The Undertaker's Complaint by Phillip Donnelly

D., the undertaker, was of the opinion that death was not what it used to be. 

He had been in the business of selling death all his life, and although the market was still healthy enough -- since people continued to die, recession or no -- he still felt that recent advances in science had robbed the profession of some of its dignity. Death was no longer spiritual, but medical. 

He was also worried that the death of God had taken all gravitas from his ancient vocation. Few of his current clients seemed to expect the cadavers they entrusted him with to rise again at the last trumpet call. The dead, he feared, would soon become nothing more than waste to be managed. Where was the VITAE ETERNUM in waste management?

He was also slowly coming to the conclusion, only ten years from retirement, that his choice of career had been a mistake, that spending a life in the company of the dead had robbed him of his birthright, his life.

Alone in his funeral parlour, to the ticking of the grandfather clock, as a haggard autumn aged and fell, he entertained himself with fantasies of what his life might have been like had he done something different with it. He could have been many things, he thought, if only he had not inherited the business from his father -- that dour man, that shadow creature.

Dong! Dong! And ten dongs more. The clock rang in midday, as it had done every day, for as long as he could remember.  He hated the clock, he hated the deep-pile carpet, he hated the dark brown wooden furniture. He let his eyes run around the room, looking for something he did not hate, but there was nothing.

“We are doomed by the choices we do not make,” he said to the grandfather clock, which was accustomed to suffer his observations on the ringing of the hour.

Perhaps he should have gone to university and studied literature, he thought, tapping his silver pen in vexation on the oak counter, wondering why he had let his mother talk him into taking over the business on the death of his father.

He rifled through his life’s memories, a chest little-stocked, looking for a point where he might have made a different decision, a decision that would have changed his life. Unable to find one, he paced up and down the parlour, his form only dimly visible from outside, through the smoked glass of the windows.

His ruminations were interrupted by the ring of a bell which told him that someone was entering the funeral parlour. He nodded solemnly to her while walking backwards to resume his place behind the counter. 

Instinctively, he hid the trade paper he had been doodling on, folding into it the bitter aftertaste of his life unlived, and with more difficulty than usual, he made his face take on an air of calm consolation. In his trade, he felt, it was essential to maintain decorum at all times. Histrionics were for the friends and relatives of the deceased -- who had paid dearly for this privilege -- but the undertaker had to remain above emotion and be as serene as the cadaver.

 The woman wore a disheveled white dress and a great deal of make-up. Under the powder and the paste, it was hard to discern her age, but it was broadly similar to his own, the early fifties, but time had been even less kind to her than to him. She was thin and gaunt and there was something of the bat about her: the stretched skin, the hanging jowls, the shrunken lips and protruding teeth. 

The woman was also wearing dark sunglasses, a wide-brimmed hat and most important of all, a wedding ring.  The undertaker immediately classified her as an eccentric widow, his least favourite type of client, owing to their unpredictability and their penchant for talking incessantly on their late husband’s quirks, routines and foibles. The recently bereaved, of course, talked incessantly of the lost one, as if these words might resurrect them, but widows in their fifties talked most of all; and given the opportunity, they would talk until the end of time, rather than the face the solitary butt end of a life that awaited them.

She approached him and he noted how unstable she was on her feet. He wondered if she was a little drunk and disliked her even more. His distaste increased yet further when she was near enough to smell, as she clearly had not bathed in quite some time, and the perfume she wore to mask this somehow only accentuated it.

“Good afternoon, madam. How may I be of assistance?” he asked, holding the palms of his hands together and tilting his head slightly.

“I wish to make a complaint,” she said imperiously.

Her shrill voice make the hair on the back of the undertaker’s neck stand on end, but he maintained exactly the same professional demeanour.

“I’m sorry to hear that, madam. May I enquire as to the exact nature of your query?”

“It’s not a query, it’s a complaint.”

“Indeed, madam, but might I be so bold as to ask for more particulars?”

“I’m not satisfied.”

“Yes, madam.”

“No, sir.”

“No, madam.”

“No, sir. Not satisfied at all. It won’t do, I tell you. It won’t do.”

“What ‘won’t do’, madam?”

“This won’t do! I’m not happy.”

There was a small pause while D. waited for the anger within him to subside. He wanted to rail against the woman and tell her that he wasn’t happy either, that no-one he knew was happy, that the only time he ever saw happy people was at the end of American movies.

His bile was partly due to his melancholy mood, of course, but even apart from that, there was something truly repellent about this customer, something altogether unnatural, and D. hated her with a passion that was not part of his nature. 

But funeral parlours cannot reserve the the right to refuse admission. ‘We all have the right to die,’ his father had told him, with a smile, or as near as he could come to one. 

“Madam, I trust you will forgive my bluntness, but I would be more able to address this egress if I had more to assess.”

“What?!” the woman shrieked. “Speak English, sir! Are you a foreigner?”

“No, madam. What is wrong, madam? What is your ‘complaint’?”

“I’m not happy!”

In D.’s mind, he picked up a nearby brass paperweight and smashed it into the woman’s skull. The violence of the image shocked him, for he was not a man given to violent imagery, or imagery of any kind, for that matter. Even his dreams were mundane and rarely went beyond the quotidian. In the dream of the night before, for example, he had gone to the supermarket and completed his weekly shopping, all without incident.

“Not happy with what, madam?” he persisted, looking her straight in the face for the first time and managing, only just, not to wince at the tautness of her skin and its glistening complexion.

“My coffin.”

“Your coffin?”

“Yes, my coffin! Why do you keep repeating everything that I say? Are you a simpleton?”

“No, madam. What seems to be the problem with your coffin?” he asked her quickly, unable to remember having ever met her before, let alone having sold her a coffin.

“It’s not the right size. Far too small. You can’t even sit upright in it! I want to exchange it for a larger model. I want a deluxe coffin, and one with a modern entertainment system, like they have on aeroplanes nowadays.”

“You want a TV in your coffin?” he asked, hiding the incredulity in his voice.

“Oh really, my good man. If I have to repeat myself to you one more time, I really will have to speak to the manager.”

“That won’t be necessary, madam. But I might be better able to satisfy your needs if I knew why you wanted a television in your coffin.”

“There’s not a lot to do when you’re dead, you know, and there’s all the time in the world to do it in. Death is longer than any cruise, you know.”

“Yes madam, I know.”

“No, sir, you don’t know. You’re still alive!” the woman spat, stomping her fist on the desk.

The undertaker looked at the stretched skin on her hand and saw what it was that had been troubling him since the woman had first entered his funeral parlour.  What he had mistaken for old age, poor posture and infrequent bathing, was, in fact, the result of a poorly executed embalming procedure. And that smell, he now realised, was not the microbial effluent of living sweat, but the acrid fumes of leaking formaldehyde.

The undertaker took a sharp intake of breath and tried to calm himself. This, he knew, could spell the End of Days his father had prophesised.

Since embalming was not common in England, he outsourced all such requests to another firm, one which had recently been closed down for using unqualified staff, and all of them illegal immigrants. The Undertaker’s Digest had also hinted at the perpetration of ‘arcane practices of an unseemly nature’. 

This woman, he realised, must have been referred there for embalming, but the workmanship was clearly shoddy, and he feared that his own funeral parlour might be held responsible. A lawsuit of this magnitude, he realised, could be crippling.

The woman dragged her clenched fist from the counter, which make a squeaking sound, since the force of her blow had ruptured the skin around one of her knuckles and fluid was trickling from it. This worried the undertaker greatly because he knew that formaldehyde stained wooden surfaces, but he fought back the desire to clean it immediately, feeling that it would upset this most difficult of clients.

She did not seem to notice that she was leaking and began to speak again.

“What I want to know is why there is no entertainment provided!”

“Well madam, death is a time for repose, a time for…”

“I’ve never been so bored in all my life!”

“Quite, madam, but we’ve had no complaints before. The dead have been perfectly happy with our services up until now…”

“Well times are changing, sir. We’re setting up a Resident’s Committee at the cemetery, I’ll have you know. The dead worm has turned!”

“Indeed, madam. One must air ones grievances, but…”

“And some kind of ventilation system needs to be set up down there.” 

“But you don’t breathe, madam. The dead don’t breathe.”

This was just as well, he thought. If she did breathe the movement of her chest could only increase the rate at which she was losing bodily fluids. Even as it was, her smell was becoming quite overpowering and starting to make his head spin. And then there was the damage to the carpets to be considered.

“I am well aware of what the dead do and don’t do, sir. I am, as you should have noticed in your professional capacity, quite, quite dead.”

“Yes, madam, I am aware of that.” 

“And are you aware of how badly a coffin smells after a few days, sir? Do they teach you that in funeral school? I demand that Air Conditioning and a shower be installed down there, toute suite!”

“But that really isn’t a standard part of our funeral service, madam,” he replied. 

“Well, why not?! What kind of customer service is that? Dead people have rights too, you know! No-one ever thinks of the needs of the dead AFTER burial. What about some post-mortem care, that’s what I say?!”

The undertaker wondered if his company should begin to offer a ‘deluxe package’ of some kind, offering all the services the woman had requested. In this way, he saw, a monthly charge could be exacted, leading to a more steady income. One of the downsides to the funeral trade was the absence of repeat business, since the dead only die once, or so he had always believed. 

He made a mental note to sketch out some financial models later and then returned his attention to his erstwhile and yet current client. 

She droned on.

“…just like my husband. And that’s another thing. I want him to be relocated to another part of the cemetery. I couldn’t put up with him when he was alive and I’m damn well not going to put up with him now he’s dead. I want a divorce!”

“But the dead don’t divorce, madam. It’s simply not done.”

“Will you stop telling me what cannot be done and start to do something!  My late husband has been tom-catting around with every shrouded harlot he can lay his decomposing hands on and I intend to divorce him. I have grounds, sir. Now, please instruct your lawyers to begin legal proceedings at once. I tell you again, sir, that I am not happy with your service and I insist that you take immediate action.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, madam. We always strive to deliver a high-quality service.”

“Well, you haven’t, have you? I’m a paying customer and I am not happy with my accommodation. And I shall, of course, expect the coffin improvements I require to be free-of-charge. The dead have no discernable income, I’m afraid, and all my savings were eaten up by death taxes and medical bills.”

The woman who was staining his carpet, he now realised, was a penniless deadbeat, and any of her future funeral expenses would be at the charge of the state. His funeral home did not deal in that kind of business. Moreover, she would therefore not possess the financial wherewithal to employ a lawyer, so he need not worry about an embalming lawsuit. The dead, he was sure, could not qualify for legal aid. 

He determined to be rid of her as soon as possible. 

“Ah, well, madam. I’m afraid all sales are final and we have a strict policy of no-refunds.”

“I’m not asking for a refund. I want better after-sales service.”

“Yes, but if you check the small print in your contract, madam, you’ll see that our services clearly end at burial. You should, perhaps, enquire at the Cemetery Maintenance and Surveillance Department. This really is their concern, you know.”

“But the Cemetery Maintenance and Surveillance Department sent me to the Department of Health, and they sent me to the Morgue, and they sent me to the Church, and they sent me here. I’ve been running from pillar to post all day, and in my condition, that’s not an easy business. Do you know how uncomfortable corpse life can be, sir? Do you? Do you know the pain of death?!”

“Well, of course not, madam, but…”

“But nothing! Life is wasted on the living, I tell you. Wasted!”

“Forgive my brusqueness, madam, but I really must insist you return to the Cemetery Maintenance and Surveillance Department and lodge an official housing improvement claim with them. It’s a CMSD matter and has nothing to do with my funeral parlour. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other pressing matters to attend to.”

The undertaker busied himself with shuffling some officious papers, and losing heart, the woman creaked her way towards the door and hobbled out of the funeral parlour. 

“You’ll be dead too one day, you know. See how you like it!” she said, before slamming the door.

When she was gone he cleaned his counter and inspected the damage to his carpet, which took less time to clean than he had feared, unlike the smell, which lingered for days.

The grandfather clock struck one and the undertaker spoke to it.

“Bloody dead people -- never satisfied anymore. When I was young, dead people were different. Death isn’t what it used to be.”