The Croak Smoke

CONTENT WARNING: Death, Description Of Cremation Process

I used to work at a funeral home that was set in a large cemetery. We also had a crematory sited on a hill just adjacent to the cemetery.

One Saturday, I was performing a cremation on a body that came in just barely under our maximum weight limit. Without getting into too many gory details, fat burns very hot, it produces a lot of thick black smoke, and in order to cremate very large bodies completely, it is necessary to use a long metal implement to sort of drag the flaming corpse up under the retort burner a time or two. It is incredibly unpleasant work, but luckily, it only takes a few minutes at a time.

I had just completed one of these “pull-ups,” which had filled the crematory building with smoke. Normally, this smoke gets sent through an afterburner, incinerating the remaining particulate which makes it black, which is why all crematories don’t look like cartoon coal-burning plants. A big, black cloud of it came billowing out of the door with me when I left, and there was no wind that day, so it took a minute to dissipate.

I locked the door, and turned around to see a very shocked and angry-looking young man walking up from the graveside where a priest was performing committal rites. I didn’t recognize him personally, but I clocked him for a student intern from another funeral home in town. After seeing that he was staring aghast at the black smoke now wisping its way very visibly into the sky, I met his eyes, grinned brightly, and chirped, “Hooray! We have a new pope!”