Georgia DeFoyer does not have a picture yet. She died last night. I’m writing her obituary right now. I know where she was born, the date she was married, her occupation, her parents’ names, but I do not know what she looks like, or frankly, who she is. My dad is meeting with her family at 10:00 today. It’s currently 8:48am and I am the only one here.
It’s kind of peaceful. I watch the sunrise tint the post office across the street a pale morning yellow. Cars drive down M-36, off to who knows where. I contemplate getting in my car and driving with them, until what surrounds me is mostly cornfields.
My dad owns this funeral home. He and his business partner run it together. Last May he asked me to come in and paint the chapel for him. I, needing money, said yes. They were understaffed at the time, so me hanging around there while I was painting I guess was like fresh meat to them. They asked if I would like a job in the office. I, not 100% sure I wanted the job, but unable to think of a good reason to say no, and I tried incredibly hard to think of one, have now worked here for five months.
I hear someone moving around in the back office. It’s Kevin. He comes and sits in the front office with me reading the paper.
The phone rings and my heart quickens, like it does every time it rings. I’m not great at talking to people in general, I’m even worse on the phone. It’s someone from Hillsdale Daily News. She’s calling about the obituary for Louis Karl, supposedly it was run without his picture, or the wrong picture or something, I don’t know. She talks fast and assumes I know what she’s talking about, but I really have no idea. It’s a balance between trying to comprehend what she’s saying and trying to respond to it in a way that doesn’t make me sound dumb as shit. She asks me what I want to do about the picture. I tell her, “I will have to ask Michelle, who runs the office. Is it okay if I give you a call back….Okay. Is there a number I can reach you at?…….Thank you….Yes, no problem. I’ll let you know…Thanks.. Bye…Buh-bye.”
I cringe when I say it. I hate “Buh-bye”. If I was an 80-year-old woman I would have no problem saying it, but I’m not and it sounds so stupid and foreign coming out of my mouth. I know the people on the other end of the line hear it and see right through my disingenuous cheeriness. But I have no other choice. I have to overcompensate because I don’t want to come off sounding rude. I hang up and see Devin pull up in the parking lot.
Kevin engages me in conversation. “It is the first day of fall,” he says as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world to him and he has the most knowledge about it. “Oh yeah,” I say realizing September is slipping away faster than I had noticed. At this point Devin walks in with his hands full. He’s awkwardly balancing his suit coat, lunch, and a mountain dew energy drink that I’m guessing is slightly toxic, and I get up and open the door that is locked for him.
Kevin tells me he has a meeting at 9:30 so to look out for his people. Kevin is not a funeral director, he helps people pre-arrange their funerals, so everything will be in place when they die. He technically works for PRECOA, a company that pre-arranges funerals or teaches people how to pre-arrange funerals. To be honest I’m not really sure. All I know is they send out advertising mail to people around town who think we are the ones sending it out. Sometimes they call us, seething, angry that they’re receiving this mail. One woman was livid.
“How dare you send this out at a time like this.” A time like this, she says meaning the pandemic we’re in. I understand her fear. We actually haven’t had a covid case since April though thankfully.We tell her we’ll have them take her off the mailing list.
I tell Kevin I’ll look for his people and he goes to the back office to get his paperwork in order.
Devin comes into the front office after dropping his stuff and making his coffee.
“Anything new?” he asks.
“Um.. There are arrangements at 10:00,” I say like I know what I’m talking about when I really have no clue.
“Ah yes, DeFoyer, DeFoyer,” he says. “DeFoyer is dead,” he looks at me and says; a joke he likes to make. He likes to point at their pictures and say, “That guy is dead.” A joke that wasn’t exactly funny the first time I heard him tell it five months ago, and isn’t exceptionally hilarious now, but I’ve learned to just smile and nod and say, “Yes, yes they are.” In a weird sort of way we’ve bonded over it.
I hear someone walk in the door and it is Anna. I start to get up but she already has her key out to unlock the door for herself.
“Hi!!” she says, walking into the front office, her hands jittering from the coffee she’s already had today.
“Hi,” I nod back.
“How are you today? How’s class goin’? Still reading those picture books?”
“Yeah, I guess I am,” I say smiling a cringey smile underneath my mask. One time I was reading a textbook that had pictures in it and now she everyday makes fun of me for my “picture books.”
Kevin comes back to the front office and asks if the people he’s meeting have shown up. I look at the time and it’s already 9:30, and they haven’t shown. I see a car pull up through the parking lot, and think it’s them, but it’s not its Michelle.
A load of stress comes off my shoulders. She walks in the office. “Hi honey,” she says to me, like I’m a child and I appreciate it. Michelle puts her things down and gets her coffee. I wait until she’s settled to ask her about Louis Karl’s picture, by then I’ve comprehended what the lady on the phone from the Hillsdale Daily News was asking and I already know what should be done about it, but I ask her anyway, just to double check. She tells me they should run the obituary again, then she starts to prepare for arrangements, getting the death certificate, and other documents ready and proofed.
The family of Georgia DeFoyer comes in and my dad meets them at the door. Arrangements are like surgery. My dad brings the family in and sits them down and begins to sew up their broken hearts. Healing is a process they have to choose for themselves, but he gives them the tools to do so. He comes out and sends in Michelle to get the nitty gritty, the admin stuff: proofing the obituary and the death certificate. They tag team, getting everything squared away. I am on the receiving end, in the waiting room, hearing half the back and forth conversations. I’m waiting to hear if I’m going to have something to do for the rest of the morning.
My main job, aside from answering phones, is to do all the printing. I make memorial cards, register books, thank you cards, all the signs with service information, etc., they also bring photos of their life that I make into a video they play at the service. Michelle comes back in and I anticipate what printing they have, but the family hasn’t brought in a picture yet, so I can’t make anything yet. I have nothing to do now, nothing to do but wait for the phone to ring.
Two weeks ago we were insanely busy. We had fourteen death calls within a four day span. There were so many bodies. I don’t often see the bodies of the people who have passed but that week I walked into one of the chapels for some reason, and there were five boxes, all lined up of bodies being taken to the crematory. I didn’t see their faces, the boxes were closed. I’m used to seeing one person laid out in a casket, usually before a service, that doesn’t phase me anymore, but to know five dead people are right in front of you, lined up in a row, is traumatizing. That week I had so much to do, a new printing assignment everyday. Everyone was overworked, praying no one else would die.
Last week the calls came to a grinding halt. When this happens, we clean the office, close the case files, and do all the little, less important organizational things. We get through all that pretty quickly though and as the days roll by with still no calls there is nothing to do. Last Saturday, I resorted to sorting push pins while waiting to answer a phone that never rang. This week Georgia DeFoyer is our first call, and I was anticipating having something to do, but I do not.
I sit there and wait, scrolling up and down through unimportant emails, trying to make it look like I’m doing something productive. The phone rings, and I see on the called ID its a number that calls all the time, that’s a scam call with no one on the other side. I always answer it anyway. They’re the only calls I don’t mind answering.
I sit there, as time goes by, doodling the deceased from their obituary pictures on our website, anxiously waiting for someone to call.
I putz around, unstraightening things are straightened then re-straightening them. No one else is very busy either. Once the rush of arrangements are over, there is not a lot to do compared to weeks prior. Anna comes into the front office to tell me she wants something added to her funeral arrangements. A popular topic of conversation here is our own funeral arrangements for when we die. Anna has her’s all planned out, but only in her head, she hasn’t made any real plans. Devin’s involves a giraffe and Victorian era mourning garb. Michelle is the only one who actually has hers planned out and pre-arranged with Kevin. As we’re discussing this, the phone rings.
It’s not a scam call, and I’m instantly anxious. It’s a woman with a sing-songy voice, that is scratchy now from being a little choked up. “My dad passed away, and I-I’m not really sure what to do or what happens now.”
“Oh, okay, I see,” I say, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“First I’m going to get some information from you if that’s okay,” I get all the information I need from her and she thanks me. I tell her a funeral director will call her within thirty minutes and tell her what is going to happen next. She thanks me again, and I hang up, pleased with myself that I didn’t let my anxiety get the better of me. I give the information to my dad, for him to call her within thirty minutes and I start writing a new obituary.
Ann Borek | September 22, 2020 | Hamburg, MI