Hw # 50

Hi, my name is Tom Jokinken and the writer of book called Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker – in – Training. I had moved to Winnipeg to be in the same postal code as my wife where I worked at CBC radio at first, but I then decided to take a month’s leave to intern at a family – owned funeral home. This is where I was inspired to write this book and the whole reason why came to work there was because, I wanted to find out why we humans do certain things when some one dies and how we handle the body, the left overs. Neil the owner of this funeral home toured me around the first day, where I got to see the stillness of empty old ladies and the violence of retort. (Retort is where body are place to be cremated, number one retort deal with heavier bodies while number two retort preferred thin elderly bodies without much fat). After interning there for a few months I decided wanted to stay longer, so quit my job at CBC radio, starting a new life.

· “ Two rules for picking up a body at the hospital, known as a “removal”: (1) Make sure it’s the right one. This is business, when you shake it down to first principles, is the burial or cremation of the dead, two irreversible acts… (2) Never stop for food on the way back to the funeral home when you’re “carrying,” not even at a drive – thru. It’s bad for the brand, and is apt to put other drive thru – ers off doughnuts.” (Jokinken 1)

· There’s a time, from when someone dies to when they magically pop up at the funeral or the cemetery or as a bag of ashes, that remains a black hole, invisible to the rest of the world, and everyone’s happy with the arrangement. We in the funeral service cover the gap. People pay us to keep to ourselves what goes on there”. (Jokinken 5)

· “ … humans are the only ones who know they’re going to die and even worse, they know they know it, and it’s not something they can “unknow.” All they can do is distract themselves, briefly, like you might mask the smell of burnt food by spraying the kitchen with Lysol”. (Jokinken 7)

· “ Look at it this way: We evolved, beautifully, from monkeys into type – A control freaks, with a system (government, laws, religion, organized labor and technology) designed to overcome nature. And for the most part, we pulled it off. There are only two weak spots where chaos sneaks in, wild, wet and savage, reminding us we’re doomed animals: sex and death. So we devised taboos to deal with former, to take away its power, and ritual to weaken the chaotic impact of the latter”. (Jokinken 22)

· “ What matters is the physical fact of death. We need to see it to know it, touch its hair or hands, feel how cold it is… If you don’t see the body, it’s as if it was lost at sea and you can harbor dreams that your loved one is still alive on some desert island with a coconut tree sending messages in bottles like in a New Yorker cartoon”. (Jokinken 86)

This text has a tone of lightness when talking of death and deathcare, making reader even laugh at these topics with a joke author makes like the one he says about bringing body along when going through a drive - thru is a definite no no because it would give the place a bad name. Letting me, the reader imagine this happening, how all the cars behind his would swerve around and leave with sick stomaches instead of a full one of doughnuts. His detail of the rituals being done to dead bodies for example the one of him watching the bodies being places in the retorts to be cremated were gruesome and violent for the reader, how the body becomes simply human dust and pieces of bone. It was sad during the scene where he is helping dress the dead old ladies, because they were well groomed it was hard to believe they were empty, goners when author believes they would rather be sitting on their couch watching Wheel of Fortune. It made think of how one day I'll be in this position of being prepped for burial, laying lifeless when I'd rather not be... Well so far after reading first third of the book, I am enjoying the book.