Dearest Rachel –
When I go in to the ‘office’ these days, especially on days like this when I don’t have anything pressing in terms of actual ‘work,’ half my job, if you can call it that, is to simply hang around with and chat up my folks for a while (as well as moving the odd box here and there for them, especially as they pack up from the Christmas season). Sometimes, I think I need to bring my iPhone out and record the conversations, because when Dad starts reminiscing, I’m reminded of what a colorful life he’s lived, and how if I don’t record this, I’m not going to remember it all once he’s gone.
Oddly enough, some of the really colorful stories come from the career path he didn’t take (although in fairness, he actually studied for it, as opposed to the sales profession he eventually settled into in various forms); that of mortuary science. As far as I can tell, he did all right from both the science itself and the customer-facing parts of the profession, but the customers he faced – compounded, I suppose by the conditions that he faced them in – got to be a little too much for him to want to make a career out of it.
Now, we think of the fifties as a straight-laced, repressed time – like the Victorian era in Britain, but in America and with more and better means of transportation – but at one of the funeral homes he worked, there was, ah… an unofficial ‘service’ extended to certain more comely widows from time to time. Dad was offered the chance to, shall we say, ‘assist’ in one such case – and got some gentle ribbing for his naivete when he expressed shock that this was done – but when he turned the opportunity down flat, there were no hard feelings; one of his fellow apprentices was more than willing to fill in (if you’ll pardon the expression).
Another story he told me was about calling a mother to come to the morgue to identify the body of her (grown) son. To say she was reluctant to do so would be an understatement; indeed, she apparently wanted no part of him. “Such a no goodnik layabout, leaving his poor mother penniless; no, I’m not coming in there to claim the body for nothing.” It was at this point that Dad’s boss filled her in on how the burial and everything was not only paid for, but that a tidy sum was left over for her to claim from his life insurance policy. There was a pause on the other end of the line as she processed this information, and then… “I’ll be there tomorrow.”
Indeed, money seemed to make a difference, even when eternity was on the line. More than one client was refused burial in consecrated ground, due to their general behavior in life and in particular their lack of connection to the church they requested burial in, but for the ‘donation’ of a hundred dollars or so (to be fair, back then a hundred dollars was real money, as opposed to the price of a meal for three people at a fast casual restaurant, but still…), somehow those sins could be overlooked, and the client – or at least, what was left of them on earth – could rest easily where they wanted to be.
Dad spoke particularly well of the owners of the Jewish funeral home he worked at for a time; of all the places he was employed at, they treated him the best, almost like family. It probably didn’t hurt that he knew his way around the scriptures as well as any of them – and with a yarmulke of his own, he could almost pass – unless the use of Hebrew was needed as part of the service itself. At one point, though, he asked the owners why they were so nice to him in comparison to other homes he’d served at, and they pointed out that he posed no threat to them in terms of the employment ladder. Theirs being a family-owned business (they are called funeral ‘homes’ for a reason), and him being a gentile, he wasn’t competition for them. He wasn’t going anywhere at that particular place of business, but they did their level best to keep him happy in the position he would be stuck at, should he choose to continue working there; it was a bit of a gilded cage, if you will.
At some point, I really need to press him as to what got him out of the business; thus far, all he says is a rather vague “I decided it wasn’t the life for me.” On the other hand, based on even just these few stories (and there are more; these are just the ones that come to mind), I can’t imagine him lasting in such a venial industry without becoming as cynical as me, which he never would have wanted.
In fact, he’s often been surprised at my own attitudes toward certain authorities, as it’s clear that he didn’t teach me to hold them in such contempt. He still tells about a trip in which he was driving me down to university (probably not my freshman year, but possibly before my meeting you, so maybe September 1987?) when a car barreled past us on the highway going something on the order of a hundred miles an hour or more. He expressed his customary dismay about how there is rarely a traffic cop when they’re needed, but according to him, I’d observed a peculiarity about the license plate of the car; apparently, there was something on it that indicated that it was a government vehicle. What struck him about my reply to him was a certain resignation that such a vehicle – and the folks driving it – were, by virtue of having created the laws, not subject to them. He didn’t teach me this, though, so he wondered where I’d gotten it.
I can’t even say that his stories of life in the funeral home business were an explanation; back then, he was too busy getting his independent sales rep business off the ground to spend much time reminiscing about those days. So I couldn’t tell you how he raised such a cynic like me, other than that we’d been raised as Christians to believe that humans weren’t basically good, unlike most people – and this just got more obvious as a person was given more power and authority. I didn’t – and don’t – see it as cynicism as much as just realism. It’s sad that I feel it necessary, but that’s how life is.
Anyway, on that note, I should probably let you go for today. Until I have something new for you, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m pretty sure I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 