trying to remember what Natalie told me: long easy thrusts in a radial pattern (it didn’t sound so pornographic when she said it). I mark the spotabove and to the left of the navel, and punch the tip of the trocar through the skin. The rubber vacuum hose does its frothy work, emptying the cavity of gas and fluid, in and out, in and out: her belly drops. I get the tip stuck once in her spine, but I pull hard and it comes out. I rinse and wipe the trocar, hang it on its hook, and try not to replay in my head the violent act I’ve just performed. What I still lack of course is the undertaker’s skill at deconstructing death into smaller, manageable Cartesian problems, getting hung up instead on some nebulous big picture that says it’s wrong, somehow, to run people through with a spear until you hit bone, even if they’re already dead. The woman wants a funeral but she doesn’t want to be embalmed; therefore, the remains must be secured in some other way, by venting and then packaging them in a plastic bag (no one mentioned putting her on ice, but at this point I’m not going to backseat undertake). It’s a rational response to a physical problem. I need to remember that. Gentle, caring violence is just part of the job.
We dress her in pink panties and nylons, a blue skirt and white blouse.
“It’s come to this for you,” Adina says. “Putting pantyhose on dead ladies.”
That and impaling them. Once the woman is bagged and the air is drawn out with the Shop-Vac, Glenn picks her up and sets her in the casket. She’s tiny and light. The family sent a teddy bear with her and Adina lays it at the lady’s feet. She now looks like a freezer-wrapped salmon, her nose squashed against the plastic, her mouth open as if struggling for breath. As transgressive as it looks and feels, packaging this birdlike little lady, we’ve arguably performed a cultural duty here, like shamans of any other tribe. According to the anthropologist Nigel Barley, the Toraja of Sulawesi wrap theirdead tightly in absorbent cloth to preserve them until the next stage of the ritual, which may not come for years. He met a man who kept his dead grandmother in his house as a storage shelf for his collection of alphabetically organized cassette tapes.
All I can do is watch and learn from the undertakers. In the prep room, Shannon carefully cradles a man’s head, rubbing his earlobe, before punching a needle through his palate to secure the mouth. During a cremation, Glenn shows me how to open up the skull with an iron hook to expose the soft tissue to the open flame, thereby getting a cleaner burn. The bone is fragile from the heat, and the hook is heavy, so all it takes is a light tap. Reg, the trade client from the LeClaire Brothers (the one who likes extra-purple lips on his corpses) is a master at arranging the body for viewing, with a knack for problem cases. Last week, we loaded a body into his rental casket only to discover the man was too tall for the box. Adina tried bending his legs at the knees but the embalming had stiffened the joints, and they wouldn’t stay bent. Pushing him up in the other direction just forced his head deep into the tufted fabric: no good for viewing. When Reg showed up he studied the problem as if he were building a bridge.
“Have you got a piece of wood about yay big?” he said. “A broomstick or a piece off a pallet.”
Adina disappeared to the tool shed and came back with a length of two-by-two. Reg bent the man’s legs again and used the wood to wedge the knees against the sides of the casket, then pushed the lower lid closed until it locked.
“Now he’s stargazing,” he said, referring to the position of the head: tilted back, not forward in the viewing position. “I need something under the pillow.”
“Do you want a phone book?” Adina said. We keep a stack of old phone books in the dressing room closet for these occasions.
“No, that’s too much. Do you have a couple of empty Dodge
We dress her in pink panties and nylons, a blue skirt and white blouse.
“It’s come to this for you,” Adina says. “Putting pantyhose on dead ladies.”
That and impaling them. Once the woman is bagged and the air is drawn out with the Shop-Vac, Glenn picks her up and sets her in the casket. She’s tiny and light. The family sent a teddy bear with her and Adina lays it at the lady’s feet. She now looks like a freezer-wrapped salmon, her nose squashed against the plastic, her mouth open as if struggling for breath. As transgressive as it looks and feels, packaging this birdlike little lady, we’ve arguably performed a cultural duty here, like shamans of any other tribe. According to the anthropologist Nigel Barley, the Toraja of Sulawesi wrap theirdead tightly in absorbent cloth to preserve them until the next stage of the ritual, which may not come for years. He met a man who kept his dead grandmother in his house as a storage shelf for his collection of alphabetically organized cassette tapes.
All I can do is watch and learn from the undertakers. In the prep room, Shannon carefully cradles a man’s head, rubbing his earlobe, before punching a needle through his palate to secure the mouth. During a cremation, Glenn shows me how to open up the skull with an iron hook to expose the soft tissue to the open flame, thereby getting a cleaner burn. The bone is fragile from the heat, and the hook is heavy, so all it takes is a light tap. Reg, the trade client from the LeClaire Brothers (the one who likes extra-purple lips on his corpses) is a master at arranging the body for viewing, with a knack for problem cases. Last week, we loaded a body into his rental casket only to discover the man was too tall for the box. Adina tried bending his legs at the knees but the embalming had stiffened the joints, and they wouldn’t stay bent. Pushing him up in the other direction just forced his head deep into the tufted fabric: no good for viewing. When Reg showed up he studied the problem as if he were building a bridge.
“Have you got a piece of wood about yay big?” he said. “A broomstick or a piece off a pallet.”
Adina disappeared to the tool shed and came back with a length of two-by-two. Reg bent the man’s legs again and used the wood to wedge the knees against the sides of the casket, then pushed the lower lid closed until it locked.
“Now he’s stargazing,” he said, referring to the position of the head: tilted back, not forward in the viewing position. “I need something under the pillow.”
“Do you want a phone book?” Adina said. We keep a stack of old phone books in the dressing room closet for these occasions.
“No, that’s too much. Do you have a couple of empty Dodge
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