I spent my childhood years in an apartment above my father’s funeral home, a place where, during services, the sound of gurgling toilets and wafting cabbage scents were strictly forbidden. Instead, the quiet rooms usually smelled of clashing flowers and coffee, and hints of perfume diluted by sweat.
We played at the funeral home, and as long as that included a neighborhood kickball game, the delivery entrance was first base and the coffin room door served as third. Our litter box, bucket, and shovel were kept in the northwest corner of the asphalt-covered parking lot, a spot that also provided an opportunity for us to put baseball cards on our bike spokes and then quickly spin our tires.
When we indulged in hiding, our options were huge and we pitied those who enjoyed the activity in a more ordinary and orderly way. The funeral home contained four entire levels from basement to attic, dotted with a delightful array of half-floors, balconies, staircases, and cubicles – a joy for those hiding and a sweet torture for those who had to find.
Faded photographs reminded us that this building once boasted even more complexities. The man who brought the mineral industry to the city of Lorain, Ohio, built it as his private home at the turn of the century. In 1924, a tornado broke out in nearby Lake Erie. Deadly winds tore the tower from the house (which will never be repaired or replaced), and a photo from that day shows the skeleton of another house floating above the roof of the structure that would one day become our funeral home. While much of the neighborhood was destroyed during that tornado, this building survived the destruction to become a house of mourning.
When we moved in, all that remained of that horror were accounts in yellowed newspapers and reminiscences of elderly survivors. Few remembered the gray and white house as anything more than a funeral home, and certainly no one my age had memories that contradicted it.
Classmates inevitably labeled me the “girl from the funeral home.” They questioned me whether or not I slept in a coffin and howled in confusion when, tired of the questioning, I informed them that the hole located at one end of the coffin (where a tool is inserted to close the lid) actually allowed the corpse. to keep breathing.
Eventually the elementary school kids got used to the idea of the funeral home, but then the middle school came along with a whole new group of students, with their own taunts and questions. I remember attending an extracurricular event in seventh grade. While I was waiting to be picked up, a classmate offered to take me home to his parents. “No,” I said cheerfully, not thinking about how my answer could be misinterpreted. “Someone will be here, as soon as my father’s funeral is over.” I still remember how wide her eyes were, how pale her face was, and how flushed her cheeks grew.
My sister and I used to show our friends our tattered copy of a national detective magazine that contained a photograph of my father picking up a murder victim who had been crammed into a trunk for two steaming weeks during the month of July. We shuddered to remember that his murderer turned out to be his wife, a woman who had cried at our funeral home. I remember her name as Becky. When I was older, the mother of one of my best friends shot and killed her husband in self-defense. Sensational headlines were heard and out of this drama came the defense against domestic violence in the state of Ohio. What I remember most is how my friend, her mother, and I tried to have a normal conversation in front of the coffin of a once abusive and alcoholic husband and father, and how, in many ways, we succeeded.
Other alarming deaths stirred the air in our community, and some even made national headlines. One day in May 1970, my father offered services to a murdered young man at Kent State University during a demonstration against the Vietnam War. While Dad searched for enough chairs to seat the crowd of mourners, my sister and I chased Sam, our half-blind pooch, out of reach of the television cameras. By bribing him with bread from the day before, we managed to keep him out of the glare, and only a flash of his black fur graced the evening news.
While long before the Kent State tragedy we moved into the adjoining property, after the connections to the funeral home doorbell and telephone were carefully connected to our home, the funeral home was still a big part of our life. I remember when classmates lost their mothers, fathers, or grandparents to death, and my understanding father would realize that no friends from school attended the visits. In those cases, she would pick up the phone and mutter, “Put on a dress and come here.”
Every now and then we would bring a tampon to someone who visited the funeral home, and I was always amazed at the amount of toilet paper, tissues, and light bulbs that my father kept for the comfort of those who still lived. He stored those supplies in his basement, a place that smelled of citrus-scented disinfectant and contained rooms that were strictly off limits.
An ambulance carrying remains interrupted my Sweet Sixteen party. As the guests shuffled uncomfortably, one of them loudly suggested that the newcomer be provided with a hot dog loaded with ketchup and a bottle of soda. Once my mother drove away from a cemetery not realizing that the body had not yet been removed from the vehicle and did not notice the screaming and flailing arms of those she left behind. During my senior year of high school, my father rushed to a cemetery located in the middle of the Bowling Green State University campus. Before he left, he asked me to get help unloading the coffin.
So, I called Lorain High School alumni now attending BGSU, but found only empty rooms or incredulous roommates. “Please,” I begged one of those roommates, “when Kevin gets back, tell him to go to the cemetery … Right away!” The roommate laughed and then said, “Yeah. Sure. Sure.”
Fortunately, as soon as Kevin returned, his college classmate gifted him with an account of the unsophisticated sorority initiate who tried, but failed, to trick him. “Moron!” Kevin Hollered. “That was not a joke!” Kevin then assembled a group of strong helpers, including his humble roommate, and my grateful father gave each of them a five-dollar bill, a dollar for every minute worked, a huge windfall for a thirsty freshman. in those days.
Once when my father was out on errands, he discovered a tough-looking black, white, and gray stray cat dozing in the back seat of his car. Rubbing the scarred head, my father noticed that a piece of the cat’s right ear was missing, so he gave the homeless feline a few words of encouragement. After getting him out of the car, my father thought he would never see the homeless man again.
The cat, however, had different ideas and began accompanying my father to the funeral home every morning and accompanying him home every night. During daylight hours, this cat, now nicknamed Mr. Gray, roamed the perimeter of the parking lot, keeping the asphalt free of marauding cats, ugly insects, and unruly squirrels. Mr. Gray also spent a considerable amount of time in the garage, where my father printed mourning brochures on an authentic printing press from the 1880s. Perched atop the press ledge, Mr. Gray carefully observed the location of each dash and observed the removal of each in.
Mr. Gray also greeted the mourners. All the children and most of the adults were pleased with this element of comic relief, and my father added humor by introducing the cat by name; for the few who were upset by the cat’s presence, my father simply called him the “neighborhood stray.” But a stray was not going to stay, as both he and my father knew.
The climax of this situation occurred when my father was elected president of the local Rotary Club and a newspaper reporter arrived to interview and photograph my father. Everything went well, but then the reporter called again to ask who else was in the photo. My father was about to reply, “Nobody,” but then he paused and asked if that “someone” was, in fact, a cranky-looking cat. When that identity was confirmed, the reporter simply added Mr. Gray’s name to the caption of the photo, calling the cat a “funeral home employee.”
By the time I went to college, Mr. Gray was settled in his new home and I thought my life at the funeral home was ending. I finished college, fell in love, and then got married. I found a stable but poorly paid job, bought and helped repair a century-old house, rejoiced with three pregnancies, and celebrated the birth of two children.
However, just a few years ago, shortly before Christmas, our furnace started spewing carbon monoxide fumes and we needed shelter. Returning to the now empty but still sparsely furnished apartment above the funeral home, we brought warm clothes and our fully decorated tree to resume our interrupted vacation.
Our young people were concerned that Santa Claus would not find them at a funeral home, but I assured them that he would. And he did, providing them with such labyrinthine treasure hunts that they prayed for the details to reach the ears of the Easter Bunny, so that the bunny could surpass his rival! We scattered clues around the funeral home, leading to surprises, gifts, and candy, and we all declared this celebration “the best ever.”
Ryan and Adam were pleasantly surprised by this turn of events, but come to think of it, I wasn’t. I was concerned about the oven, of course, and I was concerned that our boisterous presence would override my father’s work. Still, that near-catastrophe proved what I’ve always known: that while our funeral home contains marbled marble coffins and frequently receives packets of cream in boxes wrapped in brown paper, it is also brimming with love and an incredible abundance of life. .