The writer's use of imagery and contrast is pretty powerful. Here are the quotes that stuck out to me: > He was curled up like a fetus and in a white plastic b

The writer's use of imagery and contrast is pretty powerful. Here are the quotes that stuck out to me: > He was curled up like a fetus and in a white plastic bag. It's the same bag we put everyone in before we stick them in the cooler along with the others. The cooler is a bit like a triple-tiered dorm room, except it's coed and everybody in there is dead. > A urine test later, I was interviewing for the position with the office manager. A week after that, I was officially an employee of the booming death business. > Like all customer service jobs, most of the art comes down to language. In the death business, every tool has a public and private name. There is the "vinyl shroud." It's really just a plastic bag we removal technicians use to cover a loved one's body, but "vinyl shroud" makes us seem less like the overdressed movers we are. > After we've got the body on the cot, we'll say our good-byes and go on back to the funeral home to tape, label, and store the deceased in a temperature-controlled environment. Also known as a walk-in refrigerator. Exactly like those you find in ice cream shops. > Death, as you might expect, has boom and bust cycles. January through March tends to be the busiest season, while the summer months seem a bit slower. I only worked at the funeral home for a year, but I learned that during the boom months, it isn't uncommon for a funeral home to have so many bodies they don't know what to do with them. > There are changes that come over you after you work with the dead. You see things differently. You notice weight in not only a cultural context, but also a pragmatic one. I can't count the number of times I've been in the grocery store and found myself thinking about how if this or that person died, how difficult it would be to get them into the van with just two people. There is also a sense of commonality that comes with it. You see people not as their class or title, but as what we all truly are, bags of slimy, gooey muscles and bones. > And then there is the sadness. For me, my career in the death business lasted just over a year. In that time, I would guess I picked up more than 500 bodies. All sizes, all shapes, and all ages. There are the elderly, the middle-aged, and the young. The expected, the surprised, and the forgotten. The kids are the ones you never get used to. It was sad every time, and a year was just about as much sadness as I could take. Everyone in the death business has their own way of getting around the sadness. Religion, booze, and time are the primary prescriptions. Eventually, for me, all it took was quitting. And that works for most of us. An important reminder that we all die. Thanks for sharing.