiwork, I wanted to speak with the son again, to tell him that I didn’t agree with the corpse-makeup industrial complex either, that natural was better, but that maybe if he had seen her he would have agreed the makeup was warranted. Then I would ask him to clarify what he meant by “she looked better before.” Was “before” when she was still alive? That made sense. Or was “before” when he last saw his mother and she wasn’t yet the color of a traffic cone? Most unsettling of all was the possibility that he was one of the rare creatures genuinely comfortable with bodies that have already moved into the stages of decomposition. In which case Mike was right, maybe this guy was my dream man. Either way, the conversation never happened and I’m pretty sure our rom-com relationship was doomed, despite the excellent meet-cute premise.

The family took their time viewing their matriarch before coming to get me for the cremation. Back in the chapel I was alarmed to find smoke wafting out from the sides of the corpse. The family had laid several thick bundles of burning sage in the folds of her white sheets. We didn’t usually allow open fire in the viewing room, but since Mike was gone and Mom resembled sports equipment, I let it slide.

Along with the incense, the family had placed a H?agen-Dazs coffee-and-almond ice-cream bar between her hands like a Viking warrior’s weapon. Those are my favorite. So I yelled, involuntarily, “Those are my favorite!”

I had successfully kept my mouth shut up till that moment (even after the insult to my skills as a corpse beautician), but ice cream proved a topic on which I could not remain silent. Thankfully, they just laughed. Coffee ice-cream bars were their mother’s favorite too.

With Chris retrieving Mr. Clemons, it was up to me to transfer Mom into the crematory. My first act was to ram the cot firmly into the doorframe, spewing forth a burst of sage smoke. I don’t remember exactly what I said—mortification clouds the memory—but it was probably something along the lines of “Whoops!” or “First door’s always a doozy!”

I lifted Mom onto the conveyor belt without incident, and then, to my relief, the belt’s soothing whir accompanied her right into the cremation machine. I let her son push the button to start the flames. Like many before him, he was moved by the button’s ritual power. The incense and ice cream had shown that this family was no stranger to ritual. For the moment it seemed he had forgotten the rammed door and the theatrical makeup (though he still wasn’t charmed enough to ask me out).

While Mike was on vacation, I cremated twenty-seven adults, six babies, and two anatomical torsos. Three of those cremations were witnessed, and they went off without a hitch.

On his first morning back, Mike glanced up from his paperwork and said, “I’m so fucking proud of you.”

I almost burst into tears right there. I felt like I had conquered something huge, like I was no longer a girl playing dress-up at this job. I wasn’t a dilettante. I was a crematory operator. It was something I knew how to do. It was a skill. And I was good at it.

If Mike had been in the habit of flattering my vanity the way I’d hoped he would, congratulating me on a well-swept courtyard or my cremating five babies before five, I would have become a far less competent worker. I succeeded because I needed to prove myself to him.

“You’ve stepped it up more than ninety-five percent of the people we’ve hired, man,” Mike continued.

“Wait, who are the five percent who worked harder than me?” My eyes narrowed. “That had better just be an expression.”

“We usually have to hire people with no experience. Or, if they do have any experience they’re goons from the removal service. I mean, it’s kind of a disgusting job.”

“That doesn’t pay very much,” I added.

“No,” he said with a laugh, “it doesn’t. We tricked you into it.”