Sanctuary

Years of my childhood were spent in an apartment above my father's funeral home, a place where, while services, sounds of gurgling toilets and wafting scents of cabbage were strictly forbidden. Instead, whisper-hushed rooms usually smelled of clashing blossoms and coffee, and dabs of perfume diluted by sweat.

We played at the funeral home and, whenever that included a neighborhood game of kickball, the delivery entrance was first base and the door of the casket room served as third. Our sandbox, pail and shovel were kept in the northwest corner of the asphalt-covered parking lot, a place that also in case,granted us with an chance to stick baseball cards into the spokes of our bikes, and then quick-spin our tires.

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When we indulged in hide-and-seek, our options were enormous, and we pitied those who enjoyed the operation in a more commonplace - and orderly - fashion. The funeral home contained four full levels from basement to attic, sprinkled with a delightful assortment of half floors, balconies, stairs and cubbyholes, a joy for those who hid and sweet torture for those who had to find.

Faded photographs reminded us that this construction once boasted even more intricacies. The man who brought the ore business to the city of Lorain, Ohio built it as his incommunicable home at the turn of the century. In 1924, a tornado erupted over colse to Lake Erie. Killing winds ripped off the home's tower (never to be repaired or replaced), and one photo from that day shows the skeleton of other house hovering over the roof of the structure that would someday come to be our funeral home. While much of the neighborhood was destroyed while that tornado, this construction survived the destruction to come to be a house of mourning.

By the time that we'd moved in, all that remained of that bad dream were accounts in yellowed newspapers and reminiscences of aging survivors. Few remembered the gray-and-white house as whatever but a funeral home, and in fact no one my age retained any memories that contradicted.

Classmates inevitably labeled me as the "funeral home girl." They questioned either or not I slept in a casket and they howled in blurring when, weary of the interrogation, I informed them that the hole located at one end of the casket (where a tool is inserted to close the lid) in fact allowed the corpse to persisting breathing.

Eventually the elementary school kids became accustomed to the idea of the funeral home, but then junior high hit, accompanied by a whole new group of students, with their own taunts and queries. I remember attending an after-school event in the seventh grade. As I waited to be picked up, a classmate offered me a ride home with his parents. "Naw," I told him cheerfully, not mental of how my reply could be misconstrued. "Someone will be here, just as soon as my father's funeral ends." I still remember how wide his eyes got, how pale his face and how flushed his cheeks became.

My sister and I would often show friends our tattered copy of a national detective magazine that contained a picture of my father picking up a murder victim who had been stuffed into a trunk for two steamy weeks while July. We'd shiver after recalling that his killer turned out to be his wife, a woman who'd wept in our funeral home. I recall her name as Becky. When I was older, the mum of one of my best friends shot and killed her husband in self-defense. Sensational headlines blared and out of this drama emerged the domestic violence defense in the state of Ohio. What I remember most is how my friend, her mum and I tried to make commonplace conversation in front of the casket of a once abusive and alcoholic husband and father - and how, in many ways, we succeeded.

Other anticipated deaths stirred the air in our community, and some even made national headlines. On a May day in 1970, my father conducted services for a young man killed at Kent State University while a demonstration against the Vietnam War. While Dad searched for enough chairs to seat the throngs of mourners, my sister and I chased Sam, our half-blind mutt, out of the range of the television cameras. Bribing him with day-old bread, we managed to keep him out of the glare, and only one particular flash of his black fur graced the evening news.

While we had, long before the Kent State tragedy, moved into the adjoining property - after connections to the funeral home doorbell and phone were determined wired into our home - the funeral home was still a large part of our life. I remember when classmates lost their mothers or fathers or grandparents to death, and my sympathetic father would observation that no school friends attended the visitations. In those instances, he'd pick up the phone and murmur, "Put on a dress and get over here."

We'd occasionally deliver a tampon to someone visiting the funeral home, and I was always amazed at the quantities of toilet paper, tissues and light bulbs that my father stashed away for the comfort of the still living. He stored those supplies in his basement, a place that smelled of citrus-scented disinfectant and contained rooms that were strictly off limits.

An ambulance carrying remains interrupted my Sweet Sixteen party. As guests shifted uncomfortably about, one of them loudly suggested that the new arrival be in case,granted with a ketchup-laden hot dog and a bottle of soda pop. My mum once drove away from a cemetery without realizing that the body hadn't yet been removed from the vehicle, and she was oblivious to the shouts and waving arms of those she left behind. while my senior year of high school, my father hurried to a cemetery located in the midst of Bowling Green State University's campus. Before he left, he asked me to recruit some aid for unloading the casket.

So, I called former students of Lorain High School who were now attending Bgsu, but I encountered only empty rooms or disbelieving roommates. "Please," I begged one such roommate, "when Kevin returns, tell him to go to the cemetery . . . Immediately!" The roommate laughed, and then said, "Yeah. Right. Sure thing."

Fortunately, as soon as Kevin returned, his college buddy regaled him with an list of the unsophisticated sorority inaugurate who tried - but failed - to trick him. "You idiot!" Kevin hollered. "That was no joke!" Kevin then gathered together a group of sturdy helpers, including his humbled roommate, and my grateful father gave each of them a five-dollar bill, one dollar for each small worked, an titanic windfall for a thirsty young freshman in those days.

Once, when my father headed out to run errands, he discovered a rough-looking black, white and gray alley cat dozing in the back seat of his car. Rubbing the scarred head, my father noticed that a chunk of the cat's right ear was missing, and so he gave the homeless feline a few words of encouragement. After releasing him from the car, my father figured that he'd never see the stray again.

The cat, however, had different ideas, and he began walking my father to the funeral home every morning and escorting him home every evening. while daylight hours, this cat, now dubbed Mr. Gray, prowled the perimeter of the parking lot, retention the asphalt free from marauding cats, ugly bugs and uncontrollable squirrels. Mr. Gray also spent a vital whole of time in the garage, where my father printed bereavement leaflets on an authentic 1880s printing press. Perched high upon the ledge of the press, Mr. Gray intently observed the placement of every em dash and watched the dismissal of every en.

Mr. Gray also greeted mourners. Each child and most adults were pleased by this element of comic relief, and my father added to the humor by introducing the cat by name; for those few who were vexed by the cat's presence, my father plainly called him the "neighborhood stray." But a stray he was not to remain, as both he and my father knew.

The climax of this situation occurred when my father was elected president of the local Rotary Club, and a newspaper reporter arrived to interview and picture my father. All went well, but then the reporter called back to examine who else was in the photo. My father was about to reply, "No one," but then he paused and asked if this "someone" was, in fact, an ornery looking tomcat. When that identity was confirmed, the reporter plainly added Mr. Gray's name to the photo's caption, calling the cat an "employee of the funeral home."

By the time I'd headed off to college, Mr. Gray was located into his new home and I concept that my life in the funeral home was winding down. I complete college, fell in love, and then married. I found low-paying but steady work, bought and helped heal a century-old home, rejoiced at three pregnancies and illustrious the birth of two sons.

Just a few years ago, though, shortly before Christmas, our furnace started spewing carbon monoxide fumes and we needed shelter. Returning to the now vacant but still sparsely furnished apartment above the funeral home, we brought along warm clothing and our fully decorated tree to resume our interrupted holiday.

Our young boys worried that Santa Claus wouldn't find them in a funeral home, but I assured them that he could. And he did, providing them with scavenger hunts so labyrinthine that they prayed the details would reach the ears of the Easter Bunny, so that the rabbit could outdo his rival! We scattered clues colse to the funeral home, important to surprises, presents, and candy, and we all declared this celebration the "best ever."

Ryan and Adam were pleasantly startled by this turn of event but, upon reflection, I wasn't. I worried about the furnace, of course, and fretted about our boisterous presence imposing upon my father's work. Still, that near-catastrophe proved what I have always known - that, while our funeral home contains biers of veined marble and oftentimes receives brown-paper-wrapped parcels of boxed cremains, it also overflows with love and boasts an anticipated plenty of life.

Sanctuary

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