a grave undertaking

It’s the type of thing that isn’t public knowledge. In fact, you could say that many people have taken this secret to the grave.

And back.

I would definitely take a bow for such a wonderful opening to a story but it’s really not of my doing. What you’re probably unaware of, unless you’re intimately involved in the funeral game, is that burial rites start long before you and your recently departed are involved.

Call it tradition, call it hazing, call it what you will, but what I’m about to impart to you has been going on since Ancient Egyptian times. Since taking care of the dead is our oldest profession (no offense to all you prostitutes) we’re talking thousands of years of this stuff going on.

What stuff am I referring to specifically?

I’m glad you asked.

Call them morticians, call them funeral directors, call them what you will, but before they can become a member of the world’s oldest profession they have to undergo a rite of passage so secret that the only place you’ll ever hear about it is right here on this website. I would ask you not to tell your friends about this website but after years and years of people not telling their friends about this website I apparently have nothing to worry about.

You’ll forgive me if I sound a little bit bitter but I know of websites dealing with cooking and cleaning that have thousands and thousands of daily visits and here I am spilling the beans about a global conspiracy that has existed for millennia and I bet I don’t get so much as a small bump in traffic.

Anyway… just before a prospective undertaker is approved to undertake his future undertaking he has one little ceremony he has to go through. All of the area morticians gather, always on a Friday evening, to raise a cup and toast the newest member in their fraternity. Of course, unbeknownst to their soon-to-be-colleague, a powerful sedative has been added to his drink and within minutes of throwing it back, at the height of his revelry, the lights go out.

And he wakes up in the dark hours later. In a coffin. Six feet deep.

And that’s where he’ll stay until Sunday night when their peers grab their shovels and dig them up.

I hear some of you recoiling at the notion of being buried alive and saying “Can this be true?” and “How barbaric!”

I can also hear of some you, more in the 260 to 525 Hertz range no doubt, asking “Why do you keep calling the mortician a ‘he’? Seems a bit politically incorrect.”

More on that in a moment.

It’s not my job to judge whether or not a potential undertaker benefits from spending a couple days underground, I can’t see how it in any way mirrors the experience of being dead, but I do know that the other undertakers get a kick out of it. They will often times sit quietly on top of the grave and listen to the ‘new guy’ yell and plead for hours on end, careful not to make a sound to indicate their presence. Not easy when they are having such a good time. You know that laugh you tried to stifle in school? It’s like that times ten. Some of the stuff that comes out of a person who is buried alive’s mouth is incredible. You’ll never know a man’s true heart better than listening to what he screams when he thinks he’s about to die alone underground. Dead men may not tell tales but let me tell you, men who think they’re dead certainly do.

An interesting aside; most of the mythology surrounding zombies and mummies can be traced back to this cruel practice.

If you didn’t like or understand funeral directors before this story it’s certainly not going to help you like them any better, but it might explain a little that weird look in their eye. And as long as I’m cheerleading the profession let me give you some information that might make you feel a bit warmer towards them.

It was 1868 that they dug up the first black undertaker.

It was 1911 that they dug up the first woman undertaker.

It was 1959 that they dug up the first openly gay undertaker.

All of these dates well before mainstream acceptance of these groups.

Sort of makes you look at morticians a little differently now doesn’t it?

But hold on, before you go falling in love, just know that to date they have buried three transgender candidates and they have yet to dig any of them up.

I guess with undertakers respect can’t be bought. It has to be urned.

(post-gallows humor)