Nine Years Under by Sheri Booker

Author:Sheri Booker [Booker, Sheri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101621769
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2013-05-29T16:00:00+00:00

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COSMETICS were the most important part of the prepping process. The whole purpose of a viewing is to have one last look at the face of a loved one, one last memory. Mr. Wylie understood this and took his time with every case. Many families didn’t understand that when he asked for a photo, he used it as a guide for his work, so they would bring in photos of a sixty-year-old man in his youth, or a side profile, or some other picture that would not be helpful for him when he tried to restore a person’s true features. Sometimes Mr. Wylie would have to request a more recent picture, and he accepted anything: a driver’s license, a passport, a tarnished Polaroid, whatever he could get.

We once had a daughter come in to view her father. Her dad had been terminally ill for about a year before he died, and she’d spent every day nursing him. The daughter had brought in a photograph that had been taken right before his sickness got the best of him. Mr. Wylie filled out his face, which had become very thin and sunken, as it was pictured. The old man’s skin was a little darker than the photo because of his illness, but there wasn’t much Mr. Wylie could do to lighten the complexion.

When his daughter came in, she stood before the casket for a few moments, inspecting everything, and then she walked around and read the notes on the cards before circling back and pausing again in front of the casket. Then she burst into tears. “He doesn’t look dead enough. I don’t like it. He looks too healthy.”

After she and Mr. Wylie discussed the issue, she admitted that the photo she’d given us was more than two years old. She had become used to her father’s dying face and wanted to remember him as the sick man that she had cared for and known most recently. Mr. Wylie agreed to make changes. He knew you only got one chance at funeral service and he was happy he could honor a family’s request, no matter how strange it seemed.

After ushering the family out of the room and pulling the curtains shut, he went to the casket and began massaging the area around the man’s cheekbones with his thumb and index finger. He added pressure and pushed the skin in, making the man’s face look thinner. The more he rubbed, the more the man’s face sunk in, removing the man’s youth before my eyes, and adding a look of death. But that was exactly what the daughter wanted. She returned, and when she saw her father again, she gave Mr. Wylie a hug.

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