- The 405 will NEVER be my friend, but the 91 has stepped up and decided to play nice.
- The slow lane, which is one of 5-6 lanes down here instead of the 2 I'm used to, consists of going about 75mph. Any slower than that and people are chomping at the bit to give you the finger.
- Long Beach is a huge dog city! I had no idea how many people owned dogs here. I literally can't turn a corner without seeing someone new walking a dog, if not 2 dogs. The best part is that I've seen a ton of well taken care of Pitbulls and many mutts. The best has been seeing extremely large and ganster looking men walking various forms of Chihuahua and Poodle mixes. It warms my heart.
- As my friend Schyler explained, Long Beach has the highest population of Cambodians outside of Cambodia and let me tell you, I appreciate that. My apartment required I get my own refrigerator or rent one from the management company. I chose to buy my own and "Cambodia Town" as the street sign said has an awesome second hand appliance store with $25 delivery charge. Thank you Cambodia for my giant $250 refrigerator!
So, on to the whole reason I'm here in the first place: school. This has been some week. Although I am already feeling the stress of the workload, I am much calmer about how this program is going to go. I found my little route to school, found my usual parking space and I have found my seat in class. It just so happens that it's right behind the huge projector and I can't see the board to save my life, but hey, creatures of habit die hard.
Our main focus in class this week in my Into to Funeral Service was removals. Although the funeral home I worked for rarely made removals themselves (we had a removal company that did it), it's still very important to know the proper procedures since you never know what type of funeral home you'll end up working for. And here, ladies and gentlemen, is where Mr. Randy Rescue takes center stage! Randy Rescue is 165lbs. of pure plastic (or some silicon type equivalent) who we had to practice removing and bringing to the mortuary (AKA, the table across the classroom). The instructor explained that our end goal is to know how to move a 250lbs+ body from the floor, the bed, the toilet, etc. BY OURSELVES and into back of the removal vehicle and off to the mortuary. Now, had this statement been made by one of the giant gangster men who walk their Chihuahuas in Long Beach I would have scoffed and rolled my eyes. Yes, easy for you to say/do. But no, this statement came from a woman who is about 5'1" and is quite robust to explain it politely. She had made plenty of these types of removals on her own and as she explains, it's all about geometry, physics and leverage. To me it equals tying to figure out how Stonehenge was created, but that's another story.
So here we walk into class in the morning and there's Randy Rescue on the floor, around the corner and literally wrapped around the corner itself. "Do it all by yourself," the instructor says. I should say that there are people in our class with specialties. Some have never stepped foot inside a funeral home nor seen a dead body and others have been in the industry for years and are now wanting to become licensed. We happen to have 2 young men who work for removal service companies contracted through various different funeral homes. Naturally these two jumped right up to "save" Randy and get him on the cot. Did you know that once the body is strapped onto the cot you can flip the cot up vertically and walk the deceased out of the house upright in dolly fashion? No? Well either did I. Here goes this guy strapping Randy in and then there goes Randy vertically and walked over to the "mortuary" table to be embalmed like Home Depot moves heavy appliances. It was amazing. I don't think I could have gotten Randy out of the yoga, wall hugging pose he was in nevermind delivering him UPS style to the other table. It was quite a day.
As the week progressed we really dove into the ethics of funeral service. There are such extensive laws and codes of conduct for funeral directors and embalmers to follow. It's a world that few will ever know. One of the most interesting discussions this week, among many, was the call to serve and what it truly means to serve a family. We learned that it's vital to understand all cultures and religions we come in contact with and if we don't know something about either of those then we need to study up. We can't judge a family based on religion, culture or their financial standing. What really becomes interesting is serving a family that you may not agree with morally. About 6 months ago I worked a funeral service for a neo-Nazi family. Except for the obvious, they were similar to other families I had worked with. Did I mention I was a Jew? No. Did I want to mention that fact along with many others? Of course, but I didn't. It was a learning experience to say the least.
What came up in class was the Boston marathon bomber. For those of you who don't know, the bomber was a 26 year old named Tamerlan Tsarnaev. He was ethnically Chechen-Avar and was religiously Muslim. A lot of Americans don't like Muslims and almost all Americans don't like murderers. This led to the problem after Tsarnaev was killed by police of who was going to take care of the body. Tsarnaev remained at the coroner's office for weeks in refrigeration because no funeral home was willing to take him. These funeral homes cited very valid reasons for not, such as fear of retaliation from the public in the form of vandalism and threats. Think Planned Parenthood here and what the people who work there have gone through in the past. Other funeral homes said that morally they would not serve the family because of the crime Tearnaev committed. Many did say however that they would be happy to cremate him since it's a huge slap in the face to his religion to do so. Revenge post-mortem was their goal.
The funeral director who did finally step up said that he was not taking the case out of respect for the individual, but out of respect for the profession and the reality that human remains need to be disposed of properly. The flip side of the situation is that if no funeral home had stepped up, the family who was willing to pay, would lose custody of the body and Tsarnaev would have become the responsibility of that county and labeled an indigent. Indigents are disposed of through public funds i.e. taxpayer's dollars. This is what happens to the homeless found under bridges who no one claims. Had this funeral director not take care of Tsarnaev, it would have been salt in the wound for the people of Boston who would have ended up paying for his disposition. Interesting how that works huh?
All in all it brought to light our morals and ethics not just as people but as future funeral directors. What would you have done?
Alright folks, now that the refrigerator is here I'm off to do some grocery shopping and work on my boat load of homework. More to come as the weeks progress. Keep smiling and staying alive : )
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