Putting the FUN in Funeral

Completing my beautician’s course wasn’t the hard part, it was finding a job afterward. I scoured the job posts, handed out my CV to salons, hoofing it around shopping malls to see who might be hiring. It wasn’t until I gave up entirely that fate stood heavily on my doorstep and knocked.

A newspaper ad looking for a mortuary cosmetologist caught my eye. I pressed my pen tip against the paper and with a moment of hesitation, I circled it. Within a week, I started my new job at the Light and Love Funeral home down the road from my house. They took me in like family, showing me the visitation rooms, the chapel, a coffin “shop” where families can look at urns and caskets, and my new office: the preparation room. Kevin, the embalmer, was handsome in a pale, impish sort of way. I pictured our partnership in that prep room, greeting each other each morning with some off colour joke about the latest body coming in. I decided to test one out:

“Hey Kevin - what do you call a dead magician?”

Kevin looks at me quizzically. I blurt out

“An abra-cadaver!”

Kevin rubs his eyes. He’s not amused. I try again.

“I hear being a mortician is a dying business.”

I wait patiently, looking for a smirk. Then I unleash the rest in a spray of puns.

“It’s stiff competition?

"You’re buried in work?

“You really gotta think outside the box?”

Kevin yawns. Then a miraculous thing happens. He opens his mouth and says:

“Can you dig it?”

We both break down in laughter. I can already tell that Kevin and I will put the FUN in funeral.

And so we did, working in a symbiotic cloud of formaldehyde. Bodies arrive and Kevin cleans them and removes the blood. Then organs and internal cavities are drained and treated with preservatives. Then it’s onto my part which I’ve learned is called “Restorative Arts” which is a fancy way of saying “Making them pretty.” I begin by moisturizing the face and body, and then a primer to help with applying the makeup. I reverse time, erasing bruises and jaundice from faces. Like a magician waving their wand, cheeks glow like a lantern lit within. Jawlines appear sculpted and cheekbones heightened. Faces appear dewy as though the corpse hopped up and raced around the room before laying back down on the gurney. I wasn’t just a makeup artist, I was a maestro, a temporary giver of life. It’s hard to describe the power I felt as I watched a family stand over a coffin in disbelief, often reaching out to touch the corpse’s face. I’d hear them murmer “Oh my God, they look so…so…alive!” They are right. I AM God-like. I resurrect the dead.

Pride was an unexpected bi-product of this job, an unfamiliar one as well. I grew up being told I’d probably not amount to much and I shouldn’t waste my time going to art school as I’d never get in. My parents encouraged a one year beautician course where I could “put my creativity to use in the real world.” They weren’t evil, they were pragmatists…and ran an accounting firm together. Understandably, they are incredibly boring people with zero appreciation of art or the world’s need for it. But I did what they said, and left my dreams of being an artist behind.

My next shift at the Love and Light funeral home was on a rainy Monday. I stumble in with a slight hangover, disinfectant stinging my nostrils when I open the door to the prep room. Kevin hands me a cappuccino and nods towards the body with a sheet over the face

“Local school teacher, died of an aneurysm. Should be easy to prep though.”

Kevin reaches over to the radio and turns up Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man." I hold up a hairbrush and begin singing

"Being good isn't always easy

No matter how hard I try

When he started sweet-talkin' to me

He'd come and tell me "Everything is alright"

He'd kiss and tell me "Everything is alright"

Can I get away again tonight?"

Kevin is belting it out too. I love this place. With the fog of my hangover lifted, I ready myself for work: rubber gloves snap over my hands, tools are sanitized and lined up on my tray. Still humming the Dusty song and smiling, I lift the sheet and drop it immediately. It’s Mrs. Jebb, my highschool English teacher, a monster in the flesh. During those years, Mrs. Jebb was responsible for dismantling every bit of my self esteem. My ADHD was undiagnosed at the time, and she took my inability to focus as a slight to her teaching. When I had to re-read exam questions over in my head 5 times each in order to absorb them properly, it meant that I never finished on time, something Jebb attributed to me being lazy and unfocused. She spent five years making it her personal goal to shame me in front of my peers, and to dissolve any self esteem that remained. I remember one particular time she made me stand up in class and asked me if I knew what my current course grade was. When I said I didn't, she informed the entire class that it was 30%. She then asked if I planned on taking the final exam. When I replied yes, she asked me why, since I had no hope of passing the course. I replied that I'd have to do very well on it. The class snickered. She told me not to bother. Because of Mrs. Jebb, I hated highschool. And I hated myself.

Now, Mrs. Carla Anne Jebb is lying here in front of me, dead from a brain bleed. I attempt to lift the sheet again and drop it. I take a deep breath and summon all of my newfound strength. I reach out and lift the sheet with purpose and pull it down cleanly, ready to get to work. She deserves the same treatment as everyone else, right? She may have wronged me, but she’s just human and I should treat her as such. Jebb’s eyes are open, milky and collapsed in their sockets. I get the glue ready to seal them shut as usual, but pause as a wave of anger rises, engulfing me in feverish splendour. I may have spent my years feeling small and incompetent in the presence of a towering Jebb, but now I’m in charge. I am the God-like one casting judgement, choosing resurrection and beauty for most, but tyranny and revenge for others (this one). I decide right then that Jebb will pay for what she’s done to me. I get to direct her final act. I look over my shoulder at Kevin, making sure he can’t see what I’m doing. Milky, collapsed sockets are exposed. I line them heavily in black. I grab fire engine red lipstick and draw in violent circles around her gaping mouth until it reaches up her cheek, pulling the corners up in a joker-ish grin. Next, I grab gel and spike her bangs straight up from her face. She stares back, a garish clown. I gingerly pull the sheet back over her face and step away from the gurney.

This one’s done.