Wunderkind

Bloody Wunderkind is here again!  If I’ve told my dad once, I’ve told him a thousand times, no one, but no one wants him here.  Burrells’ Funeral Home (come in for a rest, you know you’ve deserved it!) is not the place for him.  Besides, it’s hard to appreciate his smart mouth when you’re working.

First job is to check your client is actually dead.  Urban myth-like it might sound, but it has happened that someone has suddenly sat bolt upright on the cold slab.  I’m telling you, the hassle of explaining why you’re standing there with an ice pick and cranial saw is not worth any amount of money you might earn.

One check isn’t good enough though, for Wunderkind. “Have you confirmed that the client can speak?  Is he forming cogent sentences?  What about his diction and choice of words?  And his grammar – what’s that like?”  Pedantic, know it all.

Next thing is the identification of the client and ensuring that the name on the toe tag matches the record of the deceased.  Again it might sound obvious, but if the name on the clipboard is Mabel Fairweather, and the toe tag (and in fact the toe) suggests Herbert Pugh, then there’s likely to be something of a discrepancy.

Wunderkind queers the pitch, however.  “What about gender realignment?  A criminal alias?  Or even a nom de plume?  I think you’ll find that Mabel Fairweather and Herbert Pugh are one and the same person!” Da da dah, the big reveal…and Sherlock Holmes-like, he smiles...superciliously.

After that comes the draining and embalming, or drainbalming, as we like to call it in the trade.  Fluids out through the carotid artery, and formaldehyde and ethanol solution in through the jugular.  Then, a massaging through of the solution to get the pose and the features natural.  Sorry to talk shop, it’s just that the business of death is an art, man, an art.

Not that Wunderkind sees my work that way.  “No, I’m not convinced.  He looks – how can I put it? – a little stiff.  A little tableau mort.”  Pretentious bastard!  I’d like to see him create the silk purses out of some of the proverbial starting points I do.

Then we’re on to the makeup, or cossetting as it’s known.  The better the photograph you have of the client in life, the more of that life you can recreate on his or her face now.  You set the features in the embalming stage, but it’s the makeup that covers up a multitude of sins and brings the pizzazz.  A soothing memory picture (oops, there goes the trade talk again) for the client’s loved ones.

But wouldn’t you just know it, Wunderkind has a take on this.  “Please, a memory picture?  Granted, the photo shows he was no looker in his prime, but that (air bunnies) memory picture makes me want to take to drink to forget it. And if we’re really honest with ourselves, isn’t this whole damn process not about soothing anyone, but about lining your rather deep pockets with the clients’ loved ones’ wonga?”  Oh, but does the harshness of Wunderkind know no bounds?  Nor his lack of gratitude to the family that raised him?

And so to the dressing of the client.  Over time, this has become more relaxed, less uptight if you will.  Everything is still slashed down the back for ease of putting on, but the suits and twin sets of old are being replaced with what the client might have actually worn in day to day life.  The jeans, the trackies, even the onesies - perish the thought.  My dad doesn’t approve, but I say you have to move with the times and after all, you’re a long time looking at the lid.

And Wunderkind? Well.  “Houston calling, Houston calling.  Do you honestly think anyone – in life or death – would wear that shirt with those trousers?  I think not!  Blue and green should never be seen.  Green and blue will never do!”

Sometimes, Wunderkind just wears me out; as if the job isn’t hard enough in the first place.  In fact, I’m done with him now, sitting there, staring and judging, berating me about the nomenclature of coffins.  “Ahem.  A casket is tapered hexagonal, a coffin is rectangular.”  The pious, sanctimonious, smug, pernickety, prissy thing.

His kind might have crept into the crypt, crapped and crept out again; but I’m going to take the law into my own hands, put my toes under his arse and punt him out of the funeral home.  Wunderkind, that fucking, fucking cat.

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