the mortician

One of the few compliments I have ever genuinely been able to accept is one I received from a coworker during my time in retail management. She was a woman in her late forties, a mortician who split her life between Pennsylvania and Alaska. On a Wednesday at four o’clock in the middle of a school year, the store was empty apart from myself and the mortician. After jotting down our less-than-desirable sales for the previous hour, I stepped out from behind the register and weaved between display tables to the front of the store, where she was refolding a stack of jeans and quietly humming. I’d heard about her and what she did for work, but had only seen her in passing, usually while I was scurrying out the door and she was just arriving. If I hadn’t hated the job and made it a goal to spend no more time there than what was absolutely necessary, I suspect we would’ve shared more than a quick smile and a barely-there nod. Now, given the opportunity, we exchanged courtesy introductions and got to talking, and she told me that she went to mortuary school in the city, and now did some teaching in Alaska. I played ignorant, like this information was new to me and not something I’d kept safely stored in my mind, next to the hope that one day I’d get to hear her elaborate on it. She’d spend about two months at a time in Alaska and then come back to this job and her husband. I wanted to ask how attached she was to him. I wanted to poke and at prod her mind, to ask her to share everything with me. What made her choose her career path? What does she think happens when we die? Was she nervous to embalm a body for the first time? What does it feel like in her own body? Her voice was confident and smooth around the edges, not a whisper, but quieter and more sincere in tone than I’d expected, and I wondered if that was how she sounded when she talked about everything she was passionate about.

I told her how admirable I found her work to be, that I specifically admired the guts it took to be so involved in people’s grieving process, that I’d personally been interested in the profession, and then she looked me up and down and said I’d make a good funeral director, because I’d look good in a suit. I don’t think I hid my blushing very well, and I definitely didn’t hide my smile, which only got wider as I thanked her. I tried to think of something else to say, something to signal that I didn’t want our conversation to come to an end. I wanted to ask her if I could rest my feet in her lap while we sat in the office chairs in the back room, if she’d place her hands on my ankles and drag a thumb across the fabric of my jeans in light, slow strokes.

A man walked into the store. The mortician greeted him with her sweet customer service voice, gave me a parting, apologetic smile, and diverted her attention from me. I watched from afar, preparing for closing, business as usual, as she showed the man three pairs of jeans, and thought that I really must be losing it.