from my book Undertakings of an Undertaker; true stories of being laid to rest

Hi folks, here is one story from my recently published book, I hope you enjoy it..please feel to email me with any questions, comments etc . [email protected]. thanks, have a great day!

 

 

 

 

A Story Made for Thunderstorms

    There have been few times that I have actually witnessed something remarkable in the funeral business. Over the decades, I have been questioned by so many people who asked such things as, “Have you ever seen a body sit up?” or "Have you ever seen a ghost in the funeral home while at work or during an overnight thunderstorm?"

    The simple answer is no. These things are pretty much urban legends, passed on from generation to generation, and are subjects made into third rate or less TV movies. Funeral homes have always been the subject of potential scary movies made for kids. It's just natural I suppose. You have some caskets, many times a body in a preparation room, and always, always, the wind blowing, maybe a little thunder and lightning thrown in, all a recipe for some good late night TV.

    But one day, in broad daylight, I did experience an event which I would deem to be just a bit out of the ordinary. It was late afternoon at the funeral home. A gal in her forties, dressed smartly in a business suit, entered the funeral home unannounced and walked to my cherry desk where I was

seated. She placed in front of me a box I assumed to be cardboard, wrapped in brown paper with a string surrounding its perimeter.   

    "These are my mother’s ashes," she blurted. "They are in a vase which broke by itself, allowing her to seep out onto the shelf where I had the vase sitting."

    OK. This was going to be interesting. We exchanged pleasantries for a moment. She gave me the details of her mother’s passing several years ago, and how it was decided to keep the urn, not vase, at home instead of being buried. She went on to tell me that as she sat in silence one day at home reading a book, she heard what she described as someone running a fingernail over a chalkboard. She said it was very unusual, as there was no one else in the room, and there was no electronic media.

    Turning around to where the sound came from, she looked up and saw her mother’s urn in its usual place, but something around it seemed to suggest movement of some type. She arose from her chair and approached the urn. When she came within a foot of the urn, she noticed a crack from the midline to the top of the urn, and more disturbing, a small stream of ash that was seeping out of the

crack and onto the shelf itself. As she told me the story, I was trying to diagnose her comments and look for anything in her demeanor that would give me reason to doubt her narrative.

    "I wanted you to examine the vase, if you would, and give me your impressions of what could have caused this to happen," she said.

   "And has anything unusual happened since that day?" I asked her.

   She shook her head no.

    I reached over to the box, undid the aged yellowed string, and undid the outer paper wrapping, giving way to a brown box, which also showed some age. Standing up, I undid the flaps of the box, reached down and extracted the urn, which was dark violet in color and sporting a swirl of some design which was not painted on, but rather part of the glass blowing process, I assumed.

    Sitting the urn on the table squarely in front of her and only twenty inches or so from my vantage point, I did see some paper tape of some sort had been adhered to the glass from the midpoint to the top. She pointed to the tape with a well- manicured nail and said, "I taped it to keep any more ash from coming out." 

    "What would have caused that?" she queried.

    It was an older urn I explained, not purchased from us. After some questioning, I discovered that her Mom had died more than fifteen years ago, and the urn had sat in the same place since her death.

    "I only dust around it," she said, "but really haven’t moved it in years. I was always afraid I'd break it, and that would be horrible."

   I had no answers for her. The urn looked pretty normal. There was no indication that it had been mishandled in any way. I really couldn’t explain why it had happened to her.

   I asked her if she wanted to purchase a new urn, to which I could transfer the cremains into, but she declined.

   "No, I'll take her home with me, and think about maybe scattering her ashes in the next year or so.  She has been with me a long time now."

   At that moment, the phone rang, and I had to excuse myself into the next room to take the call. When I returned, the gal was now standing and had retreated a couple of feet from her chair. As I approached her, I saw that her right hand was raised over her mouth, a startled look on her face. I looked at the urn, still in the same position which I had placed it. There were very minute traces of ash now seeping out from the tape and onto the top of the cherry table.

   "Mother was an avid traveler during her life," the woman remarked, "Maybe she just doesn’t have it out of her system."

    I wrapped the urn in plastic, placed it back in the box, and the woman retreated out the door as quickly as she had entered. I never heard from her or saw her again. Was her story true? I had no reason to doubt her. Some things you just can't explain. You just have to save them for stories to be told during a late night thunderstorm…