from
The Undertaking
in
The Undertaking:
Life Studies from the Dismal Trade
by Thomas Lynch
W.W. Norton & Company
Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople. Another two or
three dozen I take to the crematory to be burned. I sell caskets, burial
vaults,
and urns for the ashes. I have a sideline in headstones and monuments. I
do
flowers on commission.
Apart from the tangibles, I sell the use of my building: eleven thousand
square feet, furnished and fixtured with an abundance of pastel and chair
rail
and crown moldings. The whole lash-up is mortgaged and remortgaged well
into the next century. My rolling stock includes a hearse, two Fleetwoods,
and
a minivan with darkened windows our pricelist calls a service vehicle and
everyone in town calls the Dead Wagon.
I used to use the unit pricing method -the old package deal. It meant that
you had only one number to look at. It was a large number. Now everything
is
itemized. It's the law. So now there is long list of items and numbers and
italicized disclaimers, something like a menu or the Sears Roebuck Wish
Book,
and sometimes the federally-mandated options begin to look like cruise
control
or rear-window defrost. I wear black most of the time, to keep folks in
mind of
the fact we're not talking Buicks here. At the bottom of the list there is
still a
large number.
In a good year the gross is close to a million, five percent of which we
hope
to call profit. I am the only undertaker in this town. I have a corner on
the
market.
The market, such as it is, is figured on what is called the crude death
rate-
the number of deaths every year out of every thousand persons.
Here is how it works.
Imagine a large room into which you coax one thousand people. You slam
the doors in January, leaving them plenty of food and drink, color TVs,
magazines, and condoms. Your sample should have an age distribution heavy
on baby boomers and their children 1.2 children per boomer. Every seventh
adult is an old-timer, who, if he or she wasn't in this big room, would
probably
be in Florida or Arizona or a nursing home. You get the idea. The group
will
include fifteen lawyers, one faith healer, three dozen real-estate agents,
a
video technician, several licensed counselors, and a Tupperware
distributor.
The rest will be between jobs, middle managers, ne'er-do-wells, or
retired.
Now for the magic part - come late December when you throw open the
doors, only 991.6, give or take, will shuffle out upright. Two hundred
and sixty
will now be selling Tupperware. The other 8.4 have become the crude death
rate.
Here's another stat.
Of the 8.4 corpses, two-thirds will have been old-timers, five percent
will be
children, and the rest (slightly less than 2.5 corpses) will be
boomers realtors
and attorneys likely one of whom was, no doubt, elected to public office
during
the year. What's more, three will have died of cerebral-vascular of
coronary
difficulties, two of cancer, one each of vehicular mayhem, diabetes, and
domestic violence. The spare change will be by act of God or suicide–most
likely the faith healer.
The figure most often and most conspicuously missing from the insurance
charts and demographics is the one I call The Big One, which refers to the
number of people out of every hundred born who will die. Over the long
haul,
The Big One hovers right around well, dead nuts on one hundred percent.
If
this were on the charts, they'd call it death expectancy and no one would
buy
futures of any kind. But it is a useful number and has its lessons. Maybe
you
will want to figure out what to do with your life. Maybe it will make you
feel a
certain kinship with the rest of us. Maybe it will make you hysterical.
Whatever
the implications of a one hundred percent death expectancy, you can
calculate
how big a town this is and why it produces for me a steady if
unpredictable
labor.
...
Last Monday morning Milo Hornsby died. Mrs. Hornsby called at 2 A.M. to
say that Milo had expired and would I take care of it, as if his condition
were
like any other that could be renewed or somehow improved upon. At 2 A.M.,
yanked from my REM sleep, I am thinking, put a quarter into Milo and call
me
in the morning. But Milo is dead. In a moment, in a twinkling, Milo has
slipped
irretrievably out of our reach, beyond Mrs. Hornsby and the children,
beyond
the women at the laundromat he owned, beyond his comrades at the Legion
Hall, the Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge, his pastor at First Baptist,
beyond the mailman, zoning board, town council, and Chamber of Commerce;
beyond us all, and any treachery or any kindness we had in mind for him.
Milo is dead.
X's on his eyes, lights out, curtains.
Helpless, harmless.
Milo's dead.
Which is why I do not haul to my senses, coffee and a quick shave,
Homburg and great coat, warm up the Dead Wagon, and make for the freeway
in the early o'clock for Milo's sake. Milo doesn't have any sake anymore.
I go
for her–for she who has become, in the same moment and the same twinkling,
like water to ice, the Widow Hornsby. I go for her–because she still can
cry and
care and pray and pay my bill.
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