Friday, October 11

First job for me on a normal Friday morning is to strip the bed.  All the linen goes to the laundry and the rest is piled into the spare room.  When the cleaning lady arrives she gives the 'topper' a shake and puts on fresh linen; so all I have to is spread out the doona and the bed is ready for another week.  This morning, just after I had finished my part of the operation, the cleaner rang to say she wouldn't be coming until Monday!

If I had known earlier, we could have slept in the same sheets for another couple of nights and stripped the bed on Monday.  But now I'll have to remake the bed and that's the part of the operation I hate: especially tucking in the sheets .. not great on my back.  Of course, it could be worse; we might not have a cleaning lady at all and I'd be faced with this chore every week.

Marilyn has gone off for her walk and will be back soon for our third cup of coffee for the day ... and it's only 10 o'clock.  No wonder people complain that the days get longer as you get old.

I wrote the following bit about funeral directors as an exercise and it gave me a chance to use some big words, like 'dichotomy'.

When a hairdresser says he has had a good day, it is likely he is looking at the number of haircuts he provided, or that he had several new customers, so there was an increase in his income for that day.  Likewise, a greengrocer’s good day will involve the sale of more fruit and vegetables.  I think we all understand what is meant by ‘a good day’ and can feel pleased for the people who are enjoying one.

But what of the local funeral director?  If he is having a good day, does that mean his income has increased because he is burying more people?  If so, he is basing his good day on the increased number of people who have died.  There’s a direct correlation between the number of deaths and how happy the funeral director feels about it.

There’s no joy being a funeral director.  When he says, “I’m sorry for your loss” It is with the tacit understanding that he is, at the same time, happy about the consequent increase in his income.  There are some people who would find it hard to deal with that dichotomy: putting on an empathetic, sorrowful face while, underneath, their heart is singing with the thought of the extra dollars in the bank

In some way, you would have to compartmentalise your roles or, in other words, develop a split personality.  Psychiatrists, however, tell us that schizophrenia or ‘spilt personality’ is one of the major causes of mental health issues.  It’s an unusual person who can successfully keep apart two parts of their personality and they’re usually diagnosed as being psychopaths.

It’s a sobering thought, isn’t it, that your friendly neighbourhood funeral director might be an undiagnosed psychopath, like Adolf Hitler, or Pol Pot or Son of Sam?

Is it time for Do-it-Yourself Funerals which will allow you to cut out the, perhaps dangerous, middle man?