When Death Calls

When Death Calls

By Kelly Varner

I graduated college in 2001 with a degree in Law Enforcement. I had decided in high school that this was the career path I wanted to take. I ran into problems getting hired on to a police department though because I had tried the drug LSD when I was in the eighth grade. I had never been caught or arrested or anything, it was just because they asked about any past drug use and I was honest. It wasn't until I was about 24 years old that I was finally hired on to the Sheriff's Department. I was excited but the years of trying and feeling down on myself to get to this point had me a bit discouraged. I was also pretty young still and the 7pm to 7am shift working in the jail was not appealing to me. I was still very social and valued my nights out at the bar drinking and dancing. Needless to say, I quit and tried a new venture.

After about four years working as a Courier for FedEx I went back to school. My favorite genre growing up was true crime and horror. I thought, I know what I could do that would fit me better. Mortuary Science! There, it was perfect. I could work in a funeral home! So back to school I went! I came to find out that it wasn't that easy getting into the funeral biz. Most funeral homes are owned and operated by families that have been doing it for many years. No one in my family works in this industry. My mom does medical billing and coding and my father, an independent sales representative. I was brave about trying new things so I went in full force. I've never been one to give up on something that I want. I poked around in the halls at school looking around for student jobs and internships and in the hallway where they hold most of the mortuary science classes, there was a bulletin board with open jobs. There it was, a small piece of paper pinned to the corkboard with a student position. I wrote down the information and from there I would embark on an unforgettable journey of what I call the other side of life-death.

There is a whole different world in the death industry. An anxious person by nature, I was hoping this wouldn't be a roadblock going forward. Why the hell was I choosing jobs or careers that would cause me anxiety? I'm not exactly a "thrill seeker" but doing something different, something out of the ordinary was appealing to me. This wasn't delivering a pair of shoes someone had ordered online, this was picking up someone who was deceased. Someone's family member and loved one. Someone's child, cousin, aunt, uncle, father, mother, grandparent, etc. This, was huge and so intriguing.

My boss, knowing I had a bit of anxiety, would let me know exactly what kind of call I was about to go on so that I could mentally prepare myself. After about six months on the job, nothing was shocking, the pages came in; name and address, and possibly how the death occurred but not as much as in the beginning. The hours kept were brutal, sixty hours a week, overnights, 7pm to 7am. The cool thing was that you were on an on call basis. You picked up the vehicle to use for the shift and if you were lucky, you could get home a rest for a few minutes. That was rare though. For the first few months I couldn't eat during my shift. I'd get hungry for sure, but something about eating and then getting a call to pick up a dead person that may have died in a messy way or had been dead for months and reeked of decomposition-which if you've never smelt, it's an odor you cannot describe and boy does it linger-was not something I wanted to endure. Eventually though, eating was no issue. It got to the point I could have two bodies on board and cruise through the taco bell drive thru with no problems, other than hoping the employees wouldn't happen to notice I had to gurney's in the back of my van. Had I become completely desensitized to death and how people die? Or was this just normal after doing something for a long period of time?

So then it came, the first pickup. Since there were so many calls, there were always two of us working a shift, each with two gurneys in the back of the vehicles. The text came in over my phone, "suicide, gunshot wound to the head, may be messy". Deep breath. Well, here we go! I plugged the address into the Garmin and headed out. My mind started going, the wheels turning and thoughts brewing. What was this going to look like? Can I handle seeing something like this? I mean, sure I've seen this on the movies. Hell, I grew up watching slasher films, they were my favorite. But this, this is real life. My chest started feeling kind of fluttery. Time to try and relax and listen to some tunes. Working myself up will only exacerbate the situation. I popped my eighties mix CD into the disc player. It was a pretty nice day outside, so I cracked the window down a bit and the crisp fall air hit my face with a little tap, there we go now, a little better. I reached over to grab a smoke and saw my fingers, which look like they've been through a damn shredder. If I wasn't smoking a cigarette I was biting my nails. Ever since I was a child, well, the nail biting part, not the smoking. My dad would tap my hand away from my mouth whenever he saw me gnawing on my fingers. Always a nervous kid I was. I lit my smoke and was singing along to the music, "my girl likes to party all the time, party all the time, party all the time", but still in the back of my mind was that damn anxiety. The music and smoking was only a minor distraction. My arrival time was getting sooner and sooner, most of our calls were in a twenty to thirty mile radius. I flicked my cigarette butt out of the window and turned down the stereo. I saw the checkered flag there on the screen letting me know I'd be "arriving at my destination" any minute now. As I pulled around the corner I saw several cars and the Medical Examiner vehicles. There was my partner's van too, I pulled in behind him and grabbed a pair of latex gloves out of the box on the passenger seat. He had already taken his gurney inside so he just needed me to help him move it-the body.

I took a deep breath as I walked up the porch and headed for the door. I grabbed the metal handle and gave it a turn. I think at this point I was more anxious about something happening to me in front of all these people. What if I pass out or something? That'd be embarrassing as hell, let's just move fast and get it over with. I'll feel better once it's done and I'm back out in the van. I walked in and there it was, just to my left, the remains of a human being who had taken his life. Not only was this a gunshot wound to the head, it was a shotgun wound to the head, so there was nothing left on this man from the shoulders up. My partner was holding a small red biohazard bag, he was picking up the pieces of skull and brain matter that were scattered across the room. These things go inside the body bag with the body. There was blood, oh my god there was so much blood, splattered all over the three windows behind the couch, up on the ceiling, and the front door. Just then one of the Medical Examiner's looked at me and said, "are you okay? You look kind of pale". Oh shit, someone can visibly see how much this is bothering me. I tried to play cool, "yeah, I'm fine, I just need a little air". I excused myself and went back outside to the van. Okay, I've got to collect myself, I'll be fine, I'll just not look at his head-or rather where his head used to be. Hoping my partner was done with his collecting of the skull and brain pieces, I headed back in to get this done. The man had been seated upright on the edge of the couch but the force of the shotgun blast blew his body back into a laying position. This whole thing was unreal to see in person. My partner laid the body bag next to the man and unzipped it. We both opened it up wide and he said, "I'll take this end if you'll get the feet end." Thank god, because I sure as hell didn't want to be up on his end. He's been doing this a long time and I was in awe of how comfortable he was. I focused only on this man's feet, I didn't want my eye's to wander from there because I didn't want that wave of anxiety to hit again. The man was wearing a tee shirt, jeans, and a pair of white sneakers, all splattered with dried blood. I wrapped my hands-donned in purple latex gloves- around his ankles, and on my partner's count we lifted the body up slightly and slid it over into the bag. My partner placed the small tied up biohazard bag in with the body near the feet then we zipped him up and that was it, our job was almost complete. Now we just load him up in the van and drop him off at the coroner's office.