The Dead. A Living. For Some.

Before my recent prospects for a return to construction, I had made a job application to work with a guy I know, we'll call him Pete.

Pete is an employee at a local Cemetery. He is in charge of transportation. He needed help carrying bodies. And he'd heard I was looking for work.

He must've noticed the weariness in my eye, "It's not backbreaking work, Rob, if that's what you're worried about. These days we just slide them over onto a gurney." Well, it wasn't the lifting that worried me.

Pete clarified that the people he deals with are the living ones, "that's who we help out, the families and the friends." He added, as if I may have thought otherwise, "the dead are dead."

Well, that was over a month ago and I never heard back from Pete, even though he acted like I'd for sure got the job. So when I spotted him yesterday at a birthday party I pulled up a chair next to him. "Yeah back in November we were swamped with work and then the weather got better and there was hardly enough work to go around." At first I wasn't totally sure what we were talking about here. I slowly revealed my own naivety, "you mean the death rate declines when the weather gets better?"

Now Pete began talking to me like I was one of those people who knows nothing about the dead, "The weather's a big factor. A big factor. The holidays are too." Responding to my raised eyebrows, he added, "People really hang on for Christmas, and then its downhill for them all."

In a way, Pete was simply confirming what I'd always known. Christmas was essentially a time of great hope and disappointment.

Pete tugged on his brother's arm and introduced me, "Hey this is the socialist guy I told you about." Pete was once a union printer before those jobs disappeared and he took up his work with the dead. The two brothers went on to tell me how their dad was an Auto worker. "He worked at General Motors in Fremont and before that at Fischer Body on 98th Street (Oakland). He used to bring the Militant (a socialist newspaper) home from work." Wow, now that surprised me!

We stared down at our drinks. "Yeah well, with this cold front coming on right now, plus the holidays, we're gonna get real busy in the coming weeks. January is always our busiest season." He paused and looked at the two of us with a grin that was almost undetectable, "I get up in the morning, look out the window and if I see rain, I know it's going to be a good day!"

A good day for some.