It says so much when a working family can't even afford to bury the dead

[Hekate]

148. That is horrible; I'm so sorry. Our experience with my mother was much, much kinder

Mom wanted her body donated to science -- but she had just moved to be near my brother when she died, and the university medical school was in another state entirely. So my brother scrambled to get his local university med school to accept her "donation," which they did. The only place to keep her until they picked her up was a local mortuary, which had the requisite refrigerator.

My sister and I scrambled to get there, and we did want to see her one last time. The mortuary people, who mind you were getting nothing from us for their services (maybe had some arrangement with the university), offered to lay Mom out in a side chapel that was undergoing remodeling and so not in use for someone's funeral. She was draped in a heavy white cotton blanket and her head was on a pilow. She had been washed, but otherwise undisturbed. No mortuary makeup meant she was waxy-pale. Fancy it was not, but it was what we needed -- Sis and I had Mom to ourselves and were able to talk quietly. Mom was at peace at last after all the storms of her last few years. Shortly after we were done, the med school's ambulance came for her body.

I guess my family and I have been lucky, but these people were kind to us.