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Every once in awhile, those in funeral service experience situations that
are far from the norm. This was one of those situations I encountered many
many years ago. Fortunately it turned out well....but it could have been, well,
a most difficult week for all those involved.
We've all heard of lost bags at an airport....but lost human remains? Yes...
thank goodness it was just temporary...I do remember however it did take
at least half of one day for my blood pressure to return to a near normal
reading.
It is chapter number 9 from my first book Undertakings of an Undertaker
(2015)
Somewhere in the Freight
The phone ringing in the middle of the
night always meant someone had gone on, died, passed away, crossed over,
sugared off. There were so many terms and descriptions for death. Young people
would say "bit the dust". Older people were kinder and gentler, many
liking the term “going on” or “slipping into the night.” The language used really isn’t significant.
Whatever the term used, it all ends up the same. For the person for whom the
bell tolls, there will be no morning oatmeal.
So it was 2:00 am and a hospital in
Florida was telling me that Floyd so and so from our hometown had gone on to
his last reward. As I struggled to force
my eyelids to respond, a family member was put on the phone and instructed me
that they
wanted
Floyd flown back to our town for just a local burial, no service, just a burial
in the family plot next to Maude, his wife who had expired years before. I managed to write the information down,
expressed my condolences to the family and hung up the
old
clunky black telephone, a phone that actually had a bell in it. When it rang,
you'd swear the dust would emerge from the curtains; it was that loud. I
attempted to put cotton in the bells years before but got a brief, but powerful
shock when I tried to open the bottom of the phone, its corporate insignia
AT&T glaring at me on the warning that said, “Do not try to make adjustments
to this phone.” No kidding. I think the
shock I received must have at stopped my fingernails from growing for at least
six months.
As I stumbled groggily to my desk
downstairs in the funeral home, my mind started to formulate a plan to retrieve
the gentleman from Florida and bring him back here as his family had requested. I reviewed my funeral director yellow book,
quickly discovering a funeral director in Florida near the hospital where Floyd
had died. Perfect. Here's a guy who would retrieve Floyd and put
him on an airliner to Rochester, the airport closest to me. I though more about
it and decided to wait and call the funeral director at 7:00 am. There was no
need of spoiling his night as well. I
closed the yellow book, killed the light, and went back to bed. Unfortunately, my brain kept buzzing over the
new death call, and a return to a restful sleep was not to be realized.
At 6:00 am, I was back at my desk dialing
Florida and an undertaker who could assist me on that end. An answering service told me I had reached
some corporate funeral home. The corporate guys always had answering services.
The mom and pop guys usually lived on premises, like my wife and I, and were
usually the sober voices that answered the phone.
"Of course," said the director in
Florida. He would be very happy to claim
Floyd, get the necessary paperwork and find an airliner going to Rochester
within the next day or so.
The plan was set. There was an immediate family member locally
who came in later that day, gave me the information I needed, selected a very
humble pine casket and concrete grave liner, and paid in advance the amount I
had estimated for all of the work, including the Florida undertaker and the
airline fare. Life was good. Things always felt good when you had a plan
in place and your family was pleased with their arrangements.
Twenty-four hours later I pulled the
vehicle out of the garage, gassed it up, and headed north to Rochester, about
ninety miles from our chapel. It would
take me about an hour and forty five minutes to get to the airport. Then, after a quick drive to the freight
office, which was only about 100 yards from the passenger gates, Floyd would be
mine for the drive home.
In those days, the mid-1980's and before,
there was little or no airport security. There was no TSA, few gates to show
I.D's, etc. You just showed up, stated
your business, and you were in. How
innocent those days were. Little did we
know how drastically things would change someday and how difficult simple
things would become.
Arriving at the freight office after an
uneventful trip, I skipped up the four steps into the office announcing my
presence and my intentions. The guy
behind the counter was munching on a tuna sandwich between swigs of soft drink
and drags on a cigarette which almost choked me as I pulled back from him.
"Is flight 490 from Atlanta on
time?" I queried. He looked at me half interested as he continued to
devour the sandwich. "I have some remains on that flight coming to my
funeral home from Florida."
With that, he wheeled around, pushed a
button and looked at his TV screen.
"It’s already in," he proclaimed, "It came in early,
about 20 minutes ago."
Fantastic!
It was rare that a flight arrived early.
This meant that I might even be home early. It was a nice day to drive,
but wanting to get back out and beat the afternoon commuters made me smile.
"Back your car up to dock number 2 and
we'll go fetch your guy," the attendant said.
I quickly
signed the receipt for the air-tray, which would contain the body, and I flew
down the steps to await his next move.
My car was backed up, the rear door popped,
and I stood in my blue shirt, tie and sport coat, awaiting the front loader-
lift which should soon appear with my guy attached.
Instead, the same fellow came to the
loading dock and started to say something, but his words were drowned out as an
incoming airliner whined loudly overhead on its final approach and casted a
shadow as it neared the runway just behind us.
"What’s that?" I screamed, so I could be heard. "I didn’t hear you."
The attendant had a sheepish look on his
face as he jumped down and stood eyeball to eyeball with me next to the rear
bumper.
"I can’t find your guy. I know he's
here. I just can’t find him"
My mind was now processing this
information. You can’t find my guy. A dead man in a standard pine and cardboard
box, the size of a casket with stickers all over it saying
"human
remains", “handle with care”, airline logos, etc., and this guy is telling
me he's misplaced him? This isn’t your
standard shipment of copy paper, carpet remnants, or plastic actions figures.
This is a deceased human we're talking about. You just don’t
misplace
human remains.
I had to cut the cold veil of silence by
asking, "You didn’t give him to somebody by accident did you?"
He looked at me like I thought he was a
moron. I think the term “moron” went
through both of our skulls at the same time.
"We'll turn the place over. We'll find
him. I know he's here," the attendant tried to reassure me.
I sat on the bumper of the car as he
re-entered the building. Five minutes
turned to ten, ten to fifteen. Finally, the tractor emerged with my guy’s air-tray
on the front, the driver smiling gleefully.
"Some guy threw a tarp over the box out
back. Sorry for the wait."
We loaded Floyd, I headed the car south, and
we returned to the chapel unscathed. The next day I buried Floyd with a simple
grave side prayer, and we called it a day.
The
ironic part of the story was that just at the end of the service, the family
member told me how great it was that Floyd was now home and tucked away with
his family.
They said
he had had a very frightful time once as a kid when he was lost in the woods
for a couple of days. Wow. Floyd had almost done it again. Sleep well Floyd; you can’t get lost again.
