The Mortuary

            by Kristina Chan

 

  “Tina, do you want to come to the mortuary with me?”

     “No.”

     “You sure?”

     “Yes.”

     “Come on, it’ll be fun!  We can have some time together and you can skip a day of school.” She implored, with that tone of voice that meant, “If you say no, I’ll make sure you feel guilty for the rest of the week.”

 

     So there I was in the car with my mom, on the way to Pacific Gardens Chapel and Crematorium.  My mom was taking a class with the happy title of, “On Death and Dying,” and they were going on a field trip today to the said mortuary.

     As we pulled into the parking lot, and walked toward the front entrance, an old man in a dark suit with a butler-like air approached us. 

     “Are you with the ‘death and dying’ folks?” I half expected him to speak with a posh British accent.  He gestured toward a small chapel through the French doors.

     “And there’s cold soda and water if you would like,” he added as we passed.  I took a Coke from a cooler that sat next to a potted palm and a table with bowls of peppermints and potpourri.

     We walked into the chapel as I popped the Coke can and took a sip.  The teacher, wearing a tasteful black t-shirt that read, ‘Got Formaldehyde’, was sitting at the front with the funeral director named Jim, according to his pastel blue nametag.  A large cardboard coffin leaned carelessly against the altar.  Jim was explaining the cremating process. 

     “According to safety codes, we have to do the actual cremating outside the urban areas.  We put the body into a cardboard coffin and then insert it into a special furnace, after which we collect the ashes and put them into a complementary jar.”  One of the students raised her hand.

     “You can’t really clean up the ashes a hundred percent, right?  How do you ensure that leftover ashes in the oven from the previous person don’t get mixed around with the next person’s?”

     “Well, I assure you that we have state-of-the-art facilities and our employees do everything they can to make sure the furnace is as clean as possible,” he said, shifting a little in his seat.

     “So you’re saying that someone’s grandma isn’t actually just grandma, but also a percentage of other dead people and a cardboard box?” 

     “Well, that’s not really the focus or intentions of our certified professionals, and we try to make the process for the families as easy as possible,” he said, adopting a corporate air and straightening his silk tie.  He then stood up and said, “Okay, thank you for all your enlightening questions.  Shall we take a tour of the facilities?”

     We all walked outside and entered a new building with an even smaller chapel.  There were side doors that led into a little shop filled with sample caskets and arrays of memorial plaques with floral or lighthouse motifs.  The air was heavy with some musky smell that made you, if you weren’t already dead, want to curl up into a casket and die.  It smelled like a mix of cleaning chemicals and cheap perfume.

     Jim started explaining the different kinds of materials used in caskets and the different things you could do with the ashes of your loved ones.  While he was speaking, he handed out pricing lists and sample death certificates.

     “Many people find that keeping the ashes doesn’t suit their needs, so they can instead be set afloat on the ocean in a decorative box—a biodegradable one of course.  Another option is to scatter the ashes in the water, though some clients find it difficult and a little messy on windy days.”

     While he was talking I looked at the price lists.  It looked as if a lawyer had written it, with disclaimers thrown in every third paragraph, such as, “Our funeral home makes no representations or warranties about the protective value of outer burial containers other than those made by the manufacturer.”  However, I was more distracted by the prices.  Twenty thousand dollars for an oak coffin?!  That’s like a year’s worth of college education. I definitely want to be cremated when I die; it has a much more reasonable price tag.