See you soon...

Today I went to the ME to pick up a young woman who apparently died after sex and drugs with a date.  The guys at ME know me well enough to fill me in on these things now, and I think that's very cool.  The date, needless to say, is under investigation, and I'm sure he's shitting bricks no matter what really happened.

Last week another driver and I went to the ME.  While waiting for property of a decedent, a medical investigator knocked on the door to one of the offices in the lobby where a man was apparently discussing matters of a loved one who died.  The man was upset for being disturbed at such a time by the investigator.

The investigator, calm and polite, said that he is sorry, and that it was his regret to tell the man that his son was killed by a car while walking to school that morning.  In disbelief, the man asked how he knew it was his son.  The investigator told him that they recovered his son's backpack and his ID matched.

Just then the clerk at the window shouted to us through the bulletproof glass that there was no property for us, so we quietly walked out, leaving this heavy conversation.  Both of us were stunned by what we just witnessed.  Families tell us all the time how hard our jobs must be;  I think the guy delivering the bad news has it harder.

I need to blog more frequently.  It's very difficult to remember a month's work.

One that comes to mind is a nursing home call I went to late one night.  An old man in a darkened facility.  The nurse showed me the way and I asked if I can just wrap him up in the bed sheets and take everything with me (this is a common procedure;  it just saves time).  The nurse said yes, take it all and the bad energy out.  Asked about the bad energy, the nurse replied that she's seen ghosts at the home and she's spooked.  I asked her whether the old man who just died was a nice man.  He was, she said, so I told her that I didn't think you need to worry about him.

I asked how long she's been doing this and she said three years.  I told her that in almost a year I've yet to see or hear anything.  She went on to tell me about a little red-headed girl ghost and how the residents also talk to this girl.  I asked that if she is so spooked why not find another job, and she just said that she has to pay the bills.  She told me that when she first started she wanted to find out whether these things were true and now she believes.  She also seemed eager to see me go so I left quickly.

I then drove to a hospice, thinking about what the nurse said.  Perhaps for my own sanity, I concluded that one's attitude towards these things plays a big role, and mine is that whether there are ghosts or not is not up to me, and that what is is just is.

One time I had a dream that I was on a house call, and a grandma who died started moving and came back to life.  The family was freaking out but I was happy for everyone since granny wasn't dead after all.  What that says about me I don't know.

The cooler is completely full and then some now, with bodies on tables taking up all the floor space inside.  There must be 80 bodies in there plus about 20 embalmed bodies in the prep room.  It is officially the busy season for this industry.

Also today I stopped by my old place of work, a small private funeral home close to my home to pick up a body.  The greedy and socially inept owner came down to get the body out of his small cooler.  Nothing has changed there, except for yet another new driver who was packing creation boxes into the same old crappy van to drive up to the crematory out of town.  Poor bastard, little does he know.  A former office assistant from there told me that other than the lead driver, whom I still run into from time to time, and the little chihuahua bitch manager, everyone I knew there are all gone.  It's been seven months since I left, and being back, all I could think was how grateful I am to be where I am now.

The Asst. and I, running night calls, often see motorcyclists driving fast, weaving in and out of lanes (we call them donorcycles).  One zooms by and he'll say, "See you soon".  Another zooms by even faster, and he'll say, "See you very, very soon".  Jokingly we mutter to ourselves whenever old people stare at us pushing a body on a gurney down the hallways of their assisted living homes:  See you soon...