He dreamt that night killing would happen to any who did not go to school. Never sure of dreams, he certainly had not had that one before. It was odd he remembered the dream in the morning. This did not happen as much now that he was ninety-two years old and in a hospital bed. He still heard the nurses joking in the hallway, ‘Isn’t it funny, even Undertakers have to die…?’
   
His wife had been a woman who could continuously live in the bog of horseshit that was the funeral industry. He did not fault her for much in life, not even for dying sixteen years before. Alternatively, the men. She liked gifts and little ones kept her most happy; gloves, small ivory boxes, tiny silver figurines, a fish in a small bowl, some pewter works, a new lens for her camera, a board game, an artistic print or a Norman Rockwell coffee mug. All those things were gone now that he lived alone in his dying room.

Sorrow was something he lost long ago. So many dead had transferred through his hands to the grave or the furnace. He knew what life wanted in the end. In addition, he knew what the body looked like when most unflattering. No matter the age or beauty, there was nothing pretty about being dead.

He mused that morning, after again recalling the overheard cruel joke, the townspeople are always jealous of the local mortician. It was not just the money. He was their ...