The Apples in My Orchard

A tisket a tasket I see another casket!

Today I had to take a table back to our shop storage area at work. To get to the storage room, one has to traverse a couple of hallways. Between the two main hallways is a storage room full of new caskets.

It is one of the spookiest places I have had to walk through that wasn’t an amusement park attraction!  The room is dimly lit, not dark, but there are only a couple of lights that show the path through to the other hallway. There are caskets stacked everywhere in the room that is close to a half a football field in length.

Some are single, extracted from a stack, and maybe waiting to be delivered to one of the many funeral homes we have in the area. Some are stacked three high, enclosed in brown kraft colored corrugated cardboard boxes. The boxes are labeled on one end with one large word that says HEAD.

It’s creepy, I’m telling you!

Only once in the last eight months of work have I seen other humans in this room. They were sweeping.  Twice I crossed the casket room with co-workers, both male, to reach the shop. Every other time, it has just been me and the caskets. There must be over one hundred of them – all the same size – all waiting for an occupant.

It’s eerie.

It’s quiet.

It’s still.

There are many, many boxes, and one forklift, all sitting still in a dimly lit room, waiting.

The casket room.