The Blessing of Sorrow Page 10
Mr. Washofsky looked me straight in the eye.
“Vere did you read dat line, in a rabbi book?”
He is more than a fond recollection; that endearing heart patient I visited in the months after my father died. He had no idea, juggling memory and mischief in his simple hospital bed, trying to come to terms with his son’s considerable absence from the situation, how he lifted my soul and moved me further across the bridge of grief. Mr. Washofsky became president emeritus of my own spiritual memorial foundation. And whenever I recall him, I whisper to myself, with gratitude, “For grief is a great teacher, if it sends us back to serve and bless the living.”
17 Sidney Zisook and Katherine Shear, “Grief and Bereavement: What Psychiatrists Need to Know, World Psychiatry, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2691160.
18 Encyclopedia of Death and Dying, http://www.deathreference.com/En-Gh/Freud-Sigmund.html#ixzz4dWhCn6Sx, accessed September 2017.
19 Gates of Prayer (New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1975).
20 “Polly’s Story,” published by the Polly Klaas Foundation, www.pollyklaas.org.
21 Posted and on display at the Anne Frank House and Museum in Amsterdam. Also online at http://www.annefrank.org/en/Anne-Frank/Otto-returns-alone/Otto-reads-Annes-diary.
22 Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (New York: Doubleday, 1967).
23 Twenty-two years later, when I reached the age my father was when he died, I endured an extended period of imagined chest pains and other illusory symptoms of cardiovascular disease. Eventually a psychotherapist diagnosed me to have a case of “cardiac neurosis.” Grief can seize a person’s mind down the road of life; those who’ve lost someone close to a particular disease are advised to anticipate this kind of delayed reaction related to numerical age.
Chapter Six
Necessary Business: What Does the Funeral Director Think, Say, and Do?
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
QUIET PLEASE
Service in Progress
The sign, though momentarily off to the side, remained visible as I entered the foyer of the Saidler-Dunn Memorial Chapel, a respected mortuary that was nonetheless barely noticeable along the suburban boulevard. A somber, pale building without fanfare, it blended unceremoniously into the long and typically American thoroughfare of doughnut shops, fried chicken eateries, golden arches, auto repair centers, franchised drug stores, and chain retail outlets. My fellow clergy and me try to create requiem solemnity in places like Saidler-Dunn. During funerals, we eulogize, we bless human lives, we invoke God’s name, and then we often get into a parade of waxed cars and limousines and drive to the cemeteries along the wrapper-strewn avenues of the eternal test-market culture.
Meanwhile, in this particular funeral home that attends to the local Jewish community, I am greeted by a well-built bearded man, with kind eyes, named Emanuel Steinbock. His wool suit and silk tie, both charcoal-colored, blend impeccably. Manny, as he is called, has been a licensed funeral director since 1987, and this building is his primary workplace. After pleasant handshakes, we settle into his somewhat cramped office, and I ask Manny about his work.
His response is immediate. “It is all-consuming and has a great emotional and physical impact on me.” He proceeds to explain the burden that transfers to him after any death. “To arrange a funeral generally involves ten to twelve hours,” he says. Manny notes the extensive coordination required each and every time among family members, clergy, his funeral staff, and the cemetery administration. All this happens in the environment of fresh grief.
“But first, they call the funeral director,” he emphasizes. “There is a trained person here in this building twenty-four hours a day. We don’t have or believe in an answering service. Deaths occur at all times. I am phoned at all hours, day or night. Our job is to immediately give survivors reassurance and then organize the next few days of their lives.”
Manny is responsible for retrieving and transporting the body from wherever it is, for writing and releasing obituary notices for the press and web, for establishing which religious rites are applicable, and for arranging the death certificate. Will there be a viewing of the body prior to the service? Will the grave be ready in a timely fashion? Is there going to be a protective vault involved in addition to the casket?
“Funerals are for the living,” Manny accentuates. The living, acknowledging their dead, come to see him in this same office. “The members of the family,” he says, “are confronting a lot of things. Some of them don’t have as much experience with this as others do. I have to explain and propose religious rituals to them, and they don’t always agree with each other.”
Manny recounts that a woman had just been in earlier, along with her adult son. Their husband and father had succumbed to Parkinson’s disease. “The woman was quite negative on religion. But the son, like many children at such a time, needed religion. I worked out a series of compromises that I hope will satisfy both of them in their grief.”
As we converse, Manny often gestures toward the empty couch between us. Numerous dramas occur on and around this piece of furniture. A perch for despairing persons, it was wrinkled with emotions, stained by tears, bent by anger, pressed for secrets. “I’ve seen a lot of things in here,” says the seasoned funeral director, his eyes flashing with wisdom. A purveyor of pathology, microbiology, social security law, accounting principles, veteran benefits, and biohazard wastes, Manny Steinbock is ultimately a manager of mortality, a human coda in a society increasingly unaccustomed to limits.
Manny regards his vocation with sensitivity, and he listens carefully to the people he services. He is affected when they cry, and he is attentive when they bewail. Is this exceptional in the mortuary business? While there is a great deal of skepticism, even cynicism, out there about this industry, I believe that, like in any other field, there are principled professionals at work and there are others who are devoid of high standards or even an awareness of the gravity of the situations they are managing. More than one funeral director has conceded this inconsistency to me. We are a vogue-driven culture; some funeral establishments wouldn’t be proffering sailboat-style coffins or cremation urns that are shaped like reading lamps unless we as consumers weren’t responding to these odd retail tactics. At the same time, I clearly remember when I completed a course for certification as a “pre-needs” counselor,24 I saw and heard some unsavory things.
The very first day, even before the session began, the recruiter for this program pulled me aside and told me, “Look, you can’t make any deals with the people you are selling a funeral or a grave or a casket, whatever. There’s no negotiating. They’ve got to have the money up front. They can’t tell you there’s too much on their credit card. We offer them financing but, no matter what, you don’t leave without the money worked out 100 percent and that’s that.” While I did gain many insights during the course, which has enabled me to serve people with greater sensitivity while they journey through the grieving process, I found some of the banter among the funeral professionals distasteful and insensitive. Again, over and over again, I heard the maddening refrain, “Remember, people, the first three letters in funeral are FUN!” There is simply no context for such a flippant philosophy to exist within an enterprise that services human beings at the most tender juncture in this life.
How Does One Choose?
Before continuing our discussion in his office, Manny takes me on a tour of the facility. He glows with purpose as we enter the Death Education Library, a softly lit room just adjacent to the casket showcase chamber. The library is filled with books, pamphlets, and videos about mourning, bereavement, healing, and sharing. The director, the father of two boys, has a delicate spot in his heart for the needs of youngsters. During our visit, he frequently expressed his keen anguish about dealing wi
th the expired bodies of children.
Manny continues his discourse about the library. “Many of the hospice people use it; and family members who are doing the right thing, that is preplanning for a funeral.” Manny then hands me an unused coloring book for kids entitled Kolie and the Funeral. There are “helpful hints” for grown-ups on the inside back cover; Manny often hands the book and some crayons to children experiencing the death of a loved one. It is filled with both happy and gloomy drawings of “a little koala named Kolie. One day, Kolie’s mama told him that his grandpa had died.”
There were subsequent sketches, to be filled in by a child’s colors and emotions, of a sad koala family, a funeral home, a casket, the deceased grandfather koala at rest in his open coffin, a hearse entering the Koalaville Cemetery, the little koala visiting the grave sometime after the funeral. Manny passed this coloring book to me as though he were transferring scripture.
We enter the next area, which is a dealer-style showroom filled with coffins on display. “This is where reality hits,” Manny tells me. The decorative boxes, furnished with linings and pillows, all pose opened, gaping with vacancy. In this room, terror has flared, denial has been blunted, and ultimately, deals have been closed. Manny points to a certain, particularly lavish, regal casket with a cost equivalent to that of a well-equipped automobile.
Though no stranger to caskets, I examined and touched the various models, thinking about broken people coming into this retail sales center and trying to figure out which selection is most fitting and how it can be handled financially. They experience such torment: “If I don’t spend a lot for a fancier box, will Dad’s legacy be slighted?” Such guilt: “I didn’t even know Mom well enough to discern what she’d want for a casket.” The models included Tigereye Bronze, Fawn Stainless Steel, Grecian Copper, Star Quartz, Neapolitan Blue, Revere Silver, Emeraldtone, and entire categories of steels and hardwoods (mahogany, cherry wood, poplar, oak).
The caskets were laced with a choice of velvets, crepes, and a wide selection of stains. The least expensive were cloth-covered or plain pine (favored by Jews and Muslims). The overall price range for the coffins was from roughly $800 to multiple thousands of dollars. Several of the models were named for biblical tribes.
As in every funeral showroom I’ve ever visited, a legally required disclaimer appeared on the wall:
Neither this funeral establishment nor any of its employees represents or implies that any casket will be airtight or watertight or will provide long-term preservation of human remains.
When we Americans grieve, we normally fall in as mortuary client-consumers, which makes us even more vulnerable. The funeral industry is a recession-proof business, and many once privately owned funeral homes, including Saidler-Dunn, have been swallowed up to become part of conglomerate chains such as Dignity Memorial (also known as SCI) or Hillenbrand, Inc. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, began the trend of selling low-priced caskets online. And so, our challenge is to find a compassionate human being who represents the business to us at this hardest time of our lives—Manny Steinbock being such a person.
But the best way to work with the industry, without question, is to preplan the funeral. We routinely preplan weddings, bar mitzvah ceremonies, graduations, and christenings, so why not apply this rational practice to the most excruciating milestone in life. Why not save a great deal of money and be spared all of the agonizing indecision and second-guessing that attend to a memorial that was not prearranged by the person we seek to honor?
Manny continued the tour. Also on display for discussion and sale in the showroom were examples of outer burial containers, or vaults, “so the grave does not sink in.” Prices were higher for Sunday or holiday installation. I thought, in this case, that the entire presentation of a necessary and fundamental consumer operation was dignified and restrained. I couldn’t think of any other way for Manny to demonstrate his goods and services. “It’s in this room, with the casket they’ve chosen nearby, that I discuss with the family what clothes their loved one will wear,” he adds.
A separate, general price list itemized the costs for an astonishing array of often-essential ministrations performed by the funeral agency. These included embalming,25 refrigeration, bathing and handling, dressing and casketing, transferring of the body to or from airport or mortuary (night transportation was higher), floral arranging, cremation, urns, the funeral vehicle, the family limousine, the service car, shrouds, blankets, memorial books, acknowledgment cards, temporary grave markers, candles, and pallbearer gloves. “In all this,” Manny notes, “we have to take precautions in handling everything. We’re concerned about AIDS, hepatitis, airborne viruses. This is complicated work.”
Back in his office, I ask Manny, what has his work taught him personally about mortality?
“Being all around this for so long, I don’t get too excited about most things,” he says. “I don’t get all worked up about a dry-cleaning order, or if my landscaper didn’t exactly do a great job. I may be too laid back because of what I see here and I may have a tendency to put off decisions about future things. But I can’t help it. It’s usually not worth it. We really can’t plan all that much. I think I appreciate life in a way that others possibly don’t.”
Manny’s phone rings, startling both of us. He picks up the receiver and listens. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I’ll be over shortly. I knew your father. He was a good man.”
A process begins, an agency mobilizes. A life has ended, and several other lives, including that of Manny Steinbock, are about to be further illuminated.
The Care Center
More recently, a funeral director in Oceanside, California, opened a thick, code-controlled door to what is called “The Care Center” of the Eternal Hills Mortuary and Crematoria. Debbie Allen,26 an effusively agreeable woman in her fifties, is the general manager of the site. I followed her into the stark, neatly organized room that smelled of formaldehyde, and beheld five human corpses lying on white metal tables, their lifeless faces outlined beneath sheets, their noses pointing skyward. “The Care Center” is a euphemism for the embalming room.
A preparation room, as it is also termed, is distinctly unnerving. Alan Feuer succinctly describes this room in a New York Times article as “a starkly lighted chamber with a tangy iron odor, a silence one can feel, and the subterranean dankness of a crypt.”
Within a moment or so, a man in custodial garb came through an opposite door after clicking the password, and Debbie spoke to him. “Is that Number Four done?” she asked him, gesturing toward the body of a dark-skinned woman with a net holding her hair in place and some kind of gel visible across her sunken face. He nodded affirmatively and walked out of the room. I realized that this man was the crematory operator—the oven was in the adjoining room outside this preparation center. Neither Debbie nor the operator saw anything remarkable in this sterile space that is meticulously ventilated with outside air in accordance with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards and compliance. The air inside this prep room would otherwise remain toxic and biohazardous for the embalmers. Debbie and the passing crematory operator were in their normal, daily work environment.
Debbie noticed me looking at the dead woman and explained, “The gel on her face is a hydrating fluid.” During the twenty minutes or so spent with Debbie in the cramped Care Center, I did a mental itemization of an extraordinary—but necessary—inventory. The facility contained drainage tubes for blood and other body fluids, injection and aspirating devices, “stopcocks” (ball valves that control the flow of liquids or gas), trocars, scalpels, razor blades, forceps, scissors, syringes, needles, suturing supplies, plastic undergarments, cottons and fillers, cosmetics and brushes, soaps, sanitizers, deodorizers, plastic gloves, towels, sheets, pillowcases, head positioners, eye caps, and restorer waxes. Debbie readily opened almost all of the high-standing cabinet doors and pointed out the countless bottles and containers and pumps and other items maintain
ed and catalogued assiduously.
The mainstay stock was formaldehyde. I didn’t realize until this visit just how many varieties and colors of formaldehyde exist and are utilized. Debbie explained, “It depends on the shade of the skin and other internal situations that affect the coloration of the body.” All the blood in each corpse was machine-drained and replaced with the carcinogenic preserving fluid.
I stepped back, still keenly aware of the five corpses that filled the room with a looming motionlessness, and realized that I was brushing against a coffin-shaped, grayish, cardboard transport box. “So there’s someone in here?” I asked Debbie.
“Yes, there’s someone in there. And he will be cremated tomorrow. We don’t keep them in that for more than twelve hours.”
Debbie went on to point out the large biohazard waste control section that was positioned prominently in the room, then the mortuary refrigerator that stood adjacent to it. The long, expansive, upright unit contained slot trays for fifty people and was equipped with a condensing unit that was air-cooled with R-22 refrigerant. “The refrigerator operates at thirty-seven degrees Fahrenheit,” Debbie expounded.
Following our meeting, I checked online and saw a “Mortech” four-body refrigerator that retails for $15,299.95. That is less expensive than some of the caskets.
Debbie had shown me through the Selection Room prior to the Care Center. Unlike the casket showroom in Manny Steinbock’s funeral home, in which the containers are in full display, this conference room only presented the corners of each casket variety thrust out of the warm-colored wall. Debbie told me that the displays were termed “the needed merchandise and etiquette items.” This is the trend in American funeral marketing, and it does feel more discreet than an indoor parking lot of full-blown coffins. “It’s much easier on people,” Debbie said. “But legally,” she added, pointing to a plaque-like marker on the wall, “we must still display this sign.” I noticed the familiar-sounding language: