When Will It End?

The calls do not stop coming. Yesterday we had two visitations, plus a memorial service. Today we had two funeral masses and a cot view. By the end of the day, we had four calls, all of them coming after lunch. Call number one was a car accident. We'll get the body from the Medical Examiner in the next day or two. Number two will be a burial Monday at the National Cemetery. Myself and one other guy will handle that. Call number three will be a cremation; I don't know if there will be any services. The fourth call will be a ship-out. This makes about 15 or 16 calls for the month, with about 9 of them coming in the last 6 days.

While all of this business can be good for the bottom line, it can also lead to confusion and mistakes. When you're handling this many calls in such a short time, it's easy to overlook things like filing the death certificate, getting families to sign cremation authorizations, sending the completed paperwork to the crematory, etc. So we have to be extra vigilant with our paperwork, and that's not always easy when there is so much of it.