My Life With Death

The eternal darkness of death comes to every human. Whether it is the miscarriage of an imperfect fertile egg, or the grim reaper coming to harvest our soul, we all enter into another world in an instant. It can happen at any time, from the moment of conception until well past the century mark. We all have our very own time to die.
During my thirty-two years as a licensed embalmer and funeral director, I’ve seen death first hand, almost on a daily basis, and I’ve seen nearly every kind of death imaginable. I’ve removed the dead bodies of those who died of natural causes, and I’ve had my hands on some of the most gruesome, and grotesque looking bodies imaginable.
The following story tells about my involvement with some of those dead human bodies, and their survivors. It contains my own thoughts, observations, and descriptions of when, how, and where death occurred. I try to relay my relationship to the circumstances, and to the part that I played in the removal and disposition of those bodies.
My intentions are to enlighten the reader about my profession: what we do, the odd hours we work, and to let you know that we in the funeral industry are humans, too. Some of what I write about is sad, some of it is humorous, and some of it is extremely gross.
Out of the thousands of experiences in my career with the injured, the dying, and the dead, these are the incidents that will forever be etched into my memory.
Even though some of the events I tell of here may not be chronological, these incidents did actually happen. Everything I say in this story is true. I have, however, given fictitious names to the many people and businesses that I mention in my story.

David J. VanBuskirk