We’ve been at Rosenbaum’s for a couple of hours, in the basement with the bodies.

A young woman named Nina greeted us at the front door of the mortuary with a gravity appropriate to the occasion. We’d crossed the threshold, leaving the summery morning with its sunny black-eyed Susans and shady lawns, and followed her across the foyer, past the sanctuary, and down the narrow back stairs into the chilly fluorescent room.

Even though it’s the end of June, we’re wearing pants and down jackets. We’ve done this—Shemira—before, so we are prepared.

Shemira is the Jewish ritual of watching over the body of a deceased person. Back in the old days this was to guard against rodents, but that is not a problem at Rosenbaum’s. The surfaces in the main room of the basement, which is about 30 by 60 feet, are spotless. I observe that the floor is made of “pad-and-pour” polyurethane like in rec centers and has drains in it. . In some ways, it is reassuring that Death is kept clean and relentlessly lit, but in this windowless room, it is stifling to be in its company.

Another reason for Shemira is to keep the soul company after death; it lingers near the body for a few days, and can easily get disoriented. Many years ago, after my grandmother took her last, long, rattling breath, I saw her soul hover in the air. It looked like a mirage you see when driving on a long road on a hot day.

It is customary to read comforting psalms when doing Shemira. Caroline liked the poems of Mary Oliver, so I’ve brought my copy of Devotions. “Okay, Caroline, how about… ‘Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness'?”

Not surprisingly, her soul is similar to the person I’ve known for 30 years: easygoing and agreeable. Just so quiet now. Damn it.

I contemplate the outline of her body, on the gurney under the crisp white sheet. She was always petite, and seven years of chemo and cancer-related emergencies made her smaller and smaller. Now Death has diminished her more.

A few weeks ago, Doug and I took turns keeping Caroline—dear, living Caroline—company during what would be her last infusion. She was tiny under layers of soft sweaters and a winsome felt hat. We were on the top floor of the Kaiser building, and the streets of Denver and the mountains stretched out below the picture windows, far away and full of bustling, oblivious life. “Would you like a cookie?" she asked, pulling a small baggie from her brown lunch sack. As always, her voice was low and gracious. Now that she will never talk again, I will not be able to hear it with my ears. But I feel it in my chest.

********

Her body lies on one of three gurneys.  The two occupied ones have the name of the deceased on a little name tent, and a battery-operated votive candle by their feet.

I am sitting next to Caroline, but that’s not required for Shemira. Doug is settled in a small room off to the side. We—Caroline and I—can see him through an interior window. That room is carpeted with comfortable seating, warm light, and pictures of old men with long beards and black hats reading holy books.

I consider what kind of person works with corpses as a profession. When I was in college, I took a standardized career assessment. The results pointed to the job of funeral director. Also teacher, therapist and writer.

Caroline is a therapist. Was a therapist. When will the past tense sound normal? It feels rude, as if I am ignoring someone standing right in front of me.

When Nina brought us down here this morning, I wanted to be sociable and ask how she got into this work. But my brain was too busy.  We had to get settled, and then there was the breath-stopping, stomach-dropping first meeting with Caroline’s lifeless body. I started to think about other people: Our friend Peter, now Caroline’s widower. Their adult daughter Ruth, now a motherless child. My daughter Louisa, same age. What ridiculous privilege allows Louisa to have two living parents? My thoughts were too crowded for me to talk with Nina about her job.

********

It's been more than an hour, and I get up to use the bathroom. There are a few supplies stored behind a curtain and a traditional blessing posted on the wall. It’s called the Asher Yatzar and I’ve seen it before. It praises God for creating people with “many openings and many hollow spaces.” This is referring to our viscera: our organs, and the valves between them.

The blessing goes on to say, “It is obvious and known…that if even one of them would be opened , or if even one of them would be sealed , it would be impossible to survive.”

That is the truth. Caroline died of ovarian cancer, my friend Donna of stomach cancer, and my friend Joanne of pancreatic cancer. I read the prayer and do not take for granted the workings of our openings and hollow spaces.

Casting around for distraction, a maniacal part of me whispers with sophomoric humor that I wouldn’t need a toilet if I were dead.

As it happens, the toilet is very much alive. It makes a shuddering plumbing-fart when I flush. “It wasn’t me, it was the pipes!” I think, to nobody in particular.

********

More time passes, Caroline and I make our way through a few more poems. I tap a pencil against the Mary Oliver book; the eraser gives a little bounce. I walk to the bulletin board across the room. I don’t mean to be nosy, but it has information about Caroline and the other bodies in the room. It turns out there are more dead people here than I thought; there’s someone in a little room off to the side, and a couple more in a separate, refrigerated room.

I excuse myself from Caroline, and visit Doug in the warm dark room, do a few yoga stretches. We have another hour before someone takes the next shift.  I sit down again at Caroline’s side.

********

Young, female voices float down the stairs.

Nina enters with a colleague who is what we Jews call zaftig—pleasantly plump. She looks ready for a classy party, in a long knit dress with big diagonal stripes. She has pulled her hair into a bun. It sticks out of the side of her head like an olive in a martini.

Nina says to me, “I’m sorry, we’re going to be bringing someone in here. If you want to move into the side room, you can.”

“I don’t mind being here, if I’m not in the way.” I don’t want Caroline to have to deal with this disruption by herself.

Besides, I’m curious. What are the logistics of a mortuary?  How do the bodies arrive, and how do the names get on the bulletin board? A human being with a whole life has died. We who loved her are still living. Carrying on with an emptiness in our heart, which, against all odds, are still beating. We, who saw her alive last week, try to wrap our minds around a puzzle which the neurons of our brains, sending frantic signals in random directions, can’t seem to solve.

********

At the funeral, I will see my friend Naomi, who has also taken a Shemira shift with Caroline. She, too, took a peek at that bulletin board with the names. There she saw the name of yet another friend of hers, and that’s how she learned of her death.

If you had lived in the days of yore when our Jewish forefathers walked across the desert of Israel/Palestine in their sandals, and if you saw a friend after an absence of 30 days, you would say the blessing praising God for raising up the dead. Because for all you knew, your friend might have been eaten by a lion since you last saw him. Nowadays you live a sort of illusion ; you naively assume your loved ones are alive at this moment.

********

But right now, there is work to be done, and I want to see what that work is. Scratching my left ankle with my right foot, I sit up straight and greet Nina and her colleague.

Nina says, “That’s fine, you are welcome to stay.”

The colleague, a new intern named Belle, says to me, “That’s wonderful what you’re doing for your friend.”

I hear the sound of mechanical equipment. The elevator doors open. A gurney holding a large body under a sheet noses into the room. It is being pushed with vigor by a young man who seems to have walked off the set of The Matrix: black suit, black hair slicked back into a short ponytail, dark glasses.

The energy in the room shifts; all at once there are three new living people down here and one new dead person. It feels abuzz, like a party getting started.

Nina introduces Belle to the young man. He responds with a smooth “how you doin’,” and greets me as well. Nina, with a “where are my manners” swoop in my direction, tells me, “This is Matt.”

“Do you work here too?” I ask Matt. I can tell that I’m showing off a little: Here I am. I’m part of the Basement Team. I’m participating in a normal conversation in the presence of Death. I angle to be included and inclusive.

Matt responds, “Me? Nope. I’m the Uber Driver.” The young women seem to recede from him without actually moving. It is almost imperceptible but not quite, and I get the feeling they are refraining from rolling their eyes.

I am confused. Then I say, “Oh, you drive the, uhm, hearse.” Is that what it’s called? My grandmother had been loaded gently into a black vinyl body bag with a very long zipper, wheeled out to the parking lot of her nursing home, and slid into a van which had the capacity for six bodies, bunk bed style. Two occupied body bags were already there, waiting patiently to welcome her, as if the van had been a cabin at a summer camp. I’d been startled to see that Grandma Tiby wasn’t the only one who’d died that morning. Then I poked myself in the ribs: Duh.

The hearse that Matt had driven, alike my grandmother’s van, is called a “First Call Vehicle.” The ride from deathbed to mortuary has a medical feel to it: a living body (which had been receiving medical treatment to prevent it from dying) has become dead.  And now it’s a corpse in need of a different kind of treatment. As with most medical things, the transport of the body feels depersonalizing. That’s what I feel in this moment as the “Uber Driver” makes his delivery. Tomorrow when Caroline takes her final ride from Rosenbaum’s to the burial site, things will be different. We will look on as her pine casket, with its beveled edges and Jewish star, is lovingly carried by her pallbearers. Together we’ll stand in a group around her. We’ll remember her kind words, helpful acts, and soft laugh. We’ll engage with her spirit and be spared her body.

But right now, we are in the cold windowless room with its faint chemical smell, with its dead bodies and living ones, and Matt continues. “I drive them all. Suicides, murders, criminal scenes, bodies from the hospital.” I don’t know what to do with this braggadocio. He is aiming to impress—me, ostensibly—but really Belle the intern. I nod politely.

He slaps a small piece of paper on a nearby table. The three of them look down at it, and Nina begins to complete a different form, one which will end up on the bulletin board.

“Now it’s time to inspect the body,” Nina says for the benefit of the team. She says to me, half-joking, “We’ll tell you when you can open your eyes.”

I give a half-smile and a nod, look down at my hands, and shift my silent attention back to Caroline. But my focus is divided now.

I hear Belle apologize to the corpse (“Sorry, guy”), and in my peripheral vision I see Nina lift the sheet. Nina says to the others, “This gentleman …”—she reads the piece of paper—“his name is Joseph.”

I do not look up to see Joseph’s face but I sneak a peek at his exposed toes; I can’t help it. They are so extremely gray and I am shocked. Then I’m surprised by my shock. What did I expect? I’m glad that I have not looked at Caroline’s body. Gray is definitively dead and even though I know full well that she is dead, I’ve been feeling an aliveness in the energy between us. I want to hold on to that feeling.

They proceed with the inspection. Nina reads to Belle, “Discoloration. Broken skin on the left hand.” Then, “It looks like he threw up.” Matt jokes, in his macho show-off voice, “He had too much to eat.” Then he embellishes, to no one who cares, “Sometimes you find them with their tongue sticking out.” Nina steers the conversation diplomatically, educationally, back on track, rescuing all three of us women (and perhaps Caroline too) from Matt’s declarations. “Yes,” she says, “that can happen with cardiac events.”

Belle is writing the inspection notes that Nina gives her on the new form while reading the original one. “His name is Joseph, and he was 92 at his death. Oh, look at this.” She shows the paper to the others and I hear the word “Covid.”

They have gloves on already and reach in unison to pluck masks from a big box sitting nearby. Since Nina’s gloved hands have been touching the body, Belle stands behind her and gently slips a mask over her face, tucking the straps tenderly around her ears. I watch this gesture, with its inherent intimacy, and think about how nice it is that living people are capable of such graceful partnership. Then Belle writes large letters on the form, in Sharpie permanent marker: “Covid.”

Caroline and I are about 10 feet away from the action. I’m not worried about Caroline; you cannot be more immune than she is. I don’t know about myself. Can you get Covid from a corpse? It’s not like he’s breathing. Right? I pull a mask out of my purse and put it on.

It’s time to move Joseph’s large body from Matt’s gurney to Rosenbaum’s. Matt jockeys for position, initiating the move, intending to do it by himself. But Nina establishes her dominion in the mortuary, saying, “I do this all the time.” They end up working as a team, gently shifting the corpse from the transport gurney to Rosenbaum’s cart.

To wheel Joseph into the little side room and isolate his Covid-hosting body from the rest of us, Nina and Belle have to move other bodies. It’s like the video game Tetris and I am mesmerized, glad for the distraction. One cart seizes up, and Nina says to me and Belle, “Each wheel has its own brake, which is dumb.” I chime in supportively, “I can see the problem.” She adds, “We should get new carts.” There is no need for this, but she is self-conscious about the equipment.

I’m an outsider in this room, but at this moment I’m more of an insider than Matt. He’s pulled his gurney out of the way and is dawdling, even though it’s obvious there’s nothing more for him to do. Finally, he backs into the elevator with his gurney. “See you later,” he says to the girls.

After the door closes, Nina makes the tiniest smirk. Belle and I follow suit, and then all three of us begin to chuckle. I can hear Caroline chuckle too, in solidarity. It’s discreet, as she always was when she was alive.  Belle voices what we are all thinking: “Of all the times to hit on me.” And then, as if to address Matt: “Do you know where we ARE?”

********

And then they are gone, retreated upstairs because their work is complete, at least for now.

Once again I am alone with Caroline, remembering why I’m here.

********

I sit very still in the wake of all the flurry and silliness.

There is no energy in my body.

I am a canyon after a flash flood.

********

To keep myself company, I say to Caroline, “Well, that was a lot, wasn’t it?”

But there is no response and in this moment I know she is dead for sure.

So I address her dead self: “You and I would have had a good giggle about this, but you would have been demure and not mean. I know it.”

Just like that, I’ve switched to the past tense.

I have to conjure up her laughter in a different part of my brain from the hearing part, because I can no longer hear her.

********

I leave Caroline’s side and join Doug in the room with the carpet and warm lights and rabbi-paintings. After some yoga stretches it’s time to go to the bathroom again, and say that blessing posted on the wall. I think about my various dead friends whose organs stopped working.

I want—but can’t will—the tears to come. Maybe tomorrow, at the funeral. For now, the living body I’m in knows how to sit still with Caroline, bond with the girls, smirk at the boy, do yoga, and use the bathroom. But it doesn’t seem, right now, to know how to cry.