Sad! This Lonely, Work Obsessed Mortician Forgot The Word For Living Cadavers

DETROIT, MI—Being a mortician is a depressing job and often requires one to work late into the night. That’s one of many reasons local mortician Gerald Barenheinz has not been so lucky in the relationship department. Instead of courting women and having a social life, he dedicates his time to making corpses look as peaceful as possible for their families last glimpse before they say goodbye forever. 

The isolation of the job never bothered Barenheinz until very recently when he forgot the word for cadavers before they die. “I was trying to remember and I just couldn’t. Was it pre-corpse? Almost stiffs? Soon-to-be carcass? I just couldn’t for the life of me remember what those are called,” Gerald explained. His life was dwindling away taking care of the lifeless and it’s hard to imagine something more pathetic.

Not for lack of trying, his love life just never seemed to flourish. “I did go on a date once, with an EMT named Julie. We worked similar hours and had both seen our fair share of cold bodies. But she didn’t really care for my conversations, which mostly centered around what color rouge looks best on an elderly female cadaver.” 

Gerald finally cracked open a thesaurus and remembered “people” or “human” were the words he was trying to remember. After a deep sigh, he took comfort in the knowledge that one day he would be lying on the table and someone else would be touching up his makeup and putting a nice suit on him. That would likely be the next and final time he had human contact, just before his funeral service with nobody in attendance.