The Hum

An unlikely comfort

Each morning, I’d head straight to the mortuary register by the coolroom door to see who the crew had brought in overnight. It was my way of greeting the dead each day too, poking my head inside a moment, the arctic air waking me faster than any double-shot espresso served in the staff room. A whiteboard was fastened on the outside of the mortuary door, listing the deceased by surname, given nane and shelf number. One particular morning, I noticed rather an odd name recorded.

Surname: Roach.

Given name: Cock.

Shelf: 6.

Curious, I popped on some shoe covers and headed towards shelf number six. Although surrounded with the dead, I couldn’t help laughing my lungs raw when I saw a dead cockroach on the human-sized metal tray. Lying on its back, its tiny legs curled up towards the ceiling.

‘Hard transfer that one!’ Al*, a rosy-cheeked funeral director whom was one of my closest pals, laughed from behind. I turned to find him poking his head into the coolroom with his signature goofy smile. ‘Flight of stairs and all!’

Together we laughed and laughed and I stepped back out into the world of the living, pulling the door closed behind me. ‘Ah, you gotta laugh.’ He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and we started towards to the staff room for coffee. ‘Otherwise we’d all go mad.’

♡

Making new friends as an adult is hard enough, without throwing the word ‘mortician’ in the mix. When meeting new people, a common question I’d get asked was, ‘So, do you see anyone? About it?’ It, referring to death. Everyone assumes that to work with the dead there must be a part of us that is mad, and our spare time is spent in the office of a psychologist. Perhaps they’re right. Maybe we are a little mad, but we’re all mad together.

Funeral directors are a family. We needed no therapy because we had one another. Hugs in spades, jokes on everyone’s lips to lift dismal days, water fights while cleaning hearses. We were a tribe with the coolest vibe.

When I first entered the funeral profession, I found it odd that so many funeral directors within the company were either married to one another or dating each other. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Do they not realise there is a world outside of the funeral home?’

But the longer I worked in the industry the more I got it. It’s hard to share the events of your workday with someone who has never voluntarily stepped inside a funeral home. ‘How was your day today?’ is usually met with something along the lines of: “Well, where do I start? The young boy who got run over by a tractor, or the brain I held onto while assisting the mortician with a head reconstruction?’ Even if family, friends and/or partner were generally interested in the gore, they simply could not understand the specialness of it all. It is near impossible to describe how precious the job of a funeral director really is. So I began to understand why death care professionals formed romantic connections with one another as well as unbreakable friendships.

Al* and Mack* were truly very special blokes to me. Wonderful big fellows with belly laughs and a wealth of funeral industry experience under their belts, they helped shape me into the funeral director I was to become.

But as well as the funeral family, there was one other element that meant a lot to me. And it wasn’t a person.

♡

Walking into the operations facility each morning, I was met with the blended fragrance of pinewood coffins, mortuary chemicals and tyre shine, with the droning hum of the body fridge as the soundtrack. It was beautiful. Death has a smell that becomes rather sweet to a funeral director after some time. It doesn’t warrant Vicks VapoRub slicked beneath the nose like you see in movies. I can’t exactly describe the scent, but fellow funeral directors know the smell I’m speaking of. It becomes part of your day.

But it was the deep droning hum punctuating the background of the workday that was very special to me.

Hum...huumm...huuuummm.

All day and night, the coolroom storing the dead hummed and hummed and hummed. It reminded the living that we were side by side with the dead and to me, the hum was sacred. There were times while going about my day when my own mortality struck and halted me, hammer in hand while fastening handles onto a coffin. I am going to die, panic! Then, like a form of meditation, I'd close my eyes and listen to the hum.

Hum...huuumm...huuuuummmmmm....

I felt an invisible hug.

I would never be alone in death. The coolroom at every funeral home I worked at, housed many bodie at a time, so I'd always have a friend. A slumber party, side by side in the big cold room.

Us funeral directors, we didnt need therapy.

We had daily reminder of mortality. Endless coffee and leftover catering food. We had banter, and the coolroom hum.