Intersections
“Love did me in, brother Coppo. It was love all along…”- Disco Elysium, 2019
Harry glanced up from his book and turned to look at the clock, deciding that he should probably begin his work. This is his 2nd ‘client’ of the week, pretty rare for his occupation to have more than 1 each week. Being a mortician and funeral director, he usually dedicates his week for 1 client. Embalming the body, dressing it, and arranging the funeral takes a lot of work and preparation, and he believes it would be nothing short of disrespectful to his clients if he doesn’t dedicate his time. After all, time is what his clients never have.
But this time, he was contacted by the deceased’s family members, saying that it was an emergency. Right at the hour he received the downpayment for a funeral home, a casket, the cemetery, and all his necessary usual needs for preparing a client, he doesn’t have the heart to say no. So it’s a bit of a rush, but he guesses that his client’s death wasn’t something that can be foreseen by his family members. Through years of being a mortician, Harry is no stranger to accidents and sudden deaths, his theory is that just like life, death works in mysterious and often unpredictable ways.
As usual, his clients come in with his clothes and belongings intact, waiting to be stripped and cleaned by Harry, who prepares them for their final meeting in this world. His client this time, is a middle aged man caked in wounds from a traffic accident. Underneath the layers of dried blood, and cuts he can see what is left of this man, this is a man with a lot of past, and obviously no future. As Harry carefully collects his belongings, rifling through his pockets, he realizes that this man can no longer interact with his surroundings in a meaningful way, not even a passive observer to the man who’s currently picking apart his clothes. Meanwhile the discarded stack of items on Harry’s table attempts to answer “why” this man became his client on a Saturday evening.
As a funeral director, it’s not just Harry’s job to embalm and prepare the deceased, but also to help ease their families as they begin their journey to grief. He supposes that it’s also a part of his job to learn about his clients and their lives, to be a messenger for the unspoken things left behind by the deceased to their families. As he’s piecing together his belongings Harry wonders what was it that did this man in, was it love? Was it anger? Was it sadness?
The obvious answer would be a car with an irresponsible driver, barreling towards an intersection at more than twice the speed limit, this was the information provided by the man’s family. He died upon impact, faster than his life flashing before his eyes. The man did not know that his body was taking its last deep breath. He never will. Death comes faster than the realization. But, what Harry is trying to find out, is what led him to this intersection on a slow Saturday evening, the train of choices that led him to that very spot at that exact time.
In the man’s jacket, Harry finds a pocket bible, and along with it, his wallet, an ice cream shop’s phone number, his phone, and a birthday card. He observes the bible and wonders if the man was religious in life, or perhaps he just liked to carry around the holy book as a sort of charm. It’s not uncommon for people to do this, people like to cling to a lot of things when they need peace of mind. Harry was never religious, despite the fact that he prays a lot for the deceased and their families, for him it’s just a procession to ease their burdens, to make them feel like they can hold on to something while they handle their grief. He’s spent many a night in the mortuary pondering about the existence of God and the afterlife, and he decides that he doesn’t believe in the afterlife. This world is just enough, enough kindness, enough pain, and enough sorrow to exist, it must be. He often wonders that if God exists, he wouldn’t be somewhere up in a throne in the sky. He would be here, in the empty spaces between people, existing in the vacuums that we leave behind each day, arranging the atoms for our life and our choices.
As he starts his routine, the bits and pieces of the man’s story start to come together in Harry’s mind. A scribbled and well read bible, a wallet with no cash in it, and a birthday card which reads more like an apology letter. This was a man who was trying to make amends with his past, to bury the hatchet with his estranged daughter. He was on his way to her house with a tub of ice cream from her favorite shop when she was little, a sentimental gift, and a peace offering for someone that he truly loves. In the end, just like the rest of us, it was love that did him in.
Harry wonders what choices could this man have made, to be spared such a fate. What possible turns at every intersection of his life to avoid this outcome? Should he have not taken that road? Should he pick a different gift for his daughter? Or should he never start his conflict with her all those years ago to begin with? The absurdity of it all being preordained rushed through Harry’s head, he brushed off the thought that this man was born only to end up at his table. He knew that if he went down that path, there would be no end to it. We ourselves may only be loved for a brief moment in time. Even so, that will have to suffice. Maybe it is all predestined, maybe it is all the cause of his choices, meanings are after all, the hardest thing to pinpoint. He is not about to go down that existential hole, death and meaning is just another day on the job for him. In the end, Harry settled with a conclusion. For this man, life is a tub of ice cream, for the one person he truly loves.
