[J. Tithonus Pednaud]

I have a lot of interesting work stories, being that I have held many unusual jobs.

I will share with you a tale from my first day on the job as an embalmer.

Things are going to get a little messy.

I was a fresh faced 16 year old with an interest in the macabre. I managed to finagle an assistant position at a local funeral home as part of my mandatory pre enrolment industry time. Before a school even considers a funeral services education applicant, a number of volunteer hours must be completed under the supervision of licensed director. This was my first day and I had never even seen a real deceased person before.

I can still remember walking into the cool and pungent embalming room. The Embalmer looked me over and reprimanded me on my choice of footwear. My old Doc Martens were the closest thing I had to dress shoes. I was fortunate to have a thin white shirt and black tie in the back of my closet. Anyway, the embalming of the first person to come in went smoothly.

She was an elderly woman named Doris. She was cared for and loved by her family. She looked at peace and I watched my mentor go through the steps involved in the embalming process.

My mentor was a very tired looking man. He was overweight and you could see that he just didn’t care anymore and was just sick of death. He treated the entire event like he was taking out the trash. No emotion, rough hands and callous jokes. But he did his job and I watched intently. A couple of hours later he was done.

The next person, I assisted more handily in. I washed the body, prepped him, used the trocar ( a spear-like vacuum device) to pierce his organs and remove as much material from his abdomen as possible. Eventually made a small cut above his clavicle and started pumping the fluid into him. All went smoothly and all was legal under the supervision of a professional for purpose of instruction.

Now, the next fellow to be wheeled in was an obese gentleman who was in rough shape. He had been gone for a few days and was on the cusp of festering. He had been autopsied at his previous stop and his chest had been butterflied open with a ‘y’ cut. At this point, my mentor simply stood back, had a smoke, and started to guide me through a new procedure. I know now that what I did was highly illegal and to follow through on such a procedure a licence is required. He actually had me cut out the baseball stitches and open the guy up again. He then proceeded to give me an anatomy lesson as we rooted around in his innards.

Noting the time, my mentor left the room for a bit. He went across the street to grab us some lunch. When he returned he informed me that I would be eating my lunch in the embalming room with our portly friend. He handed me a couple of industry magazines and a sloppy sausage-on-a-bun sandwich.

So there I was. A greasy, animal intestine sandwich in one hand, an embalming magazine in the other and a 400 pound man spread open like a trout on a gurney right behind me. As I ate I eventually took a seat right in front of the occupied gurney, with my back to the body. I sort of left my body for awhile, in an attempt to forget where I was. I was too successful at it though and I leaned back on my chair, lost my balance, hit the gurney and proceeded to dump the splayed carcass onto the tiled floor.

Much like a bit of buttered toast the big guy landed open side down; I freaked.

This was my first day, what do I do? I’m going to be fired! My boss would be back any minute!

I could literally see all my career aspirations disappear. I frantically resolved to fix the situation. I knew I would not be able to lift the guy back onto the gurney but there was a hoist system in the corner of the room used to transfer body from table to table when a person was working solo. I started to drag the guy to the hoist. As I did so, he began to unravel. A rope of intestines and congealed blood smeared the floor like some horrific snail trail. Even worse, my shoes were slippery on the tiles and now gore soaked floor. I began to lose my footing as I became more and more frantic. I slipped and slid as I tried to push and pull the dead weight. Eventually I lost my footing and face planted right into the gore. As I tried to get up, well, it was reminiscent of a newly born calf trying to get his footing. I flopped again and again to the floor like some demented three stooges routine. Smeared with horrible grime, my white shirt resembled modern art and I finally got the guy to the hoist. I locked him in and got a table under him.

However, there was still the matter of about seven feet of intestine and human refuse littering the floor. At this point, I was completely manic and I just proceeded to stuff the guy like a turkey, not paying any attention to the placement of anything. I then hosed off the floor.

When my mentor returned, not two minutes later, there I was sandwich in hand, covered in disgust and ‘acting casual’. I pretended nothing happened despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He looked around, blank faced. He looked me up and down.

“You know,” he said “Bodies drop all the time. It’s no big deal”.

The best bit was being detained by police during the bus ride home. The driver called to cops due to my bloody clothing and they actually pulled up with the cherries flashing.

They had to call the funeral home to confirm my story.