Last night was my first time being on call...for anything. If you're unfamiliar with the terminology, being 'on call' means that you physically do not need to be at work, but if someone calls the home for a body pick up you are the first to arrive to do the transfer.
Once I got home from working my first funeral I made sure that my phone was on the loudest setting as possible and charging by my head. So in the event of getting "The Call" I would promptly shit my pants and have a heart attack before leaping out of bed to get dressed. When a call does come in we need to dress in our funeral attire which is our basic everyday work clothes: black pants, shoes, and business jacket and a white button down shirt.
Because I had worked almost a 12 hour day on only 6 hours of sleep, I was dying to get to sleep but was too anxious because I was on call. Eventually I did fall asleep but I kept having this reoccurring nightmare that my phone magically shut itself off and I missed a call to do a pick up and inadvertently caused the zombie apocalypse because I had missed the call.
Thankfully I was never called in. Out of the 2.5 million Americans that die every year, apparently no one in the Milwaukee area died last night requiring our services...go figure.
So going into work today, I knew that I was not going to be working any services because we did not have any planned, that meant that I would be working 'normal' hours and could go home around 4;30 pm.
If I learn anything as an apprentice it will be some basic life skills like ironing Old Glory, washing cars, and pulling up weeds. I did all three of those things today. Not very exciting, but all very needed.
About 45 minutes before I was scheduled to leave David comes up to me and says that I will be going on a house call with him.
Wait.
Morticians that make house calls? ...to the living? ....not to pick up the dead?
Yeah. I was a bit concerned too.
But apparently the The Home likes to make personal house calls after the funeral to give the family any flowers, personal affects, and to go over our memorial book that we create for their dearly departed.
The family that David and I were visiting was Mr. G's family. Although David did not work the funeral (or meet the family prior to this moment) he was the one who had done the cosmetics on Mr. G. So when the family praised the work David just politely smiled and said thank you, not mentioning that he had done it. It was comforting to see that these ladies where so appreciative of the work that we had done even. They even said that they would recommend our home to any of their friends or family who would someday need our services.
After visiting the family, I realized that I am working for probably one of the best funeral homes in Milwaukee. I have a deep appreciation for the traditions that Jim and Jack uphold and that we strive to go that extra mile for the families that we work with. Yes I want to see the funeral industry change, and yes I would be more than thrilled if people decided to finally take ownership of their own dead instead of selling them to us (that is a blog topic for another time). But because we are not at the point yet in our society, I am glad that I work for a company that does honest work so that people can begin their grieving process.
So that was my second day on the job in a nutshell. Nothing terribly exciting, but all very important.
Until next time.
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