Grave Matters: Conversations With a Modern Mortician

What is it about our fears that partly fascinate us? That compelling urge to seek it, creep upon the edges of it and just as fast as it can look us in the eye, we run.

I first stumbled across my father’s collection of Edgar Allan Poe when I was just 7. A retired English teacher, he kept well-worn volumes in boxes in the basement; I remember opening one of those boxes and pulling out a worn spine of navy and gray buckram, with its linen feel, intricate filagree patterns on the cover and yellowed pages with its decrepit, old book smell. As I opened this book, I sat down and dove straight into “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

The fascination of ghosts and death has yet to cease and leave me, so from stories of haunted houses and cemeteries to the “Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales,” I’ve always found myself attracted to the morbidly grotesque, the mysteries unsolved, tales of terror and the ghost stories told at late-night slumber parties and summer campfires.

The tales about death and all that comes with it never tire or expire, pun intended. It seems to always have something new to say despite the finality of it — “It” being death. Death being, well, the end. For this life cycle anyway.

But what is it about death that makes us helplessly polite, skate around the obvious that we ourselves will one day arrive at? This curiosity is what led me a number of years ago to interview a mortician, or to be more professionally polite, a funeral director who works on the East End, representing the fourth generation to toil in the family business.

The subject, who wishes to remain anonymous does not embody the stereotypical image of an “undertaker” — that is a tall, gaunt, darkly dressed character with a dark hat, sunken eyes and flat monotone voice. Instead, I meet a casual and very friendly man dressed in dark green cargo pants and light, long-sleeved button-down shirt. If it were summer, I could have seen a T-shirt on him and mistaken him to be a Montauk fisherman.

Upon entering the funeral home and noticing how quiet and still it was, I sat at a dark, massive mahogany desk across from my subject. It felt chilly, but I conceded to believing the cooler temps were appropriate for the setting — and perhaps any bodies below us in the morgue. The office was tastefully decorated in a palette of soft colors with deep red drapes and other natural earthy hues. Nautical pictures hung around the room (appropriate, seeing that we are in a coastal community), elegant vases were placed on Queen Anne tables and a few bronzed antiques were scattered about. Nothing too drab or heavy to create a somber, creepy or depressing tone.

What’s the history here? How did you come to be a funeral director?

A: My family business began back in 1919 in the once sleepy, coastal towns of eastern Long Island. And like most families in the funeral business, we share a similar story. My great-great-grandfather was a cabinet and furniture maker. He would also construct caskets when needed. From there he would rent the horse and buggy that pulled the deceased in their caskets to their final resting place and eventually opened his home as the place for everyone to gather to pay their last respects before the burial.

For the most part, and up until the 1930s to 1950s, many people still had viewings at their homes and can still opt to do so today. But the trend to lay out their loved ones in a funeral home was becoming more popular and convenient. As many families in the funeral home business, especially if local versus corporate, the lineage of the family and business have lived and worked in the same home or building give or take, 100-plus years.

To most of us death is often taboo to talk about and utterly strange and repellent in its own fascinating way. What was the fascination for you?

A: It was not a fascination so much as just growing up and being exposed to death and not being fearful of it. Around 8 or 9 I saw my first body wheeled in on a stretcher, “Mrs. Smith,” and she died of natural causes, nothing remarkable. Years later I witnessed unnatural or tragic causes.

Around the age of 12 or 13 I began helping my father and that usually only required me to help move or lift a body from point A to B, usually from gurney to casket. That dispelled any of my fears about death or discomfort associated with it.

What about schools and education?

A: I graduated from Canton College in Potsdam, New York. At that time there were five colleges that offered mortuary sciences, now only four within the state of New York. It’s an associate of science. You take courses in the physical sciences such as anatomy and physiology, biology, chemistry, embalming as well as business courses and psychology. Anything to be done with gross anatomy is left for medical students and examiners.

I light-heartedly call myself a “Funeral-Home-Kid.” I recollect a class of 40 when I first attended college for mortuary sciences and out of that, only 15 were what I classify as “Funeral-Home-Kids.” Three-quarters of my starting class dropped out. Many realized they would actually have to work with the dead. Some thought they’d sit behind a desk coordinating business, then discovered it’s hands-on, such as dressing the body, closing the eyes, mouth, etc. Growing up in this business helps you build an immunity to get over whatever makes you uncomfortable.

So, does death seem boring to you? Has the mystery evaporated and do these people who come in ever feel like strangers to you?

A: No, death hasn’t become boring. It changes with every new body. Sometimes it’s so quiet in the viewing room, other than whispering, you can hear a pin drop. Next day, different body, different family — people are up, walking around, talking, laughing, telling stories. Although people come here for the same reasons, and it never takes away from the sadness, the response is always different.

A lot of people don’t feel like strangers because I know many through the community. It’s never a happy occasion to see friends in these circumstances, but you take comfort knowing you’re taking good care of them before they’re laid to rest.

Talk to me about legends told or stories heard. I remember reading about the origin of “saved by the bell.” Back in the day, people were so terrified of being buried alive that they rigged “safety coffins” with a string tied to the deceased’s finger, leading above ground, where a little bell sat on a forked stake. If the bell rang, someone on the “graveyard shift” would know the person was still alive and rush to save them. History, of course, tells a much funnier story: the bell rang all the time; either blown by the wind or knocked by a squirrel, and every time, someone would come running, dig up the grave, and find that the person was very much indeed, dead.

A: I’ve always heard someone talking about how their aunt or a friend’s cousin’s uncle sat up during visiting hours. That always makes me laugh because it’s unheard of. Rigor mortis is natural and happens within hours of death, but by 34 to 36 hours the body goes back to a non-rigor-mortis state and becomes loose, floppy — like a Raggedy Ann doll.

I’ve heard of bodies exhumed with scratch marks, but I can’t say whether it’s true. Modern technology tells us if someone is truly dead before funeral preparation. Hair and nails “growing” after death? Not true; growth ceases around 12 hours after death. What happens is that the body is losing water and giving off H20 vapors. The nail shrinks giving an illusion of length, but it’s just the body not keeping water retention with the process of embalming.

What do you know about ecological options for burial today?

A: A lot. Trade magazines discuss it constantly. Besides burial, cremation, or ashes spread, there are ecological burials, special cemeteries where you’re buried in a sheet, no headstone, maybe a rock with a number, a tree planted in your honor, creating a natural preserve.

Mary Roach’s book “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers,” talks about a Swedish scientist [Suzanne Wiigh-Mäsak] who has her theory and technology of freeze-drying the body, shatters it, composts it, places it in a cornstarch box, and buries it with a rose bush or plant of your choice above. Modern day fertilizer one might say. How’s that for recycling? Actually, I have to admit that I like that idea of being environmentally friendlier, even in death. But instead of a rose bush, I think I would choose a wild garden of freesia above me.

Q: What are people’s reactions who meet you outside of work and ask, “What do you do?”

A: “Really?!” Other than “You look so young” or “How do you do it?” I’m comfortable answering. People ask obscure questions — “Is it sad? What do we look like 10 or 20 years after death?” I’m prepared to answer honestly.

Q: Okay, saving the best for last — have you seen or experienced any paranormal activities or ghosts on the job?

A: No, I haven’t. If a spirit lingers, I think it stays where death occurred or where life was lived. I never experienced one wandering the funeral home. As a child I never sensed anything either. Believe me, when I’m the last one out at night, closing the casket, shutting the lights, locking up, I stand silently, keys and cell phone in hand, listening. I think about it, but nothing happens. I always make it out of the building without incident.

Disappointed there was no ghost story to thrill my senses, I thanked the funeral director for his time. As he walked me to the door, I glanced into the viewing room one more time hoping for something metaphysical he might have missed — a glimpse of an older spirit waving — but no such luck.

Outside, the brisk February air carried the scent of sea salt, a seagull squealed overhead, and I thought: Today is a good day to be alive.

Requiescat in pace.

New York City-based Jennylynn Jankesh is a lifelong learner and aspiring writer who uses her academic work to explore themes of growth and meaning to better understand the human experience.