Booker - Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner-City Funeral Home

NINE YEARS UNDER

NINE

YEARS

UNDER

COMING OF AGE IN
AN INNER-CITY FUNERAL HOME

SHERI BOOKER

GOTHAM BOOKS

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Copyright 2013 by Sheri Booker

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Booker, Sheri, author.

Nine years under : coming of age in an inner-city funeral home / Sheri Booker.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-62176-9

1. Undertakers and undertakingMarylandBaltimore. 2. Albert P. Wylie Funeral Home (Baltimore, Md.)Employees. I. Title.

HD9999.U53U5217 2013

338.473637509752dc23

2012049711

Designed by Spring Hoteling

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity.

In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers;

however, the story, the experiences,

and the words are the authors alone.

Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

For my mother, my hero and best friend

A human isnt fully mature until theyve had to grapple with death, and neither is a culture.

TOUR

THE custodian who controlled the thermostat for Baltimores summer heat was a smug son of a bitchrelentlessly unleashing lethal doses of sweltering humidity and dampness into the inner-city air. There was no way to dilute the blazing mixture.

Fired up like an open rotisserie, it roasted the skins of innocent bystandersgravediggers, policemen, and outdoor merchantsuntil they were a golden-brown delight. Those who could tolerate the unbearable heat were desperate for any sort of hydrationa fire hydrant, a frosted bottle of water from a street vendoror for God to at least have enough mercy on the city to let it rain.

I had stopped petitioning the heavens for miracles four days before, when my aunt Marys light went dark. My mother discovered her slumped figure just in time to see it gasping for its last taste of oxygen. We were now en route to see her remains for the first time since she was taken from me, and in just a few moments, I would be standing inside a building designed to transition corpses from lifeless organisms into living memories.

None of us should have been surprised, but eight wide eyes stared at Great-Great-Aunt Marys unresponsive body that horrible night. My parents, my sister, and I hovered around the bed where she lay slouched in an eternal slumber, her eyes shut tight and her body completely still. My father knew CPR; he was a policeman. And my sister had been certified in CPR for the camp where she worked that summer. But no one moved. As I stood there, the plush carpet shifted like sand beneath my bare toes and the walls of the room felt like they were closing in on me.

My home had felt foreign for weeks. The hospice nurse stacked the shelves with medical equipment, a few weeks supply of Depend adult diapers, morphine patches, bandages, and gauze. People were in and out all the time: nurses, visitors, and ministers back-to-back. If Aunt Mary had been in her right mind, she would have called it signifying or meddling in her business, but she hadnt been coherent for a while.

We watched her shrivel and shrink as the cancer consumed most of her body. The hospice nurse warned me to savor every moment because time was running out. She gave me a purple double-pocketed folder with booklets about preparing for death and what to do when your loved one has a terminal illness, but I shoved it into a drawer after her shift was over and didnt look at it until weeks after the funeral when we were cleaning out Aunt Marys room. Neither flowery folders with colorful brochures nor compassionate nurses can prepare you for the inevitable.

After weeks of hospice care and enough meds to tranquilize an army, Aunt Mary slipped through our fingers like twenty thousand dollars on a gamblers bad day. No little girl wants to stand by and witness her hero surrender. I wish someone had told me back then that hospice care was the beginning of the end. Then I wouldnt have blamed myself for not doing enough. I wouldnt have felt ignored by God.

I imagine Al Wylie and his son Brandon were at their kitchen table picking at a dozen well-seasoned Maryland crabs that night when the call came in. This was neither the first nor the last time they would get their hands dirty that day. It was the middle of June, just before the seasons changed shifts, the time of year when homicides and heatstrokes kept the two of them occupied. The call volume was steady and there was little time for entertaining friends, especially since they spent three or four mornings each week directing funerals and supervising burials, and most of their afternoons were busy with preparing human remains for viewing.

Later, Al and the new female apprentice he had just hired would strip down from their fancy suits into old jeans and long-sleeve shirts for a night of embalming. In the mornings, that same crab shack would be converted back into the staff cafeteria and lounge. No matter what time of day or night, one thing remained the same: Al Wylie was the boss, and the chair on the right side of the table was for him alone.

No one was ever surprised when Als pager went off in the middle of his spontaneous crab feasts. The sound of it buzzing was far too familiar. Death was just like a debt collector: It had no respect for the day or time when it called. The sound could sizzle in his pocket at his best friends wedding or shake the entire pew at church, but when death called, Al Wylie had to answer. He was always on call, and just like a doctor, hed excuse himself, check in with the operator, and graciously bow out of his activity.

Without even looking down at it, hed already know it was the answering service. When his volume of calls picked up, hed hired a twenty-four-hour live-call center that took his calls after business hours. They were the only ones who called this late in the evening. Many times he would be fast asleep when his pager began vibrating on the dresser. A call after midnight was usually for a body in a nursing home. Unlike hospitals, most nursing homes dont have refrigeration or a morgue where the body can be placed until morning.