The Lesson of Two Evils : A Literary Venn Diagram

When it comes to the macabre, I'm kinda a self proclaimed expert. For all of my adult life, I have pretty much exclusively worked with the dead. Everything from infants to horses. It has been quite an emotional journey I have gone through, being a 19-year-old-Mortuary-Dispatcher, fast forward three years and I'm actually helping medical doctors perform private autopsies. I have been on the front lines of loss, grief, and even fights starting out at funerals. It might seem like I have been through a lot, but my death care career is barely budding. I have spent a year working in a funeral home, and almost a year working in the animal crematory. In this weeks episode, I want to take some time to compare and contrast the two, and really delve into what made me feel what.

I'm sure that many people can agree that a death of a human, being unfortunate, is also a huge nuisance. There are so many legalities behind everything, and costs, that a lot of the time, the family does not feel like they can handle the death right now. Let me be sort of broad here, there are three types of people at funeral homes: sad people, angry people and quiet people. And who do you think gets to be the emotional punching bag in most of these scenarios? Its the person in the fancy suit asking all the hard questions and waving an invoice around, thats who. Society is afraid of the funeral industry, they think that we are ripping them off, and they are completely right! I mention legalities because that is probably the major difference between the two business models: one is legally required, and heavily regulated by lobbyist, legislation and monopolization (humans), and one is an option that you get to choose, that has no political or legal agenda.(animals).

Legislature actually plays a significant role in the structure of the funeral home dynamics. Laws are in place controlling the type of container you need to be cremated in, the scenarios when you do and do not need embalming, and the laws even control the way they are allowed to communicate with the clients, making them have to use verbatim wordage in their fees and services rendered, verbatim wordage on their embalming requirements, and verbatim wording on their General Price List and it becomes so convoluted that people are sometimes swindled into buying things that they do not really need; like embalming, an upgraded cremation container, and so many other things could end up being bought out of fear of meeting the legal requirements. Sometimes the family of the decedent didn't even choose the funereal home the body got sent to, this was the funeral home the hospital referred them to, and "We can't move mom now, did you see that transfer fee?" If you guys wanna read up on something interesting, Robert "Tommy" Tomlinson is a senator in Pennsylvania who was passing laws limiting the way cemeteries could sell caskets, inevitably increasing the way funeral homes would sell caskets. Oh yeah, and he also happens to own a funeral home, good stuff.

I did some digging around, and out of the 15 funeral homes in my area, only four of them had their pricing online. Which is incredibly shady! not only is the price of goods and services rendered crucial in a consumers decision making, it is hard to interpret and hard to even get your hands on the information from a funeral home. Unfortunately though, when surveying the pet memorial services in my area, of the five, only one listed its pricing online. I happen to know that the average cremation cost for a human is about $1,000 and the average price of a non-equestrian companion's is around $150. Although a surprise five-hundred dollars in a lot easier to accept, it is still no excuse. This information needs to be more accessible, and funeral service providers need to stop acting like their industry is confidential, that no one is worthy of this information, or worse, their competitors might see their prices! Tactics like this only feed into the intimidation society has about making funeral arrangements. I am starting to think this casual comparison is not going to be a compare and contrast at all but more of a reformation rant. Funerals arrangements are something everyone can be fluent in.

Heres a realization for you guys, for many funeral homes the free "urn" that comes with the cremation is just a cardboard shoebox. Where I have seen it pretty uniformly across the board that the pets all go home in a marble, sleek container. The free urn reality is a grim analogy of how we actually do treat the inconveniences, I mean, people in our lives, versus our fury companions. The pet parents have chosen to come to you, in general. Because there are no heavy regulations and laws set in place to give all power to the seller. They honestly could easily bury Max in the backyard, although illegal in some cities, I have never seen it stop anyone. The pet parent has done their research, research being a loose term here, and they want the services that your business offers. There are no heavy rules and regulations, making them buy unnecessary products or weird wording getting in the way of an actual connection and understanding.

My clients, and the relationship that I build with them, is very important to me, thats why I went on that whole rant, for you guys, the people who have experience dealing with a funeral home. I do this job for you guys. Your tears of sorrow and joy, both keep me motivated to do my best, every day. But there is more to my day to day life then you guys. Now I want to dive into the corpses. Head first, with a snorkel. I might regret this.

You ever notice how when your walking down the street, and you see a man sitting at the bus stop, and you pray he doesn't look your way? Begging him to just disappear. On the other hand, if it were a dog, you would jump for joy at the opportunity to pat its head and call him a "good boy". It doesn't change when they die. Don't get me wrong, a corpse has suffered and should be showed the most respect and dignity. But thats just it, we call it "handling" the body with respect and dignity, because not a lot of people are willing to do it. The human corpse is not a cute thing. It purges, it leaks, it stinks. And I think all of this gets in the way of actually being sad. I am not mourning for the loss of this person, I didn't know this person, and she is currently making my day a hell of a lot harder.

Do I care about her family? Yes. Do I care about the hit the world took the day we lost her? No.

Now, this might be the psychopath in me, but the dead dogs actually make me feel much more desolate. Our whole lives, we know people die. But me personally, I don't like to accept that helpless little animals, mans companion who did no wrong, dies. The dead dogs, they do not show signs of old age, of loss battles, They all look so happy and healthy, like they should not have died. It is easy to look at a decrepit old lady, and know that she is in peace now. But when the dog is as happy and healthy looking as ever, it even smells like puppy, it actually makes me choke back tears. Maybe its just that I love my cat more than anyone on this planet. Maybe its that my dog is my best friend. I don't know, but these deaths hit me harder than human ones.

Maybe its because when we see a corpse, we reflect on our own humanity. We see ourselves lying on the table, as opposed to somebodies love one, our own loved one. I see a corpse and I think about how I need to make a name for myself as a writer, I think about having children, I think about finding love, and how I'm running out of time to do those things. Its a panic that sweeps me over me, not a mournful sorrow. Then I see a dead dog, and I don't see myself. I see everything good in this world that could be taken from me at any moment. I see innocence stolen, and an emptiness people do not understand. Disenfranchised grief is grief that society does not accept, but still hurts just as hard. Like losing a pet, not everyone is going to understand the pain you are going through. And I see it day in and day out, and I come home and love my pets so hard, and in turn, love life so much harder.

I want to conclude here, that its almost ironic. The two industries actually appear to be so similar on the surface. But in fact, the human deaths are hard to deal with because of stress and bureaucracy, not in fact because of the dead humans, which people like to assume is the tough part. The dead people are the easy part. And on the other side of the coin, the pet funeral industry is almost easy going compared to its counter part. You can interact with the clients casually, and not to mention it pays better. But surprisingly, it is the dead animals I see all day taking the toll on my psyche.