Menewsha Avatar Community - The Girl Who Grew Up With Death (Prelude)

This was something I did for my literary art's magazine my senior year at high school. I'm more into screen play writing so this is just my attempt at a more standard novel format.

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When I was a child, I thought I had a relatively normal life. My parents were married, both had decent jobs, and a stable home. I never did anything too extraordinary; wore normal clothes and had normal dreams and desires any girl my age would have. I liked to play hide-and-seek in the backyard, and when the weather turned cold, read books in bed while snuggled up in my blanket. Apparently, I was dead wrong about the “normalcy” of my childhood.

Emanuel Benard, my father, married my mother Karrie Anne Finkel and started their life together at Clearwater Passing – a funeral parlor. You see, my father inherited the parlor from his grandfather and in his grandfather’s footsteps, became a mortician. My mother was already working as a beautician at Clearwater Passing and once she met my father, she knew she was in love. About a year after their marriage, I was born four weeks early and weighed seven pounds, eight ounces. Newborn babies at a funereal parlor usually create smiles on those who are mourning – usually, that is; often there were questions raised on the merit of having a baby surrounded by death and the grieving.
Honestly, it did not occur to me that there was a morgue two stories below my bedroom until I turned seven. Our home was upstairs at Clearwater Passing while the kitchen, the office, the reception hall, and the viewing room were all downstairs. In the basement, of course, was the morgue and next door to the parlor was the chapel. I liked the chapel the best, mostly because of the old gravesite beside the building. Stone markers were used for headstones, there were sixteen in all. Unless you were observing the landscape, you may not even recognize the miniature graveyard due to the lack of a fence and flowers. I had a habit at four of picking dandelions and buttercups and placing them on the stones, mimicking those I had seen at various funerals. When I was five, I started taking the flowers sent to the deceased and spreading the bouquets among the sixteen gravestones until Grant stopped me.

Grant was the son of Pastor Gil Roberts and served as the hearse driver and babysitter for my parents. Before, my aunt Beatrice was my babysitter, but as soon as Grant took the job as my caretaker, Aunt Bea left town from what my mom said was a broken heart. I was too young to know that Aunt Bea loved me that much, and I still wonder why Grant at sixteen was a better babysitter than my aunt. Due to his double job as hearse driver and my caregiver, Grant put me in the passenger seat and we drove around with a dead body in the back. This was still completely normal to me – didn’t everyone have a teenage boy as a nanny who drove a hearse part-time?

My parents had a philosophy of “embracing death” and when I was old enough, seven to be exact, I watched the embalmment of Mary Leigh, a teenage car crash victim. My dad used this moment to explain that morticians and embalmers are not the same job but he could do both and also that whenever I get into a car, to always buckle up and never drive “under the influence.” I wanted to question him about what “under the influence” meant but I was too curious watching the embalming fluid being injected into what my dad called the “carotid artery.” I was soon called up to lunch by Grant so I left Mary Leigh in the basement with my father and told to wash up thoroughly, even though my hands had not touched anything.

Even though embalming bodies was an interesting sight to watch, I only witnessed the process a few times. My mother wanted me to be a beautician just like herself so I ended up watching how to apply foundation, lipstick, and other cosmetics. I learned to do hair too, as that was another important part of making the body “viewable” for family and friends to see. I’ve been told that my parents were “morbid and immoral” and had no right to “subject me to such horrifying things.” Others told me that my parents were disrespecting the dead and their families for allowing a mere child into the morgue. These accusations, which I heard when I was much older, were readily dismissed because the way I grew up was my life. Clearwater Passing was part of the Benard Family and like my family, I was going to embrace death just as they had. However, I never became a mortician, embalmer, beautician, or even a hearse driver – I just fell in love with Johnny.