“Are You Morbid?” —online quiz I spoke to morticians on the phone each day as though I ran a helpline for those who knew too much about grief to feel it. Some sounded like timid strangers in a quiet room as they rattled off their litanies of names. “Melody Anderson,” one would say, “age sixty-four, went to be with the Lord at St. Mary’s Hospital,” not stopping to joke—as we in the newsroom did— Jesus must have been waiting in the ICU, resting with a post-op morphine drip in the next room. Funeral directors found nothing funny— their job to comfort survivors, mine to get words right: names, children, spouses, special friends. I talked to plotters as though we were intimates ourselves, mourning over mass graves covered in newsprint black. One brought me a Christmas tin loaded with cookies the othe
Like the title says.