6 generations<\/em>.<\/p>\nWell, in my machismo I thought I could handle following around a funeral director for a day, pay a visit to the morgue, and stop by the crematorium, no problem. I\u2019m a big boy, I thought. I can handle being around death.<\/p>\n
Yeah, was I wrong.<\/p>\n
As it turns out, I\u2019m terrified of death.<\/p>\n
The funeral I attended (to see Caleb in action, so to speak) didn\u2019t actually bother me. In fact, listening to the family celebrate the life of their dearly departed actually made for an oddly pleasant experience.<\/p>\n
Afterwards, Caleb took me through the casket room, showing me the various options for burial. While certainly not the most upbeat showroom I\u2019ve ever visited, it was the sticker shock that I found more depressing than the empty caskets. And I don\u2019t mean that Caleb and his family were price gouging. In fact, they do quite the opposite. I just had no idea how incredibly expensive a funeral can be. And the thought of having to shell out thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars right after a loved one has died on something that, let\u2019s be honest, it\u2019s just going to rot in the ground is just awful. Particularly if you find yourself in the position that so many other families find themselves in and you just don\u2019t have the money. Talk about a heartbreaking double punch to the gut.<\/p>\n
Well, my punch to the gut came next.<\/p>\n
Caleb opened a non-descript door at the side of the casket room and I turned to follow him in.<\/p>\n
But I wasn\u2019t ready for what I was about to see.<\/p>\n
I mean I thought I was and I had a pretty good idea of where that door led, but one glance and I knew I was in way over my head.<\/p>\n
We were in the morgue.<\/p>\n
And there there two bodies laying out on two different tables.<\/p>\n
One covered completely in a red bag which we were going to be taking over to the crematorium.<\/p>\n
The other covered in a blue sheet that only extended up to the shoulders, exposing the face. It was the body of an elderly woman and I couldn\u2019t look away.<\/p>\n
She looked like she was just sleeping, like she would open her eyes at any moment and sit up. But I knew she wouldn\u2019t and I think it was that realization that made that moment all the more jarring<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a lot easier to look past death when it\u2019s nice and neat and lying all dressed up in a casket, but when a body is lying on a cold metal table in a morgue with nothing but a thin sheet to cover it you\u2019re forced to literally come face to face with the stark reality of death. You\u2019re forced to accept the finality of death and the fragility of life.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an image I still can\u2019t get out of my mind.<\/p>\n
The entire day was like that. It was an incredibly visceral experience on every level.<\/p>\n
From the morgue we loaded the body in the red bag into the funeral home\u2019s van and made the 45 minute drive to the crematorium. I\u2019m gonna be honest. We talked a lot, but I have no idea what we talked about on the drive over. When there\u2019s a dead body laying 2 feet behind you and you don\u2019t normally drive around town with dead bodies in the backseat it is, to say the least, a bit distracting\u2026.and a lot unnerving.<\/p>\n
Things didn\u2019t get anymore comfortable for me at the crematorium.<\/p>\n
The crematorium is tucked away down a country side road in a nondescript building behind another long building where they make the vaults your casket will go into when you\u2019re buried.<\/p>\n
Oh, and all those concrete vaults are set out row after row next to each other, adjacent to the crematorium as if to make sure you don\u2019t forget where you are.<\/p>\n
The only thing that gives away what\u2019s inside the nondescript little building tucked away down that country road are the waves of heat emanating from the chimney on the roof.<\/p>\n
I can still see them disappearing into the Pennsylvania sky.<\/p>\n
Caleb backed the van up to the crematorium and I watched as he and Brooks, the guy who ran the crematorium, unloaded the body and moved it from the gurney we brought it over on and into the cardboard box that would carry the body into the flames.<\/p>\n
For as long as I live I\u2019ll never forget the thud of the lifeless body as they laid it in a cardboard box in preparation for cremation.<\/p>\n
There something so final and gut wrenching and lifeless about it.<\/p>\n
While they worked Caleb and Brooks talked business. Then Brooks talked about his upcoming vacation to Panama. And all the while country music was blaring on the radio as if it was just another day on the job.<\/p>\n
For them it was.<\/p>\n
They were used to death.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
At all<\/em>.<\/p>\nSo I cowered by the doorway watching, too afraid to step inside.<\/p>\n
Then Caleb turned to Brooks and said \u201cHey, do you mind showing Zack the furnace?\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll be honest. I\u2019m still not sure how I found the courage to step inside. OK, it wasn\u2019t courage that motivated me so much as the embarrassment of trying to explain to my professor why I didn\u2019t go in and see one of the most critical parts of a story about death and dying.<\/p>\n
So I stepped inside.<\/p>\n
Just like sight of the dead elderly woman and the sound of the body landing with a thud in the cardboard box, I will never forget the heat of the furnace when Brooks opened the door to the room where the cremations actually took place.<\/p>\n
It hit you in the face and lingered as an ever present reminder that one day those same flames might consume your body too.<\/p>\n
Again, I lingered near the door too unsettled to take more than a couple of steps into the room.<\/p>\n
Brooks told me how the furnace worked and showed me the buckets of metallic medical devices that aren\u2019t consumed by the flames, but all I could think about while he was talking was the heat.<\/p>\n
To my great relief we left soon after.<\/p>\n
I was rattled.<\/p>\n
A lot<\/em>.<\/p>\nLike for the rest of the day and into the night rattled.<\/p>\n
I lost my appetite. I couldn\u2019t sleep. I didn\u2019t want to be alone.<\/p>\n
Sure, I had thought about death before and pontificated on its theological meaning. And I have, unfortunately, had several friends and family members die.\u00a0But I\u2019ve never really come face to face with cold, harsh reality of death before. Not like that.<\/p>\n
And I would wager you haven\u2019t either.<\/p>\n
As a society we\u2019ve outsourced death. We\u2019ve pushed it out of our sight and into the hands of professionals who behind closed doors beautify death for funerals so we can keep living in our delusion of immortality and never really, I mean really really come to grips with the fact that life is fragile and fleeting and when we\u2019re gone there\u2019s no coming back.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t say that to be depressing.\u00a0I say it because while I think our fear of death itself is healthy, our fear of being around death is not.<\/p>\n
Death isn\u2019t pleasant.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s kind of the point.<\/p>\n
The unpleasantness that it brings unsettles our lives, forcing us to reexamine everything \u2013 the decisions we make, where we spend our time, who we spend our time with, what is really of value.<\/p>\n
But as unpleasant and painful as is it, death has a strange way of transforming us into better people because it doesn\u2019t just remind us of the fragility of life, it inspires us to live our lives more fully, to take advantage of every moment we have because before we know it we\u2019ll be the ones laying on table in the morgue.<\/p>\n
Now, I\u2019m not saying everyone needs to follow a funeral director around for a day in order to appreciate the reality of death, but it\u2019s not that bad of an idea either.<\/p>\n
If nothing else I can promise you this.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an experience you will never ever forget.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Grace and Peace,<\/p>\n
Zack Hunt<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(H\/T) I paid my first visit to a morgue this past weekend. Maybe I should back up and explain. This past weekend I drove down to\u00a0Pennsylvania\u00a0Dutch country for the funeral of someone I\u2019ve never met. Yeah, I should probably back up a little more. So, this semester at school I\u2019m taking a class called Writing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3437,"featured_media":10884,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"graveyard\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/941\/2013\/09\/graveyard.jpg\")
<\/a>(H\/T<\/a>)<\/p>\n