[Brad Ford greets me with a forced smile, that familiar smile worn by so many that have survived the War. He doesn't appear to be the stereotype of a career mortician; his hair is dark, he speaks quickly and with his hands. We meet at his cluttered A-framed mountain home near the San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California. During the War he managed a Human Remains Disposal Unit, he also designed and manufactured a lightweight portable crematory system; after the war he sold the design to a large international funeral supply company and with the profit he made, has at age 54 "put himself out to pasture".]
Even though I haven't worked at a mortuary or a cemetery in over twelve years, mostly everyone does a double take of some sort when I tell them I used to be a funeral director. This happened even more so when I was young and in the biz. At a party when I was 20, a cute girl I was hitting on said "Gross." On the sofa next to her was this Goth girl - although we didn't call them Goth back then - who said "That is so cool." Whether someone thought it was gross or cool, there was always a slight hesitation, and sometimes when I'm honest with myself I'll admit I liked that reaction. I mean look at me, if I was an office manager or a truck driver would you give me a second look?
First thing, before I continue, it's important to understand this - that when you're dead, you no longer move on your own. No sitting up, no twitching of any sort is physically possible, do you understand? They don't make any noise, either. Maybe when they're dying, sure, but after the brain waves stop, no. People who'd never seen a body would argue with me, but it was urban legend stuff. I mean, lots of people have told me stories of bodies sitting up at funerals, but it was always second person – "Dude, my uncle saw one sit up", or a friend of a friend's hairstylist heard one groan. Sometimes there was a slight guttural noise when you would pick up or move a body, but you could tell it was from the abdomen and not the sort of sound that would make you think the dead guy was talking or groaning. At my cousin's wedding I was talking to a guy, he was big, I think he'd been a linebacker in the old USFL, and he told me he personally saw one sit up. I didn't argue with him. It wasn't until years later that I would see the dead move... And worse.
Secondly, all the funeral homes I worked for, for a lack of a better word, were "busy." I mean they did tons of burials and cremations, so in my twenty-three years of undertaking I saw and touched thousands of dead people; people of all ages, colors and sizes. You ever try to move a 250 pound woman out of a bedroom in a single wide? I've schlepped bodies from various coroner's and hospital morgues, convalescent homes and home hospice calls; not to mention traffic accidents, suicide and homicide scenes. I know what dead is, right? One December alone in the eighties, at _ and Sons Funeral Chapel we handled ninety-three bodies. Before the plague hit the vast majority of the funeral homes in the US would love to do ninety-three in a year, let alone in one month. Sometimes I would make funeral arrangements with five families in a day; in one single eight hour day that same month I made nine removals – We used to call them "first calls," as in the first call you made on a family. That was my personal best, at least when they used to stay dead. At least later I didn't have to wear a suit and tie. Also, more than once we worked fourteen funerals over two days. What you need to understand is I'd seen dead and I knew what dead was. At least I used to know.
This is not to say back in the day, years before the War I'd never gotten spooked. One night after a visitation, I had to drive a baby from one of our satellite locations back to the main funeral home. I'd just started working there, and I admit it, while driving that van in the dark, I looked over my shoulder at that little blue casket more than once.
I recall one time the coroner's office calling us to say they were just about finished with an autopsy, or as our lingo, the "post' – short for postmortem autopsy. The morgue attendant was sewing up the last of the Y shaped incision on the body when I arrived. That alone was all the proof one need to know that this body was dead – I used to joke that if you were unsure someone was dead, an autopsy would make certain of it. The pathologists would take all the organs out to slice, dice, measure, weigh and take samples to test; then the assistant would place the viscera into a black garbage bag and place that in the body's cavity. That reminds me, you know, our county coroner used to always do head posts, that is remove and examine the brain, every time they did a post. That changed later though, I don't know if it was due to budget restraints or maybe figuring out that it wasn't always necessary, but after a while head posts weren't nearly as common. And after that, they even stopped doing posts altogether on some suicides and traffics. They would just take blood samples and maybe an X-ray. I don't know, maybe, just maybe if they had continued doing head-posts…That might have slowed things down in the beginning...Maybe given us just a little more time, you know what I mean?
[Brad clears his throat and quietly stares at his hands. Then he starts speaking quickly again.]
So, back to my story. The decedent is sewn up, I take the canvas cover off my gurney, drop it on the floor, unbuckle the two restraints, put on my latex gloves, open up the white sheet and lay it over the gurney. The morgue attendant and I pull the body off the stainless steel table and onto my gurney, and I pull up the sides of the sheet to wrap the body. I buckle the restraints, and bend down to get the cover. I glance over at the sheet covered body, which at this moment is at face level and just inches from me, and the body starts to roll towards me. Not falling off, but rolling to the side like someone would do when getting out of bed! Remember, I just saw this guy getting sewn up, there's no doubt he's dead. What I slowly realized as I straightened up was that it was just gravity, making his left shoulder settle down, and from my lowered vantage point, it gave the body the illusion of rolling over. I wasn't scared, it was more of a "Say what?" reaction. If I was a dog, my head would have been at an angle, you know?
[He tilts his head and blinks.]
Another time I was in the funeral home prep-room, leaning into a casket, making some final adjustments to a pins on a biker guy's vest. As I'm doing this, he starts vibrating. This time I'm startled, I let go of the vest, and step back a foot or three. I then realize that it's just my pager going off. This was the early nineties, and we carried those big pagers on our belts, remember those? My wife was paging me.
[He laughs quietly.]
To hear her tell the story, I screamed louder than a girl with white lipstick at a Beatles concert. But I was the only witness and I tell you I did not scream.
[By the time he gets to the word "scream", Brad is speaking just above a whisper. He's quiet and slowly his forced smile goes away, as he spins a thick silver wedding band on his finger. His eyes start to water up.]
You know, she really could make me laugh. She was one of the "normal" people I'd met, who didn't think my job was strange. She rode shotgun with me to direct some out of town graveside funerals, and even went on a couple of removals. She used to joke that she'd always dreamt of meeting Mr. Right and living in an apartment above a Funeral Home. But even in my worse nightmares, I'd never dreamt that I would end up pulling her on to a gurney.