The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
-by Sherryanne De La Boise
Yesterday, I suffered a phone call from my former spouse. He needed me to listen to his final arrangements. He was scared about his upcoming surgery (underlying complications) and wanted to make certain that he would not be "tossed on the barbie."
My own final arrangements were made when I was 30. Not because someone had died, but because I was working at Rosehill Cemetery for Service Corporation International. SCI was a bunch of funeral directors who owned a couple hundred cemeteries and funeral homes all over the country.
Using my employee discount, I purchased five mausoleum crypts located around the corner from the private room of Mr. Sears of Sears, Roebuck and down the hall from the rooms of Mr. Montgomery Ward and Mr. Shedd of the Shedd aquarium. Those rooms have beautiful Tiffany glass and doors that are works of art. Shedd's is adjacent to the mausoleum's chapel. He donated the chapel chairs made of bronze with a seahorse motif.
The doors to private rooms in mausoleums reflect the era in which they were built. Those built just before WWII have heavy bronze, floor to ceiling doors. People were scared. Those built in the 1960's have swinging gates. People were… well, I digress.
If my former spouse was unhappy during the year I was a Bill Collector, he was miserable that I had left Commercial Real Estate to become a Cemetery Salesman. "Just tell people that you are in Sales and change the subject before they can ask what the product is."
Well, a recession had hit commercial real estate. The market died. Rather than get frustrated that there was no business, I thought it would be amusing to spend the summer selling "permanent" real estate. You know the joke about the tenant never moving out?
Ended up doing a huge business in re-locations. Seems that folks who daily visit their loved ones, tend to move their loved ones, when they move. They would dis-inter, put the concrete boxes (with caskets inside) onto a semi and transport them to be re-interred in a cemetery near their new home. Urns are cheaper to move. Might be an argument for "tossing ‘em on the ‘barbie."
"Little Lady, you'll make $20k the first year. And, more the next," promised the stogey chomping man who hired me for this 100% commission job. He assigned me to be trained by a very handsome man, who probably never realized his success in sales came from his flirting with the wives (aka Rodney Dangerfield's "You can't think of anyone either?").
There was no way that I was going to flirt with the wives (I don't play on that side of the fence). Nor, the husbands. Men tend to take flirting a little more seriously and might come to collect. Then, the sale would be impossible to close.
I knew I had to find my own way to close.
From Brian Tracy to Zig Ziglar, I watched all those tapes on selling so often that when my four year old son badly wanted a Lego, and the car had failed to stop at Toys ‘R Us; he put his chubby hand onto my forearm and looked soulfully into my eyes, "It is the Mon-ney?"
He had learned how to close! I was so proud of him. I did a U-turn across a double yellow line and bought that Lego.
The best closing advice turned out to be from my father. He and his father were salesmen. "Salesmanship is the blue liquid running through our veins." Sounding like Yoda, "Let your instinct guide you to the close."
When there has been a death, it's really rough. The commission's cut from 20% of the sale to 2%. Not a good day for any of us!
The family has already been to the funeral home and spent money. They are typically on the edge of a total meltdown. One sister wants mom buried in her cornflower blue dress. The other sister remembers a different dress and besides, the blue one was thrown out years ago.
Then, there are the glasses. "Dad is not Dad without his glasses." "But, he did not wear them at night, and he's asleep, you know, eternal rest?" It's at this point that I'd take them to see grave markers that were carved to look like pillows.
Giving the family a tour of the neighborhoods of the cemetery (Yes, people like to be buried with their friends), I pointed out headstones and headstone fashion. A typical stone is rectangle, with three lines and a simple border pattern. But, the stonemason has 34,000 possible designs including 260 farm implement designs.
Flowers can be flat. Or, they can be carved to look like a specific flower. No more "give the flowers whilst I live."
One Christian woman always put parsley into everything. She worked her entire life for AT&T. If you look closely at her headstone, the carved flowers are actually parsley. And, the three crosses on the hill are connected by telephone wires.
The creator of the Franklin Planner bought the 4' tall open book and had it carved to look like his planner, with the birthdates of his entire family.
Took that concept a step further for a little business with existing upright monuments. A family's names and dates were cut into a sheet of rubber, which was lightly glued to the backside of that old monument. After sandblasting, the rubber was removed, leaving a permanent family tree.
A hundred years ago, folks liked the roughhewn stone. They choose it as a reminder of the cave into which Jesus's body was placed (and, it won't show chinks by the mowers).
But, I'm going to be encrypted in the mausoleum. Instead of boring block letters, I used my best handwriting and had my signature cut into a sheet of rubber and then blasted onto the white marble.
Unfortunately, my signature has changed: I no longer use the name of my former spouse. So, as he was talking to me about his final arrangements, I thought of a solution: He could have my crypt. I could save him a fortune of inscription fees. He only had to add an apostrophe and three letters to get a final inscription of "Sherryanne's ex."